The Lets Read Podcast - 77: Episode 068 | Thanksgiving & Jail Stalker Stories | 24 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

Welcome to the sixty-eighth 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 Thanksgiving, Jail Stalkers & Terrifying Exes... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ♫ Background Music: Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFvrqVSJE8E PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead 

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So who's that pro the pros at tread experts from tires to auto repair. Tread experts is always there helping you with Kumo tires. You can trust until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Tread Experts.ca Let me tell you about my Uncle Earl. Uncle Earl was my dad's older brother by four years, and they were wicked close when they were younger, growing up on the North Shore of Boston. My dad used to get pretty badly picked on by some Italian kids down at Bunker Hill High School and Uncle Earl was the one who finally went down to talk to them about it. Yeah, he was that bigger brother.

Another thing you should know about Uncle Earl. In late 60s, the US Marines were drafting all the poor Irish and Italian kids from the poor neighborhoods around Beantown. According to my dad, everyone was terrified of getting that letter in their mailbox. But not Uncle Earl. Because of his 18th birthday, Uncle Earl marches down near Boston Common and signs up for boot camp. The way my dad tells it, this is because Uncle Earl was a quiet patriot who was honored to have the opportunity to serve his country, but we all know that the real reason is because Uncle Earl is completely nuts.

So now for the actual story. It's late 1991. I've just turned 15 and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Mom and Dad are rushing around trying to make sure everything is prepped and ready to go while I'm just chilling in my room playing my brand new state-of-the-art Super Nintendo. Then an argument commences. My parents weren't really ones to argue out loud. They'd have tense but quiet discussions trying not to let us kids see them being negative. I always appreciated that but hence why I was so concerned about them shouting. I crack my bedroom door and listen in on what they're talking about, quickly gathering

that it's an argument involving my uncle Earl. Earl had decided to attend this year's Thanksgiving and was apparently bringing his family along with him. I didn't know too much about Earl, just that he was a NAMM vet and that he and my dad hadn't spoken in almost 10 years. What my mom could have possibly found objectionable about this, I didn't know, but it did kind of make me sad that we seemed to have such a fractured family. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened that Thanksgiving evening. but it did kinda make me sad that we seemed to have such a fractured family. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened that Thanksgiving evening. And I would see exactly why my mom was so angry at my dad for refusing to disinvite Uncle Earl.

Cut to Thanksgiving morning and things are tense in our house. All day my mom is snipping at my dad, first seemingly hopeful that he'll disinvite his brother, but later outright contemptuous that he somehow didn't have the sack to tell him no. During a quiet moment, I ask dad if Uncle Earl really was coming to dinner, and I'll never forget his reply. Family should stick together, son, no matter what. He then told me the Italian bully story and I remember understanding why he couldn't tell Earl no. They were brothers, nothing could or would change that. So I'm back to wondering just what it is that's got my mom so on edge, letting the thoughts slip

from my mind as I drive back in for another level of Super Mario World. But the cutesy 16-bit sound effects were suddenly drowned out by what sounded like an army of engines. Motorcycle engines to be specific. I looked out of my bedroom window and gasped at what I saw. There's like a whole fleet of motorcycles clogging up our quiet suburban street. They're all wearing matching leather jackets too, with identical stitching and designs on the back of them. I squinted through the fogged glass, trying to read what they said. I had no frame of reference for them, so when I read the words, Hell's Angels, on the back of their jackets, it didn't really mean anything to me.

But it would by the end of the evening. Where's that little brother of mine? An older man at the front of the column began to shout. His bare arms, how he wasn't freezing I don't know, were covered in hand ink tattoos, one of which clearly read, Vietnam Vet. When I die, I'll know I'll go to heaven, cause I served my time in hell. It was Uncle Earl. That was the evening the Massachusetts chapter of Hell's Angels Outlaw Motor Club invaded our family home. I think I was so scared at first because Mom locked herself in her bedroom. I'd never known her to be so skittish, and I guess it was because these guys were actually dangerous.

So you can imagine how terrified I was when I heard someone banging on my door. Before I could even answer, Uncle Earl and a handful of his Hell's Angel friends had piled in my room. The stench of cigarette smoke and open beer cans floating around the room. What is this? Uncle Earl spat, peering at the Super Nintendo and the graphics on the screen. Is this some kind of movie? I remember stammering, so scared I could hardly speak. Nah, Press, one of his friends replied. It's one of them video game things. Look, he's making it move with the remote thing there. My God, what a time to be alive. Uncle Earl said with a smile.

You must be one wicked smart kid to be able to make it work, huh kid? He ruffled my hair and I began to relax. But what he did next made my head spin. Happy Thanksgiving, kid. Buy yourself a movie for your thing. I don't know what you call them. Uncle Earl took out his wallet and tossed a few ten dollar bills onto the floor next to me. Boys, back me up here. At that, all of Uncle Earl's friends took a few dollar bills out of their pockets and tossed them onto the pile. I swear I had like 300 bucks when I finally counted it all up.

To this day I've never seen such an outrageous display of generosity. But as they filed out of my bedroom, one of the bigger, hairier Hell's Angels didn't leave. He just sits down next to me on my bed and asks in the deepest, most gravelly voice I've ever heard. Mind if I try? I handed him the controller and at first he couldn't work out how to do anything. He actually managed to walk down a pitfall too, thinking it was where he was supposed to go. I gave him a little impromptu Nintendo lesson until he actually got pretty good, and found myself kind of sad when he had to leave. When the angels had finally left, I plucked up the courage to see just what condition they'd left downstairs. It was a real mess, but it wasn't the whirlwind of destruction my mom dressed it up as.

Just a lot of empty beer cans and fancy cups used as ashtrays. But there wasn't a single scrap of food left in her house. All the turkey, all the yams, every last mouthful of green bean casserole had all been completely consumed. That was the most terrifying thing in the end, really. That there wasn't even enough left over for a turkey sandwich. Thanksgiving, although one of the hallmark holidays in the American yearly calendar, can be an extremely stressful experience for some. For some unfortunate people, family is less about a network of love and support and more a web of jealousy, suspicion, and hatred.

But for one Florida family, Thanksgiving joy turned to the ultimate horror, and it didn't end there. As Paul Marich, 35 years old, commenced a murderous rampage directed at his own family members, he was reportedly heard to mutter, I've been waiting nearly 20 years to do this. Marriage's violent mental break resulted in four dead and an additional two wounded on Thanksgiving 2009. Marriage's extended family had gathered at his cousin's house, owned by Muriel Sitton and her husband Jim, down in Jupiter, Florida. After chowing down on a traditional Thanksgiving meal, they'd gathered around a large grand piano and joined together in singing traditional Christmas songs,

to the delight of a six-year-old Michaela Sitton, who was tucked into bed soon after. It was as wholesome as a festive scene as one can possibly imagine, at least until Paul, who'd been acting relatively calmly all night, produced a loaded pistol and began fulfilling a real estate agent, and Lisa Knight, who was eight months pregnant at the time of a brutal murder. Like little Michaela, they both loved to sing. Marriage also shot his 76-year-old aunt, Ramonda Joseph, who, due to her advanced age, had little to no chance of escaping the slaughter. Marriage's brother-in-law, Patrick Knight, was rushed to the hospital in critical but stable condition after surviving one of Paul's bullets. While, another man, Clifford Gabera, 52, was grazed by a bullet and also taken to the hospital.

Sitton doesn't think Marriage planned to kill Michaela, but he thinks he became overcome with rage and jealousy when he saw the family delight in her singing. He tried to snuff out the light, Sitton said. He came into a baby's room. He saw her innocence and he walked in and purposefully killed her. After the mass murder, marriage went on the run from the law for weeks, supposedly having entertained ending his own life. He had been laying low in the Florida Keys under an assumed name and living off the $12,000 in cash he'd withdrawn before Thanksgiving. That was until January of 2010, when an attempted member of the public spotted him after his appearance on an episode of America's Most Wanted that focused on the obscene brutality of marriage's killings.

That huge 12 grand cash withdrawal further underlined how premeditated marriage's crimes had been. The local Palm Beach Post described him as an estranged recluse who clashed with his sisters in the past. One had even taken out a restraining order against him a few years prior. But at that 2009 Thanksgiving, everything seemed calm, at least on the surface. However, court records show in the weeks before the deadly Thanksgiving attack, he had painstakingly and discreetly spent over $2,000 on at least four firearms and the appropriate ammunition in two Broward County gun shops. He even asked for a scope to be attached to a bold-action Remington 700 rifle. He said he wanted to use it for hunting, but the gun salesman would

have no idea just what he planned to hunt until weeks later. Marriage had been asking his parents probing questions for days about the Thanksgiving event, evidently trying to find out just who would be attending, but never committed to his own appearance until the day itself. This can be evidenced by the fact that his parents never alerted their hosts Jim and Muriel Sitton that he might be attending. When he called that evening to announce he was on his way, his mother couldn't resist a sinister thought. I hope he doesn't come and kill us all tonight. Carol Marriage recalled telling her daughter, Lisa Knight, according to a Jupiter Police report.

Mom, it came to my mind, her daughter replied, but don't say, Marich pled guilty to all charges after making a deal that would spare him the death penalty. Instead, he received seven life terms to be served consecutively. As you might expect, the case caused a huge rift in the family both emotionally and legally. Marriage's brother-in-law, Patrick Knight, who lost his wife and was himself gravely wounded in the shooting, said he was eager to move on from the tragedy instead of enduring years of appeals. But the murdered child's grieving father, Jim Sitton, begged the judge not to accept the dead in light of the slaying of their young daughter, Michaela, even falling to his knees in the courtroom. The Sittons also filed a lawsuit

against Marriage's parents, seeking damages because they had invited him to the gathering without warning the host that their son might be dangerous. If someone brought a rattlesnake or a pitbull to your home without your permission and that pitbull started attacking and killing people, wouldn't you hold that person responsible? Jimmy Sitton asked indignantly, that's what this is. We're seeking justice with every means at our disposal. However, the aforementioned lawsuit was actually dismissed in late 2012 after it was determined the marriages had no legal right or ability to control the actions of their son. But that wasn't the only suit filed in the wake of the brutal

Thanksgiving murders. Patrick Knight also sued his former in-laws for failing to prevent the killings, including the death of their daughter and his wife Lisa. Then, unbelievably, the marriages filed a countersuit against the Sittons in 2011, alleging the Sittons were actually to blame for the bloodshed. "'To the extent Paul had problems, the entire family knew that,' said the marriage's attorney, Alan Rosen. If the Sittons were concerned he was going to be a problem that day, then they should have stopped them.

It was their house, they should have protected their family as well as the marriage family if they were concerned. In the lawsuit, the marriages made counterclaims that Jim Sitton and his family had defamed them with unfair and untrue statements about the couple by saying they invited Paul to the dinner without notifying other members of the family and knowing his reputation for violence. Also named in the lawsuit is Dr. Antoine Joseph, whose wife was murdered by marriage. Joseph is Muriel Sitton's father. His sister is Carol Marriage.

Joseph had apparently treated Paul Marriage and therefore was well aware of his mental instability, as was the rest of the family his parents contended. A tangled web, indeed. There was one tiny bright spot in all of this. During marriage's trial, the Sittons announced that Muriel was pregnant with their second child. We're having a girl, but it's very bittersweet. There will always be someone missing. Mrs. Sitton said. Some wounds never really heal.

My big sister has always been kind of the black sheep of the family. She got into partying way too young and got into partying way too young and got into all kinds of trouble with our parents and the police and it was a general headache for our family right up until she left for college. She actually squared her stuff away in time for the SATs, or so mom and dad say, but only really mellowed slightly. She remained the mentally irregular weirdo that we'd all grown to know and love. So flashback to the second Thanksgiving since she moved to Jersey, first time she just came home on her own, but the second time she brought a friend, her boyfriend to be specific.

Most doting moms will get pretty excited at the idea of meeting their daughter's college boyfriend, but like I said, my big sister was always different. So instead of wondering what handsome bookworm she was about to bring home, mom and dad started to profusely worry about what variety of freak she'd drag over the threshold to spend an entire evening with us. Cut to the night in question. My mom gets a text from my sister saying she's on her way with the boyfriend. They're in his car but they're stuck in a little Thanksgiving traffic and would be a little late. Mom and dad's anxiety is at fever pitch at this point. They're rushing around trying to make sure the house is perfect. Dad starts pounding beers, mom starts whining at dad for pounding said beers,

the atmosphere is getting pretty intense. Then we hear car doors slamming outside, a girl's voice and a boy's voice coming up the driveway. I probably have been a little nervous if the whole thing wasn't so entertaining. Only when the boyfriend comes inside it's a total anti-climax. He's clean shaven, neat, actually kinda preppy and shakes my parents hands super politely before introducing himself. Now just to explain, I'm not using any names here and you'll soon realize why that's the case since there's so much personal info on my account. So it's actually looking like my parents have got themselves all worked up over

nothing, like I mentioned. My sister had done a fair bit of mellowing out in the run up to her SATs so I guess it made sense that it carried on into college. So the boyfriend starts with this impressing the parents routine and it honestly worked like a charm. He was studying environmental science or something as his major, I can't remember exactly what his degree was, but my parents were seriously impressed. But when he announced he'd brought some home cooked food to add to the spread, they seemed to fall for him harder than my sister had. And I don't know, I get it, he seemed pretty cool. He played Xbox too so even we had something to talk about for a while. So eventually my mom wanders off into the kitchen to take various things out of

various ovens and before long she announces that dinner is ready. Quick note, the casserole dish full of stew that my sister and her boyfriend had brought was covered in aluminum foil and then placed in an oven to keep warm. So it ended up on the table, lost in the jumble with everything else. All the yams, pots of cranberry sauce, etc. So when it came time to passing around plates, everyone got a little spoonful of this mystery stew. My dad says grace before we all tuck in. Not that he's religious, but he's big on tradition and the actual giving thanks part of the Thanksgiving experience. I like to think he's not talking to God. Just whatever force in the universe made it so we could be fortunate enough to enjoy this kind

of abundance. And then, as you can expect, everyone starts devouring their food as we've been pretty much fasting all day since the kitchen was well and truly occupied. But when my dad gets done with his little Thanksgiving speech, my sister's boyfriend asks if he can say a few words. Everyone is busy filling their mouths so there's a few affirmatory grunts and nods before he begins his little speech. So I can't remember what he said word for word but I can definitely remember the spirit of what was said. So I can't remember what he said word for word, but I can definitely remember the spirit of what was said. So here goes. A big part of the Thanksgiving tradition is acknowledging the influence of our Native American brothers and sisters on our great

American culture. It was some grandiose opening. I think I was barely listening at that point. We can still learn a lot from the once plentiful tribes that once called these lands home and one of the most important lessons is respect for the animals that help maintain our lifestyles. Right about then I cut into a chunk of meat that had been spooned on my plate for their mystery stew and instantly recoil. The thing was kind of hollow on the inside, not like any piece of braised beef or lamb I'd ever come across. It took me a minute, but something just kind of clicked when I took a closer look. I recognized something about it, something from biology class the year before.

It was an empty chamber, what was technically known as a ventricle. What I was looking at, what I'd just about to take a bite out of, was a lamb's heart. Right as I'm wide-eyed looking up, about to draw attention to just what was on my plate, I hear my mom gag audibly. She recoils from the table, pushing her chair away so hard it made this horrible squeaky creaky sound against the hardwood floor. There, sitting in the middle of her plate for all to see, was an eyeball. Little side note, my mom loves animals. Not quite in the same way that the boyfriend obviously did.

More in a, I wanted to be a vet and I almost went vegan kind of way. And she is horrified, beyond horrified, like this is an actual nightmare come to life for her. She gets up, sprints over to the downstairs bathroom and slams the door behind her before we hear puking and retching noises from behind the locked door. So my dad chases this guy out of the house with my sister screaming at them both trying to stop a full-on murder from occurring right in our driveway. I watch for a bit then grab some turkey for a sandwich before heading

up to my room to tell my friends exactly how this entire crazy drama unfolded. But this wasn't the end of the whole drama, not by a long shot. Word comes through the family grapevine that my sister was so mad by what he did that she broke off the relationship. Apparently the guy didn't take it very well, but if he couldn't handle a simple Thanksgiving dinner, how was he gonna handle getting dumped? So my sister comes home again for Christmas break, alone this time, and we're not expecting anything weird to happen, like at all. Which only made it all the worse when mom went to take the dogs for a walk one morning and found something hanging in the tree. It was a lamb, hanging by its hind legs, its stomach torn open, with its guts still streaming in the cold winter air.

Thanksgiving is a time of year when families convene to show their appreciation for life's blessings. It should be a time of safety and sanctuary when the worries and concerns of everyday living are put aside for an evening of festive feasting. But for one man in Minnesota, Thanksgiving of 2012 would become a turning point, an event that would separate everything that came before from everything that came after. This is the story of the true nightmare on Elm Street. Byron David Smith lived alone on Elm Street in Little Falls, Minnesota. He was a retiree, having worked for the U.S. State Department for many years as a security engineering officer.

But Smith's retirement was not a quiet one. His home had been burglarized at least half a dozen times over the few months leading up to Thanksgiving of 2012. He had only reported one of the previous burglaries to police, and investigators only found evidence of two previous burglaries, one of which occurred in his detached garage, and of which he appeared to have no knowledge when it was brought up by police. Among the items stolen were $4,000 in cash, his father's POW watch, coins from a collection, and a chainsaw. Smith installed a security system to protect himself. He also began routinely wearing a hip holster with a loaded gun inside his home, as well as stashing bottles of water in granola bars in his basement. It may seem like Byron Smith was being overly paranoid. Insulting a home security system is one thing, but stocking up on rations like some kind of survivalist may have been a step too far.

But Smith was right to be paranoid. Every evening in the run-up to Thanksgiving, his home was being cased. Casing is when a potential burglar simply observes a potential target for an extended period of time. This is to establish the homeowner's daily routines, to work out the best points of entry and escape, as well as to analyze if there are any valuables in the target home. The two predators outside of Smith's home was Haley Kiefer, 18, and her cousin, Nicholas Brady, 17. There is plenty of evidence that the pair was responsible for the previous burglaries at Smith's home. Brady was being investigated for prior burglaries, one of which was committed that very same Thanksgiving day. Brady was also under investigation for theft

of drugs from his sister's home, so it's easy to make the assumption that Brady and Kiefer were committing a crime to fund some kind of narcotics habit. On the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day 2012, Byron Smith was making a friendly visit to his neighbors to wish them a happy holiday. As he was concluding his visit and was making his way back home, Smith saw Kiefer and Brady driving in the direction of his home. The pair must have had somewhat of a reputation in Little Falls because Smith suspected them of being at least partially responsible for some of the break-ins at his home. Smith then commented that he needed to get ready for her and went back to

his house. Upon arriving home, Smith switched on a recording device he owned. He then removed the light bulbs from the ceiling lights in his basement and positioned himself in a chair that was obscured from view. He wasn't just looking to catch the pair in the act. Byron Smith had set up a sophisticated ambush inside his own home. Shortly after, he heard an upstairs window break before one of the pair climbed through the opening and into the home. Smith then waited in silence for twelve whole minutes, not making a sound, not moving a muscle. He had made a point of moving all the valuables and home into the basement in the hopes of luring any potential burglars into his ambush. It worked like a charm.

When Brady began to descend into the basement, Byron Smith shot the teenage drug addict twice on the stairs with a silenced firearm and once in the head after he fell to the bottom of the stairs. Elated and overcome with bloodlust, Smith made taunting remarks to Brady's still warm corpse, wrapped it in a tarp, and dragged him into another room. Smith then rushed to reload his weapon and re-establish his ambush, taking up his previous position in the obscure chair. Minutes later, Kiefer entered the home and could be heard calling her cousin's name.

Their usual burglaries were normally quick and efficient, but Brady had been gone around 15 to 20 minutes. His cousin was undoubtedly deeply concerned. When she made her way down the stairs, Byron Smith put a bullet in her, just as he had her cousin. Mortally wounded, her body crumpled in pain and shock. She tumbled down the basement stairs and slammed into the cold concrete floor. In the audio recording that Smith made of the ambush, Kiefer can clearly be heard screaming,

I'm sorry, oh my god, I'm sorry, I don't want to die. Smith simply got up, approached her wounded body as she tried desperately to crawl back up the stairs, and shot her again through the left eye in a callous, cold-blooded execution. Then, just as he had with her cousin, he spat bile-filled words at her, then dragged her into the other room before tossing her body on top of her cousin's. Despite having the corpses of the two teenagers in his basement, then dragged her into the other room before tossing her body on top of her cousin's. Despite having the corpses of the two teenagers in his basement, Smith was in no rush to report the incident to local police. When later asked why he delayed reporting the crime,

Smith replied that he didn't want to bother the cops on Thanksgiving. Police acknowledged that Kiefer and Brady were definitely there to rob Smith's house but asked why Smith felt the need to employ such lethal force against unarmed thieves in a statement Smith said that Kiefer had let out a short laugh after she fell down the stairs saying if you're trying to shoot somebody and they laugh at you you go again the audio tape did not record Kiefer laughing instead she cries out Oh God in fear and police interviews Smith acknowledged firing more shots than I needed to and that he fired a good clean finishing shot into Kiefer's head on April the 29th 2014 a jury of his peers found Byron David Smith guilty as charged on two counts

of first-degree murder with premeditation, with an additional two counts of second-degree murder. The jury took just three hours to deliberate. A judge then sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The audio recordings were named by the jurors as the biggest influence on their decision. That was the most concrete piece of evidence in my mind, said juror Wes Hadlestad following the trial. The audio recording of the actual killings and the audio recording of Mr. Smith's interview immediately after his arrest pretty much convinced me that we were dealing with a deranged individual.

I had just arrived in a nearby grocery store on Thanksgiving afternoon. You know how it is. You think you've got all your bases covered until it's half an hour before the relatives are due to arrive and you realize you've gone and forgotten to pick up cranberry sauce or you only have one bottle of wine to be shared among like 10 to 12 people. I mean, no offense to my in-laws but I'm not dealing with a dozen of them at a time without at least two or three glasses of Merlot in my belly. They call it a social lubricant for a reason, right? Anyway, everything seemed perfectly normal as I got out of my Chevy and started walking over to the storefront.

However, by the time I reached the end of the parking lot and was only within a few meters of the store, I spotted them. There were like ten really obvious gang members standing in front of the store's entrance. They all looked young, but they definitely had the attire of a fairly large gang in the nearby area. Now I know what some of you might be thinking. Check this boomer thinking any gatherings of youth is like a gang, or some nonsense. But here's the thing. We're the only township in our state to have our own gang unit,

as we have some serious problems with gang activity bleeding over from a nearby metropolis. I actually have an old high school buddy who was attached to said gang unit for a few months of tactical training. So trust me when I say I recognized a few different indicators that these guys were definitely in a gang. Color coding, similar tattoos, they even wore Boston Red Sox or Chicago Bears caps, anything with the telltale B on it. As I approached them, I am constantly repeating to myself in my head, don't make eye contact, keep cool, don't make eye contact, don't make yourself a target. I must have repeated that a dozen times, but honestly honestly it didn't make me feel any calmer whatsoever. It also didn't help any.

As I'm getting towards the storefront I can see one of the gang members break away from his group and make an approach to me. I literally have hundreds of dollars in me at this point after having made almost constant trips to various grocery and liquor stores over the previous few days. All that and we still didn't have enough for our guests. Typical. Luckily, as one of the gang starts to approach me, a lady hastily walked towards the store and caught its attention, along with the other members. They promptly switched targets and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The gang members started to initiate a conversation with the lady, something that was obviously confrontational. As they talked about something, I didn't really listen, I just

wanted to quickly go past them. I sped up to go into the store, barely escaping their grasp. Once I finished my shopping, the hard part came. Going back to my car while my arms are fully laden with grocery bags. Grocery bags that are quite obviously filled with bottles of booze. A prime target for robbery if ever there was one. I planned ahead and only brought things I could carry in the plastic bags. The cart was too big of a risk. Regrettably, I brought one or two more things than what I could comfortably handle, so as I started to approach the exit I could feel something about to fall out of the bag. I go through the automatic doors and accidentally make eye contact with one of them.

I quickly look away and in my head I am cursing at myself for making such a foolish mistake, but it's way too late. The gang member that I made eye contact with started to approach me and starts muttering something that I figured is directed at me, but I just ignored it and rapidly walked to my car. However, no matter how fast I walk, it's no use. The kid quickens his walking pace along with me, power walking towards me as he's still saying something. I speed up even more and then I hear a few things fall out of one of my bags. For a split second I contemplate on what to do. Ultimately I decide it is a lost cause and continue my fast walk toward my car. The boy is still on my tail. I finally reach my car but with my hands full I cannot reach into my pockets for the car keys. I quickly drop the groceries from one of my hands to get the keys,

but I realize in absolute horror that I've somehow dropped both my keys and my wallet. I have no idea why I opted to do that, throw my wallet and keys inside the grocery bags along with the bottles. In retrospect, I figured that it was just a rushed decision, one made in panic and haste, and ultimately a poor one. I was effectively trapped in this parking lot with the approaching member quickly gaining on me. I look to my right and see the boy standing there with a smirk on his face, holding what is clearly my wallet and keys in his hand. I'm terrified inside and thinking the worse that

he's about to take my car off of me as well as my keys and my wallet. I was just imagining how angry my wife would be. It was at least two hours walking back to our family home and that's if weather holds. If not, I might be in some serious hypothermic trouble, facing a fate considerably worse than just a dressing down from a furious spouse. Then to my surprise, he comes closer to me. He's just off my left shoulder, and I'm actually considering something life-changing. You see, in my glove compartment is a.38 snub nose that I kept for self-defense purposes. In a split second I could see myself in my imagination smashing the car window, whipping the glove compartment open, grabbing that pistol and shooting that kid dead. But just when I think he's about to pull his own gun

or a knife or something I just hear him say, hey mister, I think you dropped this. He's holding out my keys and wallet, obviously offering them back to me in a peaceful display of thoughtfulness. Astounded, feeling somewhat ashamed for my assumptions, I hesitantly say, thanks. Thinking that there was nothing to fear, I grabbed the item and started putting my groceries away. Looking back, I think the only scary thing was how quickly I judged those kids. I mean, I know they were in a gang, but that doesn't mean that even bad people aren't capable of acts of compassion and kindness. Especially on a day like Thanksgiving. These days, the majority of students in American public schools grow up learning the story of how the English pilgrims and Native Americans came together for the first Thanksgiving in

Plymouth. Yet the reality of the situation is that there was no lasting peace between the English settlers and their one-time Native American allies. Shortly after the Plymouth meeting, the two groups became entangled in a devastating series of conflicts just a single generation after the famous feast. As it turns out, the true story behind Thanksgiving is a bloody struggle that decimated the population and ended with a bloody, severed head impaled on a stick. It is generally thought that Thanksgiving is a time for family reunions, festive parades, mountains of delicious fall foods. Not to mention the rush for college students and transplants alike to make it home in time to carve the turkey.

American school children are usually taught that tradition dates back to the arrival of the pilgrims on the ship christened the Mayflower. These were English members of small religious sects, persecuted in their homeland, who helped to establish the Plymouth Colony of present-day Massachusetts in the year 1620. According to legend, friendly local Native Americans from the Wampanoag tribe contacted the pilgrims in order to teach the struggling colonists how to survive in their new wild home. Then everyone got together to celebrate with a feast in 1621. Attendees included almost 100 warriors from Wamp noag tribe and the 50 or so surviving mayflower passengers the celebrations lasted three whole days and featured a menu including deer fowl and freshly baked corn on the cob in reality thanksgiving feasts predate the plymouth colony

by many years in fact upon investigation one finds a number of different places have tried to claim that they were the first to hold Thanksgiving celebrations according to local researchers settlers in the Berkeley hundred of Virginia a hundred is an archaic administrative division that is geographically part of a larger region decided to celebrate their arrival with an annual thanksgiving back in 1619. Although the Washingtonian, a magazine in circulation around the District of Columbia, reported the meal was probably nothing more than some shucked oysters and baked ham thrown together for the occasion. Additionally, decades before that, Spanish settlers and members of the Siloam tribe in Florida broke bread with salted pork, garbanzo beans, and a Catholic mass way back in 1565. The contemporary idea of Thanksgiving dinner revolves around eating roasted turkey, but to the pilgrims, the festival was more of an occasion for orthodox religious observance. The oft-told tales of the

1621 Plymouth festivities live on in popular memory, but the pilgrims themselves would have likely considered their sober 1623 day of prayer the first true Thanksgiving. But disturbingly enough, others pinpoint the year 1637 as the true origin of Thanksgiving, owning to the fact that Massachusetts Colony Governor John Winthrop declared a day of Thanksgiving to celebrate colonial soldiers who had just slaughtered several hundred Pequot tribesmen, women, and children at a site where Mystic, Connecticut is now located. Either way, the popular telling of the initial Harvest Festival is what lived on, thanks to the speech writing and storytelling of one Abraham Lincoln. The enduring national holiday had also nearly erased from our collective memory what happened between the Wampanoag, proved to be an important ally and friend to the English settlers in the years following the establishment of Plymouth Colony.

He set up an exclusive trade pact with the newcomers and allied with them against the French and other local tribes like the Narragansetts. But the alliance became severely strained as the years went by. Tens of thousands of English colonists poured into the region throughout the 17th century. According to certain history books, authorities in Plymouth began asserting direct control over most aspects of Wampanoag life. ate up more land, some have estimated that diseases such as smallpox had already reduced the Native American population in New England by as much as 90% from 1616 to 1619, and indigenous people continued to die from what the colonists called Indian Fever. By the time Massasoit's son, Metacalmet, who, known to the English as King Philip, inherited leadership of the tribe, relations had frayed to the point of complete disrepair.

What's known as King Philip's War was sparked off when several of Metacomet's men were executed for the murder of a Ponkapoag interpreter and a Christian convert who went by the new name of John Sassaman. Brave Wampapoag warriors responded with a series of violent raids on English settlements, and the New England Confederation of Colonies rallied to declare war in 1675. Even the initially neutral colony of Rhode Island and Providence plantations were ultimately dragged into the fighting, as were other nearby tribes like the Narragansetts. The war was bloody and devastating. Springfield, Massachusetts was burned to the ground during a raid, and the Wampanoag

abducted colonists to ransom back to settlers. English forces attacked the Narragansetts on a bitter frozen swamp for harboring fleeing Wampanoag. 600 Narragansetts were killed, and the tribe's winter stores were ruined. Colonists and far-flung settlements relocated to more fortified areas while the Wampanoag and allied tribes were forced to flee their villages. The colonists ultimately allied with several tribes like the Mohegans and Pequots despite initial reluctance from the Plymouth leadership. Meanwhile, Metacomet was dealt a staggering blow when he crossed over into New York to recruit allies. Instead, he was rebuffed and attacked by Mohawks. Upon his return to his ancestral home at Mount Hope, he was shot and killed in a final battle. The son of the man who had sustained and celebrated with the Plymouth colony was then beheaded and dismembered. His remaining allies were killed and sold into slavery in the

West Indies. The colonists impaled King Philip's head on a spike and displayed it in Plymouth for 25 years. The war's ultimate death toll could have been as high as 30% of the entire English population and over half of the Native Americans in the New England area. The war's ultimate death toll could have been as high as 30% of the entire English population and over half of the Native Americans in the New England area. The war was just one of a harvest celebration while ignoring the deadly forces that would ultimately drive apart the descendants of the guests of that very feast. Modern day Thanksgiving may be a celebration of people coming together, but that's not the whole story when it comes to the history of that day. It's Thanksgiving Day in 1980. Ronald Reagan was elected president weeks prior. There are still 54 American hostages held in the Iranian capital, Tehran. In Reno, Nevada,

the biggest little city in the world, locals are preparing to celebrate a long-standing American tradition. It's 257, around 47 degrees, a warm Thursday afternoon for November. Thirty years prior to present, Reno is a different town. Fewer towering buildings decorate the skyline. The slate crosswalks downtown aren't yet conceived, nor are the purple flower boxes and trash cans that will give Virginia Street an effervescence character. A time traveler would likely hear the sounds of Kenny Rogers' Saccharine Lady or Blondie's Call Me from a passing car stereo. Competing with street sounds are the mechanical jingling, clinking, and ringing of

casino slot machines. The noises are from the actual sound of metal striking metal, not the polyphonic electronic beeps that they have today. The scent of local restaurants' Thanksgiving specials, roast turkey, or baked ham wafts through the air. Those planning ahead with Christmas shopping are more likely to come downtown or to Park Lane Mall than the JCPenney at Meadowood Mall, which has yet to become the area's shopping mecca. This means that the downtown area is absolutely teeming with shoppers, picking up last-minute gifts and food items before convening with their families for an evening of feasting and revelry. But joining them is 51-year-old Priscilla Joyce Ford, an African-American teacher and mother of three. It would be easy to assume that a woman with three young children would have driven downtown that day to pick up yams,

cranberry sauce, or any other last-minute foods that constitute a stable Thanksgiving spread. But Priscilla Ford is there for a different reason entirely. Ford is driving a blue 1974 Lincoln Continental, a vehicle that weighs over 5,000 pounds, with a top speed of over 120 miles per hour. One might believe that a teacher and mother of three might have something of an angelic past but not Priscilla Ford. 23 years prior to that Thanksgiving day Ford shot her second husband with a.38 revolver before threatening to turn the gun on herself. She was also arrested for trespassing and assault after tracking down one of her ex-husbands in a fit of rage. Ford is 5 feet 4 and weighs 125 pounds. She has brown eyes and shoulder-length hair combed back. She has crackers and emerald dry wine before leaving on

an errand. Her blood-alcohol ratio is.162. That's too drunk to be driving legally, but many a barfly has made it home with hire. Sitting peacefully in her car, Priscilla Ford notices that there are many more people than usual walking up and down the downtown sidewalks. People are milling along Casino Row. Perhaps because of the mild weather, there are more tourists than usual here during the tail end of the National Recession. It takes another minute for the Lincoln to make its way to 100 feet south, the southeast corner of 2nd and Virginia Streets. At 2.59pm, the Lincoln jumps the curb and careens down the sidewalk. It hits the curb at about 20 miles an hour so as not to blow the tires,

but the vehicle rapidly accelerates to as high as 40 miles per hour, driving another 100 feet down the sidewalk, witnesses will later say. It crosses the second street crosswalk and continues another 322 feet down the sidewalk in front of the bank, in front of Harrah's Nevada Club and Harold's Club. Then it's back on Virginia Street, crossing to the southbound lane and stopping two blocks later behind traffic at the 5th Street traffic light. The light is red. Bodies fly left and right. The screams are blood-curdling. Destruction follows the car's path like a tornado. Five people are killed immediately and 24 are injured. 14 people will be sent to Washoe Medical Center,

the remaining 10 to St. Mary's. Street signs, body parts, clothing, wounded, and dead lie on the sidewalk and in the gutter like victims of a natural disaster. But this is an entirely unnatural disaster. It takes only a few seconds for Ford to drive five whole blocks. For the victims, every second following the attack is an eternity, waiting for help to arrive, for family members to come, for the news of survivors and casualties. But the longest wait, some will later say, is for justice. John Oakes is the deputy district attorney on call that day. I was dispatched down to a hit and run, he says. I thought they were kidding me.

It's Thanksgiving. I got downtown and it was a war zone. I never saw nothing like that before in my life. There were bodies everywhere. It was pure carnage. People were crying over the bodies of the dead. Ambulance was responding, but there just weren't enough of them. It was a complete mess.

Later, John Oakes is told to keep an eye on Priscilla Ford. There was a trauma center set up down at Washoe Med, and we had the victims coming in crying and screaming, family members filing in, all of them just shell-shocked. The perp was right next door. An officer and I were directed to maintain security because a lot of people wanted to just end her right there. Oak spends around five hours in the company of the killer. He says the most remarkable thing about her was her calmness mixed with callousness. At one point she looked at me point blank and asked, how many people did I kill? I said five

or six. She said good. She was just cold to it all, like it was just another day to her, very matter of fact, Very matronly. Motherly. She was acting self-righteous like she was justified in what she did. And we couldn't figure out why at the time. What's the first defense of anybody who creates this kind of carnage? Only a crazy person would do something like that. I got down to Reno PD before she was brought into booking and I had them set up the video.

So we could see on tape exactly how lucid she was. She knew who she was and where she was. That tape was well worth its weight in gold. On August 4th, 1981, Priscilla Ford was successfully found competent to stand trial after previously being found incompetent on January 29th. The trial lasted almost five months. After 13 hours of deliberation, a jury composed of seven women and five men found Ford guilty on six counts of murder and a whopping 23 counts of attempted murder on March 19th, 1982. A few weeks later, the jury decided she was to be put to death. Even though seven people died as a result of Ford's attack, issues in the indictment caused Ford to only be charged with six. Ford's lawyer claimed she was mentally ill with schizophrenia and should not be put to death, rather spend the rest of her life in a mental institution.

However the district attorney called her evil personified and fought for Ford to be found legally sane. Ford herself went on to stand and testify that she believed she was the reincarnation of Jesus and therefore incapable of sin. But it seems the only thing Priscilla Ford was incapable of was compassion for her victims. You can get a pro at Tread Experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations.

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Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. When I was 18, I worked at a local Target. This is when we used to have a wall next to the registers filled with Pokemon, baseball, collectible cards, etc. and Starbucks in front of the register by the doors, for context I'm female. Well, one day I was filling this wall with more cards and an awkward tall man came up and started looking at the Pokemon section next to me. He asked,

Do you like Pokemon? I said yes, which then led to us talking about Pokemon. I didn't think anything of it. He picked some, checked out, and left. Three days later, he returns to the store, finds me, and buys me candy and tells me to have a nice day. So things start escalating. He would come in frequently looking for me, started sitting at the Starbucks tables and watching me while I

work, which then eventually he started buying me more candy, Starbucks drinks, flowers, and then little girl's panties, pacifiers, little girl hair accessories, which of course, I'm freaked out. I tried telling my bosses, they couldn't do anything about it, called the cops and they couldn't do anything either. He followed me to the back room one day since I started leaving the registers whenever he came into the store, and that's when we were able to call the cops because he cornered me in the back room but thankfully our stockroom guys were back there and basically saved me. We were able to get a restraining order on him for the store so he couldn't enter anymore but that's when he started waiting outside for me following me to my car and leaving love notes on my vehicle for me to come out to. It was terrifying and my mom knew but again we couldn't do anything. One day he actually followed me from my work to my mother's house where I lived at the

time. I had never seen his car until this day and stood outside the house singing love songs and reading poems he wrote me loudly. My mother called the cops. We kept telling him to leave and when the cops got there they were finally able to get him to go away. But now he left me notes at my house. He sent me letters and packages with all sorts of illicit material, sexy outfits, girly panties, baby stuff, etc. During all of this, my mom and I were trying to get a restraining order on him ourselves and charge him for harassment, but it's not like it stopped him. Finally, one night, I was coming home from work and he waited around the corner of my house and attacked me. He grabbed me around my face and dragged me to the ground. I screamed so loud and so much that

luckily I had neighbors come outside and help me. He was arrested at that point. I screamed so loud and so much that luckily I had neighbors come outside and help me. He was arrested at that point. I had enough evidence saved up to be able to take him to court and now he's been in jail for 8 years due to be released in 2021. He's actually in the Jester 4 unit. He was stalking another local girl that I was connected with so we could help each other out after he got sent away. She was just starting to get his attention so luckily she never got hurt. He's been sending me letters in jail ever since so I suppose now I have a stalker who's in the slammer. In my 8th grade year I moved in with a family member after my mother passed away and this family member lived pretty far into the country. Because of this I

had to ride the school bus to my new school. I used to live in town before the move so this was the first time on a bus, besides school field trips, but then there were other adults present. In the morning there were about 6 or 7 students on the bus and I was the first person to be picked up and the last one to be dropped off after school. For the first few weeks of school everything seemed fine. Students were quiet, everyone kept to themselves, headphones in and what not. Being the first to get on I always headed straight to the back of the bus to avoid everyone. Not that I had an issue with anyone, I was just socially awkward and the more people I could avoid talking to the better. As for my bus driver, we can call him Tom, he seemed like a normal bus driver. He didn't say

a word to anyone and just did his job. He began getting a little friendlier to me when he dropped me off since I was the last to get off but it was never anything strange. It was a smile and see you in the morning or have a nice night, nothing I would ever suspect. Things continued like this for a while, nothing exciting happening until me, being a 15 year old girl who had just lost her mother, decided to throw a giant tantrum and beg that I no longer wanted to live with this family member. I missed the more populated city, my old friends and my old school. So about two months into going to this school, I decided to move back with another family member, and this is where the story shifts. On the last week of my bus rides, I told Tom I would no longer be taking his bus anymore,

as I was homesick and moving back home. He asked me to sit up towards the front of the bus for the rest of that week so he could say goodbye better. I didn't think anything of it. He was a 40 to 50 year old man who never gave me any red flags. I listened and moved to the seat right behind him so he could look at me through the large mirror above him and we could chat. It all seemed innocent at first. He asked about my mother, why I was leaving, what I wanted to do when I grew up, blah blah blah. The last few things of riding the bus the questions got stranger and I may have not been able to see the signs of a creep but I knew the questions weren't things a middle-aged man should be asking a teenage girl. If anything I thought he was just being nosy. He asked if I had a boyfriend, if I had my first kiss yet, and what an ideal date for me would be.

I answered honestly, but with a weird feeling in my stomach. Gut feelings are 500% real. On my final day riding the bus, as I got on, Tom asked me if I would sit in the front again, but wait until everyone else was off the bus. I agreed, going back to my past seat in the back of the bus and waited until everyone got off. I moved to the seat behind him again but this time he didn't say anything to me. At first I probably should have mentioned earlier but from the last stop before me and my stop, there was about a 25-30 minute driving distance. I'd say he didn't say a word to me for about 20 minutes of that time. I sat listening to my music until we pulled the bus over. We were on

my road and I knew my family member's house was close ahead yet he pulled over and stopped the bus. If I could explain to you the fear that ignited in me when the bus came to a halt and Tom turned in his chair so he was facing me with a smile on his face. I would. I had seen one too many movies with creepy men doing things that shouldn't be done to teenage girls and expected the worst. I was expecting to be assaulted, kidnapped, harmed or worse. But it never came to that. Instead, Tom told me to take my phone out and add his number to it. He said he would be here if I needed to talk about my mother, telling me the story of his own mother and things I can't really remember. I just remember it being an innocent conversation, no matter how weird you might think it is for a

bus driver to offer a teenager his number. He dropped me off after that and we said our goodbyes. Years passed and I was in 10th grade when I saw Tom again. I still had his number in my contacts but I never contacted him. Even when things got rough because truly what girl would call a strange bus driver when she needed help? Not me. I was at Walmart with a few friends and we decided to split up to get things we individually needed. I headed off to get a box of q-tips when I heard someone say my name. I could tell it was a male's voice and I figured it would just be a male teacher I had once had. It was Tom but I couldn't tell at first. He had grown out his facial

hair and I honestly had just forgotten about him but once he said hello to me I remembered everything. I wasn't necessarily scared I just found it odd that this man who was my bus driver for a few months remembered me after two years. It was a pretty simple conversation. He asked how I had been and how high school was going for me and I answered not really bothered to ask how he was. We said our goodbyes and I met back up with my friends explaining to them the whole story of Tom to which they all found it scary that I never told anyone my bus driver gave me his number and asked me strange questions. I explained I thought he was just being friendly because I truly did. I haven't seen Tom in person since then. Years have gone by, I'm in college and I thought

the story was over then. Just some overly friendly bus driver. I could have stayed innocent, right? About a month ago I was talking to someone I went to school with at the other school and I mentioned to her how scared I was thinking about the bus out there because of Tom. She was shocked I had mentioned him and asked for the full story. I told her a summary of it, the questions, the stopping the bus to give me his number, the encounter at Walmart. I told her he just gave me the creeps and I hoped I would never see him again. This is when I found out that Tom had been arrested for assaulting two minors. She not only showed me his mugshot but told me

what had happened. My story nearly lined up perfectly with these two other children. Bus driver who asked personal questions offered his phone number in comfort to children with trauma and acted on it. The only difference was I got out of there. If I hadn't moved back to my hometown I still wonder what could have happened to me. I'm extremely lucky that I never contacted his number and I feel sorry for the two kids that did contact him, feeling they could trust this man. This happened about 5 years ago but it was such a traumatic experience for me that I remember most of the events in pretty vivid detail. I have PTSD from the experience still that sometimes demobilizes

me when I'm home alone and I only feel safe in the place when I know I have something to defend myself with in every room. I lived in a small ground floor basement apartment building briefly in college with my now ex-boyfriend Ryan and another roommate Alice who we didn't know previously to moving in. The small apartment building faced another identical one and the drive sloped down by quite a bit to the side of our building so the front of our basement apartment was mostly below ground level but the back was fully exposed and had a back door that opened into a wooded area that you could get to from the parking lot. The front door was inside the building and you had to go down a flight of stairs from the main

front entrance to get to it. We'd been living there for about a month when I was doing laundry one stormy night and strange things started to happen. The laundry room was right across the hall and I'd walk back across to grab more quarters and say something to my boyfriend quickly so I hadn't closed the front door all the way. I was talking to my boyfriend when I saw the door move a little bit. I thought it was a change in air pressure from the front door to the building being opened initially so I kept talking but kept an eye on it. Then I watched as it opened a few more inches. I told my boyfriend to come over and he rounded the corner just in time to see it open by several more inches.

I see it, he said and ran out the door. Our front door was at the end of a pretty long hallway and the door was hung in such a way that I couldn't see who had been standing on the other side of it. Ryan came back and said that he'd chased after them just in time to see a white tennis shoe and a pale but really hairy leg going up the stairs, and that it looked like they'd gone out from the front door of the building, but it was dark and pouring out and he couldn't find anyone. We kind of just shook it off because we lived near campus and thought some idiot had stumbled home drunk and tried to come in the wrong apartment.

Two or three weeks later it stormed really badly again. This was a really janky college apartment that only had a window AC in the living room and it was September and still really hot so we had to sleep that night with the bedroom doors open to get some airflow from the AC. The next morning, I walked into the bathroom to take a shower and saw a bunch of dead bugs in the bathtub as well as mud and what looked like a footprint. I was mad and thought that Alice had opened the little window in the shower the night before when it was raining and the rain had just swept some dead bugs in off the window track. I was noticing at this point that she did some weird voyeuristic things like opening the window in the shower while she was showering. There was a line of parking spots right outside

and you could see down right into the shower from a parked car with the window open and leaving her blinds open at night while she had guys in her room. Again, you could see right inside. So I made a mental note to mention it to her later. It wasn't until a few days later that Ryan and I were walking down the slope out front and noticed a twisted window screen laying in the grass right outside the bathroom window. I picked it up and my heart absolutely sank. It looked like it had been ripped out of the window. I walked inside and asked Alice about the mud in the bathtub and the footprints and dead bugs and she said she hadn't opened the window recently. I suddenly put

two and two together and realized that someone had pulled the screen out of the window and come in that night, brushing dead bugs off of the window track and leaving muddy footprints in the bathtub, and that we had been sleeping with the door open that night. We looked all around the apartment and couldn't find anything that might have been stolen. Our TV and laptops had been sitting right out in the living room and they didn't look like they had been touched. We called the police. They came and took a statement and left, but said that since nothing had been taken there really wasn't

much that they could do. I could tell at the time that they thought we were overreacting and didn't really believe that anyone had come inside. My now ex was an absolute idiot and against my urging put a sign up on the bathroom window that said something along the lines of we know we were broken into and are on alert and was written on a bright pink note card. We had those old windows in the apartment that slid open horizontally but didn't really lock properly so I took a heavy stick I had found out in the woods and jammed it in place to stop the window from opening. One night we were up late playing a boardmed it in place to stop the window from opening. One night we were up late playing a board game and I went to use the bathroom,

saw the shadow of the stupid note on the opaque window and went back. Alice went to use the bathroom a few minutes later and came back hysterical because the note had been ripped off. We called the police and they stopped by to take a statement and said that they were going to look around the neighborhood. Since the first note had worked so well, Ryan, for reasons I can't fathom, decided to put another sign up, this time on a bright green note card. He opened the window, yelled and slammed it shut again. I had just had time to catch a glimpse of something white right outside the window next to his face. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack because I thought it had something white right outside the window next to his face. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack because I thought it had been a face at the window but Ryan said it had been a pair of white shoes and that they had looked the same as the ones on the person

who had tried to come in before. He still put the sign up against my pleading. I called the police back and they were back within a couple of minutes looking annoyed. Apparently they had been just about to pull out of the parking lot when the call came back in from the dispatcher and they said they hadn't seen anyone out in the parking lot. I explained to them that there was enough of a slope next to the front windows that if someone was standing there and there were cars parked in the parking spots you wouldn't be able to see them from the streets. One of them told us that he was going to wait around for a bit in his car to see if he could see any suspicious activity. It was a while later when he came back and told us that he hadn't seen anything and that he had even checked the hoods of the cars outside for warmth to see if any of them had been running recently. I asked him if he had seen anything else like this recently and when he said no, asked him what he thought this person wanted. He said he did believe us because he could see how shaken we all were and that maybe this person was just bored and messing with us.

I kept reiterating the length of time between these events and the fact that nothing had been stolen out of our apartment when they had more than likely entered the other night. He then admitted that the person could be mentally ill and had possibly developed an unhealthy obsession with one of us. He suggested some ways to improve our home security and left for the night. After he had left we decided to stay up. We spent the night being pretty quiet listening for sounds. I want to say it was maybe an hour later. Ryan looked over at the back door and I heard an oh no. And I saw a piece of something bright green poking through by the back door. He opened the door slightly and pulled through a green note card that had somehow been stuffed through the space between the door and the frame.

We had been sitting quietly the whole time and hadn't heard the screen door open. He looked outside and didn't see anyone. I became convinced at that point that this person was having fun messing with us and was pretty terrified by the fact that they had been scared of the police's presence. I strongly suspected at that point that the pink card sign was going to make its way back to us and I wanted to catch them in the act. So we all positioned ourselves looking in different directions and staked the exits and the bathroom window out. It must have been another hour that passed before we finally got sick of sitting there and stood up and started talking about going to bed because it was almost dawn by that point. This conversation maybe went on for five to ten minutes and when I looked back at the front door, which I had been

watching, the pink note card was lying on the floor, slipped under the door. Things escalated by quite a bit in my remaining time there. For the next month we'd wake up to the sound of windows getting pounded on or it would happen when we turn on the lights in certain rooms. We installed a motion detector by the back door but it never once went off for anyone other than us. The parking lot was pretty poorly lit so was the wooded area out back so I put the brightest bulbs I could out by the back door. I came out one morning to find the light bulbs smashed and the metal light covers missing. We eventually found them out a few feet into the woods, smashed like someone had stomped on them. Every light bulb we put out there after that got

smashed. I had to walk home from work because none of us had cars and spotted the shadow of a male figure standing by the identical building across from ours. When they noticed I had spotted them they took off running. This happened several more times to my boyfriend and roommate where they would see the shape of someone out back and that person would take off running behind the garages or into the woods when spotted. I woke up pretty early one morning when it was still dark to work on homework and saw a light coming from the living room window like someone was trying to see through the slots on the blinds with a flashlight which we thankfully had curtains to block everything came to a head one night when Ryan and I decided to run to Walmart with a friend Alice had a really ridiculous habit of drinking

while she was cleaning the apartment I had discovered by that point that she had a really ridiculous habit of drinking while she was cleaning the apartment. I had discovered by that point that she had a pretty serious problem with mixing her medication with a lot of alcohol and leaving the back door open because she didn't like the smell of the cleaning products. I had asked her numerous times not to do this, obviously because of all the issues we'd been having, so she said she wouldn't. We got to Walmart and I'm standing in the hair color aisle when I start getting all these frantic texts from Alice telling me to call her. I called her and she was hysterical and said, two guys just tried to come in here, you need to come now, the police are on their way. Apparently she had opened the door as soon as we had left even though I had told her she absolutely needed to leave it locked and two guys had walked in through the screen door.

She apparently screamed at the top of her lungs and covered her face and when she looked up they were gone. She was pretty drunk by that point and I strongly suspected she was also high from mixing it with her medication. The police were there by the time we got back and I watched with my heart completely sinking as the officer made disbelieving looks at her while she gave a description of the two guys. She was absolutely hysterical by that point and clearly under the influence so she kept getting tripped up by questions the police asked and changing her answers. What we got out of it was that there were two white guys, one taller and blonde and the other slightly shorter but pale with dark black hair. Ryan's friend who had been at Walmart with us said that that description fit two guys who had walked into

the restaurant that he and Ryan worked at a couple of weeks prior. He said the guys walked in, looked around and tried to see who was in the kitchen area, then left. He only remembered it because of how suspiciously they were behaving, but he didn't have a whole lot of details on them either. I moved out shortly after. Ryan left to go to a different college, we broke up, and I didn't want to stick around alone in a place where I felt like my life was constantly in danger. I also didn't want to stick around alone in a place where I felt like my life was constantly in danger. I also didn't want to live with someone who wasn't going to take my home security seriously and advised Alice to also move. My best guess at this point is that these two guys lived in one of the surrounding buildings

because of how they were able to disappear and reappear so suddenly, but also in such spaced out intervals. It's only conjecture but I think that because I must have personally seen Alice bring around 30 guys back to the apartment in the time I lived there. One of them might have been someone she met at a bar or someone who might have watched everything that went on in her room and developed an obsession. I can't prove any of that and it bothers me endlessly that I don't have an answer. We were never able to even get close to catching them because of the layout of the apartment building

and because their attacks were so random. I live in the same town still and the sight of those woods in my old apartment building still gives me goosebumps. I never got to find out who they were or what they wanted and that bothers me to no end. It brought chills to my bones just recounting everything and I don't till I was 14. When I was in primary school, 4 years old till 11 years old, I had a best friend, Marie. Marie's parents were split up and her father lives on the same street as me, whilst her mother lived a town over.

She spent the week with her mom and the weekends with her father. I would often go to his house and play with Marie. We play hide and seek and pretend and other games like that. Marie wasn't exactly the best child and her play fights left me with scratches and bruises. Her father spoiled her and always had sweets and money in the house. He was always on dating sites or Facebook and was an avid Arsenal fan watching every single game. In the summer, if I was playing in my garden, I could hear him shouting at his TV because of a match outcome or goal. He would take me and Marie out and would buy us McDonald's and once a pillow pad because I wanted one so badly. I remember my mom being kind of weirded out when I said that Marie's dad bought it for me.

He would take us swimming too but I don't remember much of those trips. Marie's father was around 5'11", stocky with a bald head and ears that stuck out. He had a very kind smile and was soft spoken with a very very deep voice. I used to walk home from school and he would often wave out of an upstairs bedroom window down at me. I would wave back and smile and say hi and he'd return it. The summer of me turning 10 I was over at their house almost every weekend. When I was 11 Marie moved with her mother to a seaside town and we went to a different secondary school. I lost touch with Marie and never really hung out with her again.

I need to lay out how my route home is for this next bit to make sense, and I'm really sorry if this is a bit confusing. My road is like an L, with the longer part being a tarmac road and the shorter part is up a hill. I could walk up this road to my house, and the shorter part is up a hill. I could walk up this road to my house, this was at the top of the hill. The houses are like a T with a row of terraced houses along the top of the hill and another row going down the hill along the road. The backs of the houses face the road and an alleyway leads around to the front of the houses and I could also walk along this alley to get to my house. Whichever way I took to my house Marie's father would see me as he lived around halfway up the hill in a row of terraced houses that went down the hill next to the road. When I'm in my room at home with the blinds up I can see Marie's father's house. Let's call Marie's father Ken.

Ken would open his window, lean out, and watch me from his window. It would take me a few minutes to notice him watching me and as my bed was right next to the window I would often be in my pajamas or minimal clothing. I would wave or smile and he would cheerily wave back. I would close my blind and wait a couple of minutes before opening it and he would be gone. This happened multiple times. My mother put in a net curtain for me so that nobody could see in my window. I change my sheets at night and do it often in my underwear as my bed is in a weird position and changing sheets requires a lot of effort.

I have to sit in my windowsill so I would often have to remove the net curtain. I have no idea how many times he has watched me contort and struggle to change my sheets bearing in mind I was around 13 or 14 when I began noticing these things. I walk home from my bus stop the same way I'd walk home from primary school and every single way I would take to walk home Ken would always see me, would always say hello and smile like he was expecting me or something. It really creeped me out. I began to get scared to see him. My heart would race and I began to completely ignore him as I sped walked home, earphones in my ears blasting music. I thought he was watching me waiting for me every day one day when I was 14 I tested my theory there were two ways I could walk past Ken's house both would lead me home the first way was the way

I usually walked along the tarmac road and up into my back garden it passed the back of his house however from the bottom of the hill I would be able to see his window and see if he was there waiting for me and I could divert my route to go around the front of his house, along an alley, up the hill and to my front door instead of my back. One day I saw him in the window at the back of his house and I tried not to give off that I knew he was watching me. Without stopping on my route I diverted the walk up the alley in front of his house. He had crossed along the top floor of his house. When I reached his house, some way up the hill he was looking down at me from the window at the front of his house. He was definitely watching me.

I power walked home and immediately dug up Marie's contact info. I told her to tell Ken to stop watching me walk home and then I thought it was creepy. She did so and told me Ken was only waiting for his girlfriend to get home and that he always watched for her. I can hear every car on my street pull up from my house and I never heard any the hour after I got home. I know Ken's girlfriend drives a BMW and I know what it sounds like. Luckily he stopped watching me after that and I've never really seen him again. The story happened almost 10 years ago. I'll jump right in because it's long. I got home from work one day and logged into Facebook to find a message from someone I didn't know. It was too long ago to remember verbatim what was said but it was along the lines of

Hey, I know you have no idea who I am but I've been trying to decide what to do for a few days and figured I had to let you know what's been going on. Someone has been catfishing me using your identity for over two years and I just found out about it last week. The sender of the email was clearly pretty shaken up and understandably was experiencing a mix of emotions. According to her, she had met the imposter online a little over two years prior to her writing this, and that they had been engaged in a pretty intimate long-distance relationship for a majority of that time. The imposter had created a Facebook and had over time reposted almost all of my photos with their own captions to them, including a good amount of art I'd drawn that they took credit for. They created fake profiles for a good amount of my close family

and friends so that they could comment on the photos of themselves to make the profile seem legit. The funniest part to me is that although most things in my real life seem to be mirrored in this fake profile, I, a straight male, was instead portrayed as trans. I think the main reason for this was that the sender of the email and the imposter would actually speak on the phone, and the imposter turned out to be female in the end and therefore needed a reason to justify her more feminine sounding voice. The sender of the email was justifiably both angry and creeped out and wanted to find that catfish. She started asking me a lot

of questions about my life but phrasing them like, is your sister's name blank and did you go to blank high school? Some of them were clearly information that anyone could glean from a quick browse of my profile but then she asked, is your best friend blank? Which struck me as odd since despite this person actually being my closest friend and who I spend the most time with, we have barely any Facebook photos together and most are from a long time ago. Then she asked, were you adopted and are your half-siblings blank and blank? Which sealed the deal for me since I knew for a fact I'd never posted about being adopted online. The sender of the email already had an idea that this person had known me in real life

but this confirmed it for me. The sender of the email had contacted me shortly after confronting the imposter for the first time. I guess after two years they'd finally become suspicious of the fact the imposter wouldn't show their face. I have no idea how it took this long for them to figure out that they were being played but I'm glad they finally decided to give the ultimatum of, show your face or I'm cutting you off. I'm pretty sure this is the point where the imposter admitted to being a catfish and that she'd been using the identity of someone she had a crush on in high school before hanging

up. I was given the URL so I could look through the profile myself, which was up for about two days after I saw it before it was all removed. It was definitely really bizarre. The imposter had posted more than I ever had on Facebook, and it genuinely seemed like they'd lived a pretty involved double life online as me. Almost everyone I'd posted photos with on my real profile would have their own fake profiles created that had enough content to be genuinely convincing that they could be tagged in and validate these new photos. Some of these profiles seemed to have gone and made their own real friends as well,

and I wondered if any of those were used to facilitate even more online dating deception. Either way, the amount of time that this person had spent fabricating their alter ego's online presence was pretty shocking. The whole time I'd been crawling down this Facebook rabbit hole, the sender of the email was looking through my real profile. After a while, she sent me a message saying did you take these photographs and showed me what I remember as black and white photos of a barn or something. I hadn't which was weird since everything else on the fake profile originated with me and she noticed the discrepancy. We both tried reverse image searching with no luck. Then, either through a stroke of genius or somewhat suspiciously, I really couldn't tell. She thought to flip the fake number imposter had written into the fake Facebook profile around in

reverse and a Google search came up with a landline that belonged to the same home address of a girl that I'd gone to high school with. Real name was Facebook friends with real imposter profile so we both went snooping around and found the photo that she claimed I'd taken which pretty much confirmed to me that this was the imposter. I'm pretty sure that there were more indicators to the sender as well but I can't remember. I thought about messaging her for a while but I decided that it probably wouldn't lead to anything good. At the time my thoughts were definitely let's not meet. I talked a few times with the sender of the email just to try and decompress a bit but honestly just wanted to distance myself from the situation and also had my suspicions about the sender as well.

I figured maybe it was an imposter's one last ditch effort to try and talk to me. Although when it was all over the sender seemed eager to leave this all behind as well so maybe not. Either way it was a really strange experience. I felt mostly freaked out and violated but I guess there was a small part of me that was flattered by it. I had a lot of mixed emotions. The weirdest part to me is that I'm a really approachable person and would have definitely been willing to talk and probably be friends if this person had just approached me instead. Although I'm still not sure if this was done out of obsession for me or if this person felt like I was just a suitable

image to base this fabricated persona off of. I remember talking to her probably twice throughout high school and really didn't have a very good idea of who she was other than a quiet hipster girl. If either person involved reads this I'd definitely be happy to talk now. It's been years but I've gone from being very put off to always wondered why this person chose me over a myriad of other more attractive or interesting people online to base their other life off of. According to the sender who contacted me she probably spent more time online pretending to be me than she actually did going about her own life. I have a tumultuous history of addiction and have had plenty of my own escapes which is why it's always fascinated

me that someone would want to pretend to live someone else's life as a means of doing that. Because at the end of the day the person pretending to be me had no idea that I spent my time daydreaming of being a different person as well. I guess it just goes to show that no matter how much you wish you were someone else, chances are that person has plenty of their own reasons to want to escape their own demons for their own reasons as well. In 2011 I was able to convince my grandparents to sign a waiver for me to enter into the Navy at the age of 17. Basic training went as well as it could have, but I was a fat kid and didn't pass the run, so I was sent back four weeks to do more training until the physical test came up again. This detail is important due to the butterfly effect. When I finally finished and had my orders

of traveling to my A school I ended up in Meridian Mississippi or BF nowhere. I was assigned to my class and I was taught a more specific guideline for my rate. There was somewhere between 15 to 20 people in my class. Not huge, but large enough to where people migrated between groups of 3 to 5 at a time so you could mingle with different groups to get to know one another. The kid I was when I started A school was very different. I was super shy, so when I would bounce from group to group I was more of a listener than someone who engaged with the group unless I was specifically asked things. It was in that first week I would meet Katie. I introduced myself with a hello and she did the

same. I had no idea that would be enough to cause her obsession. My base had a rec center. Inside of it they had a PS4 gaming room, a movie room, an air hockey room and music room. Because I didn't have a car at the time and to get to what little town they had nearby was about $30 each way, I spent most of my time at that rec center at the bowling alley that they also had on base. Katie would also find me at one of these places and go on to talk to me endlessly about the things in her life. Maybe it was because I wasn't rude to shut her down right away but she felt comfortable telling me things about her family and life growing up but it was more so done to be heard than to converse about. I think in the six weeks I was there I maybe said about 20 different

words to her and most of those were words of affirmation like yeah and I understand. I was already pretty uncomfortable as it seemed like every time I wasn't in my room Katie was there to find me. Even as I started to get out of my own bubble and start to make some friends Katie would be there and try to take over conversations other people were having with me so that she could talk to me. I would go to my chief to express my concerns and she assured me that they would get to the bottom of it. My chief was and is still heavily involved in the SRP program in the Navy so she has seen all sorts of mental issues come by. While my chief respected her privacy and didn't disclose what they had talked about she did ask me if I was leading Katie on to which I had to

explain that I never expressed interest but I also never told her to just buzz off as I just wasn't raised that way. I don't know what magic my chief pulled but she was able to get in contact with the person that would assign Katie's next duty station along with mine as we had similar rates and most people at the time were set to go to Japan. Katie ended up getting orders to Norfolk, Virginia while I got orders to Camp Pendleton, California. Our classes are already ended by this point so we had only been waiting for these orders for an additional week or so. As everyone talked about their different duty stations, a select few that were going to Japan stood out. There was Katie and I, a girl that was set to go to Italy and another that was set to go to Japan as well, but a completely different base compared to everyone else. So Katie found out that

she wouldn't get to talk to me anymore. She tried so hard to get my number and said that she wanted me to take her virginity before she left. It was that which was enough for me to finally say that I wasn't interested and that I was glad to be getting away from her. It's probably among the meanest things I've ever said but completely necessary in the context after weeks of obsession. Katie did not want to accept that though and after she had been set away she called the A school every single day trying to get a hold of both myself and my chief there to the point where my chief asked to look through my phone to make sure I wasn't telling her one thing while still communicating with Katie.

Our command LPO got in contact with Katie to get her to stop calling and eventually I was off to California after a short stop at home beforehand. At Camp Pendleton, especially the Naval Hospital, unless you're a corpsman you stick out as the newbie. And because of this, Katie went as far as to call my new command to ask if I made it there yet, pretending to be a concerned family member. Being a teenager I made the mistake of letting the world see what I was doing via Facebook like changing my location status and sharing that information without my account being privated. I now know better. I have a pretty unique last name so with that info Katie was able to see

exactly which one I was and contacted my family members as well as trying to tell them that she was a secret girlfriend of mine and wanted to know things about me. I'm not particularly close with my family but they know enough that if I had someone special in my life I would introduce them and seeing as I had added many new friends I had made at a school and her not being one of them thankfully their skepticism stopped them from divulging any more information about me. I had to send out an alert to my family to pass on to one another that she was a stalker and got them all to block her. I wasn't the only one Katie was stalking by this point.

She had also started going after the chief that helped me break away from her and this is what led me to keep in contact with that chief during my whole tenure in the military. After months and months of this I had finally been able to move past Katie and there wasn't anyone around any longer for her to contact to get to me. I would find out years later through my chief that in one last bold move Katie would make a false assault charge in order to leave her command in the hopes of being transferred to mine. Of course what ended up happening is that she got booted out of the Navy altogether. To think it all started over a hello and probably wouldn't have happened to its degree had I finished boot camp when I was originally supposed to. Well, always gets under my skin.

This happened yesterday so I'm still a bit shaken by it, especially after this morning. Yesterday I was waiting at my train station sitting on the floor under a tree I had my art poster tube carrier with me and nothing else I'm a fine arts university student and I was on my way to class that day I was listening to music and looking at my phone when I got this weird vibe that someone was looking at me I snuck a peek a couple of times and saw a man walking up the ramp to the train station he passed in front of me, walked a couple of steps forward and then turned around and walked my direction. I tucked my headphones out and looked up. He was a tall, lanky man who looked to be in about his thirties.

He was balding with almost shaved hair. He had those round glasses with thin frames, sporting a brown shirt with a rainbow collar, and his vibe was intensely uncomfortable. He quickly started talking to me, in English, not my country's language, and he asked if he could see my drawings. I found it weird and though I've had people ask me to see my art, it was always while I was drawing. Nobody ever asked me to open my art carrier.

Most people don't even recognize what it is. I nevertheless said okay thinking nothing of it. I took out two of them and show the man saying it's nothing special they're just exercises following with I'm an art student and I really regret saying this now as there is only one art university where I live. The man complimented what I had shown him and sat next to me on the floor. This was my first sign to nope out of there but then again I never learn do I? The man proceeded to tell me about him. He said that he had been in the country for a year and that he had no friends. He complimented me on my style, I'm sort of a rock, metal loving person and asked me what music I listen to. I realized this sounds like a normal conversation but where I live it's not normal to start talking to strangers and the specific way in which he phrased everything was downright weird and intrusive.

Also everything had a hint of self-loathing. Now I have had a couple of bad experiences in my life with creepy men and I could not shake off the feeling that there was something deeply wrong with this man. Like a certain sickly charm that only comes from a twisted individual. He focused the conversation a lot on himself until he asked me if I was nervous. I replied a little as it's not normal for someone to start up a conversation just like that, at least not where I'm from. He said it was cute and started making weird excuses as to why he was randomly talking to me. It was cute that I was scared apparently. He said he was from Belgium and was on paid leave for a month to go to a psychologist he said the reason was is that he was too good at his job and nobody gave him credit so

he had low self-esteem or something as the train arrives i point to it and say this is my train expecting him to stay but this man follows me and continues to talk like it was nothing, which at this point I became less and less responsive to. This man clearly had a superiority complex. He complained about being the best at his job and highly educated and that nobody gave him enough credit or a raise, so much that it made it weird and awkward. He repeatedly pointed out that I was nervous, saying how I knew that if I was nervous that that meant I weird and awkward. He repeatedly pointed out that I was nervous saying how I knew that if I was nervous that that meant I was more honest. He kept getting closer to me and I kept stepping away wishing he would just give up but alas my stop came and he followed me. I tried to

say oh I have to go and he followed me. I do admit I was polite the whole time but I was in public and didn't want to cause a scene. Maybe I should have in hindsight. We got off the train station and he started asking me more and more intrusive questions ending with a well you want to go for coffee later which I denied and said I have a boyfriend. He seemed angry. He told me girls only say that to stop a conversation that he doesn't believe in exclusivity to which I responded with a polite I understand but I'm not in an open relationship and I'm loyal to my partner. He said you don't need to justify yourself and maybe I'll see you later in your station leaving with a creepy smile on his face. This was when I was able to go to a

different direction than him and I walked as fast as I could looking back the whole way to check if I was being followed. I spent the rest of the day uncomfortable and shaking from how eerie this man was. I asked my mom if she could give me a lift home since I ended class really late and didn't want to have to walk alone in the dark. I have never asked this before. This morning after a bad night's sleep I wake up, do my things and later around the same time I would have been in the train station I get a call from a Belgian number. One that I don't recognize.

I check the caller ID just in case it was a spam number or something. It wasn't. My heart sunk and the same feeling came back. I didn't leave the house today and miss class in fear of seeing that man again. I didn't give my contact info to him but somehow I assumed this idiot got it and then as I started talking to my friends about it I realized maybe he already knew me from social media. So you know how if you have a business account you can check if anyone saved your pictures on Instagram. Turns out the pictures of my face were saved. I don't have many on there but the ones I do have have been saved. I checked my followers and there were a couple of very sketchy accounts following me which I blocked. I quickly turned all of my online presence to private and cleaned out my followers because

lord knows. I realized I had posted two pictures of my stories at that train station this past week, one of those being on the day prior to this happening. And hey, maybe all of this is paranoia but I will say I've had a fair share of ill-intentioned men, and this bloke gave me the same exact feeling or worse, so I like to think that it's my instincts telling me this is a big nope. I'm going to start walking around with a pocketknife just in case. I don't want to take any chances. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go

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at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca I never thought I'd have a frightening story to be told. About four months ago I was single and not looking for a man but fate had a different path in mind. I was driving with my mother when she asked me to pull over because there were beautiful flowers in the medium. It was right next to a roundabout so there wasn't anywhere to pull over so I let her out and drove to the next driveway which was a closed business. There was a man walking on the sidewalk.

He wasn't relevant until I made my turn around and came back and my mom was talking to him. This man was actually a brother of someone that my mom dated about 20 years ago but we're still friends. Now just so you're aware I'm very sensitive to people's energies and auras. Before this man even got in our van I was immediately connected and could almost say I felt he needed love, needed me. I'm not going to go into detail about our relationship but I will say it was not healthy. He told me all sorts of messed up things. Told me that he's hurt people. Told me he was someone who took care of business as in disposing of blood money or even bodies. He had a reputation of being a god in certain towns. I feel that these things should have scared me but really didn't.

I almost felt safer. I'm sorry if that sounds twisted but it's true. Things between us really started going downhill. I tried a drug that really messed me up. It got a hold of me and my psyche. He had a history of mental health issues. He also had a history of obvious drug use and he had beat most of his girlfriends and his brother, my mom's ex, had tried to warn me about all of this but you know how it is when you're so deeply in love with somebody and someone else tries to warn you or tell you something about this person. You just don't listen. In a four month span he pushed me down probably ten times and I noticed during intimacy he liked to slap me in the face. Red flags that I should have paid attention to.

I honestly figured I'd be pushed a few times but I never thought that he would actually try to end my life. Now the last few days of our relationship I was acting crazy. I broke things, I slammed doors, I was not okay. Well I was triggering his poor mental health I suppose. The last night we were together my dog killed my rat and it set off something horrible in my brain and I cried and cried as I crawled back in bed with my boyfriend. Apparently I woke him up and made him mad to the far extreme. He jumped out of bed, started packing his stuff which was something that he had been doing for days,

threatening to pack his stuff and leave because he can't handle how I was acting. What really hurt was that he had proposed just a few days prior but of course all of this made me go even crazier but I got a hold of myself because I knew if I reacted he'd flip out even more so I just laid down and cried myself to sleep. I do remember him laying down with me but at a distance. All I really remember was that waking up at 5 or 6 in the morning to his mouth against my cheek. He was actually biting me and yelling at me saying I'm lucky he didn't carve my face while I was sleeping. I literally could not believe the words that were coming out of his mouth or the fact that he was biting my cheek. He was laying directly on me.

Just so you know about three weeks before this I had fallen off a horse and really bruised my ribs so I couldn't breathe at all not to mention that I also have asthma. I was screaming at him to get off of me. I couldn't breathe and just repeating myself over and over I barely remember but I think I punched him in the face because he wouldn't move and he was screaming at me. Well that was a big mistake. He grabbed my throat with his hands and squeezed so hard I could feel the oxygen being pulled from my brain. I've never felt anything so painful and terrifying in my life. I saw the look in his eyes and it was terrifying. He actually wanted me dead.

It was an evil, empty look. Time was at a standstill. I don't know how long he was strangling me, but it felt like hours. I thought this was it. I thought the love of my life would be the death of me. Next thing I know my mom is in my doorway screaming for him to get off of me. He let go and left. My mom not hitting snooze on her alarm clock saved my life that day and I will never be

so grateful. At that point in my life I was actually happy to be alive. The drugs I was doing changed something in me and made me just not care about anything but this murderous man and the drug that was eating away at everything I was. I lost everything else in these four months. At one point I had lost my home. My mother kicked me out. This man was also homeless so it was a sad scary situation for me. I'm glad I got out of all of it but why did it have to end in such a nightmarish way? Fate is unpredictable so I stay on my toes now. I hope I never see a look in someone's eyes the way I did that morning. Be cautious about the decisions you make in life.

My family and I had just moved into a new house. This was right after the housing market went way up in the 2000s, so the house where we were moving into was a dump because that's all we could afford in our school district. It had previously been a crack house. The windows were busted by police, fence taken down by SWAT, needles in the garbage disposal. It was a dump. So my mom and stepdad were fixing it up before we finally moved in. We had a month to get out of the house that we were renting to get into our new house. My sister's dad would go over and paint. We had to because everything was covered with graffiti. He got home one night and said, when I got to the house today I saw a little

kid. This was after they had already replaced the windows so nobody could break in. He said he came into the house and he saw a kid go from one bedroom into the master. So we went into the master bedroom and no one was there. At first he thought my mom had been there with my sister and I and left somebody there. When he realized we were not there he didn't really know what happened. My mom just told him it was fumes and to open up a window and wear a mask. Keep in mind my stepdad isn't the type of person to believe in ghosts or paranormal things and he doesn't get scared easily so this was out of character for him.

Right after we moved in almost instantly my sister had an imaginary friend. This was unusual because she was never a play pretend type of kid. She never played with dolls or anything. She was more of a computer game boy tech type of person and she still is today. She was always very logical and thought very scientifically. Even though she was very young at the time it was just odd because she had never had an imaginary friend before. My mom and I were always the more artistic, wacky ones and my sister and her dad were the more logical ones, just to give you some insight. Generally when a child invents an imaginary friend it's because they want someone to play with. But her imaginary friend was super annoying and he was always bothering her. She would constantly

complain about Mikey not sharing a toy or he won't play this game or he touched my juice. He's not following the rules, not taking turns. Who invents an imaginary friend so they can fight with them all day? One day my mom was out from talking to our neighbor. She was telling my mom that before the people before us there was another family there with kids. Then she asked if we ever saw anything weird in the house. She told my mom that the family before saw stuff in the house and that her son who was now a teenager when he was little he had an imaginary friend named Mikey. The kids that lived in our house before us also

played with Mikey and that she had seen him before my sister and I would spend the weekends with our grandparents and my mom would take the batteries out of all of our toys because they would go off randomly when no one was in our rooms I remember I had a piggy bank that made noise when you put money in it one night it wouldn't stop so I checked to see if it was jam but nothing was in it so I ended up throwing it away because it wouldn't stop going off in the middle of the night. I had never had problems with sleeping before or after that house but when we lived there every morning I would wake up contorted in some way. I would wake up shoved in a little

space between my bed and dresser in a ball and I would always be stuck and my mom would have to help me out in the morning. I would always try to figure out how, but never could. I was in third or fourth grade at the time and my mom had put guards on the side of my bed, but I would still end up contorted, shoved in between my dresser. This never happened when I would stay at my grandparents'. My mom worked a night job and would stay home during the day with my sister. So one night she came home from work and was washing her hands in the kitchen. From the kitchen you could see into the living room. My mom turned around because she could feel someone watching her and for a split second there was a kid standing there. She said he looked about

eight years old and then he was gone. Not too long after it was my sister's birthday. After the party my sister and I went to my grandparents house. My mom and stepdad were alone. My mom took all the balloons from the party and tied them together and put them in the corner in the living room so they were watching TV. The air was off because the weather is nice around my sister's birthday and the fan wasn't on. All of a sudden all the balloon strings came together like someone grabbed it and they floated down about a foot. Then they went around the corner and really slowly down the hallway. Then once it got to the light in the hallway, the balloons went down and around the light. It went down to the end of the hallway and stopped

at my sister's door. My mom and stepdad were watching in shock, not knowing what to do. So my mom decided to talk to it. She said, Hey Mikey, if you want those balloons, you can have them. Right when she said that, the balloons went into my sister's room. Now there used to be a Taco Bell by our house, this was before they started remodeling them, so it kind of looked like a missionary home. So my mom, my sister and I were driving past the Taco Bell and my sister said, Mom, Mikey says that he used to live in a Taco Bell house. We didn't think anything of it. After we had lived there for a while, my mom

decided to look into the history of the property. Before it had been a cattle ranch. Then she learned that before right on the property where our house and three others were she found out that there was a children's missionary home. It was founded by a catholic church and they had orphans and that's when it clicked. One year my sister said it's Mikey's birthday we have to get a cake so my mom made a cake and then she marked it with a little dot on the calendar then when she changed over the calendar the next year she marked it with a little dot on the calendar. Then when she changed over the calendar, the next year she marked it with a dot again, just to see. The following year on the same day, my sister says, It's Mikey's birthday. He wants a cake.

At Christmas time, my mom went out and bought him a hot wheel on a little toy horse. A couple of days later, the horse disappeared. My sister didn't touch it and I had no idea where it went. A couple of years later when we were playing in the backyard we found it buried in the yard. We brought it back inside and put it on the coffee table and that night it went missing again and we still haven't seen it. So I was a picky eater and still am but my stepdad used to make me stay at the table till I ate all my food. I was also stubborn so I would sit there till 10 at night when he would finally just let me go to bed. But every night at that table I would see shadows walking around the hallway from room to room. I would just think I was seeing things but it was constantly almost every night. And that's pretty much everything I remember.

My mom's sister and I moved out after my mom and stepdad split up and I haven't been back there since. My sister's dad still lives there and she goes there on the weekends. She's in high school now. She still tells me that the house feels heavy and she sees shadow people all the time but that's it. I just thought I would share this experience because I do find it fascinating. I was young and it's hard to remember everything because it was so long ago. I have a lot of pictures from the house with some weird stuff in it and I'll ask my mom for them and hopefully I can post them here. So this will be a long post about the experiences my family has been through.

The first story is about my dad and my uncle. My dad and uncle shared a room in the 70s. Mid-70s, I believe the story takes place. My dad slept on the bottom bunk and Uncle David slept on the top. One night when my dad was dead asleep, he suddenly was jolted awake and stuck his arm out right as my uncle fell. My dad luckily caught him, but to this day my dad has no idea how he woke up and why he stuck his arms out. Now on to my mom. She used to be a medical professional. Like anyone in the field, my mom always put patients above herself and never took her safety into consideration first.

One time, in the early 2000s I believe, my mom was walking past an alley and found a man shot but still alive. She ran to him and helped the man without knowing if the shooter was still around. This next time in the early 2010s she was leaving Walmart and heard a man begin shooting and so many people screaming. Without thinking she ran back inside and started helping people as best as she could. Now these next two are also about my mom but they're more about a spiritual thing. We were looking for a place to buy back in 2009 and we found a nice trailer. We weren't sure about it but my mom said she felt like God was telling her to buy it. We did and lived there for four years. In 2012 I believe is when things sort of changed.

I was really good friends with this one neighbor girl, Alyssa. I had known her for three years at this point and one day she found me walking around. We sat at a park and she began telling me something that I would never forget. You have an aunt named Eva, right? I nodded and she continued. Eva has kids and I'm her daughter. I was put up for adoption really young due to abuse. I had finally decided to find my family that I lost and that's when I came across your mom and dad's Facebook and saw your profile. Turns out that we're cousins. I sat there in shock and never even knowing my aunt had kids since I wasn't even born when they were taken away. My aunt died in 2009 so she never got to see her kids again. Now the final story about my mom.

We were on our way back home from getting food and my mom was about to get into the far left turn lane when something told her not to so she got into the turn lane next to that one. A couple of minutes go by, this was a highway on an off-ramp so they take forever, when suddenly a car comes barreling through hitting the light post, median strip and car in that turn lane my mom almost went into. My mom doesn't understand why these things happened to her but she's definitely grateful. This story is about my second oldest sister Courtney. Something to know about my family is that we're all freakishly strong and all know how to fight. This happened when my sister was 13 back in 2003. She was walking down this one sidewalk one day when someone grabbed her and tried to

have their way with her. Courtney can't feel pain. This was found out when my sister broke her arm and my mom didn't believe her until three days later when it was swollen and purple. So she would do literally anything to save herself. She was trying to find something to help her get away when she grabbed a broomstick and beat this man so bad there were puddles of blood and a long trail leading to where his car was probably parked. My family tried to find the man but didn't get anywhere and figured he'd probably never try to hurt someone again after the damage my sister did. And now finally on to my stories. I have a lot of stories about my life but only two that are noteworthy. The first happened in early 2017. I was 17 and one night at around 11pm I was walking home from

a gas station when this one foreign guy stopped me and asked how much. Now sure I'm a fairly attractive girl. I'm full figured in all the right places, pretty face and bright blue eyes so I'm used to kind of getting hit on. I already knew what he was trying to ask so I said excuse me and this a-hole proceeds to say you're a streetwalker yes? I just walked away and he didn't bother me anymore thankfully. That wasn't really too bad compared to others, but it was scary at the time and I just kept thinking that I was gonna have to end this dude if he tried anything. The last story comes from 2016. I was on my way home after spending a month and a half in Louisiana with my now ex. I was taking the Greyhound bus and we had to get off at Albuquerque, New Mexico, so the bus could get cleaned.

I still had a good ten hours before I was home. I had to go to the bathroom and when I walked in, there was this one man in there with a bunch of other girls. I didn't think much of it because I'm all for transgender people using the bathroom they feel most comfortable in. He didn't look trans, but who am I to judge? I get into a stall and the whole time something just doesn't feel right so I just hurry as fast as I can and 10 minutes later we board the bus again. I sit in my seat and the guy from the bathroom sits next to me. He makes small talk and seems cool but then it gets gross real quick. He starts describing how I wipe myself and how I look doing it.

I was 16 at this time and very non-confrontational unless my life is in immediate danger. Needless to say that was a very awkward hour until we got to a gas station so I could tell the bus driver safely about what happened. Nothing much happened other than the driver forcing this dude to sit in the front. Thanks for listening as I just wanted to share the myriad of stories my family and myself have culminated over the many years. So my two best friends and I had gone to our LGS, local game store, a few months ago to pick up some Magic the Gathering cards, and I parked my car right out front in the strip mall parking lot in plain view. A 2009 BMW 335i, if anyone's curious. Now for context, my car has had some issues with the engine but never any issues with windows or locks at all and never any electrical issues. It was about 3pm and

really hot so we had some of the windows down on the drive there but I rolled them up before we went inside and locked my car, obviously. We were in the local game store for about half an hour and when we came back outside to get in my car all the windows were completely rolled down and all the doors were unlocked i live in a large city in western canada where the crime rate is pretty bad so my immediate thought was that my car had been broken into. But there are a few significant issues with that theory. One, I 100% locked my car and both my friends confirm this. My car beeps when it's locked and I always wait to hear it lock before I leave it anywhere. Additionally, my keys were on my purse the entire time so someone getting a hold of my keys is out of the question.

Second, nothing was taken from my car. My friends had left her bag in the car and it was exactly how she left it. Nothing was taken and it didn't appear to be touched or moved at all. I also had a necklace in the center console that was still there and some change in plain view. Stupid of me, I know, and it wasn't touched. My friends and I talked about it a lot when it happened and we still do sometimes. My boyfriend and I joke about this a lot, he's one of the friends mentioned, but we still haven't really decided on a real cause for this. I was visiting with my mom the other day and she brought up something that I completely forgot about. A few years ago when I was 19 to 20 I was a nanny for a baby who was being cared for by his grandma. His father was an addict and his mother had tragically died

right after he was born due to an overdose. The first day of said nanny job the grandma showed me around the house and where everything was and she showed me his nursery room. This room was literally ice cold. I remember thinking, geez why would a baby's room be so cold? I started feeling a tightness in my throat from being in there so I did my best to move the grandma along the rest of the house tour. I started watching him regularly and would absolutely dread going into his room for things. I just kept getting that you're not alone in here feeling every time I went in there. It didn't feel malevolent or negative but I felt watched intently. Now I never really watched him past 6pm but one night I was called to watch him overnight due to a family emergency. All was normal and I put him in his crib for bedtime,

sat with the baby monitor and watched Harry Potter. He woke up about an hour after I put him down and his grandma had always told me not to rush into his room when he's crying so I didn't. Listening to the baby monitor I started feeling strange like something was happening and I half expected to rush in and see something horrible. He was fine just crying. I comforted him, put him back to sleep and went back to my movie but I felt strange about the feeling I'd gotten. I must have fallen asleep after that because the next thing I knew I woke up to the sound of him giggling through the baby monitor. I raised one eyebrow thinking how strange that was until I heard light female humming. My blood literally ran cold and I felt prickling on the back of my neck. I felt frozen in place with fear because I shouldn't have been

hearing anyone else in there. Fight or flight kicked in and I ran in to see him laying in his crib, awake and amused by something I couldn't see. The room felt normal until I approached his crib and was hit with an icy cold mass. When said cold mass hit me I immediately had a calming feeling and his mother's name immediately popped into my head. After that some odd things would happen here and there. When feeding him in his high chair, he'd look off behind me and smile and coo but there was never anything there. The family dog would also stand in the doorway of the baby's room and just stare in, not moving. His favorite toys would be misplaced only to be in the spot I checked earlier and other little harmless things. I truly felt like she was watching over him.

So I have always had experiences with the paranormal ever since I was little. Here's the story of one of the most vivid incidences I had. Now for a quick background on the home, it was an old civil war hospital in Tennessee and me and my siblings had found some old war money, uniform and bag of stuff from that era. Lots of activity all the time but this was by far the most intense. I was about nine years old lying in my bed trying to go to sleep. As I roll over, I see out of the corner of my eye someone standing in the doorway. My eyes dart to it and I realize that it's not any of my six other siblings or my parents. It was a figure that looked like a man but it was completely made of static.

You know like that static on television. What's strange is that I wasn't afraid for mine or my younger sister's safety. We shared a room and she was already passed out. I followed it with my eyes as I walked slowly across the room towards my bed. The closer it got the more uneasy I felt but still not scared. It bent down and got about three inches away from my face and then disappears. I felt a little strange afterwards but still not terrified or anything. Any idea of what it could be? I've done research but have come up with very few answers. When you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires, find a Kumo TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations.

From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca I was staying at a friend's house for the weekend and had just taken a shower and had just left the bathroom. My friend's younger sister's door was slightly cracked and as I walked by I glanced inside for a quick second and stopped dead in my tracks. When I looked back again I got this unbelievably uneasy feeling because it was unnaturally dark in her room. It wasn't anything too weird, I just thought to myself, wow, that's kind of creepy. Keep in mind all of this happened in the span of about 5-6 seconds. Right after I had thought that, without skipping a beat, the door slams right in my face, hard. My mouth wide open, I walk into the living room where my friend's sister is sitting on the

couch watching TV. With my mouth still open I said, did you hear that? Where she says, yeah I thought that was you. I shook my head slowly and said, uh-uh. Thinking to myself maybe it was my friend pulling some joke which was answered almost immediately by him quickly stomping down the stairs freaking out i asked if he was in her room and he of course said no with a confused look on his face after telling them what happened they tell me that weird things like that happen all the time and they think the house is really haunted. The second story takes place in the house I stayed in throughout high school. One night I was up late playing a game with a few friends I've known for years and still

keep in contact with online. After a while I got thirsty and went to go downstairs to get something to drink. I live with my grandparents and my younger brother at the time and after 11.30 everyone is asleep but me. This has been a sort of system I got used to. Over the four years I had lived there, everyone is asleep. This is sort of important for the story. I open my door quickly and close it as to not shine my bedroom light to my grandparents room because they leave the door cracked so our dog can go in and out. We have two flights of stairs and an island in between, and hopefully you understand what that means. I go down the first flight of stairs and turn to the island to go down the second and stop dead in my tracks. When I looked into the living room kitchen area it felt as

though someone had turned down the brightness so to speak, like when you're changing the settings in a game. The only other time this kind of darkness had stopped me before was in the previous story which is why I felt the need to tell it. I walked down the next flight of stairs not being able to see a thing. I reach the hardwood floor and walk towards the kitchen and see a dark tall silhouette that looked like a tall person. The way it was standing it looked like I would be looking at it from its side and that's all I can see. I was paralyzed. I was convinced and still am convinced that someone or something was standing there. I'm not sure how long I stood there frozen for but it felt like forever. All of the sudden it looked like an arm reaches forward and I hear a clink clink clink noise like a spoon stirring a cup. After a while I back up slowly and

go up the first flight of steps and stop and listen on the island. Clink, clink, clink, the stirring noise again. I go up the second flight at this point right next to my bedroom door and listen again perfectly still, not breathing. Clink, clink, then silence. After that I got the strangest feeling that whatever it was was about to come up the stairs. I went back into the safety of my well-lit bedroom and hopped on the mic to tell my friends what had just happened. Clearly still shaken they could hear it in my voice. Then after a while of being in my room I realized that the light switch was literally right next to me so all I would have had to do was turn

that switch on and all my questions would have been answered. This is perhaps the most frustrating part about the whole ordeal. I later went down and turned the switch on and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary and went into the garage to get a soda. When I walked back in I noticed a rag that was always next to the sink was draped over the faucet which made me freeze. I wasn't sure if it had been like that the whole time because I didn't notice it but it still freaked me out nonetheless. I put it back in its place and went to my room. Nothing like that has ever happened to me again since. I've asked everyone in the house if they were up separately and all have said that

they were fast asleep. Even if they were awake why would they be doing something in the pitch black? All in all both were very creepy experiences for me and I will definitely be telling them until I'm very, very old. I'm a female, 19. The story I'm about to share takes place on April 15th, 2017, so I was 16 years old at the time. So you can better understand what I'm about to tell you, let me give you a little information on myself and the surroundings at the time. I have a brother who is only 15 months older than me and we are very close and I call him my best friend to be honest. The house we were living in at the time was in the very back of a neighborhood and had three floors. A main floor with a living room, a basement that contained my brother's room and bathroom plus the

garage, and an upstairs which has the kitchen and three other rooms and two bathrooms, i.e. my mom and dad's room, my room and a spare. When you first walk into the house there is the living room with split stairs, three on the right going up to the next floor and on the left of the three are a bunch going down to the basement. Once you go upstairs you go straight to the kitchen but turn right and there is a hallway. My room was first on the right and the bathroom was diagonal to my room further down the hall. In the living room we have a banister next to the stairs going down and in front of the banister we had a couch facing left from the front door. Now that I have all the information out I can tell you what happened to me.

On April 15th I was lying in bed watching TV playing on my phone, normal 16 year old stuff. My brother came into my room and laid on my bed watching YouTube on his phone, which I didn't mind because we were just chilling. Well I got bored of mindlessly scrolling through Instagram and Netflix had nothing new to offer me, so I decided to go longboarding and my brother just stayed in my bedroom. I left the house around 9.30 and came home around 10 because it was super dark and I didn't want to be out too late for my own safety, so when I got home, I left my longboard on the porch and laid on the couch in the living room facing the front door with my head against the wall and on the armrest. I didn't want to turn on any lights because I enjoyed chilling in the dark and playing on my phone while having music coming from my phone speaker.

The only light I had was from my phone screen and the street lamp on the other side of the street. I was laying on the couch for about 10 minutes listening to my music playing games on my phone when my brother opened my bedroom door and walked into the living room and stood at the end of the couch. I couldn't see his face but he started talking to me and this is the conversation we had. You can have your room back. Okay. Are you going to go to your room? No, I kind of just want to chill here for a bit. That's when my brother slightly turned and started walking downstairs to which I whisper shouted, hey, goodnight, I love you. And he just said goodnight. I then heard his footsteps stop halfway down the stairs to which

I thought was odd but didn't put too much thought into it until five seconds later. My brother walked out of the upstairs bathroom and told me to turn my music down because it was too loud. I was a little dumbfounded and asked if we had just had the conversation which was fresh in my mind and he responded with uh no I was in the bathroom and I was a little hectic asking him repeatedly so you didn't just tell me I could have my room back he started getting annoyed and asking me what was up with me and no he hadn't told me any of that and that's about when I lost it. I started yelling and crying telling him it wasn't funny and that he really scared me by doing all of this and if he was lying he needed to tell me right now and he just hugged me and said he

didn't know what had happened but he swore he wasn't lying. That's about when my parents woke up from my screaming and crying, asking what was up, and I had to explain to them what happened. And they all believe me because they have had spooky stuff and encounters happen to them before. But what really bothers me is the fact that my brother was wearing a white t-shirt, and I didn't even question the fact as to why he was a solid black figure, even though there was light from the street lamp lamp and it would have lit up his shirt. Also, what would have happened if I would have gotten up when he had asked me to?

I honestly get a little freaked out every time I tell this story even though it was so long ago. Though I still live in that house. This happened earlier this year. I have a best friend who I'll call Jade. We live in Alberta, Canada and this happened in the winter. I was having a sleepover at Jade's house one night. We had a few drinks and watched some scary movies. The night went pretty well but around 8am that morning this strange thing happened. About a year before this occurred I had heard about this girl who was in Jade's closet. So Jade's friend, who I'll call Lexi, told Jade that she had seen a little girl come out of her closet every time she stayed the night there. She described her as looking a bit like Samara off of the ring. Long black hair, a white dress,

except she was very small, like a small child. So when I heard that story I got a little freaked out but didn't think much of it as I was a little skeptical. But in February of this year it was pretty early and I was half awake. I didn't know Jade was awake so I opened my eyes a little bit and I was facing Jade's closet. I was just blankly staring at it for a minute then all of a sudden my body froze. From Jade's closet from the other side of that closet door, I heard in a child's voice say, hey. That was when I freaked out on the inside. Then I instantly felt a rush of very cold air flow over me. It was almost as if the heat from her room got sucked right out of it. It was such an uneasy and cold dreadful feeling. It was winter too so there was no way

the heat had gotten turned off when it was minus 25 degrees celsius. I had instant chills. I went to wake up Jade and I asked if she had heard that too. She said she did. She assumed that it was just me talking and mumbling things in my sleep. I thought she was still sleeping so luckily I wasn't the one who had heard that. It shocked me. Then I thought back to the time that Jade's friend Lexi told her about the little girl in her closet. Lexi had seen her a lot but neither Jade nor I ever saw her. That was very freaky. We were home by ourselves at that time too so we still to this day have no idea what that was. I still think about it a lot. We even told Jade's mom and her sister about it too. They were confused because they weren't even home at the time. Lexi had also

said that she's never seen the girl whenever she's at Jade's dad's house. It's always when she's at her mom's house. I didn't believe Lexi's story at first, being very skeptical, but now I do believe. I believe that there's a spirit of some sort living in Jade's room. Proximity awareness is the feeling you get in the dark when you know something is nearby, but you can't see it. We've all experienced that creepy sensation. We blindly wave our arms around a lightless cellar, hoping to make contact with the unknown object for greater clarity. If we are deeply afraid, we might even pretend there's nothing there at all. Denial can be a comfort in small doses, but it can't change reality. If there's something with you in the dark, then to pretend otherwise won't help.

That cobweb you just walked through probably had a large spider in it. That thing which slithered across your foot in the middle of the night was either a rat or a snake. And the evil presence you feel, broading beside you in the darkness... Well, we both know what that is. I couldn't explain why I never got around to changing the lightbulb in the basement. Over the years, that windowless dungeon with creaky hinges and musty odor became the catch-all for every broken piece of furniture or unwanted junk for three generations. Why my family didn't just sell, give away, or haul off the mounting collection of unwanted

items was beyond me. Explanations aren't always easy. By the time I grew up and inherited the old house, it had already been a long-standing family tradition for as long as I could remember. Grandpa kept the solar door bolted shut with an iron padlock. He only unlocked it when there was a new item to drag down into the basement. My siblings and I would beg him to be the one to take that outdated lamp or broken radio down there. It was spooky, but that was part of the excitement.

It was the only occasion we would ever get to see the cluttered mess of discarded furniture and timeless spiderwebs. In truth, the mystique created by that locked door far outweighed the reality. For both my grandparents, the reason for saving everything was the practical virtue of frugality. They survived the Great Depression when times were incredibly hard.

They didn't believe in throwing away anything for fear they might actually need it again. My father kept their pointless behavior alive because grandma and grandpa drove home the importance of saving everything just in case. And so it went that I eventually inherited the tradition. I grew up in the time of hippies and post-war prosperity. There was no plausible justification for me to save those worn out rocking chairs with broken rails or lamps that no longer switched on. I just followed the time-worn pattern of hoarding junk for no real reason at all. It's what they always did with unwanted things, so it was good enough for me.

Not once in a time did any of us retrieve or reuse an item that was relegated there, though. Once it went down cellar stairs, it was abandoned and forgotten. For the past year or two, that semi-annual journey into the dusty abyss has been carried out by me without the benefit of light. I always forget that bulb is blown until I flip the impotent switch and am reminded. Then it comes flooding back to me. Every time it happens, I make a half-hearted resolution to stop putting it off. But then I do anyways because I'm lazy, and also because reaching the bare light socket requires a tall stepladder.

The process is a logistical hassle. It's also impossible to carry a flashlight while carrying armloads of things at the same time. For no more often than I descend down there, I just let it slide until next time. Even though I'm a grown man now, I still have to push myself a little to do it. I put one foot in front of the other and descend a dozen or so wooden steps to the hard cellar floor, one blind step at a time. Eventually, my eyes adjust slightly until I make out the murky landscape of 70 years of discarded refuse. I scanned the clutter for an unoccupied space to deposit the newest addition of junk to the pile, but I was distracted by a creepy, uneasy feeling. In the darkness, I sensed something very near me in the walkway.

It was so unnerving that I couldn't shake it, despite the impossibleness of the situation. I definitely wasn't alone. The considerable presence in my proximity was very odd, and yet radiated a distinct level of fury. Whatever it was, it didn't utter a sound, but I knew it was there, and it was very angry. I could feel the unknown entity watching me intently. My arms were full and I didn't know what to do. Should I pretend not to realize I was alone down there? Every instinct I had was to drop the armload of useless junk and run away screaming. Naturally, I would have hightailed it back up the stairs to the relative safety of the light

and slam the door shut maybe the unwanted thing in the cellar just wanted to be left alone that would have been the best-case scenario by my stiff reaction it surely knew I was aware of its feral aura it would have been easiest just to set everything down in a nearby corner and slowly back away in a non-threatening manner. That would have been the safest approach, but for some inexplicable reason, I felt compelled to address the unknown thing lurking in my unlit basement. I don't know the circumstances of why you are here, but I mean you no harm and I hope the same is true for you. I only intend to place these old items in the corner and then I'll be on my way. There is no reason we both can't coexist in this place. I won't bother or disturb you any further. There was an extended silence

made even more excruciating by the chilling circumstances. I was at an extreme disadvantage. I couldn't see whatever was just a few feet away from me. At last, a hoarse rasp interrupted to offer a detente.

Just like all the other things down here in the cellar, I am unloved and forgotten. I was never given a name, but I am your uncle, like the rest of the unwanted things down here. I was abandoned many years ago by your grandparents. They were ashamed of my severe physical deformities. I have been chained to this floor for more than 40 years while spying on my happy family from the shadows. I never dared to show my face to anyone else walking above me. And only you make the solo trek down here to discard your refuse now. I can only conclude that the others are either dead or gone. I was stunned and completely speechless.

I didn't know how to react to the horrific revelation or how to respond. The fierce aura of animosity I sensed earlier was gone. Perhaps earlier it was misguided fear or shame that masqueraded as rage and contempt. I moved closer to the direction of its low, wavering voice. I offer you my deepest sympathy.

I am so sorry for the horrible misdeeds you've experienced. Grandpa kept the door strictly locked. All these years, I had no idea you were down here amongst the discarded furniture and debris. None of us did, but you must already realize that you've listened to everyone talk upstairs throughout the years. Both grandpa and grandma are dead and buried now. My dad himself died last year, and my sister wants no part of this place. Only I know your secret now. He was quiet as I spoke, my words resonating in the air. The tormented soul beside me in the darkness offered no immediate response. I hoped my sincere words brought him some solace for the incredible injustice he received and the rage that surely dwelled within.

I suppose a lightbulb being out overhead is no accident either, is it? I added with realization. How is it that you, um, survived down here so long? I think you know the answer to that. He croaked weakly. Indeed I do. 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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