The Lets Read Podcast - 97: Episode 086 | MySpace & Home Alone Stories | 22 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Welcome to the eighty-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 MySpace, Being Home Alone, & A Man Hiding In The Bushes... 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 & Audio Remastering: Simon de Beer https://www.instagram.com/simon_db98/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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Until May 31st, save up to $ always there, helping you with Toyo tires you can trust. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Like Toyo's open country family of tires. Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca This happened when I was 15. I'm 27 for a little context on how long it's kind of lingered in my mind as a really strange close call. I've been kidnapped before and I've had some really weird things happen but this incident just struck me as strange and always had me wondering. I got into a fight with a friend of mine and ended

up leaving the car and going into Walmart. I had been talking to two guys that were friends on MySpace and I hit them up. Note that these guys are obvious creeps, being in their 20s and talking to some sophomore in high school. My stupid self had no red flags come up. I asked these dudes to pick me up and chill and they say they're on the way. I had never met either of them before. The car pulls up and I see there is no one in the front seat. Okay, just the one guy I guess. Hop in the front seat. Immediately startled because the main guy I was talking with was in fact there, just in the seat behind me. I got a weird vibe but I got out of the

car and jumped into his seat as he scooted over to the middle. Seems strange but I just figured he wanted me to sit back there with him. We agree to go to a girlfriend of mine's house to smoke. I grew up in Las Vegas and there is a huge freeway that runs through the desert and makes a giant loop around the city called the 215. We take that. As we are driving I try to chat. A lot of silence, especially from the guy driving. Can't recall him saying anything. Then the driver turns on opera music. He turns it up full blast, just sitting there in complete silence. It was painfully loud and drowned out any talking. I was pretty weirded out but we made it to my friend's house after a long drive and kind of

tried to put it to the back of my mind. As we sat with her and her boyfriend taking rips, I became more and more paranoid. The guys were still quiet and weird and I don't remember most of the awkward conversation they made, as little as there was. It was mostly me, her, and her boyfriend talking. As we left, I got a strange feeling I might die that night. I looked at my friend, and I was so out of it I was trying to give her hints that I was scared. I said, Okay, well, if I never see you again, I love you. She laughs and says, Of course I'll see you again. I panic a little and text my dad nothing but their license plate number. When I read it the next day, his text just said, I don't know what this means. We're driving on this new desert freeway around

the city and I'm in the back seat. I'm really high beyond belief and the guy next to me in the middle seat is just staring at me. I can't bring myself to look at him and just sit there, trying to convince myself to stop being weird. I'm thinking, you're high, just do it, just kiss the guy. I began to and the friend starts blaring this freaking opera music again. We're out in the middle of nowhere and I'm making out with this guy in his 20s. We're about 15 miles from where I was saying to drop me off. All of a sudden, on this lonely desert highway, we pull off on a lonely desert road. I immediately begin to flip out. I start screaming and yelling and pushing the guy off of me and asking where he thinks he's going. He just responds, oh, wrong exit, and they begin to try to calm me down. Wrong exit. There's nothing for miles in any direction.

The opera music continues to blare. They eventually drop me off at the same Walmart in the middle of the night. I call my mom and am picked up and grounded. Didn't really care. They were bartenders and as long as you're in the door by one in the morning, no one knows the difference. I begin to convince myself that I was just high and it wasn't really a big deal. These guys were just weird and I was just really paranoid. So they eventually hit me up on MySpace again and I hang out with them. Me and my friend Sarah meet them at a park. She was 17 and had a car so she drove.

I wanted to smoke and they had some but she declined. Both her parents were cops and she wouldn't smoke and drive. I take a hit and I think they were either counting on me being alone or her doing the same because I was definitely drugged and I'm very well versed in basically anything you can think of now although I will say I'm about five years clean of anything hard. I just have a drink or two after work these days. But immediately I felt strange, incredibly strange. I was drooling and having some serious trouble speaking or walking. Sarah got me out of the car and began to try to walk me to hers down a short street. I was walking like my legs were stuck in mud. I kept laying on the sidewalk and when I

would close my eyes I was seeing patterns of tiny ponies in red and blue. She kept having to get me up and try to walk me to the car. My guess is what should have taken a minute or two lasted for at least a half hour. I was completely incapacitated. We eventually made it to her car. We met a large group of friends at a gas station but I still couldn't move really. I was looking at myself in the passenger mirror and people were gathering around and giggling. What's wrong with Katie? Someone asked. We eventually ended up at a friend's apartment where my close friend Taylor sat with me while I laid on the carpet. I still couldn't really talk or move but he kept saying I drank and smoked just like him to people as I laid there, completely terrified. I took one hit off that thing. What really messes me up is I

told the entire thing to my brother who was really active on sites like Tumblr and Reddit and all those kind of social media sites and years later he said this to me. You remember that story you told me about the guys with the opera music? I was reading online and I read an almost identical story. These guys are doing the same thing, blaring opera music and trying to drive her into the middle of nowhere. They begin to have their way with her and she ends up kicking one of them in the nose and breaking it. She just took off running into the night. It gave me chills the similarities man. Several years later I met my husband online.

My brother came with me to pick him up from the airport because he was in a nasty breakup and didn't want to be alone. I made him sit in the back because I wanted my future husband to have the front seat. My husband later said something that will always stick with me. He said if you have a strange person in the car, you have them sit next to the driver and someone sit in the seat behind them so they're easy to attack and subdue if needed, exactly like those two men did with me. They might not have counted on me getting into the back seat instead, and it also means they planned out one sitting in back unless they were just incredibly weird. They stopped somewhere and he got out of the passenger seat and sat in the back for a reason. I always wondered if I was face to face with a couple of budding serial killers or something.

They kept at it but my dumb luck kept messing it up. Getting in the back seat, flipping out, designated drivers, etc. Maybe if they had been a little more confident in the beginning I wouldn't be able to type any of this. Now I know Myspace doesn't exist anymore but I know that there's a lot more social media out there, so please, do, be careful. So this story starts in 2006, back when Myspace was very popular. My little sister, Baby, was very active on the site remaking her profile, adding and chatting with random people daily. She started telling her friends she has a boyfriend named Marcus in Atlanta and when his family comes to visit other family members, they would meet up.

We lived in a small suburb outside of Chicago called Sauk Village. I scolded her about telling random people where we live and how dangerous it was. She stated she only told him what town, it's not like he could immediately find her. They continued speaking via MySpace and eventually texted in 2007 when Marcus informed her he and his family would be in Chicago and that they should definitely meet up to hang. She agreed, but never spoke a word about it to anyone. The Friday spring break was set to start. I made it in the house after school and started my chores. It was weird because baby would usually get home at that same time as me as high school let out at 2.45 and she got out at 3.15. By 5pm I noticed that she still had not come home. I went searching for her leaving

the back door unlocked just in case she popped up while I was gone. I went to her friend's house who stayed two blocks away and they said the last time we saw a baby was when school let out and we were walking down the trail. I checked with other friends and they all confirmed that they had not seen her. While walking home I noticed a black Nissan Altima with Georgia tags driving very slowly around my block. I got that weird feeling, like static running from my ears to my feet, so I jumped the back gate and ran into my back door. I continued calling Baby's phone and family members, and then I heard the computer ping. I noticed Baby was still logged into MySpace,

so I read her messages, thinking maybe there would be a clue there. The first few messages were her friends telling her I was looking for her and she needed to get home before she got in trouble but the fourth down was Marcus. The message read, baby I'm on your block. I just saw you jump that fence. Why are you hiding from me? I was shook. What did he mean he saw her jump a fence? So I read through their thread and to my horror I realized that she had sent him pictures with the both of us in it and never clarified which one she was. Our mother didn't allow her to post pictures of herself on her profile so it was very easy to assume she was whichever one you wanted her to be. While I was reading

through the thread, I hear a car door slam and two male voices approaching my door and then I hear beating on my window. I go to my window since it's light taps and I can hear baby's voice urging me to open the window. I open the window and she slides in and turns off the light, pulling my hand into the closet with her. She said Marcus is not 13 like he said, he is old like in his 30s. He saw me and asked where my sister was so I've been avoiding the house. I scolded her and said she should have come home first. The banging on the door grew more intense and I heard more footsteps on the back patio.

I panicked because I couldn't remember if I locked the door or not. Just then my question was answered. I heard heavy footsteps coming down the stairs into that place that we were in. I took out my phone and I called 911. I whispered my address and asked for police. I heard a voice say, baby, where are you? With a sinister laugh to follow. A crack of light shone through the closet which meant he was in my room. Tears started streaming down baby's face. Then the person in the car started beeping the horn crazy. He ran out of the house and I heard tires peel off. Too scared to move, I put the phone back to my ear and the operator said the police are outside. I refused to move, actually, my legs refused to move, they felt paralyzed.

The police came downstairs and said, ladies, it's okay to come out, and now the house is all clear. We ran out and jumped on the officers, out of relief. We printed out all the messages and gave the login info to the investigators. The person left fingerprints on the door and wall so they had fingerprints. We didn't hear too much after. Fast forward to 2018. I'm on Facebook and I posted a transformation picture of baby and I in a group. Then I went to work. When I got off, I had a message from someone named Marcus saying, you got away once, but I will get you next time. I immediately put a request in to delete my profile. This happened to me when I was 11, or if you will, in 2005. In what was a usual summer day for me.

I got up at about noon, went on a bike ride with my brother, then came home and spent most of the remaining daylight in our above ground pool. We were well off, but by no means rich. So as I was relaxing for the night and intent on spending the rest of the night playing video games, I decided to check my MySpace profile really quick and spend some of the energy on my games there. As I finish off my Dog Wars energy bar, I'm fit to close out the browser and head back downstairs to play some PlayStation when I get a friend request. Allie, 13, three hours away from nowhere, Kentucky. I clicked the name because I didn't know an Allie,

not even an Allison or really any girls who had A names at all. She was pretty, and 11-year-old me just scoffed like, why would she want to be friends with me? I almost ignored it. Almost. I accepted the request, and with not much else to do, I sent her a message asking a simple question like should I know you from somewhere? She tells me we've not met but she's friends with one of my friends Mike. I check out her profile see she and Mike share a lot of common interests on each other's friends list so it checks out. I don't message Mike to ask him about her but I was a very trusting young boy and

had no reason to believe she was anything but what she said she was. For the next few weeks I'd talk to her every night for less than three hours usually. We'd just chat about things, school, music, television, typical kid things. I didn't really think anything about it more than just being my space friends until she said that she liked me. I sort of laughed it off thinking she just meant like in the way of friends like each other. However, she clarified that she meant she had feelings for me and wanted to meet in real life. She lived pretty far away from me so I didn't really see how this would be possible. I knew my parents were not about to take me to

some girl I'd met on lines house. I wouldn't want them to in the first place. They were decent parents and all and I just never felt like I could talk to them about these kinds of things so I just sort of shrugged it off. I told her it'd be hard for us to meet because as much as I like riding my bike, a three hour bike ride to a part of the state I'd hardly ever seen before was not something I'd be comfortable doing. She was very understanding and said that she at least wanted to talk on the phone instead of just messages. I agreed but told her never to call my number and to always let me be the one to call her because I didn't want my parents picking up and asking questions. She understood and I called her.

The first time I got her dad and he gave me a gruff, who is this? It was weird because I had the phone with me at the computer and I told her I was calling and she said she had the phone with her as well. However, I didn't think anything of it at all. I told him it was James and that I was looking for Allie. He told me to hold on a second and there was a rustling sound on the phone, like someone trying to make it sound like they were handing it over to someone. Again, I didn't really think anything of it and when I heard a high pitched hello, I didn't really think anything more of it. We talked for a few minutes and she said she had to go because her dad was expecting a call as well. I shrugged it off and told her to just message me and we could talk again later. We kept messaging back and forth and before I knew it, it was almost the end of the summer.

She was not satisfied having not met me in person yet, so she posed an idea. She said there was an end of summer event going on at a lake near my house. She said she and her family used to go there sometimes and that she could probably talk them into going there for the event. My family usually went to the area on 4th of July and stuff and having just had a nice time there in July, it wasn't too hard for me to convince my folks as well. A few nights later, she lets me know that they had agreed and that she was super excited to finally meet me. She told me she was going to kiss me as soon as she saw me and I just sort of blushed and tried my best to make it sound like it wasn't a

big deal, like I was some stud who kissed plenty of girls before, but I wasn't. I was totally pumped to finally kiss a girl and it was only a few nights away. I had a hard time sleeping the next couple of nights. I had stayed up most of the night talking to Allie. We were both excited and couldn't wait to meet. It was very much a magical experience. The night before I think I stayed up till 8am talking to her. So the day had come and after an early afternoon bike ride and a short swim our family loaded into the car and my dad took the truck so that me and my brother could take our bikes to the lake with us. There was plenty of bike trails and we always enjoyed riding there.

I told my brother I wasn't going to be hanging with him the whole night, however, and would only ride with him a little bit before I went to meet another friend. He wanted to tag along, like little brothers often do, but I quickly convinced him he didn't want to hang out with me because the kids were mean and I was only hanging out with them because one of them. He didn't ask questions after that. About an hour later the sun started to set and my brother said that he was going back to meet with our parents anyway. He didn't like riding in the dark. He had a habit of crashing as it was so when I ventured off on my own it was without hindrance. I made my way to the picnic area Allie and I had agreed to meet at, and I sat on one of the picnic tables, my bike resting against the slide. I sat for a long time, so long that I started to get worried, and was ready to leave because the fireworks were about to start and Allie hadn't shown up yet.

I stood up and jumped down from the picnic table,. Just as I did, a rusty old white pickup truck pulled up beside the tables. The man inside reached across the cab to roll down the window and gave me a weird smile, telling me that he was Allie's dad and he was going to take me to her. I started feeling strange about the situation, so I just gave him a blank stare and said, what? He turned the engine off, thinking maybe I couldn't hear him over the sound of it, and climbed out of the truck. I said I'm here to take you to Alley. Up on in, he said, opening the passenger door and motioning for me to climb in. The truck was full of garbage, and it looked very dirty, and I could smell oil and other

things coming from the truck. I gave a crooked look and told him I wasn't going to get in. As he grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the truck, I realized pretty quickly what he was all about. Get in the truck! He barked, squeezing my arm so tightly that I thought it was broken. I pulled away, practically giving myself an Indian burn as I told him I was leaving. They came after me, so I did the only thing I think I could do to repel a grown man twice my size and probably thrice my age. I reared back and kicked him square in the genitals. I didn't bother to wait to see how he handled the blow. I hopped on my bike and pedaled with all my might back to the other side of the lake where my family was. He didn't follow me, at least I don't think he did. If he

did, he might have seen my dad, who was a rather large guy and definitely not someone you'd want to fight with after he'd had a few beers. I never saw him again, and when I got home and went to message Allie to tell her what a jerk her dad was, the profile was gone. I saw Mike just before school started and he said he had no idea who Allie was and didn't even remember adding her on myspace. It wasn't until some years later I realized how terribly close I'd come to being abducted and God knows what that man wanted to do to me. This is a bit of a throwback, 2006 to be exact. This is about my encounter with a guy I met online named Jared. I have no idea how he came across my profile on MySpace because we had no friends in common, but he messaged me wanting to know about me. I saw that he lived only about 45

minutes north of me and I remember thinking he was very attractive, saw that we had a lot of the same interests, and I found his statuses hilarious. Even though adding people I didn't know on MySpace was completely out of character for me. I'm introverted, private, and don't really like meeting new people. I decided to add him anyway. We started messing each other a lot and he really piqued my curiosity because he was so different from all the guys I had grown up with. His humor was a bit odd and I still found him to be really hilarious. I remember using a friend's computer to talk to him one night and she walked up behind me and said, who is that? I told her I didn't know but I liked him. She then says, ask him out. I thought sure, why not? He only lives 45 minutes away and he seems really cool.

We exchanged phone numbers and set a date for dinner that weekend. Jared told me to meet him at the grocery store near his house and I could just follow him to his apartment in my car. I thought that idea sounded great. I pulled up and I only had to wait about 10 minutes or so until he got there. He pulled up right next to me and I was immediately thrown off because even though it was dark out at this point, I could still tell right away that he wasn't nearly as attractive as the profile pictures would present. I decided I wasn't going to be so shallow and proceeded to follow him to his place. And here is where it starts to get really weird.

As we are driving down a two-way road, there is a succession of entrances to different apartment complexes spaced about 15 feet in front of one another. Jared keeps turning on his blinker, turning in, then swiftly turning back out, like he's trying to psych me out. I'll admit that the first time it was pretty funny. I thought, haha, you got me. However, that initial feeling quickly fades as he does this for nearly every single entrance on the way to his place, maybe 9 or 10 times. Now I'm thinking, what is he doing? I actually became insulted and thought he was trying to lose me at this point. I kept on having to brake, cars are starting to build up behind me, and it's making the drive take forever because I keep having to slow down for this nonsense.

Had I not been a naive 17 year old I would have followed my F this instinct and turned around and drove all the way back home. But no, of course not. I chalked all this up to his weird sense of humor and tried to give him a chance. We finally get to his apartment. We have a normal introduction and I walk into his place. It's a typical bachelor pad I tell myself as I see the back of his entrance door is entirely covered in naked chicks. It's a typical bachelor pad I tell myself as I see the back of his entrance door is entirely covered in naked chicks. Think, a collage of the filthiest smut hung up to cover every inch of this 7 foot tall door. Okay, whatever, he's a single guy I'm thinking, maybe not the classiest guy, but a guy nonetheless. Anyway, we get to talking and he's kind of quiet.

But for the most part he's awkward and doesn't even know what to say. It's at this point that I notice he's wearing a really raggedy white t-shirt. Weird. It's been about 15 or 20 minutes since we have been at his place just hanging out in his kitchen and he begins to ask me personal questions. I start taunting him about his awkwardness a bit to A. Lighten the mood and b. get him to change the subject. For example, he asked, how many guys have you slept with? And I retort, wow, very nice question to ask a girl on a first date, Jared. How did you get this

smooth? He eats it up and thinks we're playing a game. This goes back and forth for about 10 minutes before I ask when we were going to dinner. He goes back and forth for about 10 minutes before I ask when we were going to dinner. He sort of snaps back into reality and says he has to change. Thank god he comes back out looking pretty sharp and maybe this night will turn out alright. I could not have been any more wrong. We get into his car which is a pretty decent Mustang to go to some place he wants to take me for dinner. We're driving for about 15 minutes before he says he needs to make a detour to see a friend. Um, okay, I said. The friend walks up to the side of my door. They talk for a couple of minutes and then the friend starts to get into

the car. Jared looks at me and asks me to get into the back. At this point, this guy is really starting to get on my nerves. Could he be any more rude? I'm dying in the backseat thinking that this is just the worst and I can't wait until he dumps this friend somewhere because I'm starving and I didn't drive all the way up here to hang out with two rude strangers. I have no clue why I picked this friend up. I have a hunch because of how quick the interaction was that he was buying drugs but I couldn't see into the front seat or hear over the blaring music. As we are driving where I can only presume is back to the friend's place to drop him off, he starts driving very erratically, pulling some more absurdity like he was doing earlier plus turning sharp corners like he's Dale Earnhardt. But really he's driving like Mr.

Magoole. I am being tossed all over the backseat and I see the friend is hanging on for dear life as well. Then when I think it's all over, he starts to turn to go into the neighborhood but he has to cross a lane of oncoming traffic. As he is making his way through the turn, he stops. I freak out. All I can see are headlights through the tiny backseat window shining and coming right at us. Me and the friend in the front seat are just screaming nonsensically. I don't even remember what I said. I'm just screaming. As soon as we are almost rammed by a giant Cadillac that has to slam on their brakes so hard they fishtail,

he peels out, completing the turn. I'm shocked. I didn't even say anything. I wait until he drops his now totally calm and collected friend off and I tell him I'd like to go home. He drives me back in complete silence. When we get to his place, he hurries over to my side and lets me out, but he is standing so close that I have to squeeze past him. As I am trying to get out of his death mobile he places the hand he isn't holding the door open with on the other side of me, trapping me in between him and the car. I look at him and he is just staring at me so I say, I'm not kissing you. He responds, oh come on, let's just go upstairs. I have to literally hold back a guffaw.

I tell him, okay, Jared, that's enough for one night. I'm going to go now. I'll text you later, okay? He is still staring intensely into my eyes and I'm just praying he lets me leave. He starts to shift away and at that moment I think he is letting me go. He pushes his mouth onto mine so hard that I'm thrown into the side of the car. I barely struggle free and haul it to my car, quickly looking behind me and see that he is just standing there. I start driving the long 45 minutes home in silence.

I am so relieved that I get to go home to my nice warm bed. All of a sudden I hear my phone ding ding ding ding ding ding ding I hear about 20 messages coming in when I look at my phone I feel sick the text reads hey why did you leave please come back I want to play more games with you is this a game do you want to play a game? Okay, I'll give you 15 minutes to get back here. I'm counting down. 1, 2, 3, 4. I miss you. Please come back. I don't like this game at all. He sent all of that within a period of 2-3 minutes, around 10 minutes after I left. All I can remember thinking is, what was that? How can someone be so awesome online and then end up just being a total weirdo? One last note, the next morning the entire top right half of my mouth and a bit underneath my nose was swollen and bruised.

Never again on MySpace. In grade 5, a friend of mine, Chloe, was messaged on MySpace by our mutual friend, Asha. Asha asked Chloe to meet at the park by Chloe's house. Chloe had baseball practice, so she told her, maybe another day. Asha insisted that today was best and she really wanted to hang out even if it was for just 10 minutes. Chloe told her no again as she was about to go eat dinner then leave. Chloe thought it was strange that Asha was so persistent as they had never hung out outside of school let alone afterwards. The next day Chloe confronted Asha. I'm sorry I couldn't hang out yesterday. I had baseball practice. I'm free tonight if you want. Asha was confused. What are you talking about? She asked.

On MySpace, you asked me to hang out last night. Asha then explained that she didn't message Chloe. Creepier yet, she had recently gotten a new account due to spam she was receiving. The scariest part to me is that Asha had referred to the park by its name, which isn't a very common one. A couple of years later, my friend saw a green van parked on the street that the park was on with a middle-aged man inside that only showed up during soccer games and when lots of kids were around and would leave when the kids left. My friend lived across the street from the park, and noticed this from her window frequently. Chloe deleted MySpace when she got home, and we're not sure if that van and the messenger that night was correlated or not.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Back in the days when MySpace was on its way out and Facebook was rising to popularity, my family had a very strange encounter. I was in 9th grade at the time, young and quite naive about the dangers of the internet. Just another way of saying that I was friends with just about anyone on MySpace. I remember this guy's page to the letter. His name was Matt.

His picture was a guy in an army dress and he had light blonde hair, brown eyes and was very pale. He looked to be about 20. In retrospect, what was a 20 year old doing adding a 13 year old on MySpace anyways? I thought nothing of it. We never messaged or commented back and forth. Other than adding him as a friend, we never had any other contact. Then late one night, I got a text from a number I didn't recognize with an area code that was very unfamiliar. The text message was just an innocuous hey and a smiley face. I asked who it was and I'm told it's Matt from MySpace. I ask how he got my number, and I'm told you posted it. That was a lie. While I didn't know a lot about internet safety, that was something I knew better than to do. However, just to make sure I hadn't done something so stupid, I combed through all

of my bulletins and blogs and found nothing even remotely like that. I never responded after that. Every now and then, I would get a text from him. Never anything too weird, just a, hey beautiful, or you're so pretty, or I really like your new profile picture. And because it seemed so trivial, I never mentioned it to anybody, not even my close friends or sister with whom I am very close. I just wouldn't respond. One day, he sent me a string of texts asking me a few pretty personal questions. I told him to delete my number and not contact me again. After that, I didn't hear from him for about four weeks. On that night, he sends me the usual,

hey, what are you up to? I go off on him. I tell him he's harassing me me that he's an adult and could get into some serious trouble for what he's doing and he better drop it and leave me alone for good or I would call the cops when he didn't respond I thought I had finally gotten the message across so I'm getting ready for bed I just put on my pajamas when my little sister four years my junior walks into my room and tells me she had been getting weird texts from this guy who claims I gave him her number. Obviously it was the same dude. It's always been the running joke that I raise this particular sister so she calls me her first born mother. She tells me this. Protective, maternal, if you will, instincts kick in and I tell my parents everything and that we need to call the

cops. When they get out to file the report, my sister and I have to tell them everything. We show them the old texts in the MySpace pages and then they set to work. The cops call the police department in the same area code as the guy and report what's going on. They end up arresting some 25 year old guy who wasn't in the army, whose name was not Matt, and who was involved in some sort of weird ring of people getting phone numbers and sending weird and mildly inappropriate texts to young girls long time ago, as Myspace is no longer relevant, but it still gives me chills from time to time. It's not as bad as some of the stories I've heard before, but it stuck with me. When I was in high school, I just like everyone else had a Myspace, and just like everyone else, I posted selfies. I never considered myself very popular online. I wasn't one of those people with hundreds of friends. My real name

wasn't even on the thing nor my actual hometown. Mostly I used it to see what my friends were up to but I also used it as a personal photo album to share and post pictures of random things I've done. I went to the mall one night with a bunch of friends, which was a typical Friday outing. We would meet, maybe watch a movie, and more than likely spend time at the arcade playing DDR. A bunch of us were at Hot Topic, another common haunt for us teenagers. We were browsing their selection, thinking of what outfit would be best to defy our conservative parents when, out of the blue, he arrives. The guy was overweight, slightly taller than me, and obviously much older. He had the look of someone who had never matured past the age of 17, despite being in his mid to late 20s. Why else

would he be approaching a 16-year-old in a hot topic on a Friday night? The first thing out of his mouth upon seeing me was, hey, I know you, Mooney. I stopped dead and stared at him, wracking my memory. Mooney was a name that only my friends called me. It was a moniker that I had adopted in high school and was not associated in any way with my name. I thought for half a second that I had met this guy at some anime convention and for some reason he recognized me. Then he said without hesitation, you're Moony from Myspace. My eyes widened as my brain spun through responses, trying to come up with a proper way to interact with this creeper. Oh, are we friends? I asked him hesitantly. I definitely did not recognize him. I typically was very good about

becoming acquainted with anyone I was friends with online. No, I just have seen you. Around. You're from Washington DC, right? He asked. I now knew this guy only knew me from online. I had set my location to Washington DC because I was paranoid about posting my actual town, because I didn't want to be found by creepers like him. The conversation that followed was filled with awkward, idle chit-chat as I attempted to move closer and closer to the door of the hot topic, all the while trying to make sure that my friends were close to me. I attained no information on how this guy found me on MySpace, or why he spent a long enough time on

MySpace to actually memorize what I look like. It's not as if though I had very distinguished features. I was the typical 16-year-old punk wannabe kid that wore Hot Topic skirts, Hello Kitty shirts, and sometimes hats with animal ears. Other than that, I was undistinguishable from any other teen on a busy Friday night. And like I mentioned before, I was not very popular on the website. I had barely 50 friends. I was far from internet famous or boxy tier recognition status. My photos were not profane and I did not dress inappropriately in any way. Quite frankly, I was and still am pretty average in looks department. After that, I set my MySpace to private and blocked most of the people I didn't know personally. It should have been a case of be careful of who you talk to online.

But in this situation, I never even spoke to the guy. He literally found my profile online and became acquainted with just my photographs. This happened sometime back when MySpace was the biggest social network. YouTube was just coming on the scene, and I had uploaded some silly videos that I posted on my MySpace profile. At the time, I was a young and slim guy. For those who don't remember the time before Facebook, mostly everyone added anyone who requested them. No one really considered privacy settings. I'm sure there were some who did, but for people my age at the time, we never really

spoke of it. It was new and we were naive. Anyway, my profile was public. One day, I received a friend request with a message. I accepted first, my first mistake, and then I clicked on their profile to see their pictures. But they didn't really have any, and the ones they did have were of landmarks. The only info I knew was that it was a male in his early 30s. I'm 17 at this time. Well, I clicked on the message and it read something like this. Hi, I'm new to Houston. I'm not gay, but I have a diverse group of friends and I don't discriminate. You seem really interesting and I'd like to get to know you.

And by the way, I am gay and maybe I'm being an a-hole, but I replied that I didn't believe him and that it was weird he was looking for gay friends if he himself was not gay. He replied in defense and I don't really remember what he said because I knew enough not to give this man the time of day. I should have deleted him but I didn't and it wasn't really a problem because we never spoke on MySpace again. Months later, I was coming back from the mall by myself when my car began to overheat. I had a 95 Mazda Millennia that was always giving me problems. I was really far from home and I didn't want to stop. Eventually my car died in the middle of a busy road,

so I was stuck there, clueless about what to do. Others were just passing me by. My family wasn't picking up calls and neither were any of my friends. I was freaking out, but after a few minutes I see a utility truck slowing down and a man step out. He offers help and calls me Mr. Myspace. I'm thinking that he tried to make a joke because I'm young and therefore must spend my time on Myspace. He has some grey hair and looks old. I kind of get a bad vibe at this point but no one else is stopping. Then things get really weird.

He says, you don't remember me do you? I say, no. We're friends on myspace. You have all those videos on your page. I saw them. I sent you a message about being new and wanting to be friends. At first I didn't remember but then I thought back and realized it had to be the same guy who sent me the messages with his friend request. I'm getting creeped out at this point. All I can do is say, oh and smile anxiously. He keeps saying over and over. I can't believe this is how we meet.

He's much bigger than me and could easily take me. He puts his hand on my shoulder and then my back. I don't know what to do. We're looking at my car. I'm trying to keep the conversation about my car and he's staring at me and says, you're so cute. We need to go out dancing. I laugh nervously. I don't want him to be rude because he's the only one that has stopped to help. Again, he says, I can't believe this is how we meet. I laugh nervously again. We push the car to the parking lot of the supermarket on the other side of the street. Once we get to the lot he asks me again if I want to go dancing.

His hands are on my shoulder and I want to run when another car with a young couple pulls into the lot and asks if we need help. He gets ready to answer no for me but I say yes. They get out and the man and the creeper look at my car. It's decided that I should leave my car there and then come back for it later with a tow truck and have my dad look at it when he can. The man from my space tells the couple thanks and he's sort of implying he's going to take me home. I'm starting to get scared because I don't want this man to know where I live. I don't know what to do.

I know now that I shouldn't have worried about offending the offender but I was the young then. Thankfully, the couple still asks if I need a ride to my house and I immediately say yes. The man looks surprised as if he thought I should have gone with him. I get in the car with the couple. They tell me that they stopped because they could tell I was uncomfortable. I was so happy that the man never found out where I lived and that the couple was nice enough to stop and help even when they saw someone else had stopped already and had helped me push my car into the lot. I deleted anyone I didn't know personally from MySpace and set my profile to private from then on. Lesson learned. One night I was running on the treadmill in the garage when some guy was walking up my driveway. Now, it would be weird enough to see him in the cul-de-sac,

let alone my driveway. I get off, close the garage door, and don't think anything of it. I was walking to my car to go to school the next morning. My window was broken in, and I realized, no, I left my purse in the car. So I filed a report and all that jazz and go to school. I assumed it was that guy and told my parents and everyone but we didn't know who he was so there wasn't much we could do. This was back in the day of MySpace. I randomly get a message from a creepy looking guy who looks similar to the guy from the night my car got broken into. He said that he found my cards on the side of the road and that he wanted to return them. I said awesome,. If my purse happened to show up too, that would be great and no questions asked. He asked where he should send it to and I said the

address on my driver's license that he had. So a week goes by and I'm not thinking anything of it. I get a friend request and message from him. He said, and I kid you not, I wish it could fit in that envelope, as well as how I am beautiful and junk. I accepted his friend request because his profile was private and I was a stupid 16 year old girl. I clicked on his photos and he has pictures he drew of a gutted naked woman. I show my dad and he kind of blows me off. The next day he sends me a message that says I think we will cross paths really soon. I freak out. I tell my dad that I think he is going to come to the house because he had my driver's license and obviously knew where I lived even if it was a different guy

than the person I saw in my driveway. My dad and mom say worrying, it is no big deal. I just tell them, well if I go missing, it is. My card showed up eventually, and thank god, I never heard from him again. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo tread experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Most people don't even believe me when I tell them, but I have a job where I work from home.

People in my area mostly work with cars or in the medical industry. There aren't many jobs where I live. Thankfully, I was able to land a decent paying job that let me work from my home office. It definitely comes with its struggles, but it is hands down the best job opportunity available to me right now. It isn't always perfect. It definitely comes with its pitfalls. Sometimes you have to sit at your computer even when there isn't any work to be done. It's also very easy to get distracted. But I think my biggest problem has to do with the house itself. It's kind of creepy. The house itself is an old Victorian, like really old,

we're talking mid 1800s. A family friend owned the house and sold it to me for a very fair price, basically gave it to me. I was super excited because it meant I got a nice big house to live in by myself along with my girlfriend. I'm a natural loner and I don't really care for social interaction, so I had a nice big house all to myself and girlfriend and job where I work from home with very minimal social interaction with other people. That was basically my ideal life. But the house's age meant that it was going to be scary at times. And I don't mean with ghosts or anything like that, but sometimes I hear the house settling in or making noises that I can't explain. I've actually had quite a few instances where I'll be sitting down and doing some work and then out of nowhere I hear a noise that I just can't rationalize. I go exploring throughout the house only to find that nothing has changed. It's as ominous as it is frustrating. I did just about what anyone else in the world would do. I started to use background noise to drown out the disturbances. First I tried

those quiet instrumentals on YouTube. You know the ones that last 5 hours and they're supposed to put you at ease or something. It didn't really work for me because I couldn't get my computer to be loud enough to drown out all the noises. It was also not very good at keeping my attention. There was one week where my work was really slow and there wasn't a whole lot to do. I still had to sit at my computer though. There was an understanding that I was allowed to basically do anything I wanted as long as I was available to my co-workers if something came through that needed to be done. I didn't quite know what to do with this time and just started watching documentaries on YouTube. It was actually pretty fun. I learned a lot. And so that next week when things started picking up

again I just instinctively turned on a documentary. I wouldn't be able to have all of my focus on it but it was a lot better than having some ambient noise. It actually helped distract me from the sounds of the house. I guess I just didn't have enough mental focused energy to notice any of the other sounds going on around me, if that makes any sense. Well, it had been about two weeks of me watching documentaries while I worked. Everything seemed to be good, until one Friday morning, I started work at 8 and this must have been around 10, I was sitting at my office chair working while I listened to a documentary about certain conspiracy theories, when all of a sudden sudden I heard an abrupt banging noise coming from

upstairs. Like I had said, I hadn't been distracted by any noises for a while by this point, so the fact that I noticed this noise meant that it was probably serious. My fight or flight kicked in. You might laugh at me, but when I work I keep a knife next to me. I ran upstairs with the knife and looked around for any suspicious noises. The banging had stopped and I didn't know where it had come from. I knew what section of the house that I heard it from but there didn't seem to be anything out of place. I stood there for a few moments and then I heard it again. It happened right on the other side of my door. I immediately braced myself for there to be some kind of animal or something trying to get in. I didn't really know what to

expect. I opened my door to see that the screen door had not been properly closed. My girlfriend didn't close it all the way when she left for work that morning. It was also pretty windy that day so it was just going back and forth causing a banging noise when the wind got bad. This was kind of a breaking point for me. I didn't want to live my life in constant paranoia and fear of some kind of attacker coming into my home. We live in a safe area. There's never been a serious threat. And I have run around my house with a knife way too many times now. I honestly felt kind of stupid.

So I made a decision. I was no longer going to assume that someone was breaking in if and when I heard a sound. I put the knife in my dresser in my bedroom and decided that I was going to just be in to work while I was working. Except for my documentary of course. So there I was the next week. It happened on a Wednesday. I was sitting in my office doing exactly what I had set out to do. I was working, ignoring the noises and listening to a documentary. I remembered the exact part of the documentary I was on when I heard it.

The sound was the loudest sound I had heard in the house up to that point. At first, I reassured myself that it was nothing and that I need to fight against this paranoia. The sound continued, and I couldn't take my mind off of it. After about five minutes of listening to what sounded like rummaging and walking, I went upstairs to check. Bear in mind I didn't have any weapon on me, and I was expecting some kind of reasonable explanation. When I got to my kitchen I saw that the front door was wide open, the cabinets were all open and there was a strange man rummaging through my stuff. I didn't notice until after the fact but he had been eating something.

I remember screaming at him, I don't remember what I said but it was something to the effect of, what are you doing in my house, obviously. Then he just ran off. Didn't say a single word. He took a loaf of bread with him, but I don't think he took anything else, other than what I had eaten before I came upstairs. I reasoned with myself that he must have been some sort of homeless man or something. I don't know why else he would steal a loaf of bread from a very ordinary looking house. This was the worst thing that could have happened. On some instinctual level it had proved all of my worst fears right.

There was some kind of danger in my house and of course it was the one time when I didn't have my knife on me. I lucked out that he didn't try to hurt me or anything, but it's still horrifying to see nonetheless. I just work at a local coffee shop now. It's honestly my only way to stay sane. I was 14 years old at the time. I'm male, pretty typical. I would call myself a nerd. I like to play video games and I'm pretty good at them too. When my friends and I play Fortnite online, I always do the best. I went through a really hard time though. The thing is, I have really, really bad allergies, like horrendously bad. they're so bad that sometimes I even sneeze blood

I mean my nose is bleeding from the constant allergies and then I sneeze blood all over the place like some kind of freak it sucked when I was 14 my mom wanted to try something out she came home one day with a mysterious bag containing something in it I remember asking her what it was I thought it was going to be some kind of new type of tissue or some kind of air filter for the house. It wasn't any of that. It was a medicine. She said that this medicine was going to take care of my allergies. I really wanted to believe her, so I started taking this new medicine and all seemed to be working for the first few weeks. I didn't notice anything being off and everything

seemed fine. My usual springtime allergies were no more. As you might expect, I just continued on with life like any other 14-year-old would. I went back to playing video games, hanging out with my friends occasionally. I want to say it was about a month later that something started to change. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I wasn't feeling myself. I was in a bit of a brain funk. And it was strange because I normally feel really present and aware in the moment. I always attributed my mental agility to being the reason that I was the best out of all my friends at video games all these years. I mean, why else would I be? But I wasn't as good as I used to be, though.

I wasn't the best out of my friend group anymore. The skill gap between myself and at least two of my other friends seemed to vanish completely. It was as if my skill had gone down. I know it seems like a minor problem, but that really took me down a peg. I really enjoyed being the best there was, and now I wasn't. It made me feel sad. Sadder than I've been in a long time. And it wasn't that I have never experienced tragedy or something else. I remember being really close to my grandfather and he died when I was probably about 12 or 13. So I've gone through stuff before.

But for some reason not being the best in a video game really took a toll on my well-being. As weird as that might be to say. I gradually started pulling back from my friend group altogether. I would just play video games by myself. The social interaction seemed to be too much for me anymore. I didn't enjoy it like I used to. And that was when everything changed. I wasn't the person that I had been before.

And looking back, I'm surprised I didn't notice sooner. It all came to a head one night my mom had some kind of work function, some kind of party or something that I don't really remember what it was. I just remember thinking it was stupid. I felt really alone. My dad died when I was younger, and I was also an only child, so I was home by myself, 14 years old. You would think that a kid that age would love to be home by himself but I didn't. I was horrified. I felt the feeling inside of

myself that truly mortified me, petrified my bones. I wanted to end my own life. I just felt this intense sensation of worthlessness. I don't even know why either. I got good grades in school. I had friends, but I just didn't enjoy being around them anymore. I didn't know what had changed. I just had this overwhelming sense of loneliness. It was a dark whispering voice in the back of my head that told me all of the horrible things that I hated to hear. This voice told me that I should be dead. That I was just a burden to my mother. That I didn't have any real friends. That all of the guys in my former friend group moved

on and completely forgot about me. Didn't even care that I was gone. And here I was, alone in this house, all by myself. Couldn't even think of a reason not to do it. I know exactly how I would do it if I wanted to. We watched a mental health awareness video in my psychology class at high school and all you had to do was take as many pills as you could and you would surely die. They called it a cocktail. I kind of wanted to have one myself. I remember sitting in my living room. I was trying to work up the nerve to actually swallow the pills. Couldn't bring myself to do it though.

For some reason, something was stopping me and I couldn't figure out what. The voice in my head made perfect sense. I had no reason left to live. No reason would ever present itself in the future either. I was nothing in a big nothing world. I slapped my hand on the table. For some reason, that gave me the burst of motivation I needed to start swallowing those pills. I opened the cocktail that I had made. Just random stuff from the medicine cabinet,

nothing in particular. I was going to take them one by one. I had my mouth already open and everything, but my phone told me that there was a text message. By whatever stroke of luck that hit me, I decided to answer the text before I decided to go. I slowly made my way to the other room and picked up my cell phone. Press the on button to see that it was my friend Walton. He was asking if I wanted to play with them. I texted back yes. The next morning I told my mom about the incident.

She was really concerned and wanted to send me for a psychiatric evaluation, but before we did that my mom thought it might have had something to do with that allergy medicine that I was on. Well, it turned out that it was the entire cause of my depression. I was an otherwise happy and healthy kid, but that medicine had some particular side effects. Side effects that my mom didn't mention to me when I started taking it, and one of the major side effects was depression. It's been some time since I had been on that allergy medicine. It got put on recall. They literally had to take it off the shelves because it was making the users so depressed that they also wanted to end themselves. I'm really thankful that I was able to escape that situation with my life. I realize how close I was to really hurting myself.

I almost died, and I'll never forget that experience. Ever since then, I never want to be home alone again. This is hands down the most horrifying thing that's ever happened to me. I still don't have any answers as to why it happened either, and I probably never will. I had recently graduated college, I was a marketing major, and I was having a hard time finding a job. I didn't have anything lined up for me right after I graduated like some of my peers, so I did what most people do and moved back in with my parents. Not gonna lie, it was pretty weird moving back in after having been away for so long. For as long as I can remember, it was just me and my dog, and now I was living with my mom and

dad again. It sucked. I normally don't talk about this very much but when I was younger I had a natural intuition that most people don't have. I had some kind of ability to speak to ghosts or at the very least to see them. I was that kid that always was talking to the wall and claimed to be talking to a ghost. I had no idea why I had this ability but I knew that I did. I remember genuinely feeling a presence and making a connection with it. I always had to make some kind of spiritual or emotional connection with it before I was able to communicate with it. It's really weird to explain but I can still do it. The ability never went away. It's a little bit more difficult now,

but I've become very interested in it, especially toward the end of my college career. I spend many nights meditating and trying to form connections with spirits around me. So here's the thing. My parents had actually moved when I was in college. I never really felt a strong connection to their new home. Honestly, I didn't really like it. And I had never spent more than a couple of nights there. Even during the summer, I would stay at my apartment in the city only because, well, why not? And again, you can see why it was so weird for me and my dog to move back into my parents' house because I have never really lived in this house.

It's not that it was particularly negative or anything, but anyone who is in tune with their mind and body and moves around a lot will remember that it is distressing even if there's nothing problematic about the move. You can be 100% financially, spiritually, physically secure and fine in every aspect of your life, but moving into a new home will invariably cause some distress. There was one Friday night when my parents had gone out for dinner. They wanted to have a night away from all the regular worries of day to day life. I have two other brothers and they're both in high school, so you can understand why my parents would need a break. My brothers, being my brothers, both went out to sleep over at a

friend's house. They only had a year between them so they hung out in the same friend group. And they all have this weird thing where they would sleep over at each other's houses and just play video games all night. That's left me and my dog Dorian home alone until my parents got home at least. I remember feeling really freaked out, not in a crazy way or anything, but something just felt off, like there was something in the air. It's really hard to explain. I remember being in my room reading an article on the best ways to get a job. It was about 9 o'clock at night. My parents probably wouldn't be home until about 11 or 12. I remember being really into this one article. I was taking notes on things that I could do to improve my resume, and then I heard it. My dog made one

really weird noise. It was almost like a bark but also a whimper. I knew something was wrong because he very rarely made noises. I rushed downstairs to see what was going on. He was sitting there perfectly fine as if nothing had happened, and this was extremely unusual. I looked around the house frantically. He had food, he'd just gone to the happened, and this was extremely unusual. I looked around the house frantically. He had food, he'd just gone to the bathroom, and nothing around the house seemed to be out of place. I chalked it up to him not liking being at my parents' house. It sounded rational enough. I made my way back upstairs to get back into the job hunting grind, and then I heard that very same noise again maybe 15 minutes later

and this time it really unnerved me. This was very out of behavior for my dog and I had this odd sense of impending doom. I ran downstairs and looked around. For a minute there I didn't even see my dog. I didn't know where he was. I called out to Dorian, but he didn't answer. Then I made the worst discovery of my entire existence. I realized that my dog was dead. He was just laying on the floor motionless. It was so weird because he was only about two or three years old. I closely examined his body and it didn't appear as if he had even been in a fight or a struggle of some kind. No blood, no bruises, no puncture wounds. It was as if he just laid down to take a nap and died. I remember feeling really sad. That sense of fear and adrenaline never went

away though. I waited for my parents to get home. I was really psyched out and I didn't know what else I could even do. I felt like calling the police was a bit too extreme and I didn't want to be the college graduate turned adult who moves back in with his parents for a week and needs them to rush home because he's scared. And this all happened a while back. I still can't explain how my dog died. I ended up landing a job a couple of days later in a nearby city, and I was really happy to have

been moved out of that house. It freaked me out pretty bad. And after an incident like that, my parents can visit me anytime in the future. This story happened when I was 15. It's been almost an entire decade now, but I still think about it quite a lot. This was our situation. My brothers and I live with my mom. I'm the oldest of three and my mom generally leaned on me to get things done. This naturally turned me into an adult from a very early age. Even to this day, my mom talks about feeling guilty for having to thrust adulthood on me so early on. She thinks that I didn't have a childhood, and maybe she's right. As you might imagine, my dad wasn't really in the picture.

He was an abusive drunk, and when I say abusive I mean seriously abusive. Up until the time I was 10 he lived with us and whenever he would get drunk he would beat the life out of us. It was always terrifying. The only saving grace was the fact that he wasn't always drunk or had alcohol in the house. In fact there were sometimes months at a time when he would go without drinking, and he was an otherwise pretty decent person. For all that was wrong with my dad, he would have probably been close to an ideal human being if he had not been for his rampant alcoholism and the demon inside of him that came out when he got drunk. The incident that got my mom to

finally divorce him was horrendous. I had been in my room playing video games or something and he was in the living room. My mom just got home from getting the groceries. He accused her of having an affair at the time and of course this wasn't true, but he didn't believe it. He kept screaming at her that she was lying. It escalated to the point that he pinned her down on the floor and said that he saw her nose growing and then grabbed a screwdriver and cut into my mom's nose with it. There is still a scar from that day. Well that all went down when I was about 10 so this is about 5 years later. My mom was bringing my two younger brothers on some kind of boy scout trip. They were both in the boy scouts

and always felt left out because all the other kids had a dad. My mom's guilt drove her to volunteer and help out whenever she could so she went with my two brothers for this weekend camping trip with the boy scouts. She really wanted me to go with them because she felt uncomfortable having me alone in the house. I insisted that I was mature enough to do it and honestly I didn't even have friends that I could party with if I wanted to. She eventually gave in and let me have my way. I remember being in my bedroom playing with my playstation. It was a pretty typical Saturday afternoon but then I heard a car pull up. I didn't know who it was at first and I immediately got really panicked that I was going to have to call the cops. My bedroom window doesn't have a really good view at the driveway so it took me a second

but after studying the part of the car that I could see I recognized that it was my father's car. I was immediately mortified. I was on bad terms with him and my mom had a really serious restraining order put on him after they had separated. I got really nervous and I was not sure what I should even do. He didn't come into the house for a few minutes and I immediately started wondering what he was up to. I did the only thing that I could think of and cracked my windows so I could hear what was going on outside. I thought that if I could hear what he was doing I would have a better idea. I immediately recognized that he was crying. His whimpering sound was really intense. I hadn't heard from him in years and my mom said that we would never see

him again. But here he was, crying in our driveway. He paced around for a few minutes before finally standing still. I could hear his crying getting louder. Then he screamed. Pop. All I heard was a gunshot. The second I heard the gunshot, I immediately knew what had happened. I ran outside. I looked down at my father's lifeless body on the driveway cement. Blood. Everywhere.

As traumatic as it may have been, I didn't cry. I didn't act emotional or anything. I just called the police. They got there a few minutes later and took me into custody. They wanted to keep me safe and secure until they could contact my mom. The rest of the story played out exactly as you would imagine. My mom apologized profusely. I had to answer some questions to the police, nothing out of the ordinary. I don't really know what to make of the situation. I don't have much sympathy for the guy, and part of me is kind of happy that he did it. But looking back, I just kind of wish that he had done it where I wouldn't have had to have witnessed it. The entire experience made me never want to go stay home by myself ever again.

It's been a long time since this whole thing had gone down and even now, if I have to stay home by myself, I will make an effort to leave the house or to invite a friend over. I won't stay there alone. A couple of years have passed since this entire situation and I can't help but to think that it was all for the better. My dad was a seriously destructive human being and I know this might sound terrible, but I just wish that he had done it sooner. For those out there that haven't lived with a toxic and negative parental figure, consider yourself extremely lucky. The tribulations that I had to endure at the hands of my father fostered a lot of rage inside of me. My mom is really good friends with one of the wealthiest people in our town.

They have a daughter, my age. I don't have a crush on her or anything, but my mom has pushed me to ask her out before. Never did. Here's the weird thing about the situation though. My mom and this friend, along with her daughter, all kind of act like their friend. Like a bunch of high school girls getting together to gossip. My mom works in a beauty salon so I guess I understand why she likes to act that way but it's still pretty weird nonetheless. There was one specific occasion when this woman and her daughter were going to visit New York City. They decided to invite my mom for some reason. I don't understand why. I guess they really were better friends than I had previously believed but my mom decided to say yes. So it was just me and my dad at the house, but here was the thing. They didn't have a dad at home. Their house

was going to be completely unsupervised for the entire weekend. I was in my early 20s at the time, so I guess they thought it would be a good idea to ask if I would watch the house for them, which I agreed to do. I didn't get paid or anything, but they said I was allowed to eat as much food as I wanted, and considering that they were rich, I thought, why not? This also gave me an opportunity to write some short stories. I always loved writing, and I published some of my stuff online sometimes. I think it was that Friday night when I was watching their house. They told me that they had two cats but they were really scared of strangers and I was probably not going to see either one of them the entire night. Didn't bother me, I just had to make sure that they had food and water, which they did.

I was chilling at the kitchen table pounding the keys on my laptop on my latest story when all of a sudden I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked up from my computer to notice the ugliest cat I've ever seen in my life. Just imagine a hairless cat but also morbidly obese and cross-eyed. It was honestly the strangest thing I've ever seen. Any one of those traits individually would have made a cat kind of cute, but seeing all of them thrown together in one pitiful excuse for a pet almost made me want to bust a gut laughing. I felt kind of bad for laughing so hard at this girl's cat but it's not like I hurt it or anything. That had been a good break from writing but then I got back into it. I remember being in the middle of writing a really interesting scene. This ghost was abducting the protagonist of the story It's kind of a psychological thriller with a little bit of paranormal thrown in there

It's very spiritual and weird I'm kind of a weird person But that scene still sticks with me because as I'm writing it I notice something outside There was a man in a hooded sweatshirt walking around I sat at the kitchen table, stunned I didn't know what to do. I felt the adrenaline burst through my veins, fight or flight. Well, I figured that my car was outside so running wasn't going to

do me much good and after a minute of rationalizing the situation I had no proof that this person was out to do anything bad. For all I knew, this could have been a jogger. I got up close to one of the windows to watch this man. He seemed to be sneaking around. He wasn't coming toward the house I was in, so I figured that I was at least safe for the moment. But then I noticed him looking into the window of the house across the street. I can only assume that he was checking houses to see if people were home or not. Must have been an actual burglar. Just show up in the wealthy neighborhood and see who wasn't home. I don't know why he would do it at night

though. Looks as suspicious as he did. We live in a gun state after all. And after a few minutes went by and I could tell that there were people at home at the house he was checking out, by the time he realized I noticed him do a 180. He was walking in my direction now. I was about to be face to face with this man. I saw him walking across the street and I immediately started to panic. I called the police as fast as I could and told them the situation, but they said it would be about 20 minutes before anyone could be here. I ran up to the attic to hide. I locked the door behind me.

In retrospect, this was my biggest mistake. I should have turned on a bunch of lights and made it obvious that someone was here. I'm good at thinking, just not in the moment. The house must have looked uninhabited by the time I had gotten up to the attic. This made the house the perfect place to burglarize and steal everything. I was in the attic for about 10 minutes when I heard a window breaking downstairs. He was in the house. My heartbeat was inside of my forehead. He walked around the house for a few minutes. Thud.

Thud. I heard the humongous boots marching across the wooden floors. He explored the house for a good while. I was really beginning to wonder where the police were. Typical. I heard him get close to the attic entrance and that was the moment that pushed me over the edge. I started screaming at the top of my lungs that I had a gun. I told him that I was going to shoot his head off if he didn't leave the house immediately. And to my absolute shock, he ran away. I watched him run down the street as I looked on through the window. It appeared that

this guy was even more scared for his life than I was. The police eventually got there and I told them the entire story from beginning to end. They said that a couple of people had been reporting this guy in nearby neighborhoods so this wasn't the first night he's been out doing this. The police explained that this guy hadn't been violent on any of the occasions they've been called. They said it was about the seventh time this month that they have responded to a similar incident in a wealthy neighborhood. I guess he's going around looking for an easy way to make money. He hasn't been face to face with any of the homeowners yet so maybe he isn't a violent criminal just a criminal in general.

I found the entire experience really interesting yet mortifying. Living through it was probably the most scared I've ever been. My mom, her friend and their daughter didn't even come back early from their trip after it happened. I thought that was a lame move but but what do I know? For revenge, I ate every single pizza roll they had in the freezer, and if you're wondering, there were three bags of 90 pizza rolls. I ate over 270 pizza rolls that weekend, and I have no regrets. I sorely needed them after that borderline traumatic experience with the burglar.

I want you to picture the middle of nowhere, rural Kentucky, an iconic country home, ranch style. The owners are wealthy, the closest neighbors live 15 entire minutes away, the closest gas station is a half hour, Walmart 40 minutes. Those are the circumstances under which I was raised. Then there's me, a pretty typical 20 year old who was born and raised in a relatively wealthy family. I was lucky enough to have been born to a father who owned a store in a mid-sized city. The city itself saw a major population growth in the 10 years after my father had purchased the store and it produced enough income that we immediately became the 1% in the state,

probably the entire country too. My father took the money that he had made from the store and used it to purchase real estate which produced more money, so we kind of had buckets of money lying around. For some reason or another, my father thought the ideal life was away from civilization which is why he built this ranch home out in the middle of nowhere. It was also a bit of an inconvenient living life. After all, all the money in the world means nothing if you don't have stores to spend it at. But the older I got, the more my father educated me on finances. He also said that he didn't want us being corrupted by metropolitan living. I didn't really agree with him, but I respected him. There were many nights that I spent at the home alone. I was always a fairly mature kid, so my parents naturally gave me a

lot of responsibility. The first time I was home alone, I must have been 12 years old, and considering we had a house full of expensive guns, alcohol, and hunting equipment, you can understand how much trust my parents really had in me. There wasn't very much in the world I wasn't prepared for, but there was one experience in particular. Something that happened a few weeks ago that I still think about all the time, sits in my memory, haunting me. It happened one night when I was alone. My father had a business meeting on Saturday morning, so he got a hotel Friday night in the city with my mom. This left me home alone to watch the castle by myself. Again, something I have done a million times

and never thought twice about. I have always been interested in business ventures online. The thing I have been experimenting with that night was video marketing. I was interested in making something go viral. Over the course of a few weeks, I probably had created six or seven solid viral video attempts, but only one of them accumulated any attention, and it was a measly 100,000 views. Anyway, I remember sitting in my home office working on a cat video. On the far side of my room is my window. I can see the backyard. There's a mountainous structure in our backyard. Basically, a really big rock. It's pretty tall, probably about 50 or 60 feet maybe, and in front of it

is all farmland. My father grew wheat, although he paid people to do most of the work, but he was the thing. There was a very strange shadow on the rocks. There were some lights from the electrical posts in the field and it was as if someone was moving around them or something. This was absurd. You guys know how tall those electrical posts are. The idea that someone would climb on top of one of them or that there was some kind of animal or something on it really freaks me out. I really didn't want to lose electric either as I was really into that cat video. I looked out the window to see what was going on and all I could see was a shadowy figure on the light post near the light. My immediate thought was that there

was some kind of freak that came out here and climbed on top of it, but I couldn't imagine why anyone would do that. I put my horror movie based fear to the back of my mind and rationalized that it must have been some kind of animal that had climbed up there, maybe a large cat. It was far enough away that I could not give you a rough size, could have been a bear, person, cat for all I knew. I just knew something was up there. Just to be on the safe side, I grabbed a pistol and my flashlight to go check out the situation. I made my way out there slowly. I got more nervous as the moments went by. Each step seemed to bring me closer to the unknown. My fear grew with the increasing distance between me and my house. The grass outside was dry, it was warm out. I slowly got closer and closer to the pole. By the time I got close enough to see the figure,

I noticed that it was gone. I stood there in silence for a moment, contemplating what it could have been. I looked around to see if whatever animal may have been up there had fallen to death. I didn't see anything in the general vicinity. I always hated leaving animals to die like that. I got down on one knee to say a prayer for what animal had been up there. I couldn't imagine that it didn't die, whatever it was. While I was praying, I heard a hiss behind me and felt it scratch. Claws dug into my back.

I reacted the only way I knew how and flung my body around. I thrusted my elbow against whatever was behind me. I hit it really hard. In an almost instinctual way, I got away from it and immediately began firing my pistol in its direction. I must have gotten five shots off by the time I stopped and realized what I had done. I had obliterated a raccoon. It really freaked me out. The entire experience was kind of traumatic. Staying home alone was never quite the same. I called my dad and told him what had happened before driving myself to the hospital. I had to get a rabies shot unfortunately which may have been the most painful experience of my life.

I discovered the next day that I had inadvertently shot two of the windows out of my mom's SUV. The parents made me pay for that with my own money and no, I was not nearly as rich as them. The only money I had to my name was the money that I had made from my personal business ventures online. It was kind of lame. My dad always hammered into my head that the bullets I fire are my responsibility no matter what. It's not a bad lesson to learn for anyone interested in owning a gun. When I got out of the hospital, I went home and finished making that viral cat video and it only got 3,000 views. You can't win them all. But yeah, I guess the moral of the story is that even rich people who are secluded out in the middle of nowhere still have to deal with stupid stuff like

this happening to them too. Dang paranoia and dang raccoons. This story happened a month ago. It was hands down the scariest moment of my life. Everything turned out fine in the end. No one died or anything, thank goodness for that, but I really did not think that at the time. It goes something like this. My friend and I were very interested in witchcraft. We live in the Bible Belt and there has always been a strong stigma against paganism or spiritual beliefs other than Christianity. Like any sane human beings, we naturally rebelled and became fascinated with witchcraft, the occult, and other stuff like that. That's not to say that we're

satanic or anything. Those kinds of people definitely exist, but we were really just interested more so than generally trying to discover a new religion or something. I mean, I still go to church every Sunday. Anyway, a couple of years ago, I had introduced my friend to witchcraft. She didn't know anything about it before, but wow, she really went off the deep end. I was only moderately interested, but she took it to a new extreme. She even runs some kind of witch group on Facebook. I heard it's pretty popular. She knows witches and warlocks from all over the world and regularly participates in paganistic festivals. This one weekend, my parents had planned a trip to go to the beach. It was their anniversary.

They took a trip every year to somewhere different, although it seemed like they almost always picked the beach for some reason. It was never the same beach, but a beach nonetheless. Anyways, this was our opportunity to hang out all weekend without any interference from my parents or anyone else. As I'm sure you're already guessing, we were going to be doing some witchy stuff. That wasn't the only thing we had planned though. Late that Friday night, we had simply watched a movie. The next day, we spend most of our time doing our nails and makeup. We didn't really have anywhere to go, so we just walked down to the convenience store that's down the road from my house. There's a small diner inside of it. They only offer a couple of things to eat, so we went there, got some waffles at like 3 and after waiting around

for a while, decided to go back to my place. By the time we were getting settled in for the night, I could feel both of our moods changing. We were both getting really excited to do the ritual. We talked about it a little bit here and there. She told me that she had something grand planned for that night. She didn't tell me what exactly that was going to be though. We got settled in for the night and by the time we did, the sun was already setting. We were ready to do this ritual. I asked my friend if she wanted to do it and she said yes. She went to her backpack that she brought to get something out. I wasn't sure what it was going to be. I honestly wasn't sure what physical objects you needed to do any kind of ritual. I mean, can't you just channel your spirituality or something? Well, I remember feeling something

in my body change the second she got it out. The atmosphere was different. The hair on my arms were standing up and she pulled out a Ouija board. I don't know if you believe in any of this stuff, but I can tell you that I was only a half-believer until I felt my body physically change the second I was in the presence of that board. There's a certain power to it, the ability to communicate with spirits or ghosts, maybe something else entirely, who knows. My friend brought the Ouija board to the kitchen table and we both sat down. My mind was racing with questions. All I can say for sure is that I wanted to talk to a ghost. I already knew who I wanted to speak with before we even started channeling anyone. My grandmother. She had horrible cancer toward

the end of her life and that was how she died. She passed away in this house, it was a few years back, I was young. I always had this feeling that I didn't spend enough time with her, and I always had a lingering feeling that her spirit was still with us. And tonight was going to be the night that I got to speak with her once and for all. We sat down and began the ritual. Unfortunately we didn't have any candles so we just had to turn out all of the lights except for the stove light. There was also some light coming in from a street light outside and it looked really good and spooky. I told her that we were going to be talking to my grandma first as she was still in the house with us. She agreed and we started calling out to her. So here was the first weird part. I only addressed

the spirit as my grandma. I never told my friend what my grandmother's actual name was. As much as I kind of wanted to believe that I was going to be able to speak with her, I felt like it would have been disrespectful to use her full name when doing the ritual, so I only referred to her as Grandma. Eventually, we got a reply. We asked if anyone was with us. The first time we asked, it went to no. Then again, the second time. But the third time, the pointer went to yes. Now this is where it gets freaky. Because when we asked who was with us, it spelled out my grandmother's name. Again, my friend did not know my grandmother's name. I just found it weird. After the name had been spelled out, my friend asked me who it was. When I told her that it was my grandmother's name she started getting really excited. That wasn't the feeling that I got too. I got really freaked out. It made

me nervous and that was the moment that I had realized that there was more to this world than what we see. Way more. I totally get it if it doesn't prove anything for you especially because you can't verify what I'm saying but for me it was more than enough. Unfortunately that was the only paranormal activity that we got all night. Nothing else of interest happened. Didn't stop us from trying again the next day though. My friend and I followed a similar routine on Saturday and by the time it was getting dark we had that Ouija board out. My parents had to be home on Sunday so we knew that this was going to be our last night of doing this. So it happened like this. We sat down to try and contact another spirit. This time we didn't try to contact my grandma, we just tried any spirit in the vicinity

or in the house. I remember sitting down with my friend and saying, If anyone was with us, please, will you give us a sign? And at that exact moment we heard a loud banging on the garage door. We both started screaming because we thought some kind of horrible spirit had been unleashed. We freaked out for a little while, but get this, it was my dad. He knew that I was letting my friend sleep over at her house and wanted to pull a joke on us. It may have been funny for him and he still laughs about it sometimes but it was absolutely mortifying for me in the moment. To think that I had unknowingly unleashed some kind of demonic beast into the world, that was truly the worst part because it

made me realize if we had somehow done something in the spiritual realm, there wasn't really anything we can do to undo it. There's no control plus Z with a ghost. or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our Tread Experts. Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Trade Express.ca I still feel sick to my stomach, and I am honestly so freaked out right now I have every light on in the house. I volunteer for a 24-7 wildlife rescue service here in Australia that mostly accounts to picking up orphaned joeys from the side of the road, catching sick wallabies and roos, getting possums out of fireplaces and others ranging from

very challenging to the basic. Now I don't drive, so I only do rescues in my area or in a relatively nearby suburbs. I live a block away from a wildlife reserve that has a problem with toxoplasmosis, a parasite that is basically deadly to most macropods, or animals with pouches and marsupials. So when there was a call out at 9pm in the reserve right next to me for a medium-sized wallaby with toxo, I had been bored all day on my day off and went, heck, why not? Got my recuse tab which contains my essentials, hessian bag, ties, gloves, and head torch and went on my way. The couple that called in the roo were at the entrance of the trail and they told me where it was. I knew them, our dogs like to play together and I was easily able to understand what part of the track they were talking about and I trust them. They offered to come with me but it was cold and late and I didn't want to stress the little guy out by having so many people around it so I politely said no and that I got this. My area is very safe and I've had no problems walking out late at night or in the

dark. So I walked the 30 minutes uphill into the reserve and found the poor wallaby. He was so lethargic he didn't bother to move when I went right up to him. Now he was a very large wallaby, definitely not a medium and probably weighed around 45 kilos more than half my own body weight. I normally wouldn't do these rescues because I know it pushes my physical capabilities, so I gently maneuver him into the sack I had in my tub, tie it such with some cable ties and pop him in the tub. Now having grown up in the area in the Australian bush, I am very very used to the sounds of the animals in the night, the scratching, movements, hissing, growling, etc. And since I had my head torch on the entire time, I could see where my feet were going.

I was fine. You develop a sixth sense of sorts. I knew the sounds so well, I was a nighttime bush tour guide a few years ago before I got sick. And when I get a hair-raising feeling on the back of my neck, I know something isn't right. And as sure as sure, every hair on my body seemed to stand on end. I'm on the balls of my feet and I scan the surrounding area, thinking it might be a snake or a lost dog or something. Nothing. Confused but still trusting my gut, I slowly start to travel back down the trail. The wallaby is too heavy, I have to stop every few meters and put it down to stop the tub

from cutting my hands. Then there was a large crack in movement to my rear left. I spin around and start internally freaking out. That was no animal sound I knew. It had to be a person. It was way, way too big and there was a sudden silence like whatever had made the noise had stopped or was stalking. I decided to just screw it. Pulled on my gloves, hoisted the wallaby over my back, turned off my light and started booking it down the trail, sticking to the right side just along the edge of the trees, leaving my tub behind. I doubt anyone would take it and honestly I was freaking out so much I couldn't care less. Luckily it was mostly downhill so I got out of there in maybe 20 minutes or so. Every now and then I could hear a distinctive rustle or crunching of dead bark on the ground And that was way too big for any animal in my area

Let alone one that would follow a human The entire time my instincts are screaming to run, run, run I was gripping the bag over my shoulder for dear life And didn't even stop when my shoulder was screaming to stop and rest. I made it out and down several streets, well into the tight-knit neighborhood and into the light before I dared stop. I couldn't bring myself to look over my shoulder. I could feel someone watching me. I started to cry as I made my way home only a few streets away. I told my mom and she looked very worried and lightly scolded me for going out like that even though we have both done this kind of thing before.

I called up my best friend and she came over for the night and to come with me to try and find my rescue tub with me the next day. This morning another rescuer came to take the sick Rue to the vet and me and Risa went back up to the bush. We found it. The heavy duty plastic tub had been smashed up, like something kept jumping on it. It was half intact. There were butts of what I could only assume were rolled up cigarettes and a needle empty on the ground. I just silently picked up my broken tub and threw it away when I got home. I don't think I will ever be going out at night for a long, long while.

I had just finished high school and had recently turned 18 when all of this occurred. I was looking forward to starting university and was going to be moving out of my parents' house into student housing closer to campus. As a result, I started looking for a job closer to my residence. I found one about 5 minutes walk from where I was going to be living and it was perfect for me. I was to be a barista in a tiny little coffee kiosk on one of the coolest streets in the city. The street was sort of known for ladies of the night and certain illicit substances but it was also super popular as it hosted some of the most interesting events and also contained some of the nicest thrift

stores in the city. What was even more ideal about my new job was the fact that I worked right across from the road from my best friend, we'll call her Phoebe. At the time, Phoebe was in love with her job. She was actively being given more responsibilities and she was being promised the world by her employers. Many of these promises turned out to be false at the time, but that's another story. During one of her shifts, Phoebe was approached by a man who had seemingly become a regular at the place that she was working. We'll call him Richard. He told her that if she ever wanted to leave her job, he had just become the manager of a new restaurant a little ways down the road. Phoebe kindly denied his offer.

He approached her several more times with the same offer before she recommended him our other close friend, we'll call her Mia. Mia was hesitant to take the position at first because she has a passionate hatred for hospitality and greatly prefers retail but she needed the extra money at the time and she took the job. The day that Mia was signing her contract, Phoebe and I both finished work early at around four. So we told Mia that we would meet her at her new job once we finished and then we would go do something afterward. Phoebe and I went to the cake shop next door and sat outside her work while we waited for Mia. When they finished, Richard followed Mia outside to come say hi to

Phoebe. The girls introduced him to me and conversation ensued. He seemed like a friendly guy if not a little bit awkward. He was late 30s early 40s bird-like in appearance quite short balding large in size and seemed very greasy. As the conversation continued I began to tease Mia a little bit as friends do. I saw no harm in it as she was one of my best friends and she had made a similar joke at my expense prior to this interaction. Richard's demeanor suddenly seemed to switch. He became somewhat catty in defense of Mia. He retorted back that if I was going to be mean to his staff that he would bar me from every store in the street we worked on. This seemed ridiculous but he claimed to be mean to his staff that he would bar me from every store in the street we worked on.

This seemed ridiculous but he claimed to be friends with a security guard that worked on the street. I actually was friends with this man and when I asked him about it he told me he had never heard of Richard before. Richard said these things to me as though he was joking but he was so persistent about it that I got incredibly uncomfortable and actually wanted to cry. It was from this interaction that he nicknamed me Trouble. I also feel it needs to be noted that he didn't scold Mia or Phoebe at all for the same behavior. Phoebe sensed my discomfort and told them that we had to leave as we had planned. Flash forward a few weeks and Phoebe and I decide to go see Mia work again. Richard intrudes on our conversation yet again and again he singles me out from the group, teasing me and only referring to Mia's trouble. This time I just play along as I can

tell it isn't going to stop. He asks Mia if she is after another job as he needs someone to clean his home and lives all the way out where my parents and Mia live. Mia tells him she can't as she has too many responsibilities but I tell him I might know a few people in the area that might do it and I give him my phone number. Richard takes this as a sign that I agreed to do it and begins texting me incessantly about setting up a meeting. This man is much older than me and lives alone in a rural area. Suddenly my instincts kick in and I try to get out of it by telling him I can't drive. He says he can pick me up from the nearest train station. I don't want to come across as impolite or have my best friend's boss resent her because of me so I make the mistake of agreeing. However,

I tell him that my sister will be helping me as she is looking for a part time job and my dad will be dropping me off. I do this in order to have some backup and so that my dad knows my whereabouts. Richard goes on to complain about how I don't trust him and claims that his house is very small and the $100 he's going to pay me won't be enough to split with my sister. I tell him that I just want to provide her with work experience and finally he agrees asking how old she is, my sister being 17. Richard and I finally find a time that I'm not working to schedule a meeting. This meeting is held at his

place of work and I feel a lot more comfortable sitting in the main restaurant surrounded by people as I thought he was going to hold the meeting in an office. We begin talking about the responsibilities of the job. He tells me it'll be basic things like tidying up, vacuuming, the usual. I agree. He then goes on to tell me he will also be expecting me to do his laundry. I think this is a bit odd as he is only paying a small amount for such a large job. He assures me his house is small and not that messy but continuously claims it just needs a woman's touch. I nod and ignore the fact that this grown man thinks that just because he is a man,

it means he doesn't need to know how to maintain his own home. Now, this is where things start to get creepy. Near the end of the meeting, he asks me again how old my sister is and when I say 17, his face drops. He then starts telling me about how he previously posted this ad on Craigslist and this 60 year old woman replied offering to do it in lingerie. He tells me he didn't even ask for that in the ad but she offered and he was put off completely. He then proceeds to tell me that he would be willing to pay more to someone between the ages of 18 to 30 if they were willing to do that but he would never request that because he's not a pervert. I call him out on this and tell him then and there that the meeting is done and I have to go meet Phoebe.

He asks me if he made me uncomfortable. Obviously. But I just say no and that I'll get back to him. This strange man who I've only met three times then attempts to hug me but I ignore the gesture and awkwardly wave goodbye from less than three feet away. I book it down the street to Phoebe's work and tell her the whole story. She tells me I can't do it and I tell her I know but I don't know how to tell them that without risking my own safety or Mia's job. Fortunately Richard gives me the perfect out. He texts me later that afternoon telling me he hopes I'm okay with cats because he has a small one.

I see this as the perfect opportunity and lie and tell him that my sister and I are both deathly allergic to cats and neither of us will be open to doing the job. Richard accepts this reasoning after a little persuasion and I think I'm finally done with him. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Richard proceeds to text me every day asking if I'm mad at him or if he made me uncomfortable, asking me how my day was, etc. Just behaving like a preteen in a new relationship basically and the more I ignored him, the more he texted. I finally blocked him in March of 2019. This escapade had began 4 or 5 months prior to this. The blocking still didn't stop him though. Mia informed me that Richard was no longer going to be working there as he had to go for surgery

and we wouldn't have to see him anymore. See, Richard hadn't only been harassing me, but Mia and Phoebe too, just to a lesser extent. One Saturday morning while I was working, setting up at around 7.45am, Richard showed up at my work. The divider was down as we were closed so he came and stood in the doorway, the only exit I had available to me at the time. He started asking me why I was ignoring him and telling me about his surgery. I told him he wasn't allowed to stand there as it was a fire exit but he didn't budge. Fortunately my boss showed up shortly after and told Richard he was going to phone the security if he didn't move. Recognizing the sheer look of fear on my face. My boss was kind of a jerk on

most days but by god was I grateful for him that morning roughly a month after that experience I thought Richard would be gone from my life I was living in my a new apartment Mia was around all the time and loved her job without Richard there things were going well for us one morning after a night of drinking me and the flatmates became peckish. I decided to order us some greasy food on a food delivery app. Lo and behold, who was our delivery driver other than Richard? I turn to my boyfriend at the time and tell him he has to go collect the food. He doesn't understand but Mia assures him it's important. He agrees and goes out to collect it. Richard is not driving the

vehicle he claims to be driving on the app and at first we're confused as the number plate is also different. Mia and I watch from his bedroom window and the intersection takes much longer than expected. He comes back and we ask what took him so long. He tells us that Richard refused to give him the food until he could prove that he was my boyfriend He recognized my name from the app and now he knew where we lived Me and I tell my flatmates the story of what happened and we all agreed it's a good idea to go to my RA The RA reports it to upper management and they say they can't really do anything about it But if he comes in again to call their security A few months go by

and there is no Richard sightings until I order from the same app again. Yet again Richard is our driver and yet again in a different car. I send my boyfriend to go collect the food again and report the incident to my RA again in the food delivery app. I know I was stupid in not immediately reporting it to campus security as I had much more proof of the creepy behavior than he had of his innocence but I was naive and I didn't want my parents to find out at the time. Fortunately, I haven't seen Richard since then. This is a story that's really been bothering me lately for absolutely no reason whatsoever. But a few months back, I just had this dream that brought back this memory I tried to suppress growing up. But as of recently, it's been weighing on my mind. Growing up in 2005 on the edge of the suburbs, there was a large grove

of trees and hills by some railroad tracks that led to a big forest about half a mile from my house. When I was 9 years old, me and my neighborhood friends would ride bikes to the railroad tracks and walk to the forest to go explore the random pieces of furniture and junk in this peculiar forest. We play card games, do homework, and hang with friends out there for about an hour or two, but never sat out there for too long. There were small abandoned houses here and there in this forest that we stayed away from as one neighborhood friend, Michael, told me that there was a homeless man who lived in one of them and if he saw him,

to be sure to run. So right off the bat after hearing this, going near this house in the woods was scary as could be. One chilly November afternoon after school, I came home and dropped off my backpack at my house and immediately went to the woods. My bike was broken so I walked. Michael had told me at school that day to meet him in this open area of the forest to play Pokemon with him. This was something we'd frequently do growing up, just to pass the time until our parents got home at 4pm, so it was nothing unusual. As I crossed the railroad tracks into the forest, I instantly felt a weird sensation. That feeling you feel when someone is watching you. I looked all around and couldn't see anyone so thought I was just getting spooked as the rather overcast day was very eerie anyway. Trekking through the autumn leaves scattered across this large wooded area,

I came upon the big open area where I was supposed to meet Michael. Near the area where we normally met was his notebook, open. On the page was written, hey, I had to go back home and grab some batteries for my game boy. Wait for me here, I'll be back soon. Michael. And so I waited. Being alone, especially feeling like someone was watching me made this particular moment very uncomfortable. However, I convinced myself I was just being a wuss and decided to wait for Michael. I sat down and began playing my Game Boy. It wasn't too long until that sensation of being watched grew into utter paranoia. I kept frantically looking up for my Game Boy and checking my watch to see how long I'd been waiting. I'd been sitting there for 30 minutes. It was beginning to get dark. Then I heard some leaves crunch. I looked into

the direction of the sound and briefly saw a dark hooded figure peeking from behind a few trees, hidden back behind them. My skin crawled and I immediately jumped up from where I was sitting and froze in my tracks, staring. I screamed hello to see if anyone was there. I was quickly reminded I wasn't alone when I saw this tall, dirty-looking hooded man peek back around from the trees. He called back. Hey, buddy. I picked up Michael's notebook and ran for my life. I ran so fast I barely had time to look behind me.

However, I heard leaves crunching not too far behind me, and it was the man running after me. He was screaming for me to come back, and I just wanted to talk to you. I'm sorry. I began crying as I was running thinking this was exactly how those missing kids disappear. I ran and ran and ran until I literally tripped over the railroad tracks and cut up my knees. Michael was just getting to the railroad tracks. He saw me dirty and bloody and crying hysterically and I screamed at him to run. Without question, we ran all the way home. The hooded man was nowhere to be seen once we left the railroad tracks. I last saw him standing in the woods, defeated that he couldn't catch me or

something. I had no idea what was going through his mind. I told Michael everything and we never went back to the woods ever again. Years later in 2016 they bulldozed the woods and built a neighborhood there. We later found out from fellow neighbors who were in the area the same thing happened to them growing up. To this day, this is probably one of the scariest stories I've ever had growing up. So I was a college student back in 2009-2010. I can't remember the exact year, but I was introduced to a friend of an acquaintance while in the cafeteria one day. He was skinny, dark-skinned, wore glasses, and kind of looked like a nerd in a pretentious rich gangster kind of way. He usually wore button-up short-sleeved shirts tucked into pants with a belt.

He'd probably have to meet him to get the image. The first thing he does after introducing himself to me and chatting a bit about random things such as our goals for the future, if I remember right, is try to inundate me with all kinds of information about the Jewish Torah and how all religion is basically fake. He told me all about how the Bible and other religious books were kind of knockoffs of this and how the definitions change the meanings of everything, mostly about the different names for God or the Lord and how it pertained to different entities. I found him interesting but at the time I was in an atheistic phase and wasn't at all interested but it rubbed me wrong for some reason that I couldn't really explain. Almost like cognitive dissonance. Also, I forgot to mention that the very first thing he did was

introduce himself under a false name from a nation, Judea or something very similar. We exchanged numbers and talked. One of the first things I noticed about this guy was how controlling and kind of manipulative he was. He would say things like, if you want to be my friend, you've got to be this sort of way, or you can't eat certain foods because our way of life forbids it. He really wanted me on board with his religious thing for some reason. He would offer advice and help about things too, like romantic problems. He would end up being the first person I ever truly got drunk with, which was ironically a fun time. One of the things I learned very early on about this guy was that when he wasn't harping on about religious rules and stuff like that was that he was one of the

funniest people I knew. He knew how to party, how to socially connect to people, and some conversations we had were very interesting, so we became the kind of friends that talk on the phone often. But one of the other things I noticed about him was he had this very creepy Jim Jones, Charles Manson kind of ability to make people listen to him and believe the things he told them. It was very unsettling. I was well aware of his propensity towards manipulation quite early on, but for some reason, I felt obligated to hang out with him until of course it became a sort of friendship. My strangest friendship ever, truly.

Another creepy thing about him is that he would show up when I'd least expect or want him to. I would turn my head and he'd be there. I was always super careful not to talk about him very loudly because he would do this quite often. Once when I was talking with my mom and I really didn't want to introduce him but had to anyways. By then I already knew he was a sociopath and a narcissist. He had no empathy for anyone at all and would stroke his own ego all day long. He was incredibly vain too and took all kinds of useless supplements for no apparent reason. When we were on the phone, he would tell me things about how the different names for God aforementioned were actually about aliens. He said humans were designed to mine for gold because it would make the aliens immortal. The story he would try to sell me on would change many times over the

course of our friendship depending on what he was into. It would go from Jewish to Jamaican then to Egyptian then to something else I can't quite remember. Sometimes it would have elements of spirituality in it and others he would say that after we die that's it. He'd talk about how beings lived in the sun and under the moon and how light was fake and only dark light existed. Then he'd talk about how I should put together all of my college loan money with his so we could buy a house near the beach and we could live it up down there. Like I'd fall for that. Anyways, we meet these girls and he wants to show me how easy college girls are. So he starts chatting up this girl and her friend who happens to be a

lesbian. Their relationship is short-lived and it's mostly because she said he had a temper and was too controlling. She's the one who told me his real name because she saw his ID card. So this guy gets the idea that he wants to end her life and her friend for humiliating him. Apparently the ex's friend mocked him or something. He said, we don't let people do things like that to us and get away with it. So he starts shopping around for poisons, a gun, and a knife, anything to try to get his revenge. He talked other people into helping him get things too. So I see this getting out of hand and the girl is a very nice girl so I do the only thing I can and tell security. But I tell them to keep me anonymous

because this guy is crazy and has said many things about wanting to be a gangster and wanting to hurt people. Well those idiots mess that up and he ends up finding out about it. I find out from a mutual friend at some point that this guy now wants to harm me. He had plans to do so but it kind of seemed like some people either didn't come through for him or those friends weren't that into the idea. Anyway we kind of sort of pseudo bury the hatchet. Although he did tell me many times that he could have did it himself but he wouldn't do that because I'm his one and only true friend. Eye roll but I don't doubt he would actually try to do it. I told him I was manipulated into telling on him. Long story, as you can tell

this story needn't be any longer and I'm trying to just give the highlights and context. The things he said kept getting crazier and crazier though and if you try to disagree with him he would just get argumentative with tons of false facts or continue on. Some people actually bought this stuff and were kind of like disciples to him but I just couldn't get behind blatant lies that a sociopath made up. At a later point we decided to go to a beach town to hang out, drink, and have some fun. Yes, I was tempting fate, but back then I didn't care so much about my life and I really needed to get out and break free from being a shut-in that never did anything. So me, him, and two other friends went to this awesome college

beach party town. It's only important to mention this because one of the friends he invited along was a guy with social issues that he didn't actually know. The guy just had money and the other guy had a car. He used these guys as a means to an end. They weren't his friends to my surprise. At one point the guy with the car stands up in the middle of the night when the whole town goes dead. Our cell phones died and a dealer was the only hope for a ride we could get. So the dealer requests we hold something for him in exchange for a ride while he goes to get his granny's car. Charles makes me put it in my pocket after a bit. Looking back, the guy was doing everything he could to make me look even more suspicious.

He had me wait even more suspicious. He had me wait in an alley. I can't remember why exactly. He said it was out of sight, but the dealer came back and said that what he was doing was messed up and that I stuck out over there in the sort of shadowy area. Looking back, if a cop drove by, they'd have detained me on the spot and then have taken whatever off of me of my person and arrested me. Eventually we leave and Charles decides that we should just keep the stuff the dealer handed him because he never came back anyway. So we were waiting by the gas station and this guy literally goes up to a police officer to ask for a ride. By this time, he had taken the stuff back and forced the other guy to hold on to it but he'd assume that the

socially awkward guy gave it back to me by then I am sure he was trying to get me with that one at that point anyway after we had made it back things went back to how they usually go if I haven't mentioned it Charles was a womanizer he didn't care who it was he'd go for her he'd get with women that I thought would be impossible for anyone at all to get with, like married teachers and devout churchgoers who were in committed relationships, but he also didn't seem to have standards. He just liked to ruin people's relationships and their lives. It kind of shattered my illusions of people at the time because it showed me that everyone could be manipulated in doing anything and that identity and personality didn't mean anything. I'm not sure, but I might have been depressed for a long time after that.

There was this girl who was a pastor's daughter, sort of pretty. She kept to herself mostly. Charles decided to go out with her at some point and she entered this rebellious phase where she was sleeping around with everyone. She also didn't bathe or take care of herself. Apparently, Charles was her first. When I asked her if that was true, she proceeded to tell me horror stories about how he was manipulative and abusive toward her. And one time during a fight, while they were walking back to campus, he tried to push her into traffic. This was told to me during a period of time he had left and gone somewhere for an internship. Thankfully I thought because I wasn't likely to see him again, at least not for a long time. I was wrong. He came back when I least

expected it and he was just as messed up as ever. I told him I thought a girl liked me once and expressed a desire to get with her. Just a random conversation that I didn't think would go anywhere. I just needed to work up the nerve to do it. Upon hearing this, he goes over to her, they talk. Next thing I know, they're in a relationship. This relationship lasts a few weeks and for some reason, he's told her and everyone else that I'm his cousin. Suddenly they break up and she's avoiding both him and me. I try to explain that I'm not like him and that she doesn't need to be afraid of me but she absolutely refuses to be around me. If I sit at the table all of our

friends except Charles are at she gets up and leaves. Someone asked her about it and she told him that it was because Charles was my cousin and that he did horrible things to her when they were together. This scumbag did that stuff just because I liked her and in a way it was kind of my fault. Anyway, a few years later, circa 2012 or something, I have a new circle of friends. A guy named Ricky, another named Mike, and a girl named Karen. Ricky had a huge crush on Karen, but we all got along just fine. One day, Charles just shows up and tries to get Ricky to join us in our adventures, or whatever. I'm really just trying to find any excuse to distance myself at this point, but I guess at this junction of my life, I'm still way

too shy to tell people off or not be afraid to speak up. This idiot has some plan to form our own gang or something and one day he's trying to three-way call us. I badly wanted to tell Ricky that giving him his number was a terrible idea but I didn't want to get shot or stabbed or anything. I didn't pick up the phone and apparently they had a conversation. Later on I'd find out that during their few weeks of friendship, Charles was trying to get Ricky in on a plan to lure me into a trap to hurt me. He had sold Ricky a lie originally that I liked Karen and Ricky didn't seem to mind and said that he would step down. So Charles started spinning other lies. Ricky didn't go

for any of it in the end and we talked and had a long healthy conversation about it. Ricky's still a good friend to this day. Eventually Charles left and the last I heard from him was some voicemail from 2015 or something. Hands down the creepiest person I'd ever met, befriended, made an enemy of, and then had to play it cool with for years on end just to not end up dying or worse. He never did admit his real name to me. He always introduced himself under false names to strangers too. I think this story needs a lot more details, so feel free to ask any questions in the comments about things that didn't make any sense and I'll do my best to fill in the gaps. I really wanted to keep this short

and just go over all the creepy points about my friendship with Charles. It's disturbing to me as I read the stories on this sub, how many experiences I've actually had worth sharing. They aren't as terrifying as most of the other stories I read, but they're enough to still make me shiver a little in hindsight. Bear with me if it gets long. I went to college straight out of high school, so my first weekend partying on a college campus was when I was 18. I remember hearing about this one frat house in particular that was notorious for trying to drug girls during their first few weeks I was there. It's horrible, but it seemed like everyone had a friend or knew someone who knew someone who partied at that house and woke up with no memory of it. Now I recall that was my first weekend in a new city

on a new campus. There was definitely more than one frat house and I was with a decently large group of people. I felt safe. This group included me, a close friend from high school who was also my roommate, her boyfriend, his three roommates, also nice guys, and another two girlfriends from high school. There may have been more that joined later in the night or something, but this was like four years ago now, so bear with me. Now, we were stupid enough to still go out partying from house to house. However, there was a limit to my stupidity. We all brought our own drinks. The guys had cans of beer loaded into a few backpacks and the girls all had mixed drinks. Let's be honest, mostly liquor and some juice in water bottles with screw caps. We kept them on us the whole time, something that was drilled

into us, I think. Make your own drink and never set it down. One house we went to had a setup that, looking back, was incredibly sketchy. The party was mostly in the unfinished basement. It had a cool underground vibe. It was pretty packed and lit up by a few black lights or red lamps. The weird thing was the drinks. There was one room in this basement that had a doorway with no actual door and an opening next to the doorway that looked like a window. It reminded me of the window lunch ladies in middle school serve food out of. Well there were a couple of coolers in this room but rather than being open to everyone, a small handful of dudes would just hand out beers out throughout

that little window. There was one senior dude who latched onto me during this party. At first I didn't care. I was with my friends and wasn't trying to hook up with anybody, but I was willing to flirt and dance a little. Harmless, I thought. I sobered up a little bit when this guy, I'm going to name him Buzz, brings me a beer. It was already open. Now luckily for me, I can't stand beer. I had my extremely strong screwdriver in my purse and didn't need a beer. It was already open. Now luckily for me, I can't stand beer. I had my extremely strong screwdriver in my purse and didn't need a beer. Initially, that's why I didn't drink any. What pulled me out of my tipsy haze was when Buzz pipes up and goes, are you just going to hold that beer or are you going to drink it?

Right away, I was annoyed. Mind your own business, creep. Maybe I'm trying to pace myself. Then I started to question on a deeper level why he was in such a hurry for me to chug this beer he had brought me. I looked at the beer for a second and then handed it to him with a huge grin on my face. He puts his hand up and shook his head. I think he said something like, Nah, that's yours. Well, now I'm definitely not going to drink it. I didn't make a scene right away or jump to any obvious conclusions but I started to watch a lot more closely. I made sure none of my friends were drinking the beer from the party. I think that I told them all that I felt weird about and we

didn't need to leave but please be careful here. I held the beer for a while, bringing it up to my face now and then gave the illusion that I was drinking it. Now, this guy followed me the rest of the night. We went to another party, he followed me there. We went to my friend's boyfriend's house, he followed us there. I went through periods of doubt. He was pretty good looking and he was hitting it off with our group pretty well. But towards the end of the night when he kept trying to get me in rooms alone to make out, I was sort of over it.

My friend's boyfriend had to work the next morning so he stayed sober enough to drive us back to the dorms. It ended up being him, my friend, and Buzz in the car. While we were waiting for everyone to get in the car, my friend's boyfriend turns to me in the back seat and lets me know Buzz told him he was coming back to the dorms with me. It was in the space of a minute and I think I only had time to look confused and be like, um, no? During the car ride, it became apparent that my friend was riding along to make sure I got back alright, but she was going to stay at her boyfriend's house. When we pulled up at the dorms,

there's pretty much nobody around. It's easily 3-4 in the morning. I get out of the car and before anyone can say anything, buzz follows. I remember being salty when her boyfriend just drove off like wow dude thanks for taking the hint way to look out. We got to the brightly lit lobby of the dorms and I turned around to face him. I asked what he was planning on doing. He looked a little bit stunned and was like well do you want me to come up? I gave him a blunt nope And watched with satisfaction as he had to wander back out into the night to find his way home I probably should have ditched him earlier in the night I shouldn't have given him so many openings to be alone with me But honestly, I had my own agenda

The way I see it, he wastes his time with me all night Waiting for me to lose my bearings That never happened I like to think I kept him busy and maybe spared another girl wastes his time with me all night waiting for me to lose my bearings. That never happened. I like to think I kept him busy and maybe spared another girl. When I was about 11 or 12 years old, my cat had a litter of kittens and I was trying to give them away at my local park. Around the same time as when I started to wear sports bras. I was pre-pubescent and getting used to being a big girl and thought it was kind of neat to be growing up. Either way, being new to sports bras I found I

could use it as a large pocket of sorts. I had taken three kittens to the park and I had given away two kittens while I was there. So naturally, with only one kitten left, I put it in my newly acquired pocket for the three block journey through the neighborhood back home. Now I wasn't supposed to be back home for at least another hour as I didn't have to be home until the street lights came on and the sun was a ways from setting. I was about halfway home and only needed to make one more turn and walk up the road to my house when a man in a white truck pulled up and asked what I was doing. I knew not to talk to strangers, it was drilled into my head at a young age but

I didn't find it weird because I lived in a pretty small town in Utah where everyone knew everyone and it wasn't strange to be stopped by someone who looked somewhat familiar because they would usually just ask how my parents were or they would make sure the younger kids in town were okay. So even though I didn't recognize him, I thought he could be my parents' friend. He leaned over the open truck window as I walked closer and said, what do you got in your shirt? Me being an innocent child and not understanding that question as a no-go, I stayed standing close to the truck door and simply said, a kitten? And continued to explain that my cat had babies. At this point, he pulled my shirt away from my chest at the neckline and said, I'm just going to peek at the kitty and look down my shirt. Alarm bells started going off. Even though I did notice the remark about

what was in my shirt, I definitely knew he shouldn't be looking down my shirt. I started to back away and he reached out and grabbed my wrist. My gut twisted as I realized I couldn't get away. He started to drag me closer to the truck door as he opened the door, stepped out and grabbed my wrist again. But now, there wasn't a metal door between us. It was at this time I went into full panic mode trying to get away, trying to bite and kick but I was too scared to scream. Just a second later I hear screeching tires and at the corner just ahead of us and I see another truck that is doing at least 50 miles per hour in this small neighborhood ripping around a corner. It was my dad. He stopped just inches away from the front

of this strange man's truck and jumped out of the truck, his face red and fists ready to beat the life out of this guy, and he screams, what are you doing? The man cowers and says, I was just looking at her, I was just talking about, I was about to take the kitten. My dad physically lifted this man by his shirt and threw him back in his truck and goes on to beat the life out of him. But I grabbed his shirt, me now sobbing and begging to go home. He relents but warns this man that if he ever sees him in our town again, he would be a walking dead man. He drives the whole seconds it took to get home with me still sobbing in his lap while holding this shaking kitten. When we get home, my mom gets on the phone with the police and goes over the little details that my dad had obtained. I got a stern talking to about strangers and what to do on those situations

and that was the end of it. The police were never able to find him and no one around our town knew who he was so I think he might have just been passing through the town or may have even been a prowler from another town. And here we are, almost two decades later and I asked my dad how he knew to come up that street like a demon escaping from Hades. He said that he was just sitting on the couch with my mom and had a gut feeling that something was horribly wrong and jumped in the truck and drove. Apparently my mom was so shocked by my dad's weird intuition out of nowhere that she didn't even have enough time to follow him outside before he was already driving off. I'm so grateful that my dad followed his gut and found me so quickly, because I believe school and that was a while ago so some

memories are fuzzy. I, an 18 year old female, was still living at home with my dad. I paid rent and worked full time at a grocery store. My stalker, we'll call him Dave, he was also 18, was my emotionally abusive boyfriend at the time. He would constantly state how embarrassed he was of my looks and weight and then flip the narrative and say how miserable he would be if I left him. He would try to pressure me to cut ties with my family and would pout when I declined. I was no shrinking violet and eventually grew tired of the emotional manipulation. My first experience happened while my dad was asleep for his night shift. Dave was at my house trying to pick a fight with me about not moving in with him.

Something about that day woke me up and I told him, I'm not doing this anymore. We're not good for each other and I want to be happy. Dave lost it. He started crying and when he realized that it wouldn't work, he kept trying to persuade me to stay with him. I told him no, that we could remain friends, wrong thing to say, and that he needed to leave. He left or so I thought. 30 minutes later I was making pancakes in the kitchen and I heard my brother's dog Paco growling from under the porch. It was a deep growl and I could tell something was off. I opened the door to find Dave hiding on the corner of my porch. He then

bulldozed himself back into the house and told me he refused to leave until I was back with him. I began to panic. I didn't want to wake my dad up because I thought I could handle the situation myself. I wasn't easily intimidated by men and was raised by a bunch of rowdy farmers. I told him I needed to use the bathroom. I grabbed my phone and sped walk into the bathroom and texted one of my guy friends, Chris, and explained that I needed help. Thank God for Chris. He dropped everything and drove over as fast as he could while I was stuck in the living room with Dave telling me we'll be moving in together. It was like nothing I said mattered. Chris walked in and told him to leave now or he'd be calling the police.

Dave was cowering and booked it, saying he'd text me later. Now the second experience. This happened a week or so after I broke up with Dave, the stalker. I was on my way to work when I noticed my neighbor's car was following me all the way into town. I live in a rural area, so it takes a good 30 minutes to get into town. Once I parked, my neighbor, Sally, parked her car and started waving her hands and yelling. I walked over to her, clearly confused. Maybe something was wrong with my car. She ran over and said, that green truck has been following you. She pointed across the parking lot and sure enough, there was Dave in this pickup. Sally

began to tell me she saw his truck parked by her house out of view from the main road and she noticed he'd leave when I left. Sally said she saw it happen about three times and she wanted me to know. She told me to call the police and hugged me and began yelling obscenities at Dave to leave me alone. I was shaking and thanked her and went in to clock in for my shift. I came out for my first break hours later and noticed he was still parked there. I wasn't scared. I was furious.

I did one of the dumbest things one can do in this situation. I stomped over to his truck and pulled his door open and began yelling at him to leave me alone and if he doesn't, I'd whoop him. He laughed. Now some backstory. I'm a tall Amazonian of a woman and have been known to be a nasty scrapper when it came to fighting. No matter how intimidating or angry I was, nothing I said was getting through to him. When he laughed, that's when the hairs on my neck stood up and I left his pickup and went back to work. I explained to a co-worker what was going on and he helped me to my car once my shift was over.

Dave continued to stalk me for a good few months and I kept myself surrounded by my friends with a taser. I eventually came out and told my dad. He was upset I didn't tell him earlier and he tightened security around the house as a result. I never did call the cops. Dave's stepdad was in the force and being in a small town that gave Dave more leverage to go about with no consequences. I was finally able to shake him from stalking me when I got a new boyfriend, now husband, but that's a whole other story. My neighbor and friend were very helpful and knowing what I know now. If I wasn't warned by my neighbor or my friend decided not to answer my texts, I probably would have been in a whole different situation. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and click that notification bell to To be continued... 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 remember, always finger the apples.