The Lets Read Podcast - 85: Episode 076 | Snowstorm & Ouija Board Stories | 26 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Welcome to the seventy-sixth episode of The Lets Read Podcast! This podcast includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about the Snowstorms, Being Lured to a Car & Ouija Boards... 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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Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumho RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumho TreadExperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Rory and I were halfway up cross Kulwar, a huge snowshoot on the eastern side of Colorado's Mountain of the Holy Cross, when the snowstorm rolled in almost a whole day early. That's when we knew we were in serious trouble. A few days prior, the TV weather forecast had

told a completely different story. It reported a clear weather window well within our Thanksgiving break, which was one of our only opportunities to tick off the Mountain of the Holy Cross from our climbing bucket list. We'd already bagged several of Colorado's mountains that winter, and we'd been eyeing Holy Cross's steep, snow-filled couloir for the previous year. Our plan was to stash some overnight gear at a base camp only a few miles from the start of our climb. From there, we'd go for the snowshoot, and then hike out once it was night. We had planned to start the climb in the afternoon when the snow was just about soft enough to provide our boots with grip. We arrived at the base of the snowshoot at around noon.

About 300 feet up the snow was way deeper than expected but the sky was a clear blue, we were on schedule, and the climb didn't seem like it was going to be too taxing. Additionally, we knew we'd have cell service on top of the peak. We didn't expect to need it, but we considered it a safety net. We were right about the cell service, but wrong about the two-hour climb. The higher we went, the deeper the snow became. Soon it was loose and powdery, all the way to the rock bed beneath. We were moving more slowly than expected, but if the weather held, we'd still make it up before dark. A few hours into the climb, slogging upward within the steep couloir walls, we didn't even notice the dark clouds moving in from the west.

The first snows came about halfway through the afternoon. By 5.30 it was pounding down, with the wind drowning out our attempts to communicate. If there ever was a time to quit, that was it. But behind us, the snow was kicked out and slick from our climbing, way too unstable for any kind of descent. So we went with our only viable option, pushing on towards the summit and descending the much easier north ridge as quickly as we could manage. We tried to focus on keeping calm and pushing onward as darkness fell around us.

The blizzard flashed through our headlamp beams and pelted our faces with ice. When I looked down at Rory, the terrified look in his eyes perfectly matched how I felt. By the time we finally reached the summit, around seven that evening, we figured the worst was over. We called our parents and told them that everything was fine and that we were going to commence the hike down, but when we looked around, we saw only sheer drop-offs and total darkness. There was no way for us to find our descent, which is dangerously easy to miss, even in daylight. Plus, the wind up top was blowing something fierce, making it equally

hazardous to approach any steep drops. With no choice but to hunker down, we settled under an overhanging lip of rock below the summit to wait out the storm. We had what we were wearing, goose down jackets, insulated pants, hats and gloves, plus a little food and water. We prayed that it would be enough for us to survive. But despite our pleas to the almighty, conditions soon worsened. Strong winds tore through our improvised shelter and our feet grew agonizingly cold. We took off our boots and socks and put our feet in each other's armpits, massaging our toes to keep the feeling in them. I couldn't get my mind off of thinking about how my parents would react to the news that we'd died up there that night. That's when the severity of

our situation started to really dawn on me. We'd been feeling pretty cocky up until this point, but now I was truly frightened. Temperatures dropped to negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind chill that night. I stopped shivering, a sign of hypothermia, but Rory and I stayed positive, and I'm convinced that was the only thing that got us through the night. I must have drifted off because the next thing I remember was the sun's warmth washing over us. Thankfully, the storm had passed, but the descent was still hard to find We saw several ridges and at the bottom of one we spotted what looked like East Cross Creek Which we'd walked along two days before We rappelled toward it thinking we were home free But when we reached the creek we realized that we accidentally had gone down the south ridge

The opposite direction of the trailhead, and the one thing we didn't want to do since at that point we'd lost all of our cell service. On the summit the night before we were worried about surviving, now we were just annoyed with ourselves, low on food and incredibly tired. Still, we were confident we were finding our way out. Below the tree line we managed to pick up a trail that took us to a spot we thought we'd recognize as the east side of the mountain. We weren't ready to admit that our delirious minds may have been playing tricks on us. We followed faint trails through the forest, turning here and there as the compass dictated, but we always ended up back where we started. We later found out locals call the

area the Bermuda Triangle of the Rockies. Iron deposits in the rock can throw off magnetic instruments and our compass was taking us in circles. We knew we should have stayed put to wait for rescue but we couldn't. With water soaked boots it was either move or lose appendages to frostbite. Our optimism was running dry. I'd start to feel a frog in my throat, but in those moments, you have to either crack a joke or cry. So we messed around, talked about girls, sang old Zeppelin songs, and laughed about whatever we could. Any distraction to keep us going. As the sun went down on our second unplanned night out,

we gathered tinder and took out our lighters. But to our absolute horror, they remained waterlogged with snowmelt. Despite our efforts to dry them, neither of us could get anything so much as a spark out of either of them. By this point, Rory was too weak to continue, so I piled pine branches on the snow for us to spoon on top of. We managed to laugh at a few cuddle jokes, but we were starting to realize that our families didn't even know if we were alive. That made it tough to keep things light. Soon we both stopped shivering and neither of us could feel our feet. He turned to me. Dude, we could die out here, he said.

I'm okay with it because I'm still glad not to be on the couch playing video games, but this is much earlier than I thought it would be. I'm not ready. We laid in silence. Rory fell asleep with his head on his right hand, a position that would cut off circulation just enough to give him frostbite on his thumb. Again, temperatures dropped below freezing and again we woke up in the morning, somehow still alive.

We hadn't been hiking long when we saw a helicopter. It was distant, but for us, it took up the whole sky. Numb feet forgotten, we ran into a meadow, and I waved a jacket and a trekking pole with a bright red hat on it. The chopper flew right past us. It circled back four more times before flying off. We felt like we'd watched our last chance vanish. That's when we finally broke down.

There was nothing to say. Rory just laid his head on my lap and we both sobbed. An hour later the helicopter returned. It had only turned back to refuel and this time it came straight to us. We couldn't stop smiling. It was finally over. I was so elated I tried to hug a rescuer who just threw me onto a jump seat and strapped me in. We were told to look for bodies, he said. As soon as we threw off, I could feel the adrenaline drain out of me. My whole body was in pain. I'd been too

numb to feel until now, but still, I'd never felt better. It was honestly one of the lowest, then highest points of my entire life. My name is Michael Magaskill, and I grew up in the very far north of Scotland in a place called Inverness. You may not have heard of my home city, but I'm willing to bet you've heard of the Scottish Highlands and its central tourist attraction, Loch Ness. But this story isn't about prehistoric monsters that live in deep lakes, which no one finds scary in the least bit. This story is about something very real and very possible that happened back when I was 19. Some of the coldest temperatures in the entire United Kingdom have been recorded around Inverness and the highlands that surround it. But with Inverness having the highlands that surround it. But with Inverness

having the relatively low crime rate that it does, you wouldn't consider a night out in Inverness to be anything approaching dangerous. But danger is exactly what I found, in the most unlikely of circumstances. It was the night of my best friend's 19th birthday. It wasn't as highly anticipated as our 18th birthdays, not by a long shot, but being of legal drinking age was something we still hadn't quite gotten bored of yet, so it went without saying that we'd be heading into Inverness City Centre for a birthday bar crawl. We gathered at our newly 19-year-old pal's house on the Friday after his birthday for pre-drinks, a proud Scottish tradition that has the purpose of saving a few quid whilst fortifying you to brave the chilly night air in search of shots and skirt.

A few hours go by and we're sitting in a taxi, hyping ourselves up to the chant of Here we here we here we effin' go. Heck, even our driver joined in for a bit before wishing our pal a very happy 19th. As we climbed out of the cab and paid the driver, he wished us a safe evening and specifically told us to call him back instead of trying for a night bus, as it was about to dip below freezing point, with weather forecasts saying the night would only get colder. So the night proceeds to zoom by faster than any of us could possibly fathom, with drinks flying off the bar tops and down our throats.

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I wandered off to the toilets of one particular club, and the next thing I remembered is waking up when one of the toilets lit down. I'd sat down for a minute to send a text message or whatever, something involving my phone anyway, and I'd nodded off. When I walk out of the toilets, all the club staff are sat around the empty venue, looking at me like I'd just grown a second head. They had closed hours ago and were apparently relaxing with a few drinks of their own after having cleaned the place down. I apologized profusely for my intrusion but they seemed to get pretty bloody annoyed at me, accusing me of hiding in the toilet so I could steal their tips. I can't help but think they

were trying to cover for their own negligence and leaving me asleep in the labs after closing but either way they definitely weren't happy to see me and promptly kicked me out of the venue before locking the doors behind me. That's when I realized that my phone was dead. Not only that but I'm stuck outside with only a few coins of change in my wallet and no warm clothing to keep the bitter winter at bay. Thanks to all the beer and vodka I didn't really feel the cold at first. I just decided to walk towards the outskirts of town to try and hail a cab. Lack of funds wouldn't be a problem, really, since I could just promise the driver I'd pay him on arrival,

giving him my powerless phone as collateral or something. I mean, I'd done that before, and there was no reason to think I wouldn't be able to do it again. But as I was walking, all the black cabs I saw had their lights off. I tried pulling over a private hire, but the driver was furious when he realized what he was asking. No booking, no insurance, no taxi. He spat before driving off into the freezing night. That was about the time I realized just how cold it was. I was obviously beginning to sober up. The growing anxiety told me that much. I was sobering up and I was getting scared.

The more I walked, the more frightened I got. There was absolutely no sign of any available cabs and any car I tried to thumb down just ignored me, probably assuming I was gearing myself to puke in their car or whatever. I wouldn't blame them usually but it was absolutely freezing outside and all I had on was some tight white button up shirt. I was shivering at that point, really bloody hard too, teeth chattering together so hard I thought they might chip. But I still kept walking, aimlessly, just sort of hoping that I'd run into a taxi that'd be willing to take me home. When I finally used up the last of my energy, I remember sitting down on the pavement, telling myself I'd rest for just a few minutes before carrying on. I had these awful

dress shoes that were about half a size too small and they were wreaking havoc on my toes. But as I sat down I realized I wasn't shivering anymore. I actually kind of felt like I was starting to warm up. I remember being really really sleepy by the time a car pulled up to the curb I was sitting on. The fella driving stuck his head out of the window and asked me if I was alright. But as I tried to speak to him and asked him for a lift home, I found I could barely talk. I definitely wasn't that drunk, let alone drunk enough to have lost the power of speech. Remember how I had mentioned how I had sobered up for a fair bit?

Yeah, that. Turns out I was in the initial stages of hypothermia. The driver seemed way too concerned about me as he got out of his car and pulled me into the passenger side, and it was only about then that I realized that something was horribly wrong. Once he mentioned something about taking me to the hospital. I spent the rest of the night in the hospital bed and doctors kept me as an inpatient for most of the following day too. They said that if I'd stayed on the street for a few more hours, if I had in fact fallen asleep on the pavement like it had felt like I was going to, I'd have died, plain and simple. It was minus four degrees when the guy found me, not even the coldest part of that night. I suppose what scares me is how

close I came to death as a result of something completely innocuous, a bloody birthday night out. Something so regular it's almost boring could have ended with me lying in a coffin with my parents crying at a graveside. We're scheduled to play a match against the Old Boys Club, an English rugby team in Santiago, Chile. The president of the Uruguayan Rugby Club rented a small twin-turbo prop airplane from the Uruguayan Air Force to fly the team over to the Andes Mountains to the Chilean capital. The aircraft carried a total of 40 passengers and five crew members, and was piloted by an experienced Air Force pilot who had more than 5,000 flying hours to his name. Colonel Julio Cesar Ferradas, the aircraft's pilot, had previously flown across the Andes almost 30 times. He was so comfortable with the journey that on this particular flight,

he was training his co-pilot, who was the pilot in command when the plane took off from Carrasco International Airport on the 12th of October 1972. But Ferratus was wrong to be so complacent, and the flight would spark off a chain of events that would culminate in almost unimaginable horror. On the day of the flight, excessive cloud cover meant that the pilots were forced to fly under what is known as instrument meteorological conditions. This means that instead of using visual references to navigate, the pilots were reliant on the aircraft's instruments to discern their current location and altitude. Essentially, they were flying blind. Explicably at 3.21pm, shortly after transiting the Planchon Pass, which was part of their planned flight path, the co-pilot contacted Santiago air traffic controllers and notified them that he expected to reach Chirico a minute later.

The flight time from the Planchon Pass to Chirico is normally 11 minutes, but only three minutes later the pilot told Santiago that they were passing Chirico and turning north. He requested permission from air traffic control to land the aircraft. The controller in Santiago, unaware the flight was still over the Andes, authorized him to descend. As the aircraft descended, severe turbulence tossed the aircraft up and down. The rugby players joked about the turbulence at first, until some passengers saw that the aircraft was extremely close to the mountain. That was probably the moment when the pilots saw the black ridge of the Chilean Andes rising dead

ahead. The airplane's ground collision alarm sounded, sending many of the passengers into a panic. The pilot applied maximum power in an attempt to gain altitude, but later evidence indicated the plane had struck the mountain either two or three times, one of which severed the aircraft's right wing. Some evidence indicates it was thrown back with such force that it tore off the vertical stabilizer in the tail cone. When the tail cone was detached, it took with it the rear portion of the fuselage, including two rows of seats in the rear section of the passenger cabin, leaving a gaping hole in the rear of the fuselage. Three passengers, the navigator and the

steward, were lost with the tail section. The aircraft continued hurtling forward and upward another 200 meters for a few more seconds when the left wing struck an outcropping, ripping it clean off. One of its propellers sliced through the fuselage as the wing it was attached to was severed, causing another two more passengers to fall out of the open rear of the fuselage. The front portion of the fuselage flew straight through the air before sliding down a kilometer-long steep slope at over 200 miles per hour, almost like a high-speed toboggan before colliding with a snowbank.

The impact against the snowbank crushed the cockpit and the two pilots inside, killing the more experienced Verratis instantly. Out of a total of 45 passengers on the aircraft, three passengers and two crew members in the tail section were killed when it broke apart. A few seconds later, two additional passengers fell out of the rear fuselage when it was torn open by the rogue propeller. One survived the fall, but stumbled down the snow-covered glacier, fell into deep snow and was asphyxiated. At least four more died from the impact of the fuselage hitting the snowbank, which ripped

the remaining seats from the anchors and hurled them to the front of the plane. The pilot died instantly when the nose gear compressed the instrument panel against his chest, forcing his head out the window while the co-pilot was critically injured and trapped in the crushed cockpit. He asked one of the passengers to find his pistol and shoot him, but the passenger refused. 33 remained alive, although many were grievously injured with wounds ranging from broken legs to having metal embedded in their bodies. Two of the passengers happened to be second-year medical students at Montevideo University, and acted quickly to assess the severity of people's wounds and treat those

that they could help most. Many may have believed at the time that the worst was behind them, but the short, sharp shock of the crash paled in comparison to the long, slow agony of being trapped on a snow-covered mountain, and the horrors they would endure as a result. The survivors had extremely little food, obviously being unprepared for such a disaster. They only had eight chocolate bars, one tin of mussels, three small jars of jam, a tin of almonds, a few dates, candies, dried plums, and several bottles of wine. During the days following the crash, they divided this into very small amounts to make their meager supply last as long as possible. One survivor ate a single chocolate-covered peanut over three days

Even with their strict rationing of supplies, food stocks began to dwindle quickly Exacerbated by the fact that there was no natural vegetation or animals on the nearby snow-covered mountain Food officially ran out after just a week As a result, the group tried to eat parts of the airplane, such as the cotton inside the seats and leather, but this only made them sick. Ten days after the crash, facing starvation and death, the remaining survivors mutually agreed that if they died, the others could use their bodies for sustenance. They had found their ticket to survival, and horrifically, it was cannibalism. One survivor described the decision to eat the deceased passengers in a book written many years later.

Our common goal was to survive, but what we lacked was food. We had long since run out of the meager pickings we'd found on the plane, and there was no vegetation or animal life to be found. After just a few days we were feeling the sensation of our own bodies consuming themselves just to remain alive. Before long we would become too weak to recover from starvation. We knew the answer, it was too terrible to contemplate. The bodies of our friends and teammates preserved outside in the snow and ice contained vital life-giving protein that could help us survive. But could we do it? For a long time we agonized. I went out in the snow and prayed to God for guidance.

Without his consent I felt I would be violating the memory of my friends, that I would be stealing their souls. We wondered whether we were going mad even to contemplate such a thing. Had we turned into brute savages, or was this the only sane thing to do? Truly, we were pushing the limits of our fear. The decision to eat flesh from the bodies of their dead comrades was not taken lightly, as most of the dead were classmates, close friends, or relatives. One survivor used broken glass from the aircraft windshield as a cutting tool, and set the example by swallowing the first matchstick-sized strip of frozen flesh, with several others doing the same later on. The next day more survivors ate the meat offered them, but a few refused or could not keep it down.

At such a high altitude, the body's caloric needs are astronomical. Additional strain on the circulation system means that much more energy is required to sustain life. The survivors required almost double their daily caloric intake, yet they had next to nothing to feed themselves with. This made the already catastrophic event even deadlier. One survivor protected the corpses of his sister and mother, and they were never eaten. Others dried the meat they'd cut from their dead companions in the sun, which made it only slightly more palatable. They were initially so revolted by the experience that they could eat only skin, muscle, and fat. When the supply of flesh was diminished, they also ate hearts, lungs, and even brains. But all the passengers on the crashed

flight were Roman Catholic. Some later confessed that they were fearing eternal damnation if they ate the flesh of their companions. Yet according to other survivor accounts, some rationalized the act of necrotic cannibalism as equivalent to the Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine. Others justified it according to a Bible verse found in John 15.13, No man hath greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Some initially had reservations, though, after realizing that it was their only means of staying alive, they changed their minds a few days later.

One woman had strong religious convictions, and only reluctantly agreed to partake of the flesh after she was told to view it as a kind of holy communion. After yet more of the survivors lost their lives to complications arising from their injuries and an avalanche almost buried the remaining survivors alive, the decision was made to go look for help. Two of the strongest survivors, Roberto Canessa and Nando Parado, volunteered themselves. Before their departure, Parado told Canessa,

We may be walking to our deaths, but I would rather walk to meet my death than wait for it to come to me. You and I are friends, Nando. Canessa replied solemnly, we've been through so much, now let's go die together. And so they walked for several days through seemingly endless snow drifts, slowly descending the mountain in the hope of finding rescue. Gradually there appeared more and more signs of human presence, first some evidence of camping, and finally on the ninth day, some cows. When they rested that evening, they were very tired, and Canessa seemed unable to proceed further. As the men gathered wood to build a fire, one of them saw three men on horseback

at the other side of the river. Parado called to them, but the noise of the river made it impossible to communicate. One of the men across the river saw Parado who hastily scribbled a note, attached it and a pencil to a rock with some string and threw the message across the river. It read, I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for ten days. I have a wounded friend up there. In the plane there are still 14 injured people. We have to get out from here quickly and we don't know how. We don't have any food. We are weak. When are you going to come fetch us? Please. We cannot even walk. Where are we? On the other side of the river one of the horsemen signaled that he understood,

then began a grueling 10-mile ride westward to get help for the survivors, who by this stage were barely clean to life. When the news broke out that people had survived the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, the Chilean Army provided three Bell UH-1 helicopters to assist with the rescue. On the afternoon of the 22nd of December 1972, the two helicopters carrying search and rescue personnel reached the survivors. The steep terrain only permitted the pilot to touch down with a single skid, and due to the altitude and weight limits,

the two helicopters were able to take only half of the survivors. Four members of the search and rescue team volunteered to stay with the seven survivors remaining on the mountain. The survivors slept a final night in the fuselage with the search and rescue party. The second flight of helicopters arrived the following morning at daybreak. They carried the remaining survivors to hospitals in Santiago for evaluation. They were treated for a variety of conditions, including altitude sickness, dehydration, frostbite, broken bones, scurvy, and malnutrition. A Catholic priest heard the survivors' confessions and told them that they were not condemned for their acts of cannibalism, given the extreme nature of their survival situation. After their rescue, the survivors of the crash initially explained their survival by telling reporters that they had eaten some cheese and other food that they had carried with them,

and then local plants and herbs. As it turns out, they had made the decision not to divulge all the details of their harrowing experience until it had been discussed privately with family members. Yet on the 23rd of December 1972, news reports of cannibalism were published worldwide. A few days later on the 26th, two pictures taken by members of the Andean Relief Corps showing a half-eaten human leg were printed on the front page of two Chilean newspapers, El Mercurio and La Tercha de la Hora. Both papers reported that all survivors resorted to cannibalism to survive. To the survivors' horror, rumors circulated in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital, immediately after the rescue that the survivors had actually killed

some of the others for food. Damage control was required and the truth had come out, so a press conference was held on the 28th of December at Stella Marie College in Montevideo, where the survivors recounted the events of the past two months. A spokesman for the survivors compared their actions to that of Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, during which he gave his disciples the Eucharist. The authorities, as well as the victims' fathers, decided to bury the remains near the site of the crash in a common grave. Thirteen bodies were untouched, while another fifteen were mostly skeletal, which must have been a truly haunting sight to those who had heard the tales of

cannibalism. A team comprised of 12 men and a Chilean priest were transported to the crash site in early 1973. Family members were forbidden from attending to the emotional strain of the task. The men dug a communal grave about half a mile from the aircraft fuselage at a site they assumed was safe from avalanche. Close to the grave they built a simple stone altar on which they placed a plaque of the pile of rocks inscribed with the words, The world to its Uruguayan brothers. Close, oh God, to you once this was completed. The team doused the remains of the fuselage in gasoline and set it alight, with only the charred airframe remained. The father of one victim had received

word from a survivor that his son wished to be buried at home. Unable to obtain official permission to retrieve his son's body, the father mounted an expedition, financed out of his own pocket, complete with hired guides. He had prearranged with the priest who had buried his son to mark the bag containing his son's remains. Upon his return to the abandoned Hotel Termas with his son's remains, he was arrested for grave robbing.

A federal judge and the local mayor intervened to obtain his release, and the father later obtained legal permission to bury his son. The survivors' courage under extremely adverse conditions has been described as a beacon of hope to their generation, showing what can be accomplished with persistence and determination in the presence of unsurpassable odds, and set our minds to obtain a common aim. But what such a sterile, saccharine quote fails to reflect on is the pure horror of what it took for those who survived the crash to stay alive. How the human spirit is capable of enduring almost mind-bending horror and committing

the most atrocious acts in order to continue to propagation of the species and whether we like it or not we all have that spirit inside of us. During the mid-19th century the United States saw a sharp rise in the number of people who chose to leave their homes in the East to resettle in California or the newly acquired Oregon Territories. For many, a new life in California meant freedom from financial servitude, or freedom to practice their own particular brand of Christianity without judgment from their peers back east. Others were attracted to the west's new and exciting economic opportunities or inspired by the idea of manifest destiny. But for one group of migrants, their pursuit of the American dream would quickly turn into a nightmare, one characterized by isolated mountain passes, freezing cold, and stomach-twisting hunger. In the spring of 1842, a wagon train that was almost 500 strong headed out from Independence, Missouri, seeking to follow an established trail

that would lead them to the promised land of California. Taking their place at the rear of the wagon train was a group of nine wagons containing 32 members of the Reed and Donner families. The patriarch, George Donner, had spent time in a number of eastern states before finally making the decision to move his family west. At first, heavy traffic on the trails leading eastward, as well as the large number of other travelers, meant that the journey was relatively easy. Traveling in the summer months could be hot and tiresome, but it paled in comparison with how difficult navigation during the winter would be.

It was essential that the wagon train make as much ground as possible while it was still possible, for winter was coming, and it would not be merciful. By the end of September 1842, an attempt at a shortcut had gone terribly wrong for the Donner-Reed families. Seeking to overtake the Sierra Nevada mountains before the winter arrived, they had successfully traversed the great Salt Lake Desert, but complications meant that they had in fact slowed themselves down by about a month. Lack of water in the harsh, dry desert had driven the party to near madness and caused casualties among its essential accompaniment of oxen and other cattle. Tensions among the party members were reaching breaking point.

In the following month of October, many of the wagons that made up the original party had gone their separate ways, either pushing on towards California or making their way back eastward. In the group that remained, two wagons became entangled and a man by the name of John Snyder attempted to remedy the situation, but he lacked patience and soon began mercilessly whipping one of the oxen. Soon, James Reed, the oldest and most senior member of the Reed family, attempted to intervene and stop the beating, but Snyder reacted furiously to the intervention and turned the whip in

his hand towards Reed. A physical altercation ensued, one that was only ended when James Reed took out a long, steel Bowie knife and plunged it into Snyder's chest. Despite Reed's explanation of self-defense, the party members convened to decide his punishment. United States laws were not applicable west of the Continental Divide in what was then Mexican territory, and wagon trains often dispensed their own justice. Something suggested that Reed should hang for his crimes, but it was eventually decided that he should merely be banished from the wagon train,

but on pain of death should he attempt to return. What was once a happy adventure into the West had become a vicious fight for survival. Grass was becoming scarce, and the animals were steadily weakening. To relieve the animals' load, everyone was expected to walk. The trials that the Donner party had so far endured resulted in splintered groups, each looking out for themselves and distrustful of the others. In one incident of abject cruelty, an elderly man was ejected from the wagon as he was reliant on for transport, being told he had to walk or die.

A few days later, the elderly man sat next to a stream, his feet so swollen they had split open. Some members of the party begged the others to wait for him, to show mercy to the party's weakest members, but the others refused, thinking only of themselves. The old man was not seen again. In the following weeks, attacks from the local Paiute Indian tribe were responsible for the party losing almost 40 of their cattle. This is extremely shocking for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Paiute tribe had at first appeared friendly to the migrants, sharing supplies with them and even directing them onto trails that would take them westward. But at some point the relationship had soured, and the people known for their respect and reverence of the natural world appeared to have no problem slaughtering the wagon's train's animal accompaniment

in an attempt to slow down or even stop the party dead in their tracks. With nearly all of his cattle gone, one particular party member stopped to bury his wagon for safekeeping. Two of his number stayed with him to help, but they returned without him, reporting they had been attacked by Paiutes, murdered, and scalped. By the end of October, the party was forced to make camp around Truckee Lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. Three widely separated cabins of pine logs served as their homes, with dirt floors and poorly constructed flat roofs that leaked when it rained. Of the sixty at Truckee Lake, nineteen were men over eighteen, twelve were women, and twenty-nine were children, six of whom were toddlers or younger.

Very little food remained in their supplies and the oxen began to die. Their carcasses were frozen and stacked. Truckee Lake was not yet iced over, but the pioneers were unfamiliar with catching lake trout. The most experienced hunter among them killed a bear, but had little luck after that. Margaret Reed promised to pay double when they got to California for the use of three oxen for other families. She was charged $25, normally the cost of two healthy oxen, for the carcass of a single ox that had starved to death. The mood in the camp was beyond tense. People were only looking out for themselves by this point, but an incoming

blizzard would be the straw that broke the mule's back. During the height of the snowstorm, a man named Patrick Dolan began to rant deliriously, stripping off his clothes and ran into the woods. He returned shortly afterwards and died a few hours later. Not long after, some of the group began to eat flesh from Dolan's body. The next morning, the group stripped the muscle and organs from Dolan's body, then dried them to store for the days ahead, taking care to ensure nobody would have to eat his or her relatives. As the days went by, more and more of the party succumbed to their desperate hunger and made the decision to consume human flesh.

Some were determined to continue hunting and fishing, only turning to cannibalism when there was no other option, but it appears some preferred the taste of human flesh and eschewed the long and tiring hunting trips in favor of consuming those who died of disease and malnutrition. At one point, a scouting party looking for the most efficient way ahead came across two Miwok Indians named Luis and Salvador. They had once been party members, but had attempted to move on when the supplies had run low. At the time they were discovered, they had not eaten anything for nine whole days and were dangerously undernourished and weakened as a result. However, instead of attempting to rescue and save the lives of their Indian friends, one of the scouting parties simply shot them there and then before carving off chunks of

their flesh with a hunting knife. On January 12th, the group stumbled into a Miwok camp looking so deteriorated that the camp's inhabitants initially fled, fearing them to be spirits of undead souls who wandered the snow-capped mountain range. Once it was clear that they were in fact the survivors of a disastrous expedition, the Miwoks gave them what they had to eat, acorns, grass, and pine nuts, completely unaware that the group had murdered and eaten two starving members of their own tribe. They were shaken, starving, and had arguably sold their souls to stay alive, but they were safe now, relatively safe anyway. Reporting on the event across the US was heavily influenced by the national enthusiasm for westward migration. In some papers, news of the tragedy was buried in

small paragraphs despite the contemporary tendency to sensationalize stories. Several newspapers, including those in California, wrote about the cannibalism in graphic exaggerated detail. In some print accounts, the members of the Donner Party were depicted as heroes, and California a paradise worthy of significant sacrifices. But it seems that sacrificing one's family and friends as well as losing one's humanity through consuming human flesh might not be worth any prize, no matter how great. Seabourn Beck Weathers was born into a military family on December 16th, 1946, and is an American pathologist from Texas. Weathers attended college in Wichita Falls, Texas, and in 1986, he enrolled in a mountaineering course, later deciding on an attempt to climb the Seven

Summits. The Seven Summits are the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. Climbing to the summit of all of them is regarded as a mountaineering challenge, first achieved on the 30th of April 1985 by Richard Bass. At the time, Weathers considered Richard Bass to be a personal hero, an inspiration who made climbing Everest seem possible for regular guys. In May of 1996, Beck Weathers was just one of a total of eight clients being guided on an ascent of Mount Everest by Rob Hall, a representative of a climbing and hiking organization known as Adventure Consultants. The initial climb up to the first set of Everest-based camps had been relatively easy for a group of such experienced climbers.

All were in high spirits, as climbing the highest mountain in the world was just as much a dream come true as it was a serious, life-threatening challenge. But Weathers had recently undergone radial keratotomy surgery, a surgical procedure that corrects short-sightedness. Developed in the 70s, the procedure has these days been replaced by more advanced forms of laser eye surgery that pose a considerably decreased risk. But at the time of Weathers' Everest attempt, it was the only fix to short-sightedness on the market. But Weathers soon discovered that the recent surgery meant he was blind by the effects of high altitude and

overexposure to ultraviolet radiation. High altitude effects which had not been well documented at the time. Obviously this was a disastrous, unexpected turn of events that Weathers himself had not anticipated. But it was far too late to simply turn around and head back down the mountain. On May 10th, 1996, the day of the final assault on Everest Summit, Weathers confessed to Rob Hall, the expedition's de facto leader, that he was unable to see. Hall, who was deeply concerned for the safety of his clients, insisted that Weathers make an immediate descent to Camp 4, the final Everest base camp before the summit itself. But Beck Weathers had come way too far just to quit, and argued with Hall that his vision might

well improve after sunrise. Hall was very sympathetic to Weathers' reasoning, understanding fully that it was the man's dreams to reach Everest's summit, and that he would not be dissuaded from doing so easily. Hall made a compromise. If Weathers rested on the balcony of Everest, a position just 2,000 feet below the actual summit, Hall would return and make the descent with him personally. But Rob Hall could not keep his promise to Weathers, for while assisting another client in reaching the summit of Everest, Hall ran into complications and tragically lost his life further up the mountain. Upon hearing the news, Beck Weathers immediately began descending with another guide, one by the name of Michael Groom.

The pair was short roping down the mountain, taking their time due to weather's poor eyesight, when Groom saw dark clouds on the horizon, storm clouds that were headed towards their current position at dangerously high speeds. When the blizzard struck, Weathers and ten other climbers became disoriented in the storm and could not find Camp 4. By the time there was a break in the storm several hours later, Weathers had been so weakened that he and four other men and women were left there so the others could summon help. In Atoli Bokriv, a guide on another expedition, came and rescued several climbers. But during that time, Weathers had stood up and disappeared into the night. The next day, another client on Hall's team, Stuart Hutchison, and two Nepalese Sherpas arrived to check on the status of Weathers and fellow client, Japanese climber Yusuko Namba.

Believing Weathers and Namba were both near death and would not make it off the mountain alive, Hutchison and the others left them and returned to Camp 4. They had abandoned him, left almost halfway up the largest mountain in the world, to die a lonely, freezing death. Weathers was forced to spend the night alone in an open bivouac while an apocalyptic level blizzard raged around him. Not only that, but for some as of yet unknown reason Weathers ended up with his face and hands exposed to the bitter cold and throughout the night he experienced increased levels of frostbite on the aforementioned exposed areas of his body. When he awoke the next morning, not only was he surprised to find himself alive, he was shocked to find that he somehow had the

strength to actually walk down to Camp 4 under his own power. Upon encountering him, his fellow climbers were horrified at the state they found him in. They discovered that his frozen hand and nose looked and felt as if they were made of bathroom porcelain. Not a single climber expected him to survive another day. With that assumption in mind, the remaining climbers tried only to ensure weather's relative comfort until the final moments of his life. It was all they could do, as there was no chance of receiving serious medical treatment while they were up there so far up the mountain. But yet again, to everyone's utter surprise, Weathers survived another night. Yet it was not without suffering. Weathers was in such a terrible

state that he was unable to feed himself, drink any fluids, or keep himself effectively covered with the sleeping bags with which he was provided. His cries for help could not be heard above the blizzard, and his companions were yet again surprised to find him alive and coherent the following day. Beck Weathers was given the assistance he needed to walk on broken, frozen feet to a lower Everest camp where he was subject to one of the highest altitude medical evacuations ever performed by helicopter following his helicopter evacuation from a broad flat gently undulating glacial valley his right arm was amputated halfway between the elbow and wrist all five fingers on his left hand were amputated, as well as parts of

both feet. His nose was amputated and reconstructed with tissue from his ear and forehead. Weathers published his book about his Everest experience and his life, Left 4 Dead, My Journey Home from Everest, published in the year 2002. He continues to practice medicine and delivers motivational speeches to share his experiences and supplement his income. He still lives in the Lone Star State and these days calls Dallas home. Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was born in Kilkeagh County, Kildare, Ireland on the 15th of February 1874. His father, Henry Shackleton, tried to enter the army, but his poor health prevented him from doing so. He became a farmer instead, settling in the Kilkia area. Ernest was the second of their ten children and the first of two sons. The second, Frank, achieved notoriety as a suspect, later exonerated

in the 1907 theft of the Irish crown jewels. Shackleton's first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on the Discovery Expedition of 1901-1904, from which he was sent home early on health grounds. But this only left him with a thirst for exploration, as well as a need to prove himself to his peers. This led him to join an expeditionary team who aimed to scale Mount Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano. For this grand achievement, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home. The British National Antarctic Expedition, known as the Discovery Expedition after the ship Discovery, was the brainchild of Sir Clements Markham, and had been many years in preparation. It was led by Robert Falcon Scott, a Royal Navy torpedo lieutenant,

lately promoted commander, and had objectives that included scientific and geographical discovery. Although discovery was not a Royal Navy unit, Scott required the crew, officers, and scientific staff to submit to the conditions of the Naval Discipline Act, and the ship and expedition were run on Royal Navy lines. Shackleton accepted this, even though his own background and instincts favored a different, more informal style of leadership. The Discovery Expedition departed London on the 31st of July 1901, arriving at the Antarctic coast via South Africa and New Zealand in early January the following year, 1902. After landing their equipment and personnel, Ernie Shackleton took part in an experimental balloon flight on the 4th of February,

one that set into stone the idea that one could use a hot air balloon for surveillance in such terribly frigid conditions. He also participated in the first sledging trip from the expedition's winter quarters in McMurdo Sound, a journey which established a safe route onto the Great Ice Barrier. During the Antarctic winter of 1902, in the confines of the Iced and Discovery, Shackleton edited the expedition's magazine, The South Polar Times, an endeavor that served to both record the events of the trip and to keep the morale of the crew high with the inclusions of little in-jokes and witticisms

that both men and officers could enjoy. According to steward Clarence Hare, he was the most popular of the officers among the crew, being a good mixer. Though claims that this represented an unofficial rival leadership to Scott's are unsupported, Scott chose Shackleton to accompany Wilson and himself on the expedition's southern journey, a march southwards to achieve the highest possible latitude in the direction of the South Pole. This march was not a serious attempt on the Pole, although the attainment of a high latitude was of great importance to Scott

and the inclusion of Shackleton indicated a high degree of personal trust the party set out on the 2nd of November 1902 the March was as Scott wrote later a combination of success and failure a record farthest south latitude of 82 degrees 17 minutes was reached, beating the previous record established in 1900 by Karsten Borchgren-Dink. But the journey was marred by the poor performance of the dogs whose food had become rotten and unfit to consume, and who rapidly fell sick as a result. All 22 dogs died during the march, their withered bodies left to freeze solid in the vast, empty, frozen wastes.

The three men all suffered at times from snow blindness, frostbite, and ultimately scurvy. On the return journey, Shackleton had by his own admission broken down and could no longer carry out his share of the work. He later denied Scott's claim in the voyage of the discovery that he had been carried on the sledge. But we do know that he was in a seriously weakened condition. Wilson's diary entry for the 14th of January reads, Shackleton had been anything but up to the mark, and today he is decidedly worse, very short-winded and coughing constantly, with more serious symptoms that need not be detailed here, but which are of no small consequence 160 miles from the ship. On the 4th of February 1903, the party finally reached the ship. After a medical

examination, which proved inconclusive, Scott decided to send Shackleton home on the relief ship Morning, which had arrived in McMurdo Sound in January 1903. Scott wrote, He ought not to risk further hardship in his present state of health. There is conjecture that Scott's motive for removing him was resentment of Shackleton's popularity, and that ill health was used as an excuse to get rid of him. Years after the death of Scott, Wilson, and Shackleton, Albert Armitage, the expedition's second-in-command, claimed that there had been a falling out on the southern journey, and that Scott had told the ship's doctor that, if he does not go back sick, he will go back in disgrace. There is no corroboration of Armitage's story. Shackleton and Scott stayed on friendly

terms, at least until the publication of Scott's account of the southern journey and the voyage of the Discovery. Although in public they remained mutually respectful and cordial, according to biographer Roland Hunford, Shackleton's attitude to Scott turned to smoldering scorn and dislike. Salvage of wounded pride required a return to the Antarctic in an attempt to outdo Scott. But he would never get the chance to do so, for soon after he became embroiled in a conflict that threatened the entire world, the First World War. British military soon found a use for Shackleton's Arctic enterprise when the Russian Revolution threatened the entire war effort. He was put to work training and lecturing British soldiers on winter warfare, something that the Russians had long since mastered. He also advised on which equipment

and provisions should be provided, as well as the most effective method of belaying troops in sub-zero temperatures. For his valuable services rendered in connection with military operations in North Russia, Shackleton was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1919 King's Birthday Honours, and was also mentioned in despatches by his commanding officer, General Ironside. Shackleton returned to England in early March 1919, full of plans for the economic development of northern Russia. In the midst of seeking capital, his plans floundered when northern Russia fell to Bolshevik control. He was finally discharged from the army in October 1919, retaining his rank of Major.

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I was volunteering at a school in a rural area about three kilometers from my home home I didn't know how to drive and I have an irrational fear of biking That's a whole other story So I didn't mind walking home every Wednesday I was 19 at the time but Just know that I looked at least 3 years younger Short girl, round face, big eyes, no makeup It was winter, it was cold, it was raining and I had no umbrella. It's fine though, I like the rain and I was covered from head to toe so I still enjoyed my peaceful walk with music blasting through my earphones.

But as I was walking I saw something in my peripheral vision that I was always scared to see in a situation like this. A car slowing down, following me. I didn't know what to do, I tried not to assume the worst and I turned to see whether that was the only car on that road or if there were potential witnesses in case something happened. Nope, just this one car following me. No one else around as far as my eyes could see. Then, the driver lowers his window and I can see his face. Old man, seems to take care of himself. Unfortunately, not weak looking, eyes fixed on me. Where are you going? Would you like me to take you somewhere? I take off one of my earphones. Huh? I had heard him because at that point I had already turned down the music to be more aware of my surroundings. Plus, despite not wanting to assume the worst,

I still wanted to buy some time to think of an out. Where can I run? Can someone hear me if I scream? Can anyone else see us? Where can I get help? There was no one and nowhere to run or really hide. I was walking in this very rural area on the side of this road that had a field on one side and woods on the other. There was just one abandoned house up ahead, so I tried to reason with myself.

This man is probably just concerned that I am visibly walking a long distance, right? Oh, no thanks, I'm fine. I like walking. Oh, no, no, I don't care about that. I just want you to get in the car. What? Um, maybe he's concerned because it's raining and I don't have an umbrella. Uh, no thanks. I know it's raining, but I like the rain, so I'm okay. No, I don't care. I just want you to get in the car. I'll drive you to where you need to go. Really? I'm giving this potential kidnapper two excuses and he doesn't take them.

His intentions are becoming clearer and clearer. I can't ignore this anymore and he never breaks eye contact. Like he's analyzing my every move and reaction. I'm starting to notice that his smile is starting to become more sinister too. Is it just my fear tricking me? This whole time I'm trying to look as friendly and naive as possible because I don't want him to realize that he can't trick me into getting into his car and his only choice would be to use force. Remember, no one can hear me if I scream. Listen, I just want to talk to you. Can I? Um, well, okay. What is it? No, no, no. I mean, I want to talk to you properly. Get in the car, I just want to talk to you. That's the only moment when he breaks eye contact, and it's to slowly look at me from head to toe.

Well, you know what? How about I park a little bit further and you can join me to have a chat? Uh, sure, I don't know if you'll find a place to park anywhere close, but go ahead if you want, sir. I'm only walking straight anyway. Perfect. See you there? Yes, sir. He smiles and drives away. I wait for his car to be far enough so he can't see me and I immediately run towards the abandoned house to hide while I make a call to my mom for her to come get me. The police wouldn't do anything since I'm not in immediate danger. We tried to call them once after some serious threats from a stalker and they just told us to only call them if the stalker was

on our property. That's also another story. I explain everything to my mom and she tells me to send her a screenshot of Google Maps with my exact location just in case something happens and to stay hidden while keeping an eye on the road to see if that man's car appears again. I'm about to end the call when I see his car drive by again. And what do I see? He's looking right at me, as if he already knew exactly where I was hiding, waving at me with a smile on his face, still with this trying-very-hard-to-seem-friendly vibe. He knows I'm hiding and on a call with someone now. He knows I wasn't as naive as I pretended to be. Then, he just drives away.

My mom is still on the phone with me so I tell her what just happened and she tells me to stay calm and wait for her. We end the call. I wait. He doesn't come back again. My mom's car appears much faster than I anticipated. I get in and go home. I still can't wrap my head around what exactly happened and what could have happened. My name is Richard and I have a five-year-old son, Mark. Just a week ago, my son and I were in the living room when I heard the familiar sound of an ice cream truck. Before I could even react, my son started bouncing up and down, begging me to let him go get some ice cream.

I gave him five dollars and told him to come back with change. Now I know what you're thinking, who lets a five-year-old out by himself? But we live at the end of a cul-de-sac and I have a lot of trust with this kid. It took me about five minutes to realize that my son hadn't come back yet. I wanted to believe that he was okay but too many red flags were going up in my head. I took a look through my window and saw the truck driving away with my son in the passenger seat. I practically ran out the front, hopped in my car and rapidly drove out onto the road,

speeding to catch up to the truck. The truck sped up as if it knew I was following it and it did. I looked at the side mirror of the truck to see a scruffy looking man who in no way resembled an ice cream guy. He gave me a crazed smile, flipped me off, and continued to drive. He tried to lose me, but I wouldn't let up. Then something unexpected happened. The truck stopped, the passenger door opened and I saw my son get pushed out the door and onto the floor. Then the truck drove down the street, rounded the corner and out of sight.

I asked my son what happened and he said that a man rolled down his window and said he could take him to his warehouse filled with ice cream for free. When the man saw he couldn't lose me he stopped, demanded my son open the door and then violently shoved him out. If you thought the story ended here it doesn't. Two days later at about 12pm I was up late working when I heard a noise coming from my office window. I got closer and got a chill up my spine when the sound turned out to be the song of an ice cream truck.

And then I heard someone yell, F you. The song stopped and I didn't hear anything from then on. It's been about two weeks since then. I've reported it, but if something something happens I'll be sure to update. This happened in the summer of 2010 when I was just entering my teenage years. My family took a trip to a really nice hotel in the city. I can't really remember why we decided to take the trip but I remember a lot of family friends coming with and staying in adjacent rooms. I've never asked my parents and it's not really important to the story.

Now to preface, I'm a bit of a scaredy cat and always have been. I'm a pretty skinny, fragile kid so I get spooked pretty easily even now. This however was almost definitely not me freaking myself out like I normally did. Looking back, I'm incredibly lucky I trusted my instincts. This hotel had a strange design to it. The lobby was actually on the fourth floor, not the bottom floor, which I found strange. To access the lobby, you had to use the elevator. There was no way for you to get to it from the stairs. This information would have been nice before everything happened, as you'll find out. The hotel was organized in a square shape. Every floor was lined with a balcony, and you could look down into the lobby and cafe

area from your floor. Essentially if you were walking to your room you could be seen from anyone that was on your floor if they just stepped out of the room and looked around. I always was afraid I'd fall over the balcony and sail down eight stories to my death but they were high enough to a point where I wasn't too concerned for my safety. The first day or two was nice. My friends and I hung out and played cards all day or we watched whatever was on TV. At night we'd explore the halls of the hotel and tell each other ghost stories. It was a really fun time even though I didn't fully understand why we were there. On the third day though, things got strange fast. I woke up to the sound of screaming coming from outside my door. Now, because of the hotel's

design I mentioned, sounds from the lobby would echo all the way up to the top of the building. So, when I walked outside to investigate, I immediately looked over the balcony to see what the commotion was about. I saw a girl laying on the ground, eggs and milk splattered everywhere around her. People were rushing to help her and I heard a couple people telling each other to call 911. It seemed like the girl was unconscious, maybe she had passed out or something. I scanned the lobby and saw that my family and a couple of my friends were in the lobby getting breakfast, all staring at the event in front of them. I decided I'd rush down to meet them to find out what had happened. The elevator was on the opposite side of the floor, so I took

the stairwell located right next to my room. We were on the 7th or 8th floor, so I knew I only had to take about 4 flights down, not a big deal. I descended for a little while looking for the number 4 on the wall or the letter L. I passed floor 5 ready to find a door to the lobby. I took about 2 more flights of steps before realizing that there hadn't been a door for the 4th floor nor had there been a door for the third or second. Now at this point I probably should have turned back but I continued down because I was tired and didn't want to climb back up. There were some weird side hallways that went into pitch black areas with a bunch of piping and wiring and though I was curious to explore I passed them by. I quickly hit the bottom floor,

a dimly lit and cold room with cinder block walls and concrete floors. In front of me was a set of double doors. I hesitated at first, but I assumed that this was just another way back to the lobby, so I opened them and entered. Behind the doors was a massive warehouse type room, probably the size of a smaller basketball stadium. The only light coming in was from the stairwell behind me so I really wasn't able to see much. Stairs were stacked and covered in plastic wrap, tables lined the wall and in the distance I thought I could see boxes stacked and lined against the wall as well. It was probably the storage room for the hotel. I looked around and saw an elevator in the back of the room so I made my way towards it.

I closed the door to the stairwell and began to walk in the dim light. The room was super muggy and dusty and it seemed like nobody had been down there in a long time. As I got closer to the elevator I noticed it was a little bigger than the elevators in the lobby and other floors. I pressed the up button, but got no response. There was a card swiper next to the button. Must have been for employees only, I thought. I turned back towards the stairwell doors, making my way past the chairs and tables along the wall. When I got to the door, I gave it a tug. Locked, of course. This is when things started to hit me,

and I realized I was stuck in the dark, dusty basement of a hotel. I didn't have a phone because my parents wouldn't let me get one until I graduated middle school, so I couldn't call anyone. Everyone likely assumed I was still asleep in the room so I began to freak out believing that nobody was going to look for me. I searched around the warehouse looking for other ways out. Some areas of the place were better lit than others so I looked around in areas I could see first before starting on the darker side of the room. There was one other set of doors that I found but it happened to be locked as well.

I began to cry, scared that nobody would ever find me in this basement. I swear it felt like hours but I think only a handful of minutes passed before I heard the door creak open. It wasn't the door from the stairwell, rather the second door I had found. A slim, middle-aged man in a lab coat came out of the doors. Now if this was 21-year-old me seeing this man, I would be very confused as to why this guy was wearing a lab coat in a hotel. I was only 12 or 13 at the time so I immediately was relieved at the sight of an adult who looked smart. I approached him, tears in my eyes and he immediately looked surprised to see me, as you'd expect. What are you doing here? He yelled. I got lost on my way down to the lobby

and I've been locked in here. Do you have a key? I was shaking, eager to get out of there. He didn't answer my key question and instead he said, I know a way out of here, follow me. He began to walk towards the doors with the stairwell and I followed, relieved that someone had finally come to save me. We approached the doors and I began to reach for the handle but he continued walking. Isn't it right here? I asked him. I will never forget the look on his face when I said that. He looked nervous and though it was dim I could see sweat glistening from his forehead and behind his glasses. No, this way, he had said sternly. I continued to follow him but I was now nervous myself. We had passed the door to the stairs and were now headed towards a darker side of the basement, away from the elevators. He looked like he had no clue where he was leading me,

as he kept checking around him, almost as if he was taking in his surroundings for the first time. He turned a corner and began walking towards the boxes, a dead end. I immediately froze, realizing that something was very, very wrong. This guy had no idea where he was going, nor did he appear to work at the hotel. I said, my voice shaking, Okay, where are we going? He turned and said, This way, just follow me.

I knew that there were no doors by those boxes. I checked there first and I found out the stairwell door was locked. I want to thank whatever god is up there for gifting me with the idea I had next. I started yelling, as loud as I could. I yelled so loud I gave myself a headache. The man, irritated and plugging his ears, began yelling back at me, What are you doing? Be quiet! I continued to yell. I don't even remember how long I was yelling. Finally, the man snapped and began quickly walking towards me. I went in a full sprint towards the stairwell doors, hoping to god that they'd somehow be magically open. He didn't run after me, he walked sternly

behind me muttering things like stupid little kid and other kind compliments. I was about five feet from the door when somebody burst through, my savior, a hotel janitor who had heard the screams from the stairwell. He saw the situation, me and some random guy in a lab coat in the locked basement and immediately told me to get behind him. The janitor asked me who the man was, I said I had no idea and that he had come in through the door on the other side of the room and I pointed to the door. The janitor quickly radioed into the desk that he had found a child in the basement and quietly so I couldn't hear he said, this man came from outside, get security or something like that. The man in the lab coat

started trying to argue with the janitor claiming that he simply was looking for a bathroom. The janitor clearly wasn't buying it and kept saying things like, wait till security gets here and talk to them about it. I was standing beside him the whole time trying to take in what was happening, confused out of my mind. Eventually an employee from the front desk arrived and took me back up the steps to the lobby where I met with my family who surprisingly had no idea I was missing. I told them the story, crying and shaking, and they hugged me tightly, thanking the employee over and over for their help. I never got to thank that janitor though. Looking back now, I had absolutely no clue what that man was doing in the basement.

I don't have any information as to what happened afterwards or who he was. I know for a fact that the incident with the girl in the lobby was unrelated, something about low blood sugar I guess, not sure. I've thought about that day a lot and the only explanation I can put together is that the door I had found in the basement led to the streets of the city where he must have wandered in from. I have no clue what his intentions were, why he was wearing a lab coat or why he chose to pretend to know a way out. To be frank, this could have just been a huge misunderstanding of some sort and I just chose a really bad time to get lost. But all I know for sure is that if I hadn't screamed my lungs out, I might not have been telling this story the same way, or at all. This happened to me January 20th of 2020.

I was on the way to work and was waiting for the light to turn green at an intersection so I could turn left. I was minding my own business and worried that I'd be late to work. The light turned green for people to go straight so I had to wait for the arrow to turn green and I started to hear screeching and crashing so I turned my head and saw a car hit the median and was now airborne and coming straight for me. I had no idea to move so I braced myself for impact. I was so scared that I was going to die because the driver coming at me was going super fast, way over the speed limit. When the driver hit me, he pushed me over two lanes onto the sidewalk. I almost hit a tree and a sign but went in between them.

All my airbags deployed and I blacked out for a split second. The next thing I know I couldn't see cause I wear glasses and found them on my dash. I grabbed those and looked for my phone which flew into the center console. I felt like I was burning and started screaming ow really loud. I started to cry cause of the pain I was in. I took my seatbelt off and opened my driver's side door and got out and crawled on the ground and sat a couple of feet from my car, bawling my eyes out. I could barely move and was already hurting. I had someone come to my side and told me I was going to be okay.

I grabbed my phone and called my mom and told her I was in an accident and it wasn't my fault. I was sitting at the light not moving when I got hit. My mom asked me where I was and I couldn't even tell her. The lady next to me had to tell her. I was in so much shock I couldn't do anything but cry. The ambulance showed up within minutes to take me to the hospital. My forearm on the left was burned, bruised and bleeding. My neck or chest area was burned from my seatbelt and to the right side of my chest was hurting and I was told it was already

bruising. I was rushed to the ER so they could take x-rays of my body to make sure my arm wasn't broken nor damaged to my neck and back. They x-rayed me and did a body scan and luckily nothing was damaged on the inside, just the outside. I am now sore and trying to heal. I can barely move but today was better. My car is totaled but I am still alive and I wouldn't ask for anything more. I know this occurrence isn't outright scary like everything else but it was terrifying to me. I could have lost my life but I survived and I'm thankful for everyone that happened to help me and took care of me. I'm so internally grateful

for those kinds of people. The first year of middle school a lot of things happened that I believe really shouldn't have. About a month before school started, a day before my birthday, I got my period for the first time. I know, sorry for the TMI, but it's important to the story. I had called my friend a few days afterwards to tell her. I was a bit of an early bloomer, so I was one of the first in my friend group to start. Well, later on, this particular friend of mine and I got into a fight, and her retaliation was to start a rumor about me around the school that I was pregnant, and had become so from a high schooler.

Throughout the day day I noticed people giving me weird looks and I had no idea what it was about until my friends told me. I came home bawling my eyes out and my sister knew why. Being in a small town rumors spread like wildfire and everyone already knew about it. This girl at the high school my sister was at told her about it and she went off on her. This started a whole chain of events, me crying, figuring out who it was and my mom at the principals not leaving until they promised to do something about it. It slowly started to get better but walking home from school, I lived nearly across the street and it became living torture. I never learned this guy's name but the first day

he followed me around on his bike with his best friend. They circled around me so I had to stop walking, asked me personal questions which I'd either stay silent or say something snappy and just a bunch of things to purposely make me uncomfortable. On the third day he kept making certain comments about my body to the point even his friend said, too far man. After that he never had his friend with him. I just kind of broke down a few days of it happening. I was always a really shy, quiet kid. I spent most of elementary school not talking. I had no idea how to handle it and I was scared to ask for help because I didn't think anybody would believe me or to not take it seriously so I simply just didn't say

anything. The last day of it happening I think was the worst. He had a group of girls behind him all cheering him on as he harassed me. One of them laughed and said you should stalk her and he actually agreed with her. I finally had enough and I started screaming and cussing him out. He smirked and said, feisty, I like it. I just ran home. I was already at the halfway point. My sister was waiting for me at the front door that day with our dog, only a few months old, so she had heard the whole thing.

She didn't do that often, but it seemed like perfect timing. She looked panicked and was just like, are you okay? Do I need to hurt somebody? And told me I need to report that to the school. I said I was fine and it's taken care of. She was reluctant, but let it go. We walked past my house and our dog jumped in front of me and started growling at him. He just chuckled which freaked both me and my sister out. A few months before our house had gotten broken into and because I was home alone a lot, my mom decided to get me a dog to protect me. She's a sweetheart though and lets people pet her and everything. That's why my sister would sometimes wait for me outside and let kids pet her

He's one of the only people she ever growled at I'm really afraid that if I didn't stand up for myself or had a dog That he would have followed up on the threat of stalking me I only saw him around school a couple of times Once on the student news because he was on the football team and got this award. I almost started crying when I saw it and then he went up to my lunch table because my friend asked him a question and he stared at me the entire time. The last time I saw him was the last day of school. I was getting the things out of my locker and when I walked past him his breath hitched and he just looked at me the entire time I was in the hallway.

There's a lot of reasons I hate that town, but after I graduated from 8th grade, he was the biggest reason why I didn't want to go to that high school there. I'm glad my mom accepted, and we moved into the city. I've had to deal with my fair share of creeps, but he was by far the worst of all. So this was something that happened my freshman year of college. Being new to a campus that I didn't have many friends on I began seeking out some cool people to hang out with as I had long breaks between my classes. I quickly found myself spending time with a large group of girls from a math class.

We began spending time in the lounge area of my campus and made some friends through there too. To give an idea it was a relatively smaller campus with only a few buildings and the lounge area was quite a small room with some pool tables and seats. As the semester went on, we began making it a regular ordeal to all go to lunch or coffee at least once a week. Our lunch group quickly went from five people to nearly twenty. Friends started bringing acquaintances, and our group grew. One kid named Spencer, who was a friend's friend, joined us regularly for coffee or lunch. One day word got back to me that he was into me and wanted to get my number. I nicely told my friend that I wasn't interested and that I had a boyfriend, which was a lie.

I thought this would deter him as he came off as a non-confrontational person. One morning a group message was sent out by my friend Trish who asked if we all wanted to meet up for coffee and everyone for the most part agreed to meet. I arrive about 10 minutes early to almost everything so I was used to being the first one there. Spencer arrived shortly after me. He sat down next to me and I exchanged a friendly good morning and a smile. Slowly the time passed and no one else showed up. We sat awkwardly for about 15 minutes and finally he spoke up and said,

This is a surprise date I planned. I think it's important to mention I'm pretty hot headed and I don't like being lied to. I got up from the chair, gathered my things, and left without a word. A surprise date? Are you insane? The next couple of weeks went by without a word from Spencer. I thought that maybe he had gotten the hint that I wasn't interested. Soon though, he started showing up at the same time that I worked out at the school gym. I didn't think much of it because our schedules were pretty similar so like myself I just assumed that this was the only time he had to work out. Soon it went from being there at the same time to him following me around the gym.

Whatever machine I was using he was conveniently at the one right next to me lifting weights and just staring. I had some friends that worked the front desk of the gym so I mentioned it to them and they said they'd take care of it if it got out of hand. One day I was squatting at the gym and mid-rep he walked up, pulled my headphone down and proceeded to tell me my form was off and grabbed my wrist. I racked my bar and turned around angrily telling him, don't touch me. He apologized and proceeded to ask me out once again. I told him I wasn't interested and had a boyfriend anyways. Of course, I didn't. Once again, a couple of weeks went by and the only contact I had with Spencer was sitting at the opposite end of the table during our lunch gatherings.

I thought he had finally gotten the hint. Then one day at the gym I was walking down the hallway to the girls locker room when he walked up behind me and put both hands on either side of the wall behind my head. He said, I know you feel the connection I do. Why don't you let me take you out? I quickly yelled for my friend Chris who worked the gym's front desk. Keep in mind Chris is a very large 6'3 and extremely fit individual whereas Spencer is about 5'7 and not very in shape. Chris quickly walked around the corner to see what was happening and came running down the hall yelling at Spencer. He was then banned from the gym and not allowed back in. One night I got a text message from a random number stating

that it's Spencer and he wanted to apologize for what happened at the gym. I told him what he did wasn't okay and that I wasn't interested in him and I'd like for him to leave me alone from now on. He apologized again and again I didn't hear anything else. Thinking that was the last time, I blocked his number. All was well until one day when I came home from work to a bouquet of white lilies sitting on my doorstep. Thinking that they were from my grandma, she does sweet stuff like this, I got excited to pick them up and took them inside. Then I read the letter. It was unsigned and just said, I love watching you. I frantically started calling and texting friends thinking this was a sick joke as they knew about how creepy Spencer had been. I got concerned answers and honest no's from every single one.

I panicked, threw the flowers out and made sure to lock my door. Later that night I get a text from a random number that said, You didn't enjoy your flowers? I saw you throw them away. At this point I had had enough. I called the number and the familiar voice of Spencer was on the other line. I lost my mind quite literally. I didn't even let him get past his sickening hello before I started screaming at him.

He then calmly stated if I wanted to talk to him to come outside. I looked out my window and there he was, standing right in front of my house, smiling. I called the cops and when they showed up they detained him and I got a restraining order placed on him. The cops then contacted me a couple of days later to let me know he has more than one restraining order placed for the same behavior, 10 including mine to be exact. I had late classes the semester after this and called campus police to walk me to my car every night after this because I was terrified he would show up again. Shortly after that I moved about 300 miles away and luckily I'd never seen him again other than his every so often random Instagram follow request. Ever since I was a child, I've always been told to be careful around people. My parents relentlessly told me to watch my things, never take out my phone when I'm out walking,

never to wear expensive jewelry on my commute. I've always figured that they were just the kind of people who were overly cautious, and since I haven't really experienced being robbed back then then I didn't think much of what they had said. Cut to when I was in college. It was sophomore year and for our final exam in photography class we had to shoot Chinese New Year festivities wherever they celebrated in the city but of course what better place than Chinatown itself. So, despite it being known as a place that had lots of robbers and kidnappers, when the day came, my friend, we'll call her Kim, and I went to Chinatown at noon, and with our cameras around our necks, started shooting.

We decided we would stay there and cover as much as we can until the fireworks display at midnight. So, for the most part we just went around shooting and having dim sums in between until finally people started coming down to the main plaza for the fireworks display countdown. At this point we placed ourselves right in the middle of the crowd ready to start shooting once the countdown gets to zero. The host of the night began talking and hyping up the crowd and I usually don't pay attention to stuff like that so around that time was when I noticed three men surrounding Kim and I. One was on my side, one was on hers and the last one was behind us. I know this may not seem

sketchy considering we're in the middle of a huge crowd but something just fell off. So just to see if they would follow us I slowly pulled Kim closer to the stage. They followed but I wasn't convinced. I thought maybe I was being weird for no reason so again after a few minutes I pulled Kim who was now starting to get confused towards the left side of the stage. Still they followed. At this point I was starting to get nervous and scared so I squeezed Kim's hand hoping she'd realize what was going on but she didn't quite get the message. Once more I decided to move us towards the center of the crowd and again they followed us. It became clear to me that they were either going to try to take our cameras or do something worse

But I didn't want to stay and find out, so I had to think fast Luckily around this time the music got louder and there were more people as the countdown was about to begin I playfully pulled Kim further down the center and whispered to her what was going on The men weren't able to follow us since the place was packed But I looked back to where they were and they were looking at us to her what was going on. The men weren't able to follow us since the place was packed, but I looked back to where they were and they were looking at us. I pulled Kim closer and told her, the countdown's about to start. When the host gets to zero, duck and run towards the mall. The countdown started and just as we discussed when the host got to zero, we ducked and ran. As soon as the fireworks shot up, everyone looked up, jumped around and danced to the music. It was the perfect timing

to lose the three men. I could only imagine that they were also waiting for the countdown to end before they did what they planned to do since everybody's attention would be elsewhere. But again, I didn't want to find out. When we got inside the mall, we stayed by the main entrance right next to the security guard waiting for Kim's mom to pick us up. I was still so terrified and not a minute later, paramedics were rushing through the mall carrying a girl who was passed out and had only one shoe on. We asked one of the people who came in after them what happened. The man said, The girl was stabbed. Three men were trying to take her phone and she wouldn't give it, so one of them stabbed

her and took it anyway and ran. Kim and I looked at each other in shock and we were so scared we couldn't leave the security guard's side until Kim's mom came to get us. To think that that girl could have been us still creeps me out to this day. We never did get photos of the fireworks, but I'd rather fail a class than get stabbed. I met this guy online when I was 16 through mutual friends telling me about him and how he liked me. I decided to add him and see if he was true to his word if he actually liked me or not. It was quite weird because he accepted my friend request within seconds and sent a message just saying hey straight away. A few days go on and I decided I want to meet up with this guy. Let's call him Chris for anonymity. We met up at a shopping center

close to both of us in County Meath in Ireland. We got on great and met up multiple times after that. One night he asked me to his house and I agreed. When I arrived, I almost died. His mother was snorting coke, his brother was growing marijuana, and it just smelled like burnt oil in the whole house. We went up to his room and he asked some of his friends over. They seemed pretty genuine and nice. Now a few months passed and it was coming up to Chris's birthday so I decided to have a surprise party for him. This is when it all started to get weird. We did the whole surprise thing and he ran up to his room. We heard a huge bang and screaming. He threw a mini fridge down the stairs at me and said if I do something like that again he was going to kill me. I was shocked. Everyone left

and we headed to bed. I noticed smaller things happening as the weeks went by. He told me what to wear, what to eat and when to speak. I had enough of this, so I decided to go break up with him. We met at the bus stop, and it leads to a small alleyway. I told him that I didn't think we would be good for each other, etc., etc., and he became livid. He punched, kicked, and smacked me multiple times. I fell to the ground, and he picked me up by my collar and pinned me against the wall and smashed a bottle and cut my neck. He smiled as he did it. Luckily, the lady from the adult shop in the alley saw everything and called the police.

By the time the police got there, he ran and checked himself into a psychiatric ward so he wouldn't be arrested for his actions. To this day, it still haunts me. I'm 23 now with a son and a new boyfriend, but sometimes I still get scared that I will see him and I had been working at my first job. I didn't work during high school since I wanted to focus on my studies and school work and also cared about getting a good night's sleep. I was working at a sportswear store and I worked in the footwear section. It was getting close to the holidays and the store had more customers flowing through trying to get gifts for their loved ones and friends. During the flow of people I did notice one guy who stood out from the rest.

He was an older gentleman who had a short unkempt gray beard with a trucker's hat and a sportsman's jacket on and looked to be north of 300 plus pounds. He was hard to miss. I didn't think much of him as I continued helping other customers find whatever footwear they needed before the man approached me. I asked if I could recommend any good boots for hunting or hiking which I kindly did. I pointed him in the direction of the outdoor footwear and he carried on. He returned about 10 minutes later trying to strike up a conversation talking about his hunting and hiking experiences which I overall related to since I grew up in a hunting family and enjoyed it. The conversation seemed harmless enough but

took a weird and unexpected turn he had asked me if i had a boyfriend which was odd to me i said no and that i wasn't into men just women he looked a little upset by this and said that his 19 year old son had just come out as gay and was looking for a boyfriend i'll admit i was a little creeped out by this, but tried to be polite as possible as it was store policy and wished his son luck on finding the right guy before moving on to doing my job. As the day continued, I noticed that I kept seeing this guy over and over passing by the footwear aisle like he was doing laps around the store. He would glance over and flash me a smile like he hadn't just done it three times before that. Soon the day came to an end and I made my way towards my

truck in the parking lot. It was around six in the afternoon and with it being winter meant it was already pretty much dark out. Thankfully the parking lot was well lit which made the walks to my truck a little more comfortable. The next morning as I was doing my own thing in the footwear section I noticed again that I saw the man from yesterday entered the store and almost immediately make his way to the footwear section. He greeted me and asked what I could do for him. He didn't seem at all interested in buying any sort of footwear though and just started talking about his life and such. He didn't seem at all interested in buying any sort of footwear though and just started talking about his life and such. He said that he had gotten divorced from his wife a few years ago and his son had been living with him. After a little while once again asked me questions

like have you ever thought about getting together with a guy or have you ever been attracted to any sort of guy. I kindly but almost assertively stated that I had never been into guys and am happy being straight. I even lied saying that I had a girlfriend, hoping he wouldn't ask me any more questions. What he did next, though, shocked me. He grabbed onto both of my shoulders and said that I need to explore and get out there more. The life is short and I need to try new things. I immediately felt uncomfortable by this and got him to let go of my shoulders. I said goodbye to him and went to do literally anything to get away from the guy.

He just walked away without saying anything. All throughout the day I kept noticing him whether it was from an aisle or two over just staring at me. When I caught his gaze he would immediately turn away. I got bad vibes from this guy and just tried to avoid him. The rest of the day went smoothly, occasionally seeing the man but overall just focusing on my job at hand. Soon it came to that time that I got to go home. I had stopped by the bathroom real quick as it was a 30 minute drive home and I didn't feel like holding it the whole time. I had stopped by the bathroom real quick as it was a 30 minute drive home and I didn't feel like holding it the whole time. I situated myself at the urinal when I heard the bathroom door open. Being that it was late, it was only me and the unknown person who were in the

bathroom. As I stayed focused on myself, I did notice that the footsteps of the man stopped abruptly nearby to me as if waiting for his turn at the urinal. There were multiple urinals which was odd. Once I was finished I turned around and was greeted by the man from earlier just staring at me not moving or making any noise literally just staring. I was immediately creeped out by this and made my way out of the bathroom not washing my hands not wanting to be in the same room with this weirdo. As I made my way to the bathroom door the man made no attempt to use the urinal or anything, just stood there staring at me as I made my way out. I did walk up to the manager and told him about the creepy man.

Wanting to be on the safe side I asked if he could walk with me to my truck as I had no clue what this guy's intentions truly were. He agreed and happily walked with me to my truck where he said his goodbyes. And that was it. I never saw that man again. He never came back to the store or anything. Just stopped coming altogether. I still work at the store but have been placed in a new area of the store working in the apparel area. I haven't seen him since and I'm glad.

I hope I never see that creep again. This happened around three years ago when I was in fifth grade. I'm a quiet girl who has severe anxiety and is very gentle and not popular. I've also dealt with boys liking me, but not like this. I'm not sure that this fits into the category of true crime, but it was freaky at the time. This story is also kind of long, so bear with me. One day at recess, me and my two friends were talking. Someone who I'm going to call Ben came up to me and gave me a paper. He said Charles gave

it to him to give to me. The two friends kept saying that I should open it. I waited till the end of recess and then opened it. It was a phone number. I got uncomfortable instantly so I threw it in the trash. Over the next few days Charles talked to my mom who worked at the school part-time more and more. My mom loved him and thought he was a great kid which is why I never told her about anything that happened. I was scared she wouldn't believe me. He and his friends made fun of me and looked at me up and down every day. One of his friends was my best friend Jacob. Jacob told me what Charles said about me behind my back.

He said Charles was naming people Pokemon. He named me Jigglypuff because when I would be older I would have big breasts and a big butt. This made me extremely self-conscious. I wore jackets and baggy pants so they couldn't see anything. Jacob told me what he would do to me if we were alone. I don't feel comfortable repeating what he said but I'm sure you can imagine. After weeks of mocking, name calling, snickering, he sat next to me in music. I got stressed knowing he was right there.

A few minutes later he told me he was bringing a camera the next day to interview kids. I didn't think anything of it because my class was interviewing teachers so I assumed he got the teacher's permission. Spoiler alert, he didn't. He asked if he could interview me. I said no over and over again but he persisted and finally got him to be okay with the fact that I don't want to be interviewed. The next day I didn't go into school. I don't remember why but I must have been sick. I came in the day after to the principal gathering the whole 5th grade.

I had no idea what was going on. He explained a child brought in a camera and was filming kids and their private parts. I knew it was Charles. The kid said he threatened to put it in the girl's bathroom and then look at the footage. Charles got suspended for three days. I went home that day and cried myself to sleep because I didn't know what was happening. I was so little and not ready for anything to do with boys and especially boys who film people's privates. A few weeks after that incident, a girl who I'm going to call Abby came up to me at recess and tried to show me a paper. I started crying because I knew Charles told her to show me.

She got scared and backed off. One of my friends, Etta, saw I was crying and asked what happened. I told her Charles was making me uncomfortable. She told the teacher and I went inside. I went to the counselor and told her everything. She left me alone to go get Charles and Abby to say sorry. I cried harder because I didn't want to see either of them. She understood and stayed with me. She called the assistant principal and told her what happened. She got Charles and Abby and talked to them in a separate room. She told me Charles wrote a poem for me. The paper was all torn up and I never got to see what was on it. At that point, I called my mom and she

picked me up. She asked why I needed to be picked up early and my counselor explained. We went home and I cried the rest of the day. I thought that would be the end of Charles. Then I started middle school. Charles knew his sidekick's name was going to be Drake, and Drake liked to call me names and purr at me in class. On the fourth day of school, Drake ran up to me and pinned me against the wall. He shouted, Did you go on a date with Charles? Are you dating Charles? Over and over. I said in a strong voice, trying to be brave, to stop and know. It felt like he pinned me there for eternity. He finally let go and ran off saying, so he lied. I told my mom what

happened and she told me to keep a close eye and update her if he did anything inappropriate. I then left that school a few days later because of other unrelated reasons. Three years later I found out that Drake had harassed many girls in the school and apparently didn't get in trouble. I now go to a different school and sometimes keep in touch with friends but I can't help but cry every time I find out someone has a crush on me because I get flashbacks to back then. I'm 28 years old and this is the first time I have thought about this incident in detail because of how traumatizing it was. I met my ex-girlfriend in California in 2010.

We had both lived there our whole lives but decided to move to Maine a couple years after we started dating. She had flown to Maine on a business trip in 2012 and fell in love with everything about it. The small towns, the scenery, and the people. She came home and convinced me to pack up our whole lives and move there. And so we did. We saved up a bunch of money and rented a huge moving truck. The plan was for me to drive the moving truck across the country while she stayed behind three days to finish her classes at the local community college, which were due to end at that time. I would have just waited until her classes were finished, but we decided to take advantage of an incredibly good deal that we were offered from the company who provided the moving truck. She had a car that she had to drive there anyways, while I towed my car behind the moving truck. She had a car that she had to drive there anyways, while I towed my car behind the

moving truck. My brother came with me on the trip, helping me drive. The drive was obviously a very long one, and when my brother and I arrived in Maine, about four days after we had left, we were exhausted. After unloading the truck and sleeping for about 16 hours, we decided to visit the small town of Belfast, which was about 14 miles away from my new house. We ate some seafood at a little family-owned joint, rented a scary movie, and made the drive back to the house. My new house was literally in the middle of nowhere. During the day, the view of the lake in my backyard was amazing. The woods surrounding my house were awesome and everything was really beautiful. At night, it was a different story.

The house was incredibly creepy to be in. The whole house was surrounded with windows. You could not see anything looking out those windows at night, but I'm sure that if you were standing outside, you could quite easily see in. My brother had a flight booked back to California the following day, and we woke up very early in the morning to drive to Portland, where the airport was. I eventually made it back alone and wasn't able to make any phone calls or watch any cable TV because we had no service out there yet and no cable or internet hooked up. My cell phone did not work anywhere on that property. The only thing I had was a box of

DVDs. That was it. When I made it back, I decided to try out my new fishing pole that we had bought in town. I wasn't out at the lake very long, as it started to get dark in Maine very fast in the fall. I went back to the house and sat in the living room in the chair, looking out the windows at the scenery. My view was getting darker and darker. I turned on all the lights in the house and quickly became creeped out when it became pitch black outside. Imagine being in the middle of the forest in the middle of nowhere at night and looking around. You could not see your own hand if you held it right in front of your face. And when I say it was pitch black, I mean you can't see anything. We hadn't hung up any curtains or blinds yet, and I had the extremely uneasy feeling that somebody

was outside the house watching me. Watching me go from room to room. I decided to hang up sheets over all the windows using thumbtacks. I sat on the couch in the living room and put in a funny movie to try and shake the unnerving feeling that I had. It did not work. I eventually realized I had to try to get some sleep and my eyelids were becoming sore. I was getting very tired. I covered myself with blankets on the couch and turned off the TV. After a few minutes my eyes had adjusted and I could see around the living room very slightly. My eyes were very heavy and I fell asleep. I woke up sometime later and it was still night and still very dark. I reached for my bottle of coke that I had on the ground in front of me

and took a big gulp. I set it back down and looked around the room. Now, I'm having difficulty putting these next emotions into words that I could accurately convey. My heart began to throb when I noticed a man standing in the corner of the room. I couldn't see his eyes, but he had to have been looking at me. I did nothing and said nothing, and not by choice, but because I couldn't. I was frozen. He didn't move, and it was clear that he was trying to not be seen. After a few moments, I did my best to think rationally and logically. I'm not sure that he knew that I had seen him.

I had a blanket over me, which might have shrouded my face, in which he wouldn't be able to see my eyes. After about a minute of gut-wrenching fear, I somehow decided to do something, and it was the hardest thing that I've ever done. I forced myself to cough. I did it while getting up in an effort to give him the impression that I didn't know that he was there. I slowly made it to my feet and walked across the icy cold wood flooring to the bathroom around the corner of the living room. He didn't move. I made it into the bathroom and nothing happened. I closed the bathroom door and slowly turned the lock to the upright position.

Tears went down my face as I backed up into the bathtub behind me. I was staring at the door. I suddenly realized there was a small window up above the bathtub that I could most likely crawl through. I moved the shower curtain as silently as I could and reached up to the window lock. I unlocked it and tried sliding the window open to the left. The window began to squeak when I pulled it open and I froze, hoping that the man didn't hear it. A couple seconds later, I heard a tapping on the bathroom door. It wasn't a knock, but a tap, and it didn't sound like the tap of a finger. It sounded like metal, like he was tapping a knife

against the door. At this point, I made the realization that the man either knew what I was doing or simply wanted me to know that he was outside the door. Adrenaline took over completely and I slid the window open and pushed the screen out onto the ground. I tried not to exert any noise as I jumped up and began squeezing my body through the small window. My head and upper body were out, and I could not see inside the bathroom anymore, only the dense, dark woods in front of me. I was pulling my legs through the window when I suddenly felt the man grab my foot. Directly after that, before I could even react, I felt my ankle be sliced open. I let out a noise of shock and surprise as I pulled out of his grasp and fell to the ground. I started heaving and felt as if my heart would explode.

I stood up and looked around. I very quickly dashed out into the woods and fell to the ground, looking back at the house and the window to the bathroom. I felt my ankle, which was throbbing from pain, and brought my hand up to reveal it covered in slick blood. The deathly serious situation I was in became real and horrifying. I looked back at the house and suddenly saw the back door fly open. The man ran down the steps and started looking around into the darkness, searching for me. I became a statue on the ground and tried to control my breathing. He had a huge knife in his hand and was wearing all black.

He was walking into the woods, but not near where I was laying. He was grunting and soon after, I lost sight of him. I started frantically looking around, thinking that at any moment he would spot me and stab me to death. I saw nothing but trees and darkness. There was a bit of snow on the ground from a couple days before, and I was freezing and shaking at this point uncontrollably. About ten minutes later, I saw the man walk out of the trees from where he entered and went back inside the house. I laid out there the rest of the night, and luckily, the sun started to rise only about an hour later. After the sun fully illuminated my surroundings, I felt as though the man had probably left, and I felt ready to move.

I made it to my feet and walked around the house to the front. I saw that the front door was left wide open. I slowly approached it and looked inside. Nothing. I walked in a few steps and grabbed my car keys that were hanging on a hook by the front door. I ran back to my car and unlocked it, got inside and started the engine. I backed out of the long driveway and drove to the little general store a few miles from my house. And this is where the story ends. I got away and so did the intruder. My ankle was pretty badly cut, but it healed after a few months with no problems. I suffered minor pneumonia from being outside for the time that I had, but nothing too serious became of it. This incident has made sleep

very difficult for me, but riding this has oddly enough made me somewhat drowsy. I think maybe I'll try to go to sleep right now. Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer or enjoy over 3,000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz, make instant deposits or same-day withdrawals. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions.

19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement in Palmdale, California. My sister, Honey, and my youngest daughter lived with my mother in a rented townhouse apartment in Oxnard about two hours away. Every week or two I made the long drive to take them shopping and clean their house because they were both disabled. My mother was my heart and my sweet sister helped raise me so anything they needed I was there for them.

On the first floor the kitchen was in the back with a door that opened to the backyard, then a big open space, then the living room and the front door. On the right, the bathroom and my mother's bedroom. The stairs were on the left with a half wall railing going up to the first landing. My mom was sitting in her lift recliner on the right facing the base of the stairs. One night we were all sitting in the living room watching a show with the lights on and my daughter was upstairs in her room. We were laughing at something we saw on TV when I saw something on the stairs. It darted down the steps really fast, peeking up at me then ducked down behind the railing

followed by a cold chill that entered the living room. My mother commented that it was cold and pulled her robe together. At first I thought it was my daughter playing tricks on me, but when she didn't pop up I felt concerned. I said, Mama, did you see something? Because she had full sight of anything there. She responds, No dear, I thought I did did but there's nothing there. That's when it hit me

and instinctively I knew what it was and where it came from. I ran up the stairs and burst into my daughter's room. What did you do? She looked at me with her eyes wide. She knew exactly what I was referring to and started apologizing. I told her to tell me what she did to bring it into this house. She proceeded to tell me that when her girlfriends were there they thought it would be fun to summon a spirit. Then they tried to reach the father of one of her friends who passed away about two years prior but she said something else came through and it scared them so they stopped and her friends ran home without even saying goodbye. Well I was furious. How dare you play with something you don't

understand? I told her that I knew she was just trying to help a friend but for heaven's sake I warned her years ago to never mess around with things she didn't understand and had no control over. I was thinking that not only do I constantly have to worry about my family's health, now I have to worry about this. I asked if she at least closed the door and she just looked at me with a blank stare. Obviously she did not. She said they made a Ouija board out of paper and when they were done she ripped it up and threw it away. That door had to be closed. We gathered the pieces and she called her friends. Two of them were too scared to come back so we had to perform the closing without them but in the back of my head I knew that it didn't work and

it was still there hiding. At that point there was nothing I could have done viewing the circumstances at the time. Now fast forward to 2016. I had an opportunity waiting for me in Washington state so I begged and pleaded for my mother and sister to go with me but my sister Honey was fanatically scared of change and although my mother desperately wanted to go with me she couldn't leave my sister's side. I wish now I was more persistent. So I moved, reluctantly leaving them with my daughter and her now husband to take over their care. Within those two years my eldest sister Honey's health severely declined and my mother shared with me eight months after I moved that she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I flew and drove back and forth to be

with them and every time I showed them pretty pictures of my new life and our beautiful green surroundings, asking them to return with me and every time honey would say that she was too apprehensive to leave and said no. 2018, they both passed away. My mother from cancer and my sister from an existing illness taking a big part of my heart and my soul with them my daughter and her husband moved out leaving all of my mother and sister's things there somebody had to put their stuff in storage and of course it had to be me even though i was the youngest of six i felt it was my duty i drove there with my two grandchildren eight and

four because at the time there was no one available to watch them for that long of a period of time. When we arrived the place was in shambles. Dirty dishes and moldy food lined the counters and was piled up in the sink and it looked like soot all over the floor. Mom and honey's personal belongings were strewn around the house and in my mother's room a barricade of trash potted up all the way up to her door. In the middle of the floor in the open space was a full length mirror that I had never seen before hanging off a wooden ladder. I just stood there and cried. I set up a clean spot in the living room for my grandson to play on his tablet and my granddaughter wanted to help. As I was bagging things up in

the kitchen I noticed her just standing there staring into the mirror. I didn't think anything of it but she kept standing there. Then I heard her say to me while not looking away, Nana can we get rid of this mirror? I thought she wanted me to move it but she was adamant that it be taken out of the house. I asked her why she looked so scared and she told me to move it but she was adamant that it be taken out of the house I asked her why she looked so scared and she told me that while she was looking in the mirror she was standing alone she couldn't see anything in the reflection around or behind her just darkness all around her and something was coming I looked at the mirror not not at myself, and it did look very dark. Say no more. Not only did I take it outside, I smashed it into little pieces and threw it in the trash can.

We decided to sleep in the living room and it took days to even come close to being done. This was the last night and we were alone. I just mopped downstairs so I locked the doors and all the windows in the whole house and we slept upstairs in the bedroom across from my daughter's old room. We hunkered down on some mattresses on the floor. I always left a light on in the hall. I'm reading a book online. My granddaughter is falling asleep next to me

and my grandson was on his tablet at the end of the bed. I was getting sleepy and my grandson started to yawn. He looked up from his tablet and his eyes got big. Then he ran to the door, shouting, spooky, and slammed it. Running back, he quickly got under the covers and got as close to me as he could, making me feel very uneasy. I could see movement in the hall, dimming the light around and under the door, making swirling strange shapes as if someone were pacing, following by surges of blackness and wisps of cold air coming from the space under the door. That night was long and I felt on guard until I finally fell asleep but woke up hours later

and had to go to the bathroom but I was too scared. I was waiting until daybreak but I couldn't wait any longer. I slowly opened the door fearing for what was waiting for me on the other side and there was nothing but I knew there was as I could feel it. I tried to be as fast as I could and I left the bathroom door open so I could hear the kids and then I ran back hearing a swoosh behind me. I slammed the door and laid left the bathroom door open so I could hear the kids. Then I ran back, hearing a swoosh behind me. I slammed the door and laid holding the kids until daybreak. I received a call from my sister later that morning. She couldn't understand how we had been able to stay in that house. When I asked her why, she told me that when she was there grabbing some boxes of

pictures she heard noises from my daughter's room upstairs. She said it was loud and she felt an evil presence and everything inside her told her to leave so she did. She also told me that my son-in-law from which I had no knowledge of at the time was practicing black magic and summoning dark energy in that room. Late that afternoon everything was done, the kids were in the car and the car was packed. I just wanted to look in my mother's bedroom one last time where she used to sleep. These walls held so many memories, I felt like if I looked hard enough I would see her laying where the bed had been and in my mind telling me not to cry. As I stood in the doorway a chill went up my spine, the hairs on the back of my neck and my arms started to raise and I could feel something closing in on me. In my ear I felt a warm breath and heard one loud run. I ran out of the house so

fast not even locking the door. As we were driving off my granddaughter asked me who that was standing in the window upstairs. I want to apologize to any one of my family members who might think I am implying that this thing was in any way my sister. My sister was unique, very funny, special and the most loving person but she did have a very dark side and we all knew that. My sister was the eldest of six, five girls and one boy. She had a spirit friend at a young age and had quite intelligent conversations with her. My mother even asked her to ask her friend things she never would have known the answer to and it floored my mother when she gave her friends very mature responses. She told me later that she felt like her friend was there because she needed her at that time.

After she grew older her friend told her it was time for her to go. She lived through the hardest times with my mother. My mother's very abusive marriages, divorces and ever-changing locations and lifestyle. In some ways I think it made my sister feel very protective over my mother, almost borderline obsessive. Doing anything in her power to get my mother's approval even if it hurt one of us. In some ways we believe she resented us for taking mom's attention. I think she resented my brother the most for being the only boy of the family and getting all of the praise that came with that role. It broke my mother's heart when he got

married and moved away so needless to say that my sister wasn't too fond of his wife and made every attempt to distance my mother and his relationship. Then it was our second eldest sister because she was always getting into trouble for attention growing up and even into adulthood constantly stressing our mother out. And myself, because I was the baby of the family, my mother and I had a very special bond nobody could break. My sister had always been a little unstable, but there was a shift. Things just changed after the house on Alexandria. I slept with my mother there, and I remember night after night she would sit on the edge of my mother's side of the bed, projecting negativity and expressing delusional problems for things that hadn't even happened until my mother would cry for her to stop. It could have been that

something may have attached itself to her there but I don't know. Fast forward to the end of my sister's life. My mother passed away at the age of 87 from cancer leaving my sister feeling alone, not wanting to live anymore. She would never take her own life, but she longed to be with our mother in the afterlife so bad. She had been suffering for a long time with her own medical issues while mom was alive, but now she felt like there was nothing left to fight for, so if she just stopped her treatments, the end would come. We all tried to bring her home with us but she just wasn't having it. She suffered from paranoia and wanted to stay in that cold

empty place. She would just sit there holding my mom's things staring off into the distance like she was simply waiting. I was there one night helping like many nights before when she asked me to come sit close to her. She said it was very important so I moved closer. She told me that she was worried. She was at the end of her life and she felt like she needed my forgiveness. She said that she had done things, bad things. I told her that we have all done things we're not proud of but she insisted that what she had done was not good and it manipulated many outcomes in my life. She looked very worried. She would not tell me what those things were but I'm pretty sure I knew and they did have impact in my life in a negative way.

She said that for many years she had felt a dark presence clouding her thoughts. She opened her hand spreading her fingers and hovered her hand over the top right side of her head and said right there. I had always felt something around her as well but I only told my mother about my concerns. At the end of her days she suffered greatly. I wasn't there when she passed. I was two states away so one of my sisters sent me a picture of her in her final days. She was propped up in her hospital bed with her eyes wider than I had ever seen them, staring up to the right above her head, right where she had said she felt that negative dark presence. This is not just a glazed stare, this looks straight up like fear. I called and asked the

nurse how long she had been staring like that and she told me that it had been so long they started using eye drops so her eyes wouldn't dry out. What was she looking at? It haunts me to this day. Now the night that she passed it was late so I waited until morning to tell my brother. He didn't seem surprised and asked me what time she took her last breath and he said he had a feeling and with that I replied, how so? He proceeded to tell me that after he turned the light out and closed his eyes something dark rushed at him. He said it was cold and frightening. All of a sudden her face came to his mind and it felt like her he just knew she had passed man did that ever freak me out a few days later my second to

the eldest sister and my brother's ex-wife they live together called me telling me that things crashed in their bathroom at five in the morning and the dog won't stop growling at the top corners of the room. Now I'm thinking that I am next. But nothing happened. Almost a week goes by and I'm laying in bed. My grandchildren sleep with me. My grandson looks up towards my bedroom door and says spooky. I didn't even want to look. I told him that it was alright and that the bed was covered in white light and we're protected. I moved my hand as if I had a magic wand and was covering us like a blanket. He sat up and looked around and said, Oh, thank you.

And went to sleep and so did I. My son and his fiancee on the other hand did not go to sleep at all that night now i keep a very bright night light on in my room so there was no explanation for this i lived in an old farm like house with a loft upstairs where my son has his room the door to the stairs go into the kitchen facing my room my son said that he and his fiancee came downstairs to the kitchen they both looked toward my room to see if i was up but in the doorway they described it as a light absorbing darkness they both stood there in disbelief stricken with fear trying to see in my room it was almost as if whatever it was couldn't get in there but was standing there just feet from my bed.

It stayed there for a while then went away. Later that month my grandchildren and I drove down to my mother and sister's home to put all of their remaining belongings into storage and that's when we were met with that same darkness that shook us to the core. It left me questioning life events from the past. Was it this thing that made her that way and did it have a hand in changing the course in our lives? Or was what we saw in that house something else altogether? I hope she finds peace. I find it strange that everyone in my family in one way or another has experienced something warm and loving with my mother. A touch on the hand, a stroke on the cheek or back followed sometimes by the smell of her perfume. But no one,

no one at all has been visited by my loving sister. It breaks my heart to think that we don't really know what is on the other side. Is she being held somewhere and we can't help find her or did she simply just move on? I hope it's the latter. Now someone brought up something that really made me think and I have to agree. He said it sounds like it lost your sister when she died and that's why it's been showing up at other family homes. It was looking for a new host but it seems none of you were in a dark enough place for it to force an attachment. When she passed one of my sisters stayed whispering spiritual affirmations quietly suggesting she go into the light until she was gone and that gave me peace. I'm a mail carrier. I know, super interesting, right?

Honestly, you'd be surprised at the amount of weird stuff that happens to us. I've had people follow me while I'm delivering and try to get into my delivery vehicle to steal stuff. I've had a customer vomit on my car after she opened a parcel her husband sent her that was meant to go to his mistress. I have delivered some pretty questionable things that fell out of their flimsy packaging. I have seen people getting intimate near my more secluded boxes and they didn't stop for me. This is the kind of stuff that typically happens to us contract carriers. For those who don't know, contract carriers are mail carriers who buy a contract for a mail route that is typically in a rural area that, from what I

understand, the fancy mail jeeps cannot traverse. So we use our own vehicles to deliver the mail and we are paid monthly based on what type of route, how long the route takes on a day-to-day basis and what the post office deems as fair. Technically we are self-employed but still have to abide by the rules of the post office and we still have to become certified to even touch the mail. But of course being in the areas that we are in most of the time that kind of weird stuff I mentioned above happens all the time. Those things happened to me when I was a sub, someone who works for a contract holder but does not own the route in any way. I was paid by the person who owns the route out of their own pocket money. Now, however, I am the somewhat disgruntled owner of a 10-year route contract for the first time. I've owned the contract for about 7 months.

It's a pretty easy gig. The route itself takes about 2.5 hours to case, sort the mail for delivery, and another good 3-4 hours to deliver on a good day. 5- six on super heavy days. I'm not looking forward to how the holidays fare on this route. Thing is, before I got the contract, I had no idea what I was bidding on. The way someone gets a contract is that they bid for it. The person bidding will give a monthly salary amount that they feel would be fair-ish for the route in question. The post office and bid holders then decide which amount is the most accurate,

and their hosts a wise opinion for the route and they give it to whoever has that amount. I was lucky enough to get it, so I get pretty good pay that I technically chose for myself. All I knew of the route was that it went down into the valley. I live in a very small desert city with some very wide outlying mini communities. These outlying areas are where the majority of our office's contract routes deliver to. My route goes 25 miles out of town to a lot of small ranching properties in the closer areas and to some pretty scattered random loner properties in the farthest areas. There are a lot of hills and dirt roads where I go. It's very easy to get lost out there if you don't know where you're going. There's one area in

particular that goes through a small forest nestled between a random outcropping of hills heading out onto the state highway. It's not like an evergreen forest or anything, that's just the closest definition I can give. They're not really trees so much as gigantic bushes that nestled together very closely on either side of the road. That is towards the end of the route but it takes up a good chunk of my customer addresses. When I was training, the previous owner of the route, I'll call him Jim, gave me a rundown of the people who live on the route. There are a lot of ranch owners, of course, and they're the ones who get the most parcels.

This isn't surprising to me since they're the richest people out there. We, of course, call that section the ranches. There are the elderly retirees that live at a tiny retirement community set up by the city out there. It's pretty spread out like a teeny tiny little town of their own. That's the area with the second most amount of parcels. Lots of random buying and sometimes gifts from relatives. We call that area the retirement homes. These are the customers I talk to the most. There's the outskirters, as Jim called them. These are the people who live so far off the grid that most of the time we don't deliver packages to them. As a general rule, we are not allowed to deliver boxes to a house if it is more than three miles from the mailbox.

Most of them live about five or six miles from the boxes. Their boxes are in long lines or clusters as we call them on the side of the road. As a courtesy to these customers I ask them to give me their phone numbers so I can call them if they have a parcel and they meet me at the box. Most of them don't mind and I'm grateful to them because a lot of the roads are treacherous. I once tried to be nice and deliver a box to one of them and got stuck unable to move my car for almost four hours as I lost service. Eventually they found me and that's when they gave me their number at last. They don't get many boxes though in that part of the route. Then there's what Jim called the ghost town. It's not really a town per se but

more of the secluded homes like the previous area but these guys are closer to the road and they're the ones who live in the forest I mentioned above. He called it the ghost town for a good reason. These people are either never home as most of them are snowbirds or the ones who are are very creepy and there are a few homes out there that are usually vacant more snowbirds that have a lot going on but the stories i'm about to tell you there are three homes involved two of them are in the ghost town the other one takes place in the outskirt of Zaria. The last one is the worst, so I'm saving it for last. There's more, honestly, but these are by far the most interesting as far as history and the stuff that's happened. I'm telling them in order of intensity.

By that I mean I start with the tamest and move up as they get a bit more intense. Whether by their history or what happens there. I'll give each house a name here since I pretty much do it work anyway. It's how I remember their addresses without really having to think about it. Real names have been changed for my customers' privacy. 1. The Bailey Cluster The Bailey Cluster is a grouping of homes in the ghost town that belongs to a single family with the name of Bailey.

The mailboxes are all nestled together on the side of the road against some of those large bushes in the forest. Just before the mailboxes there are four total is a small dirt road that leads up to their property. The whole road has to be about four feet across. That's how it feels because when you're driving up the bushes on either side will scrape the side of the car. I've gotten more than a few scratches because of them. I've asked them to trim down the bushes but they never do so I just gave up. When you get to the property you're met with a large six foot tall rusted iron gate with the name Bailey fashioned out of the bent up horseshoes and pipes welded to the top of it. As a general rule, if a gate is shut, we are never encouraged to try and open it to drive in. We aren't really supposed to walk in if it's shut either unless the customer has told us it's okay.

For the Baileys, I get out and walk their parcels through the gate and up to the first house, which isn't far from the gate. I have to state now I've never once met these people in person. I've spoken to them on the phone and I've been on their property but I have never once seen hide nor hair of any of them. There are a total of 10 people at the address and their mail is split up as if their homes are in like a trailer park. For example, one of them gets their mail at 1111 Ghost Town Road, mobile number 1, Little Desert Town, state 88888, and the other will get it at mobile number 2, number 3, or number 4. There are four people in number 1, two in number 2, one person number 3, and the others are all in number four.

Every time I bring them a parcel, I leave it at the first house. Once you walk through their gate, you have to walk uphill a bit. You can see the teal green roof of the first house peeking up over the hill as you walk, and when you get closer, it becomes apparent why the place is so unsettling. Clowns. These people love clowns. There are clown statues, paintings, mobiles, wind chimes, you name it, it has a freaking clown face on it. They even have clown dolls scattered around the place. None of them look nice. They're all threadbare and worn out from sitting in the hot desert sun all the time. I'm pretty sure animals have made homes

and some of them. There are a few that are big enough to house a small family of squirrels. Now I know this isn't paranormal, yet I'm getting there I promise, but you have to admit that's more than a little odd. The first house is a simple single wide mobile with a bright teal-green painted roof. The windows all have clown decals in them. Little clown faces that look like they're straight out of a vintage coloring book, hand-colored and everything. At one end of the place is the porch. Not too big. Juts out about six or seven feet.

There's a small awning with dozens of clown wind chimes and sun catchers hanging from it, almost making a curtain out of them they're so clustered together. On the porch is a rocking chair. This thing is painted like a clown. The curve rockers are painted red, the legs that attach them to the chair are yellow with red polka dots. The seat and arms are white and the back is white with three big red dots painted on it like puff balls on a clown shirt. The top part of the back has a clown face on it. Put it all together and it's a nightmare. This chair is where I'm asked to leave parcels and I do but I'll never forget the first time I left them there. There were four boxes for them, one for number one and the rest for number three. I called ahead of time to let them know I'd be

out there in about three hours. Since they're towards the end of the route it takes longer to get to them. I'm always told by who I assume is the matriarch to leave them all on that chair. I'd never been up to their property at this point. I'd been delivering about a month but only ever had mail in small parcels that fit in the box for them. So when I went up there for the first time seeing their little clown cluster was a bit nerve-wracking. I'm terrified of clowns. I have been since I was a child but that's a story for another time as to why. I crept up to that first house and peered around the place.

It so isolated and odd, I felt like every single clown around me was watching me. I placed the boxes on the chair in a neat little pile and settled the chair to stop it from rocking so the boxes wouldn't fall off. Once it was still, I turned and hastily tried to leave. It was the creaking that stopped me. I froze and listened knowing full well what it was. I turned and sure as heck that chair was rocking and not just a little but enough to knock one of the boxes onto the porch. It was like someone had deliberately pulled it all the way back and thrust it forward to rock as violently as possible. I didn't hesitate, I just ran. I'm not staying after that. Another time I had a parcel for them,

I almost wrote it up out of protest, but I called and again was asked to leave it on the chair. This is the time I noticed that it felt like no one was there. I had been there a dozen times by then. I remember standing at the top of the hill by the gate just peering around me like, where is everyone? According to their mail, there are at least a few children that live there, and when I was there that day, it was the middle of summer. Why weren't the kids home playing outside? Why didn't I ever see anyone there? The second and third houses are a bit far away from the first house. It'd be about a five minute walk I think to get to them but you can see them pretty well. Their curtains are always open but I never see anyone inside. The fourth house is furthest away

at the top of a small hill. They have a big picture window facing the gate. It too always has the curtains open but I never see anyone there. Weirdest of all their vehicles are always there. They never move. There are two trucks, an SUV, all relatively newish, oldest I think is a 2012, and an old station wagon. The wagon looks run down but the others look like they're taken care of, always clean. This other time I had a parcel and noticed no one is ever around. I got curious and phoned the woman, I always do when bringing parcels. I figured I'd just tell her I was making sure someone would be back soon to get the parcel as there's a lot of theft out there. There usually is on more secluded routes. You'd be surprised how much more common it is out there than in the city. I heard a phone

ringing in the first house beside me. If I'm on the porch I can peek into the window just behind the evil rocking chair. It was close. The phone that was ringing, I mean, and I wanted to see someone pick it up. I squeezed myself behind the chair and looked in. I'd never looked inside before. More clowns, of course, and some clown-themed throws on the couch and pillows, too. On a side table, clearly visible from the window, I could see the cell phone lit up with

the mail lady as the caller ID. No one answered but when I left she called me back. I had been gone about five minutes when she did. I told her I just wanted to be sure someone was home and she said someone is always here. According to Jim, he never saw anyone there either. The third and final most interesting thing to ever happen at the Bailey cluster was just last month. I got a very large box for them, one I needed a dolly for. I called before I even left the post office to let them know and the lady I always speak to told me she'd have her oldest son help me. I thought finally I'll get to meet one of them. This ought to be good, right? Well, I get there. It's my last package and I was free to breeze through the final 50 or so boxes I have after

them. I have a total of 670 boxes on my route by the way. I go to the back, pull out the dolly, slide the box out onto it and start dragging it up to the gate. I look around and no one to meet me of course. The lady told me he'd be waiting for me on the porch of the first house and when he saw me he'd come down and help. You can see the gate from the porch pretty well but I can never really see my car from it so I honked just in case he couldn't see me either. No one came down. I waited for about five minutes before saying screw it I'm taking it up. I struggled up that hill with it. I don't know what it was in that box but I'm pretty sure it weighed like 75 pounds. The post office has a 70 pound weight limit that a lot of companies try to stretch to 75 or 80.

Usually they'll go to UPS, but sometimes they slip through the cracks and come to us. I get to the first house and of course no one is there. I look around. As usual, I'm all alone with a bunch of clown dolls gaping at me. I wiggle the box up the stairs in the dolly and lean it against the railing next to the rocking chair. It's way too big to sit on it and head down to my car. That's when I hear, Thank you. from behind me.

It's a man's voice. I assumed it was the son who was supposed to help me I quickly run back up the hill and not only is there no one there but the box is gone from the porch this isn't like the span of 10 seconds I wasn't even down the hill all the way it doesn't take that long to walk back down I looked in the window and everything and didn't see a soul. I hate going to the Bailey Cluster and I ended up going there a lot. Number 2. The Blood House. This place is the one that gives me the most creeps. While I was training, Jim told me about this place. This is another snowbird place where the people only live there between October and March. They were there when I started and they came back at the beginning of this month.

Super nice couple, I really like them, but I don't have a clue why they live here. Jim told me that back in the early 90s, when he first started working at the post office, the guy who used to do the route before him told him the story. According to him, there was a family of five that lived there. All of them were absolutely crazy. The mom had schizophrenia and would apparently abuse the kids because of the voices. The father was no better. He was a worthless drunk who just sat by while his crazy wife hurt the kids. One night, the eldest child,

who was 18 and finally fed up with how they were raised, tried to escape with his siblings. The mother, of course, tried to stop them and the kid finally snapped. He murdered his parents and painted the walls with their blood. The incident changed him and while his siblings escaped, he stayed in the house with his parents' corpses until he ended up slitting his own throat and tried painting the floor in his own blood before succumbing to the blood loss and dying himself. They weren't found for months. The place was cleared out, torn down, and rebuilt, and the guy who built the new house was compelled to paint the house red. It's not obnoxiously red, but it's too red if that makes sense. There's no long driveway up to this place. It sits right on the road at the end of the ghost town.

The end is literally a dead-end end road and they're right there at the tail end of where signs tell you to turn around. The current owners, we'll call them Mr. and Mrs. Nice because they're nice and I'm not that creative at the moment, have told me countless horror stories about living there. Sometimes I think they get some sort of sick thrill out of it. When they're not there I forward everything but I have to pass their house to get to the turnaround spot and their neighbors always have mail so I'll go buy them no matter what. I've seen some really weird stuff out there but every time I pass the blood house I just get this awful feeling of dread. Whenever I did deliver packages to them I step

out of the car and just standing at the edge of the driveway feels like standing at the precipice of a cliff. I feel like stepping onto their property is like jumping off to my death. It's terribly unsettling. I honestly don't know how they stay there for as long as they do. I mean, they leave for six months out of the year, so I guess for them it might not be too bad but if I feel that way just delivering packages once in a while I don't know it just doesn't make sense to me. Mrs. Nice told me to always watch the third window from the left because that's where the son who went mad likes to sit. She calls him Tommy even though that wasn't his real name, she feels it suits him. She talks about him like

he's her own son. I think she pities him. She believes his soul is trapped there because of all the terrible things that happened to him. When she first told me, my reaction was, no thanks. But one day, the temptation got the best of me and I looked. When you're at their mailbox, you can see into their windows. The house is a long one-story place with six windows, three on either side of the small front door. Of course the house is red but the trim and door are all white. The window in question is the one that sits right next to the front door on the left. Mrs. Nice told me that's the front guest room so I looked and I couldn't believe my eyes I didn't see a full-bodied apparition or anything like that but I definitely saw a face and it looks

so anguished like you know the happy and sad mass that you see for drama and theater. It looked like the sad mask, just pained. I blinked and the face was suddenly gone and the curtain, which was open, had been closed. Another time I walked up to the house to put a package by the door. The Nices weren't home that day. The truck was gone, so I decided I would put the package around the back and leave a note in their box to let them know since I didn't have a number for them at the time. When I rocked around the back, I put the package over the small fence in their backyard. Once I did, I turned and I felt myself run into someone. But there wasn't anything in front of me, nothing but air. But I swear I felt something was in front of me. I didn't want to move forward.

It was like an invisible wall had erected before me and while I couldn't see it I knew that if I went any further I'd get hurt. It just felt oppressive and strange. I actually backed up into the house and slid along the wall all the way to the front and whatever invisible force was there I felt like it followed me. I actually began to cry because I felt like there was a person just pressing up against me as I moved like they were trying to force me back. Once I hit the edge of the house I ran. I ran to my car and sped away. I cried most of the way back because it was just so I don't know what else to say but terrifying. When I told Mrs. Nice about it next time I saw her she said Tommy likes to do that.

He tries to intimidate people. He does it to Mr. Nice all the time apparently. Around the third week after the Nices left for their house, I passed the house and swore I saw someone standing at the mailbox, but it wasn't solid. It was like a blurred outline of a person when I got closer. As I passed, the head seemed to turn with me as I drove, watching me. I don't like passing the house. I'm glad they're back for the winter. It makes me feel a bit more at ease to know they're there, but I still don't like the idea of delivering packages to them. I do not want to be anywhere near Tommy. And of course, I saved the worst place for last. Number three.

The Hills Have Eyes house. I hate this house. This is the one that isn't in the ghost town. This is in the section before it, the outskirters. These are the homes that are so scattered we usually won't bring parcels out for them because they're so far away. But this house is an exception because it's less than a mile from the cluster of boxes they get their mail at. These people are never home. Jim told me to never call them. They're apparently very rude and very hostile. He instructed me to just go to their gate, if they have a parcel,

always bring the mail with it or they'll call and complain. Leave the parcel in the basket that hangs on their fence with their mail in a rubber band and leave. He said to never linger there. He told me that if I did, they'd get hostile. I do as I'm told but thankfully they've almost never been home. But something is. I know that sounds so cheesy but it's true. I don't know the history of the place itself. Just that these people were apparently the world's biggest jerks. Two men live there.

Brothers from which him told me. They run a small chicken farm and bring their eggs to the feed store in town to sell all the time. It's not uncommon to see their chickens roaming around on the road leading up to the house. The road itself is barely a road. It's more like a bumpy little walking trail but it's the only way to get there. And I know I said it already but god I hate going there. I call it the Hills Have Eyes house because it's settled between two large hills and from far away, the hills look like eyes and the house looks like a mouth. That and the way this place looks, it looks like something out of the movie The Hills Have Eyes. There's butchering equipment everywhere.

Bloody knives and cleavers and chains and hooks. They've got cows too, but I think they've kept the meat for themselves. The smell is just atrocious. It always smells like death. To be honest it wouldn't shock me if these guys did some terrible things out there and only butchered cows when they did it to make excuses for the stench of death. Every single time I go out there something happens. I've been out there six times to deliver parcels, so I will recount each incident.

The first time was about three months after I started delivering. I did as I was told, wrapped the mail in a rubber band and headed out to the house. Takes a good three or four minutes. It's around a bend, and that's when you see the other two hills that the house sits between. The main house has a fence around it with a gate but the whole property has an outer fence with no gate that I go through. Once you're up against the gate the whole place looks a lot smaller than it is because it's full of junk. All the butchering stuff, random metal sculptures, a bunch of worn out furniture, garbage, a few cow skulls here and there, and then the house itself. The house is just a small trailer that's been cemented into the ground so it's no longer mobile. A makeshift ramp porch thing sits against the door and leads

to a side gate. This is where the basket for packages is. All around this gated area are coops and other fenced areas for the animals. It's smelly and weird and creepy all around there. I just tossed the box and mail into the basket and turned to leave. I didn't want to stay at all. When I got into the car I looked in my rear view mirror and swear I saw a man standing behind my car but when I poked my head out to ask him to move there was no one there. Of course I didn't stay another second. The second incident was closer to the evening. It was another super heavy day and I did not want to go out there. As I was approaching I saw something standing at the window of the house. I assumed it was one of them trying to see who was

coming. I have car magnets on my car that all say USPS on them so people know who I am. I figured he'd see them and be more at ease knowing a package was coming and not some random weirdo. But as I approach, the figure in the window seemed to distort and eventually vanish entirely. I did not want to get out of the car. I just wanted to stay there and toss the parcel and mail out the window. After working up the courage, I sped from the car to the basket back and I went to leave. As I was getting into the car, I heard this loud, raucous laughter. It sounded like it was right next to my car, like someone was standing beside me and just bellowing

laughter. I prayed I wouldn't have to come back for a while. Two months later I had to go back with four big boxes for them. This time it was a pretty light day. I was breezing through delivery pretty quickly so I was happy about that. They're about in the middle of the route so they're like a halfway point to me. I went to the house and was greeted by a large bull in the yard. I'm not usually nervous around animals but a bull isn't something you want to mess around with. He was standing just a few feet away from the fence with a basket so I just patiently waited to see if he'd move. I didn't want to honk lest the angry idiot who lived there just happened to be home and come out to yell at me or something. I didn't want to honk lest the angry idiot who lived there just happened to be

home and come out to yell at me or something. I didn't want to shoo him because honestly I didn't think it'd work. All of a sudden this bull just moves and freaks out thrashing about like someone was riding him. He came dangerously close to my car before running off into an area where the fences are. Then a whole chorus of moose erupted from that area and it was just a cacophony of noise. I grabbed the boxes and got them to the fence as fast as I could. I didn't know what spooked the bull. I didn't care. I just wanted to leave. I didn't see anything this time but I was afraid of the bull coming back and tearing up my car or even goring me in the process. The fourth incident is honestly not the worst but

still unsettling. I had never had packages so small that it fit in the box for them. Honestly, I almost said screw it and shoved it in the mailbox. I should have, but I didn't want them to call and complain. They hadn't on me thus far and I wanted to keep it that way, so I reluctantly headed to the house with a package in their mail. When I got there, a single dead chicken was hanging from the awning above the porch. Weird, but honestly it wasn't surprising. Not as surprising as the giant dressed cow hanging from the pole on the other side of the yard. I didn't notice that until I was putting the package in the basket. It's obscured by a tree when driving up to the place. As I'm walking back to the car, the chicken and the cow both start to suddenly swing.

It's not windy, and even if it was, one of these things is a freaking cow. I don't think a light breeze is going to push a cow. They're swinging back and forth almost in tandem, and I just went, nope, and left. I wasn't going to stay for the rest of that show. The fifth time was two weeks ago. It had been quite a while since I went out there and I had vainly hoped that I wouldn't have to go back for longer but oh well. The holidays are starting, everyone is getting stuff. I get out there with three boxes and for the first time I see a living breathing

person in the window. Jim told me one of the brothers was in a wheelchair. This was that brother. He was bald with a weird tribal tattoo across where I believe his hairline used to be, just sitting in the window staring at me. I waved out of curiosity and of course he didn't wave back. First time either of us had ever laid eyes on one another but I don't know what I expected them to do. Smile and wave back. I knew well that these guys didn't have a happy bone in their body. I noticed as I put the parcels in the basket that he wasn't looking at me but something behind me. I looked and I saw someone walking behind one of the chicken coops. I looked back at the brother in the window and he kind of gave me a grumpy sort of you saw that right kind of look and nodded toward the coop. I just kind of slowly

nodded and went back to the car. He watched me back out and as I was turning back onto the road I saw him leave the window and draw the curtain closed. The last time was actually yesterday and thus far the freakiest thing next to the bowl. I was having a typical holiday season Monday. Very heavy day with lots of mail and lots of parcels. And of course, they had to have a whopping five parcels. I get out there at about 4pm or so and I'm already exhausted. Halfway done, knowing I'm not going to be home until about 7. It takes

a good 45 minutes to get back to the post office and another 10 to unload and finish my day. I know I won't finish the route until about 6 or so so I'm just trying to hurry. Going out to this place doesn't help in making good time. So I get out there, get out, put some of the boxes in the basket and the others below it and go to leave. Suddenly I feel a hard tug on my shirt that pulls me back and I fall on my butt in the dirt. I hit my head on the edge of the trailer and swear to myself before getting up. I thought I maybe just caught my shirt on something but as I get further away I feel another hard tug and I fall back again. This time I know I didn't catch on anything because I was about two feet from the fence on my left and there was nothing on my right and nothing directly

behind me. I scramble up and try to run and I pull hard as I feel another tug and I hear that god-awful laugh again. I didn't look back. I left. I still talk to Jim every now and then and when I tell him about those incidents he goes, oh yeah, that place is haunted. More so than some of the others I think. In Jim's opinion the whole route is cursed. There are, as I said, other places out there where weird stuff happens, but these are the ones that I find the freakiest. After yesterday's little incident at the Hills Have Eyes house, I felt like I wanted to share these stories with someone other than my husband. Either way, I'm in a contract now,

so if this is the best of the last seven months, I'm sure I'll have way more after these ten years are over. The following story took place while I attended an all-male military boarding school in 2004. At age 14, my parents sent me to a military school in Virginia for bad behavior. Cadets stayed at the school throughout the school year except for a few weekends and holiday leaves. The school opened in 1898. Many buildings on the campus have been around for over a hundred years like the barracks I slept in, though several buildings throughout

the years have burned down, like once such occurrence when an accidental fire burnt down the Delta Company barracks in 1924. The academic building was built around 1915. It was two stories tall with the second floor being full of classrooms, but my experience took place on the first floor which featured a handful of offices for facility officers, a computer lab, and a large room that had two large swinging doors that opened into a study hall meant to accommodate roughly 75 students at any given time. One aspect of my new life as a cadet was called guard duty. Every day, three cadets were randomly selected to be on guard duty. Guards had to wake up an hour earlier than everyone else at 5am. You'd wake up, get dressed

in uniform, and meet the other two guards at the academic hall. Once the guards got to the building, they were supposed to do a walkthrough on both floors to make sure nothing was out of place and check that nobody was inside. After the walkthrough you'd sit by the phone in the first floor hallway and take calls for anyone happening to call in. I had been at the boarding school for a few months when I was assigned to my first guard duty. The next morning I woke up early and got dressed as quietly as possible to avoid waking my roommate. It was pouring outside so I put my rain jacket on on top of my uniform and walked through the dark to the academic building.

Usually guards would meet up outside the building but since it was raining hard I decided to go inside by myself. I waited inside the dark building for the other guards to show up. After about 10 minutes I started to get worried because they still had not shown up and I was concerned that a facility officer might come early and see that I had not done my job. So I walked up the stairs and checked every classroom and the creepy bathroom that looked like it hadn't been updated since the 1940s. Nothing was at a place so I made my way downstairs to check the office's study hall and other rooms. I thoroughly opened every door and walked through every room. Once again, nothing was out of place and no one was inside. Everything seemed in good order in the dark building so I sat down in the hallway next to the phone.

After a few minutes I felt the weirdest sensation. The building had begun to shake softly. I could feel the vibrations in my body and see the small table next to me shake ever so much I sat there completely frightened by whatever was occurring in front of my eyes the rumbling abruptly stopped a few moments later and I took a big sigh of relief but then I started hearing noises from the study hall room, the doors to which were only 10 feet away from me. It started off barely legible and I couldn't tell what I was hearing from the room. Though it seemed like it was getting louder and soon I started to hear what sounded like whispering.

It kept getting louder and louder until I could hear what sounded like dozens and dozens of voices inside the room. After a few moments I could hear what they were saying but it was as if many conversations were taking place all at once in a chaotic sense. I could hear laughter and comments like, pass me the answer to the math homework. This was a room that I'd just been in a short while ago and there was no other entrance into it other than the swinging doors I was sitting near. It had been completely empty short of all the desks and other items throughout the room but now I was hearing what I can only describe as a room full of voices. I sat there paralyzed with fear while hearing all of this. Then I began to also hear a tapping noise coming from the room. It sounded almost as if someone was hitting a

ruler against the desk. The tapping sound began to move around the room while all the other voices continued. Suddenly the tapping stopped, but what was so much worse, I heard something scream. Sit down and shut up, it's study time! It was incredibly loud and unmistakable like an instructor was in there screaming at a room full of cadets. As soon as whomever or whatever finished screaming, the study hall felt completely silent. I sat in my chair wanting to bolt out of the building but I was too scared to move. Plus I'd have to pass by the doorway to the study hall to get out of the building. My heart was pounding in my chest and I was breathing incredibly hard. I was terrified that whatever was in that room would realize that I was there.

Then the building softly began to shake again, almost as if whatever was taking place was coming to an end. A few minutes passed as I sat there in my chair in silence. I couldn't hear anything anymore coming from the study hall and I began to feel slightly better about circumstances though I still had not built up the nerves to make a run for it. But then the building started to shake again and I could hear the ruler tapping noise starting up again in the room. This time it was clear that it was making its way to the door that led to me. It was moving fast and growing louder. It had almost gotten to the swinging doors. I sprang up. Without thinking, my survival instincts kicked in and I sprinted out of the building as fast as I've ever run before. Now outside, I made my way through the dark back to my barracks. Just as i was getting near the barracks one of the guards was sleepily walking out of the barracks the other students were all

still fast asleep i calmed my nerves and walked up to him he hadn't seen me running in the rain and for some reason i didn't tell him what i had experienced i walked with him back to the academic building as he explained how he had overslept. We walked inside and he made a beeline to the study hall room, opened the swinging doors, walked in, and tossed his backpack onto his assigned desk. I followed him inside apprehensively. The room was still empty. I'll start off by saying no, this isn't my story. But it was such a crazy encounter that I have since asked each of my friends through the years to recount the events.

This happened around the year 2000. About a year after this took place I started dating one of these friends and that's when I first heard about this dog-wolf story. I have since asked each friend over the years and miles apart and they all remember the same encounter. Before my ex was even my boyfriend, let's call him Jay, he and our other friends were about 17 to 18 years old. At that age I remember it being an adventure to find a place to smoke. Let's hike to X and Puff. The good old days when we got away from parents and planned a day around smoking. It was Jay and his best friend B and their girlfriends S and M. The four of them decided to drive to Mount Pisgah, a beautiful wooded area

outside of Eugene, Oregon. It's more of a hill, but it's nature in its prime for sure. I've been out there many times growing up and I know exactly what trail they were on, the main one that connects the parking lot to the river. They had driven in B's little white sedan, parked in the parking lot and then walked to the river. On the way to the river from the lot, there is a very small bridge that crosses a small creek. The group spent the day out there, swimming and puffing, puffing and swimming, just being typical Oregonian teens. I can imagine that hunger is what drove them to go home after a few hours as the sun began to set. Either activity alone is bound to get someone hungry,

let alone both. So they walked along the well-worn main dirt path to the parking lot. This path has since been paved, according to Google Maps. It doesn't take but 20 minutes or so for them to get back to the little footbridge by the parking lot that they had crossed when they hiked in. When they reached the small footbridge near the parking lot, B looked out into the vast field between them and the wooded mountain and noticed a huge dog near the tree line about a hundred yards away. They all later described it as the biggest dog they'd ever seen. The dog was just sitting there, not looking scary, just looking like a humongous friendly dog. It was starting to get

dark but M and J's descriptions and the drawing she did for me later in 2005, it was very shaggy and furry. I may even still have that notebook where she drew the dog thing, I'll have to find it and post it. My friends continued to walk across the small wooden bridge and one of the girls screamed. The big dog was now on its hind legs, standing much closer than when they had seen it just a couple of seconds earlier. It had traversed most of the large field in the seconds it took them to get across this ten foot long bridge. Whatever this thing was, it was fast, quiet, and stealthy. My four friends ran to the car and they had the classic cliche, I can't get the key in because B was fumbling madly for the keys. At this point, the dog was standing on its legs at the very edge of the parking lot, looking at them. Still had the dog face, still had the dog body, standing up. They never saw it walking on all four or just two.

It was like every time they looked up it was just standing there closer. As Jay had said every time they looked up he was closer but not moving. All of them recounted how surreal it was to see a dog standing on its hind legs. I don't know if it ran for a few ticks and then stood up again at intervals in the field, but that's the way they described it. Many times I asked them, are you sure it wasn't a bear? No, it definitely was a dog standing on its hind legs, a big dog that was stalking them. This is in Lane County, Oregon in the year 2000. There are few if any bears out there. It would be odd, but then again I wasn't there. The kids got into the car and sped off, leaving this beast to its own business.

I've never had a reason to doubt any of their stories. In fact, S doesn't like to talk about the incident at all because it was too terrifying for her to recall. I have been hesitant on posting any story mainly due to the fact that I don't want anyone ever thinking that I or the person the story is about is crazy. Although saying this actually happened sounds very cliche but I can assure you the following stories are true. Now before I begin the story just for a bit of background I am an intern for a church that does work on a Navajo reservation site helping the community on people's homes like roofing repair, repainting, and interior fixing. 8 to 5, with good pay and nice people, so overall I'm pretty happy with this.

And as a bit of a disclaimer, I'm not trying to offend Navajo tradition in any way. This is just a first-hand story on what is currently happening on my trip. Over the past two months of this internship, I had begun to grow fairly close with some of the residents on the reservation. One lady in particular that I got to know pretty well was the superstitious type. Like said, never be outside at night or other random seeming things to me like that, but the biggest taboo I knew to never mention, mainly because it was told by my superiors, was Navajo folklore like skinwalkers. However, one day it was very different in the sense that the question was just

burning within me. I was on my lunch break after wrapping up painting parts of her house and she sits next to me on her porch and we talk for a while but I finally feel comfortable enough to ask her about any folklore about werewolves or anything of that sorts. I didn't really expect a response. I thought maybe she'd quickly say no then change the topic but if anything I was more scared I may offend her. But to my surprise she turns her head looking toward the outside scenery, hesitates but then says, Yes, I know some and I've experienced some too. She proceeded to tell me a description on the apparent equivalent to a werewolf. To paraphrase, she said,

Werewolves look like normal people but masked in white paint covering their face, arms, and chest. Their whole body as white as a corpse, covered with black symbols, quite possibly related to devil worshipping. More specifically, they are gravediggers and necromancers as well. They dig up bodies only to steal jewelry, although they may perform other acts to corpses as she quickly stayed away from going into too much detail about that part. Werewolves also get their power from the devil. That is how they are able to possess such supernatural strength and endurance. I was surprised to hear this, although I figured werewolves wouldn't look anything like that in Twilight or Scooby-Doo, although deep down, even though she sounded a bit crazy.

Before I could ask more questions about these werewolves, she began to tell me her own interaction with these supernatural beasts and her story still gives me chills. She explained that one day her and her husband were driving on the curvy roads alongside the mountains, only to find a woman with her face covered by her hands and was kneeling in the middle of the road appearing as though she was crying. The woman looks up towards the car's headlights to reveal the very same white paint and sacrificial symbols mentioned previously. Her husband honked his horn and quickly slams on the brakes only to be too late and hears the loud cracking

sound of the woman's bones and the splash of blood all over the windshield. Once her and her husband stop the car safely and process what had just happened, they quickly run over to the spot where they hit the woman. However, once they reached the spot, there was no body, but not only that, there was no trace of blood either. Just as a side note, this part of the reservation has some cliffs, but it was relatively flat land so it would be obvious to tell where someone is, especially if they got hit by a car. Puzzled by what the possible explanation could be for this occurrence, her and her husband drove back home trying to neglect the thought that they had just witnessed a werewolf. However, being the non-paranormal believers they were at the time, they tried to just close this occurrence off as them just losing their minds. As interesting as her story was, this got me thinking. Is it possible

for this werewolf story to be true? Or is this her own way of describing a skinwalker or other supernatural phenomenon because she didn't think I knew what a skinwalker was? This question kept circling through my head. So as you could expect, the following nights made it harder for me to sleep comfortably. And because of that, during the work days, I would feel more and more mentally drained, almost paranoid. At the end of the week around six I was sitting in the car driving back to the church site and was in the mental state of mind where I was half awake and half asleep. My buddy was driving and claimed that he wanted to pull over at the gas station that was near

the church to grab a couple of snacks to munch on during our debrief time in our cabin. Since I was too tired to argue, I said fine and laid my face against the window and tried to doze off while waiting for my friend. However, I had the weirdest feeling that I was being watched, so naturally I opened my eyes and looked out the window. I saw nothing. However, when I turned my head out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a white figure, just as the woman described previously. I looked back and saw nothing was there, but I swear I saw something. Since it was beginning to get dark outside, I quickly sat up in my seat to readjust my vision, but when I looked back out the window, it was almost as

though the figure had vanished. Perplexed I stepped outside the car and looked around but there was no trace of a creature even existing. My buddy comes back to the car and questions what the heck I was doing. Debating on whether or not I should tell him I decided to just say oh I'm just getting some fresh air let's head out. The following days have been even worse for me. My mood is getting worse, I'm feeling way more paranoid that something is out there and at night I can almost swear that I hear screams in the far distance. Everything outside just looks a hundred times scarier too because there is barely any outside light besides the moonlight so everything is more of an exaggerated appearance. But believe me I know I sound crazy but the worst part is that if I tell

anyone they'll think I'm crazy too. So I have been debating whether or not I actually saw the werewolf that the lady described or if it was just my tired eyes playing tricks on me. I hope someone can find some sort of answer to this werewolf mystery. Also, if you have any similar paranormal stories like this, please share. I'm trying my best to become more aware about the paranormal. If I find anything, I'll give my future updates about any more encounters or odd discoveries. It all started a couple of months ago after we moved into our new house. To get some more details in, I live with my stepfather, my little brother, and our dog Cosmo.

We moved into an old house that is on a little gravel road with three other houses. There was a road on one side of the house and miles of wood on the other side. When I say it was an old house I mean it was old from the 1800s and you can hear when someone walks around or opens a door. I can't remember the exact date but I can remember the time it was 2am. I was up watching anime, I was home alone with my little brother and my dog and they were sleeping upstairs and they hadn't moved and if they had I could have heard it. Suddenly I go to the bathroom and I was going towards my door when I hear someone running in the living room on the other side of the door. It shocked me so I stopped and I tried not to react or scream as it kept going back and forth.

I say it because it didn't run normally. It sounded like someone was running on all fours but it still was weird. It kept going for hours day in and day out for weeks and I felt like it wouldn't stop but one night was different. I couldn't hear it running around at all, there were no sounds coming from the living room. It took me all my energy to go into the living room and when I did I heard the running again but this time it came right for me and stopped right in front of me. I froze. I have been really sensitive about the paranormal and I have tried some things but I have a way of feeling them and that's with my feet. If someone was on the same floor as me I can feel their feet. I know it sounds strange but with this thing I could feel its feet and hands on the floor right in front of me because I froze.

This time I could feel its eyes and that has never happened to me before. After I felt its eyes gazing into me, I passed out. That was in 2016 and I still hear, feel and see it. Along the years I have gotten used to it and I have seen it a lot of times. It's hard to describe but I'll try. It's in a permanent bridge like the move that a girl learns in gym class but his feet and hands are turned towards me and his head is turned to the side and he doesn't have a jaw. I get this weird chill every time he is close. He's all black like a shadow. Yes, I've said him instead of it,

but that's because that's what he feels like. A male presence. I have lived with him for a long time now, and I'm the only one that can see or feel him. I even had a clairvoyant to come and see if she could help me but she couldn't feel him either. He doesn't do anything else other than running around on the other side of my door, always in the room that is beside my door which is always the living room. I'm not scared of him.

He doesn't say anything and he only attacks me in my dreams. The only thing that he does while I'm awake is that every time he is close to me I just want to scream and feel like I'm about to shake. I don't know what he is or what he wants but he will not leave me alone. If anyone can say what he is then please tell me so I can see if I can get some peace. feedback from the community, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And join my Discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data,

located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you again soon.