The Lets Read Podcast - 99: Episode 088 | Lockdown & Insane Asylum Stories | 23 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

Welcome to the eighty-eighth episode of The Lets Read Podcast! This podcast includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Lockdowns, Insane Asylums and Break-Ins... 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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to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Life can be very hard here in the Philippines. And here in Quezon, the largest city in my country, and the place where I live, life has gotten even harder since one man came to power back in 2016. Rodrigo Roa Duterte. He is often described in the same way as the American president, Donald Trump. People say he is a populist and an agitator, but honestly our president makes Trump look like an angel.

Duterte has been a very vocal supporter of the extrajud500 murders committed by what has come to be known as the Davo Death Squads. There, they murdered without a care, even sometimes targeting children in their attempt to clean up the streets. It was bad back then, but it got even worse after 2016 when he became president, and the more I think about it, the more it seems like his entire reign was building up to today, when extenuating circumstances have meant that he is more power than ever before. Kaysan has reacted to the COVID-19 crisis in a very similar way to other places. We have lockdowns, mandatory self-isolation, and food rationing. And naturally, the police force has been granted considerably more power in light of such an extreme health emergency. It seems to be quite

a unique situation, in that the government has increased powers and civil liberties have all but been suspended. And yet, there is absolutely no outrage or protest from the people. They are scared and scared people are very, very easy to control. They don't just accept the introduction of draconian punishment, they welcome it. And for me, a firm believer in human rights, it is a very, very scary time indeed. For example, just a few days ago I was walking to the market to buy essential food supplies when I saw a large crowd gathered near the market square. Hundreds of people were jostling for position to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that was hidden from

my view, and they were quickly being dispersed by police who obviously were under orders not to let people congregate at all. When the crowd thinned out, only then could I see what they were looking at. It was a small cage, maybe only a couple of square feet in size, no higher than a man's thigh. I recognized it as a dog cage from the sturdy steel bars, the kind us Filipinos keep our pets in to keep them safe at night, but there was no dog in the cage. It was a man. He looked terrible, like he'd not eaten or slept in days and worst of all, this was all taking place under the midday sun. He was being baked

alive in public, with only the police throwing the occasional cup of water over him to keep him from passing out from heatstroke. I was in shock. I just stood there for a moment as masked individuals filed past me, staring at the man's fingers as he hooked them through the bars of the cage and begged for help. Too big, too big, he said over and over again. Water, water. A masked policeman approached him, tossing another cup of lukewarm water over the cage's bars. The man reacted like an animal,

lapping at the bars of the cage to catch a few droplets in his mouth, trying to catch what little he could on his fingers and palms then licking them desperately out of pure manic thirst. The police just laughed as he did so, but I didn't. I couldn't even move. All I could do was stare at a man who had been reduced to something less than human, and it probably hadn't even taken that long to do it. Some people were recording the man on their phones from a distance, taking pictures to send to relatives and friends. I didn't even have to ask why he was locked in that cage like that because the policemen didn't waste time to tell me. Leave the area, one shouted at me, pointing towards the small steel cage, or you'll end up just like him.

Tell everyone, this is what happens when people don't practice social distancing, said another. I turned and walked away, very quickly, not slowing my pace until I reached the market square. When I was done, I walked straight back home, not stopping, almost flaunting my bags of groceries to any police officers that gave me looks. There was no way I was ending up in a cage like that poor man. Even if he had violated social distancing rules, there was no good reason to cage him like an animal. But the thing is, that's not even the scariest thing I've heard or seen in the past few weeks. In Cavite province, just south of Manila, two small children were forcibly locked inside an actual coffin on March 26th as punishment for violating curfew. In Bonando village, officials arrested four boys and four girls on March 19th for violating curfew.

They forcibly cut the hair of seven of the children while the one who resisted was stripped naked and ordered to walk home. And these aren't just rumors either. These are things that I have seen videos of on WhatsApp. The Philippines already has a terrible record of criminalizing children with members of Congress attempting to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 12, with some having proposed it to be lowered to 9. If enacted, this could put more and younger children behind bars in dangerous detention facilities. And speaking of rumors, in October 2017, Rodrigo Duterte opposed passing a law against so-called fake news, saying that it would be unconstitutional as it can curtail freedom of speech. news may have their electronic devices confiscated, face jail time, and in some cases even be landed with an enormous 1 million Philippine peso fine. That's the equivalent of about $40,000.

That's a punishment that could destroy someone's life, as we are not wealthy people here in the Philippines. I understand lies are bad and that scaremongering can cause panic, but to destroy someone's life for that is a horrifying prospect. But it only took a few days before destroying someone's life took on a very literal meaning. On this past Thursday, a 63-year-old man was shot dead after threatening village officials and police with a scythe at a virus checkpoint. Official news sources stated that the man is believed to have been drunk when he threatened village officials and police manning the checkpoint in the town of Nasi Pit in the southern province of Agusan del Norte. The suspect was cautioned by a village health worker for not wearing a face mask, the report said.

But the suspect got angry, uttering provoking words and eventually attacked the personnel using a scythe. A lot of people here don't quite understand what is going on, only that there is an infectious disease, but not exactly how incredibly virulent it is. So please, I hear a lot of people complaining that it's very fascist to shut down society in such a way but be grateful you are not in the Philippines where we are just as much in danger because of our government as the virus my neighbor Gary has lived across the street from our house ever since we moved in. He's a nice guy, like perennially nice. Never has a bad word to say about anyone.

Always sees the best in people. He never fails to see things in a positive light and has been a welcome fixture at every barbecue or block party we've ever thrown. But this latest crisis has been pretty hard on Gary and his family and over the past few weeks I've noticed some pretty disturbing changes in his behavior. Changes that have meant that Gary went from being the Ned Flanders personality clone we love so much to being someone that I'm quite frankly terrified of. I remember when we first heard rumors of the lockdown coming, Gary came over to talk about it. He was his usual jolly self, laughing off the scaremongering coming from the

media. But as we talked about a shortage on food and hand sanitizer becoming a reality, he grew unsettled in a way I'd never really seen before. Gary has two young kids, but he also has his elderly mother living with him. He once told me he just didn't have the heart to put her in a home, how that seemed way too much like abandonment. Gary was just that kind of guy. At least, he was that kind of guy. I only really started noticing the change when he came home one day with a trunk loaded with groceries. Not just the trunk, either. The back seat of his SUV was overloaded with paper grocery bags.

Some were loaded with meat and vegetables, some stacked entirely full of canned goods. But it was the box full of hand sanitizer that really made me take notice. Gary was the polar opposite of a germaphobe, like polar opposite. He routinely ignored the 5 second rule when it came to barbecue items dropped into lawn grass, and was very much of the opinion that letting kids play outside, letting them eat a little dirt from time to time was just good for their immune system. It'd make them tough in a way that playing with screens just wouldn't. We actually used to laugh at people who kept those little Purell bottles

and hip holsters, overly paranoid losers who would drive their cars off a bridge if they really knew how many microorganisms lived in their eyelashes alone. But here Gary was, unloading an entire pallet of hand sanitizer from his truck. Got some to spare, huh, buddy? I shouted over from my porch. Not at the prices I just paid, he replied. Seems innocuous, I know, but if you knew Gary, you'd be just as interested to note that this reply didn't come with a smile or a chuckle. He barely even looked at me as he took the supplies inside. But things only really took a turn for the worse when one of Gary's kids took a tumble while playing in the street outside their house. They were playing on the new bike,

riding around in circles when I guess they just lost their balance and fell hard onto the concrete. You could tell it was a bad fall from the way they let out this pained, shocked cry before bursting into tears. My wife was out on the porch at the time, sipping an iced tea and saw the whole thing. I had heard the scream but wasn't sure what happened until I saw my wife grabbing the first aid kit we keep in a kitchen cabinet. I followed her outside into the street but as she approached Gary's kid, the man himself was stood in his front doorway. In the sternest voice I'd ever heard out of the man, he told my wife to get away from his kid. I guess she understood what he meant. As she stopped just short of the crying child, took a few steps back and then slid

the first aid kit across the concrete in her direction. Gary's other kid was old enough to know what that first aid kit was, but as he tried to pick it up off the ground, Gary erupted at him to not touch that freaking thing and to get back inside the house. My wife apologized for her hastiness, but assured Gary she had the best of intentions, and for the first time in four or five years since we'd moved into the neighborhood, I actually found myself getting angry with him. He didn't even acknowledge my wife's apology giving us both a contemptuous look as he closed and locked the front door behind him. A few days later we saw the same kid who fell wearing a makeshift sling and looked pretty miserable. It took us a while to put two and two together but we did and we realized that Gary

hadn't nor had any intention of taking his kid to the hospital to get their arm looked at by a doctor. It was only then did it really hit me just how bad this whole pandemic thing was affecting him. He wasn't just taking precautions, as the rest of us were. He seemed to be going full-on survivalist, like the guy's entire personality had shifted over what was apparently just the course of a week or so. It was disconcerting to say the least. Then, just a few nights ago, my wife shook me awake to tell me she could smell something burning. I literally fell out of bed thinking she was telling me our house was on fire, but she assured me it wasn't and that she could just smell something. As my senses came to life I began to be able to smell it too, this acrid,

smoky smell that was obviously something being burned. It only took me one look out of our bedroom window to tell me where it was coming from, an orange glow emanating from across the street. There was a fire in Gary's backyard. The smell wasn't just bothering us either, almost every bedroom light of every house in the block was switched on and I could see some similarly irritated neighbors floating by their windows trying to find out where the stench was coming from. I decided to just suck it up, go over and ask him to put the fire out. God knows what he was burning but I knew from the smell that it wasn't healthy. But no sooner had I crossed onto Gary's half of the street, he appears from his backyard gate. At least I figured it was Gary. I couldn't see his face. It was covered up with one of those old

Gulf War era gas masks, the kind with the big round glass eyes that made him look more simian than human. That, along with the 12 gauge shotgun that he had firmly in his grip sent a shiver of fear running through me. Get away from my house, Martin. His words were muffled by the mask, but it was clear what he said. Gary, buddy, that fire is... Get away from my house, Martin. He never called me Martin. Always Marty. It was the first time I'd ever heard him call me by my actual name. I just did the smart thing. I backed off, hands raised, slow enough to keep him from freaking out and shooting me dead right there in the street. I haven't talked to or seen Gary for the past few days and I'm more than willing to give him

the space he and his family need if that's what it takes for him to stay sane. But please, if any of your neighbors are suffering right now, please reach out to see if they're okay, if they need anything at all, even if it is just for you to keep your distance. I'm sure Gary will be fine in time when all of this stuff has calmed down. I hope he returns to be the man I once knew and loved. Have y'all been following all these Zoom and Skype dates that have been happening since the lockdown started? As you imagine, the use of dating apps have skyrocketed since the government had ordered us all inside for the foreseeable future. Those who would usually flaunt their game in the club or at the gym are now forced to use

the same tactics as the less socially adept of us and dating apps. And although I'm not entirely happy with the increased competition, I'd be lying if I said my match count hasn't bumped up a little. Silver linings, right? Anyway, instead of using Tinder or Hinge with their increased emphasis on physical appearances, definitely not my strong point given I'm about 30 pounds overweight right now, I opted for Reddit's R4R forum, which is full of posts from those who want to hook up for conversation, flirting, and occasionally even more. So, I put up this pretty dumb post, basically asking if there were any girls that wanted to have like a lockdown date or whatever. I listed a bunch of my interests, mainly horror movies,

and a few political issues close to my heart, and implored anyone who identified with them to get in touch. One or two girls did, and I feel mean admitting this, but they just didn't seem particularly engaging. Nice, yes, charming, one really was, but our talks didn't light a fire in me, not like the message I got in the wee small hours of the morning when I was up way past my usual bedtime. The message from a girl named Amber who wrote eloquently and charmingly about how she too was looking for something of a lockdown bae herself. She was highly politically involved as she put it, which definitely sparked my interest, in sharp comparison with the two other girls who wrote back to me who didn't seem interested in politics. She was also

extremely intelligent. The way she was able to articulate her thoughts was something I had rarely encountered in online interactions, which is also why I was so shocked when I found out she was only 18, 11 years my junior. Only, when she described herself, I started to get suspicious. She seemed perfect. Too perfect. She told me she was 5'7", Asian-American, fit, and toned from yoga and spin class. In her own words, she was pretty cute. Catfish was the first thought that came to my mind. There was absolutely no way a girl as cute sounding as that would be getting in contact with me. So I just made a joke about it. Well, a joke that wasn't really a joke. I basically

called her out on it. How she didn't have to pretend to be some hot Asian girl just to get my attention, not with the kind of conversational skills that she did. The next message was just a link to an Imgur photo. A risky click if ever there was one, as there was absolutely nothing in the way of a caption to clue me into what the picture was of, but I suppose curiosity just got the better of me and I just clicked. For those that don't already know, a verification photo is when a person handwrites their username or other pertinent information on a piece of paper to prove that they are indeed who they say they are. And yep, you guessed it, the picture was verification. As it turned out, Amber was exactly who she claimed to be. Young, Asian, and impossibly gorgeous. I mean, I was literally stunned when I saw that picture of her.

I just stopped and stared for what seemed like minutes. When it came to returning the favor, I was terrified. I am not in the least bit confident about my appearance, as I've made clear, and the idea of trying to take a selfie, something I'd never even done before that evening, was almost too much to bear. But I did it anyway. I combed my hair, washed my face, then went over my beard with the barely used trimmer my mom bought me for my 28th birthday, basically her way of telling me to get that stuff off my face. Then, when I was done, I found my angle, took the photo, and then sent it over. The suspense. The raw suspense. Oh my god.

I honestly think the last time I was that nervous was before my first date I ever went on as a 17-year-old in high school. I'm talking that heart-racing, sweaty palm, time slowing down nervous that makes you feel sick to your stomach. I was convinced I'd never hear from her again, that she'd see how mismatched this whole thing was and just up and ghost me. Only she didn't. She actually replied saying that I was cute. That was three weeks ago now. We've talked every single day since then, sometimes having multiple hour-long phone calls that run into the wee small hours of the morning. And the more we talked, the more serious things became. At one point, Amber asked where she saw this going after lockdown was over. She told me she was living

in Portland, whereas I was all the way over in the greater Boston area, pretty much opposite ends of the country to one another, but she pretty much straight up raised the issue of us needing to act on the chemistry we had. I told her that money was no object, that she was legit the most beautiful, charming young woman I'd ever met in my entire life. It was true, I meant every word of it, but I understood when she told me that she heard that kind of thing all the time, that they'd tell her just about anything to get the chance to sleep with her, and I believed that too. She asked me how far I'd be willing to go to prove myself to her. I told her as far as she needed me to go At that she just laughed

Telling me how she doubted it I was indignant I'd do anything Everything she asked just to make her believe it That's when she told me to get a knife I'm ashamed to say that there was barely any hesitation I just trusted her I trusted that she knew what was best for me.

She already seemed to be able to read me like a book. She asked if I had an envelope handy. I told her yes, that I had a pack of about a hundred crisp white envelopes. She told me to open it. I obeyed. She told me to place the blade of the knife onto my palm. I obeyed. And when she finally gave me the order, I pulled the blade across my flesh and let fresh blood flow onto the open envelope. It didn't even hurt. It was the strangest thing, but for the first few minutes there was no pain at all. Just this dull, hot feeling as I watched the blood flow from the open wound, staining the perfect white of the paper a deep crimson. I held everything up to the webcam, showing her exactly how far I was willing to go for her.

And oh my god, the look on her face, the way her pretty almond eyes seemed to light up, it just filled me with joy. I don't really know why I'm telling you this. I know it's making me sound crazy just as much as it's making her sound toxic, but in that moment it all just made so much sense. Words are cheap, actions count for something, and there's no dearer currency than her own lifeblood. It seemed like the purest act of devotion imaginable and for a while, I saw nothing wrong with it and had zero regrets. When it was done, she told me to buy a larger plastic envelope, one that'll properly conceal the blood-filled paper one. Then I was to mail

it to her. Again, it made a lot of sense. It was possible to fake something like that, I mean, pretty easily, so the idea that she wanted to see for herself, to verify that I'd be true to her, it was just second nature. As instructed, I paid extra for next day delivery, a lot extra, but it would be worth it. It felt like every penny I spent on this girl was worth it. Money can't buy something like we shared, at least. That's the way it felt at the time. I remember being so excited at the prospect of her opening that envelope, of seeing her satisfaction at knowing what I'd done for her. And when she saw, when she showed me her opening that thing over webcam,

it was every bit as disgustingly glorious as I imagined. Her eyes lit up in that same adorable way and she smiled in a way I'd never quite seen before, such a wide white smile. She giggled as she held it up, bringing a hand to her mouth and in one fluid motion, she brought the blood-stained envelope to her lips and kissed it. Only, she didn't just kiss it. I watched transfixed as she began to lick at the dried bloodstains, spitting on them and lathering them with her tongue until the dried mess hydrated and formed a sticky crimson residue. I'm not writing this now, it's really obviously disgusting, but at the time, it seemed like love. It was the purest act of acceptance of another

living being I'd ever witnessed. She was purporting to adore the very blood that ran through my veins, that even in a dried up, crusty state, she could invigorate it. It said so much with so little. The next day, we got into a conversation about cats. Amber loved kitties, as she put it. She had a bunch of clothes with cat designs on them, hair accessories that resembled cat girls. It was a whole theme for her.

But since she was in college college living in a dorm room that she was basically trapped in due to lockdown, there was no way of her getting to own one. Now, for the first time being away, I confess that since my last girlfriend had broken up with me and moved out, I'd strongly been considering getting a pet to combat the crushing loneliness that came with a lifestyle such as mine. This revelation delighted her, and she asked if I would go get her one. I was confused at first, thinking we meant she wanted me to like send her a cat. I didn't think this was entirely out of the question.

I mean, animal shelters would still need to run despite the COVID thing. There had to be a way I could find an animal shelter in her area and arrange to have one dropped off. But obviously that's not what she meant at all. She wanted me to get a cat. I acquiesced to the idea pretty quickly. It did suit my plans after all. But then the conversation took a weird turn. She asked me if I love kitties, so I told her yes. The truth is I don't like them as much as dogs, but I wasn't about to overcomplicate the situation by saying that. Then she asked me which I liked more, her or cats. Again, I said her. Then she asked if I loved enough to hurt something innocent. I hesitated, but again I said her. Then she asked if I loved enough to hurt something innocent. I hesitated but

again I said yes. Then came those fatal words that now don't seem so loving anymore. Prove it, she told me, in no uncertain terms, that she wanted me to prove that I loved her more than any other living creature. She didn't want me to get into any trouble, to ruin my career by getting a criminal record or anything, but she still wanted proof. It was horrifying, listening to her talk, she had obviously thought this out, maybe even long in advance. She told me I could get a really old cat from a rescue center, one that was near the end of its life anyway, one that might well be suffering from joint pain or breathing trouble. She told me to look at it like an act of mercy, one that would prove I was the right man for her,

one that could make difficult decisions and own them too. And I'm ashamed to admit, I agreed to every word. I found that local animal shelters in my area were still indeed operating. I called one to ask them a few questions regarding the adoption process and found it would be infinitely easier than I even expected. I could pay them a visit and leave with the cat the very same day. Then it came to asking my own rather tailored set of questions. I told her I wanted to give an older kitty a comfortable time in its twilight years, that I was something of a feline philanthropist and had been doing so for many years. It was heart-wrenching hearing that rescue center worker telling me what a good person I was,

how no one wanted to adopt the older cats, and how one would be so, so happy to have finally found someone to take care of them. I think that's what did it. The sobering moment that made me realize how stupid I'd been these past few weeks. How lust and desire and loneliness had driven me to the point where I was willing to relinquish my entire humanity I had never hurt so much as a fly in my entire life and there I was Planning to hurt an innocent, essentially defenseless animal I knew I had to do something I opted for a clean break

I thought about writing her a long goodbye message explaining how I'd come to that decision hoping it wouldn't hurt her feelings too much but then it occurred to me that she didn't really have feelings not like you or I might do she had a fixation on what she could do it all made sense in that context

she got off on power, on manipulation, and any way she could achieve that was justified. I blocked her on Discord, deleted the email account I'd used to send her long stream of consciousness letters from. It hurt. It hurt really, really bad at first, but once I told myself she'd easily find a new partner, a new victim, the decisions became much, much easier to deal with. So please, people, learn from my stupid, short-sighted mistakes. Don't let this lockdown loneliness get the better of you because there are people out there, bad people, just waiting to exploit 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.

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Take a chance. Must be 19 plus. Available in Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, I've been reading a lot of stories recently about how Mother Nature is basically reclaiming the land since this whole lockdown thing went into place. In particular, one story that comes out of the UK, which talks about how a giant herd of wild goats has essentially taken over a small Welsh town. It's pretty charming, detailing how these rare Kashmiri goats have seized the opportunity that's been presented by people staying indoors to roam down from the hills to wander around neighborhoods, devouring the contents of flower boxes and front gardens alike.

There are also those stories about the swans returning to the canals out in Venice Beach, but you can go read up on them yourself, as I've got a point to get to here. Okay, so little side note here. Has anyone else noticed how nice the weather has gotten since the lockdown started? God, it's been so frustrating. Shutting doors while the weather went from grey and windy to warm and sunny like, well, must have been a matter of days. In all my life, I've honestly never seen spring slam into winter with such a dramatic transition. It's been tough on my little girl too. She's been dying to get out to the local park to play on the jungle gyms and telling her no, not to mention explaining why, has been harder and harder as the weeks have gone by.

I can't tell her the truth because I knew it would absolutely terrify her. Breaking down, there are little creatures living inside of us, waiting to be transmitted to someone she loves like Pat-Pat Banana, which could end their lives. How do you even say that to a child without them totally freaking out? So, our story starts with birdwatching. I know, boring, but try telling that to my daughter. She burned through all her DVDs and favorite YouTube channels in like a week, and despite some of them having palpable rewatch value to them,

she quickly grew tired of staring at a screen for hours on end. It got way, way worse than we started having to tell her no about going to the park. Seems like once you hold something out of reach of a kid, it's all they want from then on, the forbidden thing. I found a happy compromise with her in that if she stayed inside, she could look at the garden all she wanted. And the bonus was that if she stayed super still and quiet, that all kinds of birds and other critters would wander into the garden for her to look at. And you know what? It actually got kind of fun after a while. I actually fished out an old native birds of the upper American east coast that I'm pretty sure was my grandpa's at one point. And we got to work ticking off each one we saw.

Working our way through the book as common and rarely seen birds alike landed among the flower beds of our backyard. One evening I'd swear I saw something larger moving around the trees at the back of our yard, but I figured it was just a trick of the light, maybe a neighbor's dog moving against their back fence, casting shadows into ours. But a few days later I discovered it wasn't just my imagination. I was doing some laundry upstairs while my daughter busied herself with bird watching. I'd ordered a cheap pair of kids binoculars from Amazon and those things really had paid for themselves by the evening

of the day they arrived. My kid was obsessed with them. She had them practically strapped to her face for the entire day, looking at everything and anything up close and being amazed at the results. So she was only happy to sit in front of the patio window doors and will away the hours by checking out the wildlife at close range through her new binos. And thank god because having to keep an eye on her day in and day out was meaning housework was mounting up and at the top of the list was laundry. So I'm working through piles of dirty clothes, calling down to her every so often to see how she was doing, and everything seems to be going fine. Every so

often I'd rush down when she claimed to have spotted a new kind of bird in our garden. Often I'd have to point out that it was one we'd seen before, but once or twice we actually locked eyes with a lesser spotted woodpecker, a bird we most definitely hadn't spotted before. Only when I heard her cry out, kitty, I figured she must have gotten kind of bored of watching for birds. At first I was a little worried. The last thing I wanted was for my little girl to witness a full on bird murder in her own backyard, but I was quietly reassured by the fact that all the neighborhood cats were fat and spoiled and they wouldn't be finessing at backyard birds anytime soon. That was for certain.

Suddenly I heard a kind of thump against the window doors like my daughter had hit her hand against the glass super hard. I called down to tell her not to hit the glass as it would scare all the birds away and they might not come back to visit. Her answer made me drop the laundry basket and hurtle downstairs. I didn't, it was the kitty. But that thump was loud, bigger and louder than anything a simple house cat could make. It was so weird to write back now, but I distinctly remember just not thinking at all, just sort of flying into action, this white-hot urge to protect, protect, protect, just turning me into more machine than woman. And what do I see the

moment I turn the corner into the living room? I see my daughter, standing at the glass doors, staring at an actual mountain lion in the face. The huge cat had its paw half cocked as if I didn't already have an idea that it was the one making that banging noise against the glass. I ran toward my little girl with such speed and aggression that the mountain lion jumped back for a second. The inherent danger of the situation, danger that she seemed to be completely unaware of previously, caught up with her and hit her like a freight train. She started bawling, screaming, realizing in a white hot moment that Kitty didn't want to play. Kitty wanted to rip and tear. That the kitty wasn't a kitty at all. Once it realized I'd taken away its intended prey, the mountain lion took a

few more swipes at the glass and only rushed out the backyard once I started banging pots and pans together real loud, just like my grandpa had showed me years before. I guess this was just a long-winded way of saying to keep a real close eye on the woods and green spaces when this lockdown is over. It might not be entirely safe for our kids to be playing in places that have obviously been reclaimed by wildlife, and dangerous wildlife, at that. I hope you're not all too stressed in dealing with all this lockdown stuff, and to those who have had troubling or scary stories to tell from their experiences, I'm incredibly sorry.

But what I'm really enjoying is seeing this whole thing of supporting each other. I've seen some really helpful comments from people in other posts in this sub and it's frankly inspiring to see people coming together like this during such a dark time. So maybe, hopefully, possibly you could help or at least listen to my problem or rather not so much my problem but someone else's problem too. Like a lot of people I was pretty shocked when the government declared a lockdown here in the UK. I'm in my late 20s so never in my life or any of my mates lives have any of us experienced such a zealous curtailing of civil liberties. The lines at supermarkets began, road traffic dropped off to next to nothing. It's been a soft transformation of society, but a transformation nonetheless.

As life changed, so did living arrangements, and one day, I noticed that the girl who lived alone in the flat below me wasn't so alone anymore. I passed her on the stairs at one point, backing off into a corridor to maintain social distancing, but noticed she wasn't alone. He was a harmless looking bloke at first, quite tall but skinny with a mess of curly sandy blonde hair. I said hi, introduced myself with out all the usual handshaking and went on my way. Everything was hunky-dory if I'm being perfectly honest. That was until last Friday night when something happened that gave this whole lockdown thing a whole new meaning of terrifying. It started with a few bumps and groans from downstairs. I was playing Xbox at the time, willing the hours away with that new Call of Duty

Warzone game with a few mates. The floors and walls in this old Victorian flat share are pretty thick but make a loud enough noise and you can hear the bass in another apartment. So when I feel the flat shake a wee bit and hear the girl's voice, I rolled my eyes and assumed the worse. Uh oh, I said down the mic. Think the girl downstairs and her feller are getting a bit familiar. This sparked off a round of laughter and off-colored humor and I ended up turning my TV volume up to drown out any potential sounds of copulation. It was annoying, but hey, I've got my way of killing the quarantine time. I suppose they'd found theirs. But it didn't end there. Soon, loud, sporadic banging sounds from the flat below was making my flat literally shake.

It was actually kind of alarming. I mean, Christ almighty, those pairs seemed like they were really going at it. I mentioned it to my mates in the party chat and we all had a little laugh at the whole thing. But then something happened that meant I wasn't laughing anymore. I heard the girl cry out. I don't know what you're thinking, but trust me, if you heard what I did, you'd have known something wasn't quite right too. It wasn't a cry of ecstasy, not in the least bit, but it sounded hurt, weak, terrified. As I said, I'd turned down the volume on my TV to block the sounds out, but now I was turning it right down again, muting the speakers so I could better hear what was going on. There were voices alright, and they were obviously trying to stay hushed, but you could clearly hear that some kind of heated argument was taking place.

I mentioned this to the lads in the party chat, and yet again they made off-colored comments like, sounds kinky, just nonsense like that. But I quickly made it clear that this was something else entirely, and that I was actually kind of worried about the whole thing. We're literally talking about the prospect of it being some kind of domestic violence incident when there's yet another loud bang. So hard it makes my flat shake. Only this one was followed by a similarly terrified female scream. Then there was silence. My heart is absolutely pounding at this stage. Right then, one of the lads makes a joke about smelling something funny coming from

the flat below in the next couple of days, and how I might end up being the guest star of some sort of true crime documentary in the near future. I like my dark humor, and I admit I'd have found that kind of thing funny if it wasn't in danger of actually happening. But given the circumstances, I was absolutely terrified. There were no more noises coming from the flat below. It was eerily quiet now. So I asked the lads in the party chat to bear with me because I was going to call the police. Immediately, a few of them told me it was the right thing to do, that it's always better to be safe than sorry in this situation. So I do, and the dispatcher on the other end tells me to leave the front door of the building open

so they can enter safely and deal with the whole situation. Only get this, the police arrive, I hear a lot of shouting downstairs, so I walk out into the hallway of the building to listen in on what's going on. Instead of actually getting in there and dealing with the whole situation, the police seem to be happy to just talk to the couple through the door of the flat. The whole social distancing thing hadn't occurred to me in the slightest when I called, and now the problem with my solution was becoming evident The couple, within moments of the police arrival Had gone from at each other's throats

To uniting to tell the police to get out of their building They were actually shouting about a warrant and all this stuff Basically trying to find any reason to keep them out It was nuts I had read and heard about domestic abuse before and this was one of the classic symptoms. Warring couples suddenly unite when someone else tries to intervene. They demand to know who'd made the call and what I heard next had me admitting an actual uh-oh out loud. The cops bloody well told them. They straight up said, we received a call from the flat above you. They had dropped me right in it. It was quiet for the

rest of the night, and the next day I tried to avoid them entirely, but eventually I had to leave the flat to buy food. And as I did, and was walking down the stairs towards the front door of our building the girl below's flat opens up and I see a figure standing in the doorway. It was wearing a mask, one of those surgical ones they've been popular since the outbreak but it's clearly the abusive boyfriend and he's holding a hammer, a bloody claw hammer, and he's just staring at me. I raise my hands and try to explain that I only meant well, but he just slams the door on me before I can finish my explanation. That's how it's been for the past few days now, me being completely terrified for my life, locking my doors constantly

and listening out for heavy footsteps coming up the stairs towards my flat. So seriously, if anyone has any advice or examples on how to deal with this, please, please leave them in the comments. I'll be reading every single one and responding to those I think can help via DM. Hi everyone, my name is Francisco. I must apologize first because English is not my first language so I'm sorry for any mistakes that are in writing this. I'm from Paraguay and I live here in the capital city, Asuncion. Like many of the countries in the world, we in Paraguay have also been affected by the virus outbreak. Everyone is very worried. They have been wearing masks and buying all of the groceries so that they can stay at home until everything is safe again. But more importantly, the government here

in Paraguay has declared a curfew and people who leave their homes without a good reason can be punished by the police. Also, if you leave your home and you are sick, you can be charged with a crime and thrown into jail. But the problem is that a lot of people in here in Asuncion are very poor and even those who work make very little money. That means that both me and my father have to work to support our family. Even my mother makes and sells wicker baskets in her free time to give our family extra money. But that's where the trouble started. The government here decided which of our jobs were essential and which ones were not. I had a part-time job in

the tourism industry, giving guided tours of the markets and historical sites of Asunción, but this was declared non-essential right away after the lockdown was declared. So just like that, I was out of work. My father is a supervisor at a manufacturing plant on the outskirts of the city, so for a while he was still able to bring home money since he was declared an essential worker. But that all changed when he was tested at his job for the virus. When the test came back positive, he was told he would have to go home and isolate himself for two weeks before he would be allowed to return to work. This was a disaster for our family, but there was one flicker of hope. The head of my father's department told him that

a temporary replacement had been found for him, but that left a space on the factory floor, one that I could occupy for the time he was sick. So every morning for about a week I would wake up very early, grab my father's ID card, walk out of town for an hour so I could work the line at the manufacturing plant. It was a very boring job, much more boring than my tour guide work but I was still very grateful to have the chance to keep earning money for my family. My family owns a car that we share but since money was low and we couldn't afford too much gas, we had to save it for emergencies. That is why, like I may have said already, that I ended up walking 4 miles there in the morning and 4 miles

back home in the night time. It was tough going and I was stopped by the police many times but all I had to do was show them my father's factory ID card and they would wave me on. But that only worked so many times and one evening a routine police check led to one of the most terrifying stressful experiences of my entire life. I was walking at the side of the road, my feet aching after a long day on the line when I heard the momentary blare of a siren behind me. I stopped walking, turned around and I saw a police vehicle parking up near me. Usually I would just show the ID card and the police would drive on without getting out of their car. But this time, both officers stepped out of the vehicle and began marching towards me with a lot of aggression. I tried to show them the ID card to explain that I was an

essential worker working in place of my father, but they didn't want to listen. This is not your picture, one of the officers said, asserting that I could not be a supervisor and suggesting that I had in fact stolen the ID from somebody. I swore to him that it was not true, that I had made arrangements and my family might starve without the income. Then they searched me. When I asked what they were looking for, one of the officers got in my face and told me to shut my mouth, that I was lucky that they weren't just taking me to jail since I was out spreading the virus. I think they were searching me for drugs, but I can't be sure.

I know a lot of dealers have been caught recently since they need to sell their stuff and have trouble explaining why they are outdoors during a lockdown. When they had finished their search and found nothing, I thought that they might just let go of me, but I was terrified to see one of the officers take out their electric taser gun, arm it, and aim it in my direction. I didn't think, I just raised my hands like it was second nature, showing him I meant them no harm and praying he wouldn't pull the trigger. The other officer reached into the pocket of his uniform, taking out his phone and pointing the camera in my direction. It was clear that he was filming me, but for what purpose, I was scared to know. I really thought I was going to be tased on camera, that they used the video as an example

to others. Then the officer with the camera said something that I struggled to understand at first. 50 star jumps, right now! At first, I honestly thought I didn't hear his words correctly. These were words I had not heard since high school physical education class. I told the officer I didn't understand, but this only made him furious. Are you deaf, or just stupid, boy? He barked at me. 50 star jumps. Go. Hurry. I simply did as I was told. I started doing the star jumps while the officers laughed, commenting that this is what happens to those that break curfew without a good reason. Repeat after me. One of them said, I'm sorry officer, I will not leave my house again. I'm sorry officer, I will not leave my house again.

I repeated, Again. And I did so. Again. I said the words and jumped on the spot until I had no more breath in my lungs. I was still convinced that they would tase me when it was done, that the punishment wasn't over. But when I collapsed, feet and lungs burning from the work, they just carried on laughing as they got back into their car and drove away.

These hard times are difficult enough without horrible policemen taking advantage of their power. I know they're not like that all over the world, that there are always a few bad people to many good ones, but I just pray that no one else has to go through what I suffered that evening. Good luck, everyone, and be safe. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your dread's worn down or you need a new wheel, We'll be right back. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo TreadExperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there, treadexperts.ca.

A few years ago, I was renting a house in Northern California. The neighborhood was just outside the suburbs. It seemed like the perfect balance of having space and having nice neighbors close enough not to feel isolated. The area had no street lights so it was very dark at night, especially if there were clouds blocking the moonlight. It didn't bother me though. It made my little house feel even more quaint on dark nights. I got home from work one day in mid-winter. It was a cloudy night, so pulling up to my house, I saw only what my headlights and front porch light illuminated. When I got out of my car, I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. That was odd, as I had never smelled that before around the house. I didn't

see anyone nearby, so I ignored it and went inside. I had just got off a shift with a few hours of overtime so I felt pretty tired. Even though I wasn't even 7 yet I decided to take a shower and call it a night. I woke up sometime later sure that I had heard a noise inside my house. I wasn't worried right away because my friend would sometimes stop by to use my shower after work on his way to his night classes. I even gave him a spare key so he could stop by even if I wasn't home. He would always text me to let me know beforehand though and I hadn't heard my phone go off. I reached over to my bedside table and picked

up my cell phone to see if my friend had sent me a text. The bright light from my phone's screen and number pad blinded me. These were the days before phones had a light sensor that would dim the screen in the dark, and this particular phone was so bright I could use it as a flashlight. Through squinted eyes, I could make out that it was 9-something, but I couldn't tell if I had an unread text or not. I set my phone aside and called out my friend's name. There were a couple of seconds of silence before I heard loud footfalls as someone started running through the bottom floor of my house. I leapt out of bed and

ran to the closet. They were already up the stairs by the time I had opened the door and stepped inside. That house had three rooms upstairs, two bedrooms on either side of the hallway, the one I was in and a spare and a bathroom at the end. The bedroom doors were both closed but the bathroom door was cracked open. I heard whoever was in my house thunder down the hallway past my door and into the bathroom. Thank god he did. That gave me enough time to open the attic access in the ceiling of my door and into the bathroom. Thank god he did. That gave me enough time to open the attic access in the ceiling of my closet and hoist myself up. I just started to lift myself up when the person ran back out of the bathroom. My feet were barely inside of the attic when

my bedroom door burst open. I heard footsteps run into my room and stop. When they didn't see me in that room they ran back to the hallway and into the other room which just had boxes stacked in a corner, some weights and a table where I painted my miniature models. I guess they decided that if someone was hiding it would be in the bedroom because they charged back into my room and turned on the light. A moment later the closet door was ripped open. I was crouched in my attic just a foot or so away from the access so I could try to stop them if they started to climb up. From my vantage point all I could see was from about their knee down. They were wearing dirty blue jeans with frayed cuffs and worn work boots.

After a few seconds of looking in the closet they stepped away and I heard a loud crash come from my room followed by a scream of frustration and anger. That scream was the most unnerving part of the incident for me. It reminded me far too much of my stepfather who would scream in a similar way when he lost his temper. He would eventually be put in a mental hospital for several mental disorders that resulted in erratic and violent tendencies. The man in my house ran back down the stairs. I heard crashes and clatters as things were thrown around and furniture was knocked over. I stayed crouched in the attic. I left my cell phone when I ran for the closet and I wasn't certain I could climb

down without him hearing. After some time the noises stopped. I started counting slowly. When I reached a thousand I decided it was safe enough to climb down and call the police. The first thing I noticed when I exited the closet was the intruder had flipped my bed over. I assume in an attempt to find me. That was the loud noise I had heard after he stepped away from the closet. I couldn't find my cell phone so I went to the landline by the bed and called the police. I waited in my room until I heard them call out from downstairs. The first floor was a mess but I had expected that. Chairs had been knocked over, the sofa had been flipped,

all the books and pictures and knickknacks I had on my shelves were strewn across the floor. The cupboards in the kitchen had been opened and all the boxed and canned foods had been thrown to the ground. As far as I could tell, the only thing missing was a single knife out of the wooden block in my kitchen. The police check the house from top to bottom. They found that the side door had been forced open by something like a crowbar. They also found a few cigarette butts along my fence line along with some foil and an empty pen tube which the police said people use to smoke meth so they think he had been watching my house for a while. I realized that he must

have been out there smoking a cigarette when I got home. They collected up the evidence and told me I should stay with family or friends that night and get that door fixed as soon as possible. I opted just to not sleep. I moved a shelf over to block the broken door and spent the next couple of hours cleaning things up. I would often go to the window with a flashlight and shine it along the fence line where the police found the cigarette butts and foil, but I didn't see anything. The next day I called to have the door fixed and motion lights installed at the back and sides of my house. I ran a phone cable up into the attic and added a landline. I never wanted to be stuck up there without a phone again. Nothing else happened at that house though. I lived there another three years without incident. One more precaution I took was

practicing getting out of my bed, going to my closet and climbing into the attic as quickly and quietly as possible. I even kept at it when I moved, except now I go to a crawlspace at the back of the closet instead of the attic. I try not to think about what would have happened if I had been a bit slower getting to the attic, or if he hadn't gone into the bathroom at the end of the hall first. For some background, I live in the UK and go to a school with a uniform. I go to quite a large all-girls school with about A classes of 30 per year with 5 years and a 6th form attached, so I have heard about creeps lingering outside of the school before, but they are usually sorted out quite quickly by school staff I guess. At the time I was in year 9, so just 13 and about 4 foot 9. I had a big homework assignment due and

because I didn't have a computer at home, I stayed late at school to do it in the ICT suite. As it was the beginning of the school year, it was relatively dark at 5pm, which is when I got out of school and this event took place. I had to get the bus home as both my parents were working. The bus stop outside my school was fairly busy, there was a couple of other people and me. I had my back up against a fence and noticed a man under the bus stop, facing away from me, but next to the road and opposite the fence I was leaning on. I was aware of my

surroundings, as I've had previous experiences with old creeps and I'm just a generally paranoid person. The man didn't strike me as particularly interesting but I did notice him glance over at me from the corner of my eye. I then saw a bus and assumed it was mine so I stepped forward to check. It was not my bus which was annoying as I was cold and didn't have a coat. As I went to step back up against the fence I almost stood back into the man that was under the bus stop originally but he had moved to directly behind me. He had his arm up against the pole next to the bus stop telling you the buses that come to the bus stop originally but he had moved to directly behind me. He had his arm up against the pole next to the bus stop telling you the buses that come to the bus stop. I felt a bit cornered in but couldn't move as the other side of me had all the people waiting to get on

this bus that was coming. It felt like forever as I could feel this man's breath on the top of my head as I watched the bus come and collect all the other people at the bus stop, but it was probably only a minute and a half. Once the last person got on that bus, I quickly moved out of this man's area and back against the fence. He moved so he was back under the bus stop, sitting across from me staring at the ground. At last, my bus came after about three minutes like that. I didn't want to give away the fact that I was getting on this bus, but I had to wave it down so I stood next to the road to signal it over. As I got on, my heart was really going as the man was back behind me. I had already got my bus card out and scanned it very quickly and only saw a few people downstairs.

Normally, there might be a few people upstairs in this case, so that's where I headed. That was probably my biggest success or mistake, I don't know to be honest. I got up there and it was completely empty. Great. Well, I couldn't really go back down at this point because I knew the man had already gotten on and would be coming up the stairs so I did the next best thing. I sat in the outside seat directly in front of the bus's camera which I kept looking directly at just in case something happened. The man came up the stairs as expected and he sat at the right back of the bus not before looking and smiling at me as he passed. It was then that I had the idea that probably saved me.

I live on a quiet street and it was already dark now so there was no way I was getting off this bus at my stop with this man. I pulled out my phone and earbuds. I put one butt in my ear and texted my best friend to play along when I facetimed her and informed her of the situation. I understood and along with some small talk I talked loudly about how my mom was so mad that I had stayed late at school and that she had texted me saying that she was waiting at the door for me and I had told her that I was only 10 minutes away. In reality I told my mom that I was staying late in the morning before I left for school and now my mom was at work 45 minutes away and so was my dad about an hour and a half away with limited access to either

of their phones. I was at my stop to get off now and I took a deep breath as I stood up. I looked back at the man and he was looking at me as I walked down the stairs. My friend was screen recording at this point just in case something went down. Thankfully he didn't follow me down, but as I was walking away from the bus, looked back to see him up against the back window, hands and fists staring at me. That is when I took my flimsy school shoes off and sprinted to my house. As the next bus stop was still in eyesight, there were two on the main road that led down to my street. Once I was down my street and far enough away that you couldn't see

the top of it anymore, I told my friend about him against the window. She understood and I put my shoes back on and sped walk the rest of the way to my house. My family still doesn't know about this, even though I was quite proud of myself on how I handled the situation and how I had ran with no shoes, a heavy skirt, and a big rucksack on my back. I don't think they ever will know because as much as I don't want to ever stay late at school ever again, I know I probably will have to again at some point, and I don't want my parents to feel guilty about not being able to help if something more serious was to happen while they were at work. But yeah, to the creepy man who doesn't know what personal space is or frankly may have had something more sinister planned, let's hope never again. When I was 18, I was living in a small town. I was friends with ratty skaters around and they helped connect with this dude who sold. He was 29 at the time and gave me pretty good deals and lived nearby.

I wasn't driving at the time so this was convenient for me. His name was Max. Max has always struck me as a weird dude but I honestly quite liked his weirdness. Not in a romantic way or anything like that. I kind of liked weird people. We had normal buying and selling interactions that never lasted more than 10 minutes. Buy some bud, maybe smoke a bowl, that's it. He'd often tell me he could drop it off at my house but I never let him because as I said before, he was weird. I wasn't afraid of him but was definitely aware that he and his offers to deliver were weird. One day in May 2018 I was invited to a bonfire by the same ratty skaters that introduced me to this guy. I had no idea he'd be there, nor was it important to me at all.

I brought the guy I was dating at the time. I said hey to everyone including Max. We stayed for a couple of hours and some of them played some music on their guitars. Nearing the time I was leaving the bonfire at around 11pm, Max was getting upset about something and threw his guitar in the bonfire. I didn't know what he was angry or upset about and paid no mind to it. This happened as I was leaving with the guy I was dating. I went to bed and woke up to paragraphs on paragraphs of crazy texts from Max ranging from 1am to 5am, like a constant stream of texts,

stating things such as, you know how much I loved you, you're incredibly cruel. He would go back and forth between saying, I would give you the world if you let me, and you really do deserve him though. He said really scary things like, you are a predator and should be snubbed out, just wait. And, you are stuck, I will either love you or hate you to the fullest extent my powers behold. Right now, I pay the worst death on you, and that idiot. And to top it all off, he said, losing you is like losing a mother to me, and told me to tell him I never loved him and that I wouldn't hear from him again if I did. So that's what I did. I said, I never loved you, do not message me again, and left it at that. I didn't get a response, nor did I care to get one.

Max had never expressed any romantic interest, asked me out or anything. This was all out of nowhere and he was 11 years older than me. I was barely 18. That night he cut his long hair off and posted photos naked on Facebook, curled up in a fetal position talking about being a statue of shame. It's as if he had a breakdown but I had no intention of causing that and didn't think I would even offend anyone by bringing the guy I was seeing. Everyone else seemed to like the guy I brought. About a week later Max texted me pretty late at night and asked if I had seen the flowers he spread along my sidewalk saying that he stole every flower in the vicinity of my neighborhood that night. I asked him how he knew where I lived and said I hadn't seen the flowers so he must have had the

wrong house. I also told him he shouldn't do that as I never felt anything for him and so on. He told me that he had heard I lived on the same block as another one of the skater guys we were both friends with and he wasn't wrong. The skater guy I lived by was on the other side of the block and I never walked that way so I never saw the flowers. I blocked his number and didn't hear from him again for weeks. Weeks later I woke up after a rough night and there were loads of flowers on the sidewalk right outside my house along with a little bouquet at the top of my walkway. I was livid. I wasn't scared yet and stupidly I unblocked his number and texted him asking why there were flowers outside my house.

This confirmed that this indeed was where I lived. I still to this day feel so stupid for texting him and making it known that after weeks he had found my house. He responded saying, hmm, sounds nice, t'was me. I reamed him out basically and blocked his number again. About a week later I was out of town and my roommate texted me a photo of a heart with a peace sign inside of it and my name written under it drawn in chalk outside her house. When I got back into town I went to the courthouse and began the process of getting a restraining order against him. When I got back into town I went to the courthouse and began the process of getting a restraining order against him. When I left the courthouse I went to Max's work and told him he needed to stop this behavior and that he was stalking me. He looked me in the eyes with

no facial expression and said, if you don't leave I am calling the cops. I got angry and said loudly, call the cops, I was just talking to them about you, and left his work in a rage. Soon after this I began driving again. I once drove by him and he noticed it was me. The next day I woke up with my car covered in flowers. I presented my case to the judge and she put the restraining order in place. He was served with it by police officers and I thought that was that and he wouldn't be bothering me again. I was wrong. After the restraining order was served, he made several other chalk messages on my sidewalk, left random gifts for me like chalk and beheaded my little pony heads on beer bottles.

I always brought these things to the police station but they said I needed to catch him doing it, take a photo or get a security camera. So I got a security camera and really hoped that I would catch him. It turned out my security camera was stupid and I couldn't just watch the videos it took but had to skip through second by second by hand. It was an impossible task. I was terrified of leaving my house at night at this point. I never had my curtains open anymore and I was so frustrated that my livelihood was being taken away from me. Ultimately I unblocked his number in hopes that he would text me directly violating the restraining order and after a few days it worked. He sent me a weird text saying something like, forgive me, we are charming, this is harming, let us try again.

By now it's September 2019 and he finally goes to jail. He's facing up to a year in jail and has to stay there until our court date. I finally start calming down. I am able to go outside at night, even just to get into my car. I let myself have my curtains open sometimes. I am starting to feel alive again. Right when I start feeling secure in my small town life again, someone posted bail and he was released after only three months in jail and I went back to living in fear. We still had court dates coming up and I was optimistic that he would serve more time for ruining my life for so long. His lawyer kept pushing the court date back to gather evidence and after about six months of pushing it back the state decided he wouldn't

do anything more and close the case basically. I have moved out of town 3 plus hours away at this point so he didn't actually have an option to continue this behavior. Living in this new place I feel safe. I can walk at night and don't have to have my curtains closed all the time. It's been over years since they decided to close the case. About a month ago he began responding to my friend's Instagram stories, friends that live here in this new town, telling them how fond he is of me. I have always had him blocked but my Instagram isn't private so he must have found them that way. I have since changed my account to private and he hasn't messaged any more friends of mine. I refuse to be fearful now, the way I was then. He will never find where I live or where I work now. However, my life is

forever changed after this experience. I will always be more aware of people and their weird energy. I will always close my curtains early in the evening and make sure all the windows and doors are locked. I will always live a little bit in fear, maybe not of him, but of it happening again. He ruined my life for a year and I truly when we were both in high school, so approximately six years ago. We were 16 and we loved drinking and smoking, but since we were underage, we had spent quite a few nights standing next to a convenience store waiting for an adult stranger who agrees to buy us something to drink and cigarettes, with our own money of course. The store is in a pretty traffic part of town, a lot of people coming in and out,

and cars, buses, and pedestrians. Also, we lived in such a safe city, little to no crime, we can walk at night at 3am without having to worry too much. I remember this one time where Jenny and I walked to the store to try and buy cigarettes. It wasn't too late in the evening, about 8pm, when we succeeded and sat on the bench next to the store for a smoke. When a strange man looks at us, parks his car and exits the driver's seat to open all of his car doors and stand there, weirdly staring at us, at different parts of his car, at the floor. He looked like he was in his late 50s, frizzy white hair and eyes that looked extremely unaware but not frantic or anything. Now I don't know if most girls are like this, I know I'm not and my logic says that we shouldn't

be like this for the most part but I seem to attract girls and friends who are very engaging when a person who screams stranger danger approaches them. Creeps, weirdos, men who just awkwardly disturb us just to hit on one of us even though none of us is interested. Somehow every good girlfriend I've had had this weird, annoying, and may I say unsafe habit to entertain these harassers. The man felt incredibly off to me and I remember Jenny looking at him, then at me in a confused look when he walked towards us a few meters from his car with all of his car doors still open. He stood about two meters from us and about a meter from his car, started a babbling monologue about how he lost his phone inside his car, he thinks, perhaps

underneath the seat. My heart is beating fast just from thinking about this. He didn't give us a second to respond before asking us to look for it for him. Jenny stands up and starts walking to his car. I don't know much about cars, it was an old grey standard vehicle, not a van or anything, but I yelled, Jenny, what are you doing? Don't go inside a strange man's car. The man noticed my distraught and Jenny says, I'm not getting inside. I'm just looking from the outside with my flash camera. He responds, no, please just look inside to find it. She put maybe one foot inside but I gave her a look and tried to entertain the situation and mostly him so he wouldn't notice that she is inside his car behind him. So I asked the man,

Why do you think your phone is underneath the seat? I was driving here and heard it ring from somewhere inside the car when my daughter called. I thought it might be inside my pocket. And it isn't? How would you know it's your daughter if you lost it? No, it might be in my pocket. I don't know. Can you check? He walks a little closer to me. He had a confused look like he sincerely didn't know where his phone is, like he's some sort of child. No, ew, why would I check your pocket? You're a grown man, check it yourself. By this time, Jenny comes back to stand near me as the man is a complete weirdo and beginning to scare me. As he continues to ask and beg us to check inside his car, I tell him no and that I can just call his number for him to see where the ring is coming from. The man says he's out of battery so it wouldn't help, keeps asking us to basically

crawl to his back seat. Thank god for extreme situational alertness while in situations of stress cause the next thing I said may have saved Jenny who was completely engaged and stood next to his car for a long time. You said your daughter just called you and that you heard it from inside the car and you didn't find the phone since then. Then you have no way of knowing the status of your battery. If you did, then you're harassing us sir and we're leaving. Good luck finding your phone inside your pockets yourself. Now revisiting this story, I'm aware that there could be reasonable explanations to all of this that could contradict this whole creepy guy narrative.

Maybe he's too old to bend over to look for his phone. Maybe this was an emergency and that's why he was so incoherent and anxious to find his phone. Maybe he was out of battery and his speakerphone in this car passed his daughter's next phone call over to the car system. But nothing I can think of can explain him being so stubborn with wanting us inside the car. So whatever reasons that could make this story less creepy will not stand given the creepy vibe that this guy had. This happened around 10 years ago in the south of the UK. For reference, I'm a 28 year old male and at the time I was working part time at a fuel station on an A road which linked a small village to a ring road into the nearby city.

The village itself was quiet, high-end and extremely expensive to live in. It was the sort of place that only had one chain store and it was a waitrose. Everything else was either boutiques or privately owned gourmet grocers, so as someone who had always enjoyed cars, it was always fun to see what kind of high-end luxury sports cars would adorn the forecourt on any given day. This is where I met Michael. Michael was in his late 40s, dark hair, well-dressed. He always wore Ralph Lauren or, on his work days, tailored canali suits. He was an all-around nice guy, exceptionally polite,

which was actually a rarity as most of the residents of surrounding areas seemed to despise anyone who didn't qualify for the additional tax bracket. We got chatting about his collection of vehicles or the watches he wore. He'd always show up wearing some kind of Rolex and driving his Aston Martin, Range Rover, or Porsche so there was always a lot to talk about. I got to know that he worked in finance, and the conversation got onto what I was planning to do with my life, also to work in finance, and we'd always have these pleasant conversations until I left that part-time job in favor for taking up an apprenticeship role at my uncle's brokerage. Michael is important, and we'll get to why shortly. Something to be known at my uncle's brokerage. Michael is important and we'll get to why shortly.

Something to be known about my uncle is that he's a man with a lot of fingers and a lot of highs, literally. As well as his brokerage and property portfolio, he also owned a few takeaways for cash flow purposes. I think we all know what that means and as such I'd occasionally step in as a delivery driver when a driver would let him down. Luckily my uncle also lived in the previously mentioned village and the main pizza place he owned catered to the residents of said village. So tips were usually quite decent and my uncle would usually throw me a few quid for helping out. Fast forward to summer 2008 and I'd been roped into dropping off a few pies at a property on an extremely prestigious road. Average house price was well above 1.4 million and I'm intrigued to actually get close enough to see what these houses actually look like as they're all

gated and set far back from the road behind a shroud of trees and shrubs. So I find the place and buzz the intercom when a voice comes back sort of muffled just saying, yes. So I answered with the name of the takeaway and the gate slowly opened and I make my way up the driveway to a very large mock Georgian home, complete with detached four car garage and that's when I see Michael's number plates. He had his initials for his car with the numbers 1, 2, and 3 and it was the same for his wife. I was interested to see up close the sort of life this guy had if I'm completely honest, especially as a young aspiring financier. I exited my car, brought out the pizzas and the double doors opened and that's when I saw an unfamiliar face looking back at me. It was a man, early twenties maybe, thin and shaved head. I can remember he was wearing no shirt and some scruffy jeans and trainers. He was also holding onto something behind his back.

Hey, bring the pizzas through to the kitchen. I can remember his voice being hoarse and barely audible and with an accent I'd never heard before. Nervously I said nothing and just looked at him which made him visibly angry. Bring the pizza through. He repeated, more aggressive this time and I finally responded. Where's Michael? This is Michael's place, right? And it is completely true that in situations like this your mouth goes completely dry and to always follow your gut. This guy was setting off alarm

bells and telling every fiber of my being to just get off the property. Unfortunately this is when it dawned upon me that it's a gated property and I was locked in. This is when things went from bad to worse. I can remember the terror swelling up inside of me when he moved his hand in front of him to show me a large kitchen knife and uttered the words, run. I dropped the pizza onto the gravel, left my car and decided I'd have a better chance of survival by running down the driveway and lifting myself over the gates. They were the wooden type which had no decorative spears atop them luckily but all the while I could hear his feet crunching onto the gravel behind me. I didn't look back and managed to pull myself up and over the gates and hurling myself onto the pavements beneath me. The adrenaline in my system still had me running for

what seemed like hours but perhaps 10 minutes at most until I was a good few streets away and I decided to call the police. Police met me at the park I was hiding at. One officer stayed with me and the other proceeded to the property along with another patrol car. At first I got the distinct impression that they didn't believe me or thought I was up to something but after my uncle arrived to pick me up and vouched for me being sent there to deliver pizza, the PC in question backed down. Upon their arrival at the property they found nothing, just my car with slashed tires and broken windows alongside feces being smeared across part of the kitchen. There was food strewn about the place and also a needle

found in one of the bathrooms but no sign of the man who threatened me. Michael and his family at the time were visiting family in Australia, I later found out. I never did go back for another shift at the pizza place and although I understand this may have not been the most crazy or horrifying encounter on this subreddit, it's something that's always stuck with me. Wealth and apparent financial security is just completely illusory. People are people and there are some sick and tormented people out there who will always find a way to carry out their twisted actions. And if anything, I have had more encounters with crazy people

since moving away from my council estate roots and into suburbia. One or two months ago, my girlfriend and I went out to our favorite bar. The drive is a tad longer than an hour to our place from the bar, primarily on Barron Interstate after the first 15 minutes, save for a few rural exits and one rest stop a little over halfway home. My girlfriend was sober that night and was driving. I had had a bit to drink and was feeling warm and tipsy. I asked my girlfriend to make a quick stop at the rest

area so I could pee. This is a normal stop for us to make if one of us had been drinking, since the rest area has its own direct exit and entrance, so it's faster than taking an actual exit into town for a gas station. The rest area has only one road in it and one out, and is surrounded by trees to the point that you can't see the facility from the freeway. It is wooded walking trails. By the time I hopped out of the car at the rest stop, it was sometime around 3am. As mentioned, this is a fairly regular stop, and until the day the only other person I had

seen in that rest stop around that time of night was the guy who maintains it. I walk in, the vending area is empty and completely silent. I make my way over to the men's room and push it open to be immediately startled by this old man, maybe mid-sixties or so, standing immediately to the left of the door inside the bathroom. He was wearing what I can only describe as an inspector gadget coat and slacks. I noticed he had a cell phone in his hand when I opened the door but it was hanging down at his side and the screen was not lit up. He stares at me and I stare back for a split second, then I get over it and pass him to head over to the urinals. I take the urinal closest to the sinks when I notice he made no indication he was going to walk out, because there is basically a wall of mirrors stretched out far enough that I can watch him in the mirror while I'm at the urinal.

I unzip and keep my eyes on the mirror but make sure not to turn my head at all. By the time I look in the mirror his phone is up in his hand and on as if he were texting but he seems to be staring at me rather than the phone. Either way he definitely was not looking at his phone. A very long 60 seconds pass and I absolutely cannot go with this silent guy staring at my back from the door. Then in the mirror I notice him take a small slow step forward. I tell myself I'm just tipsy and imagining it, to just get on with my business and get out.

Then he takes a more obvious step forward and I just put it in my pants while I speed walk to the back handicap stall and locked the door. I went to the back where my feet weren't visible and texted my girlfriend about the creepy guy inside with me. I sit and wait to hear the door open signaling him leaving but it still doesn't. After possibly the longest 8 minutes of my life, I hear the door open and close. I wait another 2 minutes and finally go. I crack the stall door first. Luckily the bathroom isn't huge and I had almost complete visibility of the room from the stall I picked. I saw no signs of anyone else so I walked out, washed my hands and beelined it back to the parking lot. I finally make it back to the car and ask my girlfriend what car the old guy got into. She turns to me, wide eyed, and says, he didn't get into one. He just walked across the

parking lot and went into the tree line. With the rest stop being the only thing on the very short on-off ramps and the other closest civilization being 5 miles by interstate, I don't know where this guy was going. Later I realized that although the rest area main room is small, there is a second entrance and exit on the side that goes to a patio backing up to the woods. I forget about it because I never use it, but if that guy had somehow managed to get a jump on me, he could have easily pulled me out of that door and my girlfriend wouldn't have even seen it. Back in my high school years, I'd often meet with a few friends at a local Dunkin' Donuts, which was conveniently near a railway we'd take to our dealer's house.

My closest friend at the time, Katie, and I usually met up earlier than everyone else just to hang out, order our extra large drinks and hash browns, and attempt at some hey-mister shenanigans to score some tall boys from anyone willing to buy us a beer. I'd considered us to be pretty naive and overly nice girls, which never proved to be an issue to either of us until we were nice to the wrong person. Now for a little background on my hometown, I grew up in the forgotten borough of NYC, Staten Island. For those who are unaware, there was and kind of still is a pretty horrendous opioid epidemic, so seeing zombie-like civilians strolling the streets

is fairly common. Because of this, I became pretty good at spotting out someone struggling with heroin and things of that sort. Anyways, on this one day, Katie and I met up at Dunkin' and sat at our usual booth. We were in the midst of messing around with our phones and being our overly giggly selves when I noticed out of the corner of my eye, someone suddenly stop outside of the glass door. Still smiling, I glanced over to see if it was maybe one of our friends and ended up making direct eye contact with a basic Staten Island looking dude. I looked away unbothered and carried on, just another customer anyways.

After the guy got his coffee, he sat directly at the table across from our booth. I chose to ignore the fact that he sat weirdly close and resisted eye contact since that already awkwardly happened, but I guess the motion caught Katie's attention as she looked over her shoulder at the man settling in. She looked back at me, made a face that said, uh, okay, and we just giggled and tried to move on. Every now and then I glanced in his direction, mainly just because I like to be observant of my surroundings, but also because I kept seeing him scratch at his nose, neck and

face in my peripheral vision and noticed he was bleeding from various little cuts on his body. This was a dead giveaway he was doing some form of opiate as they tend to get very itchy and scratch until they break skin. A few minutes later the man asked if one of us had a charger he could borrow. I kindly denied and Katie only had an iPhone charger while the man clearly had an Android phone. This slight exchange was enough for the man to feel invited and he continued to make comments for quite some time. Being that this was about four years ago, I don't remember the entire conversation but I do remember him often asking general questions like if we live around here,

what we do in our free time, and sort of creepy things of that sort. I was pretty vague yet polite in my responses, but Katie was also a bit more enthusiastic in her words, making it pretty easy for the guy to reciprocate and basically join our conversation altogether. In Katie's innocent stupidity, the guy basically found out some of the main train stops we'd get off at to hang in these areas. He also found out we would indulge in the devil's lettuce, which only made this guy feel even more inclined. At some point, he mentioned how his ex-girlfriend got him into some trouble, got him into heroin which he used to sell, served jail time for it, and pretty recently got out. He also mentioned how he'd been an ice cream truck driver ever since his release

and told us that he's always driving around the train stops Katie mentioned earlier. He also repeatedly offered to give us rides around in his truck someday with free ice cream as the bribe. Again, we were pretty naive and overly nice girls, Katie more so than I, so one thing led to another and eventually this guy was asking for Katie's social media which she happily obliged to. She's always been really dedicated to expanding her follower count. Throughout this exchange, I was mostly just nodding, smiling, laughing here and there, so my remaining silent during the social media exchange went unnoticed. However, once the guy started following Katie on Instagram,

he quickly found mine through a tagged picture on her page. I wasn't private at the time, so he immediately started liking and commenting on nearly every one of my pictures. The comments were extremely cringy, consisting of heart eyes and water squirt emojis and things like, Ooh, Mama. Finally, after the longest half hour ever, I urged we should really be catching our train. Fortunately, the man wasn't persistent after that, and we were on our way with no problem.

After some verbal recap of what just happened I convinced Katie to block him and I did the same and we brushed it off with that. I honestly forgot about the strange man's interaction until about a week later. I was hanging out with some friends at a park near my high school when munchies made me crave Ralph's ice which was just up the block. I ventured off with one other friend and also made it to the store before the sound of an ice cream truck approached from behind us. Completely lost in conversation, my attention was only caught by the high-pitched screeching of the truck brakes

and a somewhat familiar voice. Of course, it was him. He shouted out to me, but with Ralph's ice only a couple of feet in front of us, I ignored him and rushed in with my friend. The guy didn't stick around being that he was blocking the whole lane on a narrow two-way road but we still called our friend at the park to come pick us up in his car. For the next two weeks, there were about four times this man tried to pick me up in his ice cream truck. At this point, making me pretty paranoid I was potentially being stalked.

The last time it happened, he was parked directly outside one of the train stops, almost as if though he was waiting for me. He again called out to me asking why I blocked him, and saying he just wants to be friends. At this point I had enough and told him to just leave me alone. My dad's a lieutenant, which was a lie but slipped out in my defense. I walked away before he could respond and into the diner I was meeting my friends at that night. I saw his truck drive away in the window and never had an interaction with the ice cream man again. Anytime I hear the sound of an ice cream truck, it's haunted me ever since. We'll see you next time. Back during this winter, a couple of my friends, who I've been doing urbex for a while with, decided to go check out the infamous asylum on the edge of town.

For the story's sake, I'll call my friends Steve, Joe, and Rich. We decided to go at night to avoid unwanted attention from the security that patrols the grounds. Driving up to the place, you can truly see what 30 years of abandonment can do to a building. Vines growing up the sides, busted out windows, animals claiming the building is theirs, and of course the graffiti. Steve parked his car behind some brush to remain hidden from the street. We started to walk to the patient housing and treatment building. Only brightened by the moonlight, we could see the beautiful early 1900s architecture of the four-story building. As our group climbed under the joke of a fence, we went to the entrance and put on our respirators.

As we opened the old paint-chipped door, we instantly saw a looming staircase that went to the first floor. Once we climbed the stairs, we noticed that it led to the dormitories, but the staircase kept going up three more floors. I came up with the idea to split into groups of two so we could cover more ground and try to find something cool. So me and Joe, the two youngest of the group, decided we would venture up to the second floor while Steve and Rich would explore the first. We gave each other good lucks and headed up to the second floor. Using our phone's flashlight, me and Joe were able to make out the words

Patient Treatment and Offices on the old metal door. To our surprise it was unlocked and we found ourselves into a long never-ending system of hallways. Most of the rooms contained old hydrotherapy bathtubs and showers. We stumbled onto the urbex gold mine. We were so anxious to explore the rest. I noticed Joe stopped walking as if he was listening to something. I said, Joe, what are you... Until I was cut off by Joe shushing me. He then pointed to his ear and pointed below us.

I stopped to listen and could make out a faint voice of two men humming. I told Joe, It's probably just Steve and Rich. It was at that moment we both turned our heads to the door that we had entered after hearing the metal door slam shut with force. Steve? Joe said nervously. The only response we got was more of the humming no more than ten yards away. This was our cue to get out of there. We sprinted down two long winding hallways and all the while could hear pounding steps behind us of at least three men. When we got to the end of the hallway I could make out an old fire exit sign with the glow of my light. Me and Joe barely made it to the door and slammed it shut.

Through the small busted pane of glass of the door I could make out three dark figures of at least ten feet from the door. We found the stairs and pretty much jumped them all, then bursted out the exit. I don't think me and Joe have ever climbed a fence that fast in our lives. We didn't stop running until we got to the car. To our surprise, Steve and Rich were both sitting in the front seats. We screamed for them to unlock the doors and frantically told Steve to drive away. Steve, looking confused, drove away leaving that nightmare of a place behind us. Rich wanted to stop and get coffee. During this time they told us what they experienced. As me and Joe went upstairs, Steve and Rich entered the dormitory space.

They checked out a couple of rooms but said that they were all empty. So Steve went to call me to check if we found anything cool but it went directly to voicemail. So Steve went to call me to check if we found anything cool, but it went directly to voicemail. So Steve and Rich figured that we had just left due to the building already being looted and went out to the car. When me and Joe asked if they heard humming, they just looked at us as if we were crazy. That was the first time I went to that asylum

and will most certainly be the last. So this happened almost 7 years ago. Me and my friend, named Anna, we were 13 years old. I still vividly remember this incident and I think this is a great lesson for young girls. As most of us young girls back in 2013, we were fans of One Direction. My friend Anna and I went to the cinema to watch the movie This Is Us about One Direction. We were having fun and singing along. So the movie was over at 10pm. My friend called her dad to come and pick us up. We knew we had to wait for about 20 minutes before he arrives because both of us live outside of the city.

So we were walking around and talking about the movie when we heard some men asking us, Hey girls, need a ride home? We just kept walking pretending we didn't hear anything. A few moments later, we stopped and waited for her dad in the lighted area because we thought it would be safer that way. Then the same men came again and stopped their car right in front of us. At first, I was irritated to see them again but then fear kicked in. The guy in the passenger seat said,

Come on girls, get in the car. We can give you a ride home or even better, you can go to our place and have some fun. I was shocked hearing that because they looked to be around 30 and we were only 13 and definitely didn't look older than 13. My friend replied, no, my dad is coming soon. We really don't need a ride from you. Suddenly, one of the guys stepped out of the car and was coming to us. We started shouting to go away and screw off. Then the guy came to me, grabbed my arm, around my upper arm. All kinds of things went through my head, like what they will do to us, what if I don't

see my family again, all in that instant. I knew I had to do something if I don't want anything bad to happen to us. I managed to squirm out of his grip and we started running. Then finally we saw that her dad is coming and she said it out loud so that they could hear it. After that, they just bolted away, back to the car and drove off. I can only imagine what they would do to us if we had agreed to come with them or if the other guy came out of this car and put us both in the car. That's my story of almost being kidnapped and who knows what else. Always be prepared, girls. And always check your surroundings. When I was going into my fourth year of university, I decided to move out of my

student residence building and get an apartment with my friend. It was always a scramble to find a place in the small university town but we found a small apartment and quickly placed a deposit on it. Brenda and I had been friends since our first year of university. During frosh week she had immediately butted heads with her roommates and spent a lot of time hanging out in my room. I am pretty shy so honestly it was nice to have made a friend so quickly. There were some red flags. She hated my boyfriend and was also pretty nasty to my friends who would come and visit from home. She also seemed to be fighting with her friends and family back home a lot.

Again, I was just happy to have someone to go to meal hall with. So back to us moving in together. The first red flag was when, without consulting me first, she bought a ton of furniture for the house. A new table, chairs, couch, all new kitchen utensils, etc. She then sent me the bill and told me I owed half. My extended family had already offered me lots of hand-me-downs so I had been planning on bringing those but I didn't want to start our living arrangement off on a negative tone so I have been planning on bringing those but I didn't want to start our living arrangement off on a negative tone so I just paid what she asked. Within a week of moving

in together her boyfriend moved in as well. Right away I told her that if he was going to live there he had to pay something in rent. She became very offended and asked why he should have to pay since he was only staying in her room. Things only got worse. They were both very messy people and would leave the kitchen and living room a total mess. They would sleep almost all day and her boyfriend would have a fit if I made too much noise. One time he came out of the room at 5pm and demanded I stop cutting carrots so loudly. It was weird. Things really hit the fan when I reported Brenda's boyfriend's living arrangement to our landlord. I told her that it could come to that if he didn't pay anything but she continued her defense that it was only living in her room. Our landlord was livid.

Apparently he had already suspected the boyfriend was living there and asked her about it and she lied. Not only were they taking advantage of me but also the landlord as we didn't pay heat, lights or water. The first scary thing that happened was when I came home one night and I found the hallway lights leading to my bedroom all wouldn't turn on. It was pitch black. It was late though so I just walked through the darkness and went to my room. The next morning I opened my door and realized that there were knives leading down the hallway on the floor. Somehow I had missed them. I collected them and immediately went to my roommates who claimed she didn't do it. Later that day when I checked the lights I figured out that all the bulbs had been unscrewed.

I called my landlord and asked to end my lease. He refused. I would have to create a police report and have her evicted. I don't know why I didn't do that but I just decided to stay out of the apartment as much as I could. The next incident was worse. In my first year of university I had dated a very scary and abusive person. He would scream at me constantly, among other things. Our breakup was messy and ended with him threatening to seriously hurt me. Brenda knew this. One night after an evening class, I came home to find three people in our living room.

Brenda, her boyfriend, and my ex. I raced into my room and called another friend to come over. Fortunately, my friend Morgan came right away. He was over 6 feet tall and played on the school basketball team. We hung out for most of the night. I felt much safer and even decided to go to the kitchen to get us some snacks. In the kitchen, I was cornered by my ex, literally cornered. He right away started whispering the most awful things to me. I yelled for Morgan and my ex grabbed my wrist and held onto me until Morgan came around the corner. Morgan escorted my ex out of the apartment.

I did go speak to the police but they said that there wasn't a lot they could do unless he did something to really hurt me. The last incident was almost at the end of the school year. I had been at the library studying for exams. Our apartment was a short walk, maybe five minutes to the school, and there were a lot of students coming and going. I was about a minute's walk from our house when I received a text from an unknown number. It said that one of my friends, listed her by name, had been involved in some sort of altercation and I

needed to go to the police station to help her. There were a lot of details and it seemed very real. Right away I asked who it was. They said it was the girl's mother, gave me her name, etc. I was in panic mode worrying about my friends so I turned and started walking to the station. The town wasn't very big but the police station was a little ways away, probably another 5-7 minute walk from where I was. It was getting away from where most students live so there wasn't a lot of people walking around. Again, I was in panic mode and didn't think anything about it. As I got closer, I became aware of a car following very closely behind me. This is when I noticed that there was literally no one around now. The car pulled up near me and the back window

rolled down just enough for someone to begin throwing trash at me. I walked quicker and made a turn down a street that was too close for them to take. The car backed up and followed me. They now began speeding towards me and slamming on their brakes. They started flashing their high beams and yelling some pretty nasty remarks out the window. I'd had enough and started to run to the police station. The car ripped up next to me one more time and three guys in hoodies jumped out. I pulled my phone out and started waving it around yelling that I was streaming it online while calling the police. I was really only calling the police. That's when I heard Brenda's

voice come from the car. She isn't. This is when it hit me that the text was definitely a fake when the group heard the 911 operator's voice they jumped back into the car and took off i went straight to the police station and reported what happened no surprise they said that the group hadn't really done anything and there was nothing they could do except issue a warning thankfully my sister lived about an hour and a half drive away, so I stayed with her for the rest of the semester and just drove to my classes. It was a pain, but I'm quite sure that it was better than whatever Brenda and her boyfriend had in store for me. Back in 2014, I was around 17 to 18 years old and I had been dating this guy for a few years, now an ex for unrelated reasons. We were around each other a lot, to the point where we pretty

much lived together but suddenly one of his friends asked my boyfriend at the time if he wanted to move together into this house his family had provided for him. Both of us studied outside of our hometown, roughly one and a half hours away and this house happened to be a lot closer to both our schools so my boyfriend was very keen on the idea. I was also offered to move into this house with him but since I had just turned 18, still a full time student and unemployed, I couldn't afford to move away from my family yet. I could say I partially moved in as it saved me from a lot of traveling, 3 hours traveling a day turned into about 1 and I could spend more time being productive. The moving became official and the following weeks was dedicated to moving my boyfriend at the time's stuff, buying furniture and items he needed and all anything you need to do when you move The house was located in a nice, calm neighborhood, had a view over a big field filled with friendly cows It had three floors where the two bottom floors both were fully decked with a living room, kitchen,

and bathroom each and the top floor had three bedrooms and a bathroom. We lived on the first floor while our friend that we moved in with had a younger brother who moved into the second floor. The third floor was shared with each of our bedrooms. The house was old but relatively nice and had good size to it. Additionally to that, our floor had a sauna which, at least to us, seemed like luxury. After some weeks, we were finally done moving and we decided to host a party to celebrate this new chapter of our lives. Our friend's younger brother on the second floor decided to host a party on the same date. Me and my boyfriend at the time and our friend hosted a closed party, legal drinking age in my country is 18, only inviting our closest friends. We started with

a chill drinking game to get the mood going while listening to diverse rock and alternative music. Meanwhile, the guy living on the second floor hosted an open party. It didn't take long before the first problem started to occur. The party upstairs had so many attending they started to come down to our floor to use the bathroom, trying to hang out with us and stealing our drinks. We just started by telling them that this floor was off limits and that they had to go back upstairs. Our friend decided to go up to his younger brother to talk to him about it but was shocked to see and hear what was happening. People were breaking things, harassing our neighbors, throwing trash into people's gardens. Not very unlike any party with drunk people but we still thought it was starting

to get out of hand. After a little I had to go up to our bedroom on the third floor to grab a few things. The third floor was filled with people and I had to get firm and tell them that there was nothing for them to do on the third floor and that they had to leave. Message went pretty much unheard. Suddenly this girl, probably about my age, came up the stairs crying her eyes out, walked right past me and entered the second floor guy's bathroom. I decided to follow her and I immediately started to get scared. The room was full of smoke, had a small fire in one of the corners. People were either running out or just sitting there like nothing. A group of people tried to comfort the

crying girl and the entire situation started to get bizarre. I ran back down to our party and told my ex and our friend about what I had just witnessed. They both ran up with me coming up backing them and started to throw people out. Even while actively trying to throw people out, people kept trying to enter the room as if though there was nothing going on. We managed to stomp out the fire, open the windows to air out the tightly packed smoke and finally, the third floor was empty. We came to the conclusion that this party had to end and we went to the second floor, yelling that we had called the police to scare people away.

At this point, we actually hadn't called them, yet. To us, it seemed like the only way we could get our point firmly enough for people to get up and leave. Most people left, not minding it too much, but there was one guy who was extremely unhappy for it. Started to fight our friend and eventually we got him out. Finally, everyone was gone besides a few people that were going to stay there and we went back down to our own party. We decided to make it into more of a chill evening with games and music more than a party at this point, and even though we were a bit stressed about what had happened so far, we continued the evening like nothing.

Suddenly our friend's younger brother came running down, telling us that the guy who didn't want to leave had called a group of people and they were on their way to beat us up. This wasn't just any group of people. They were well known around the nearby towns and had a very sketchy reputation related to drugs and gang activity and if anyone had enough beef with anyone, they were the people they would contact. We immediately freaked out and called the police. The police didn't seem to care at all and told us that they would eventually send a few cops if they were in the area Apparently nobody was in the area

As time passed we called them several times to try and communicate how serious this was and how scared we were With lack of police response we decided we had to prepare ourselves for the upcoming events May and the two other girls at the party were told to go into the sauna to hide With us one of the other girls at the party were told to go into the sauna to hide. With us, one of the other girls' boyfriends came to help protect us. The other boys at our party started to gather items they could use to defend themselves. Planks, curtain rods, or any long hard objects was their choice of defense, and when ready, they started to station themselves at the various entrances the house had.

The few of us who were in the sauna continued to call the police to tell them that we had gone into hiding, some of us were ready for an attack, and that we'd really, really like to get the police here. They finally told us that they were going to send someone for sure after we had called them over 40 times in the last few hours but it was almost too late. We were sitting in the sauna freaking out for what seemed like an eternity at this time. Since I was hiding in the sauna I was not there to witness what went down outside but being told this over and over from all the different guys I think I had a good overview of how it went down. Suddenly, a random guy who attended the party earlier came running to the door yelling for help.

He kept knocking on the door, ringing the doorbell and yelling. After a little, one of the boys concluded that he was probably chased by the gang coming for us and we had to let him in. As soon as we opened the door, a different person who was out of sight suddenly punched him hard on the face and knocked him down. The gang was already standing there, ready to enter and attack and around 10 people entered the house. They were equipped with knives, brass knuckles and other various melee weapons and started to fight our boys. While fighting, our boys yelled that the police were on the way. They kept on attacking as if they knew that the police here weren't any good and there was nothing they could do. Finally, sirens could be heard in the distance and the gang decided to leave. As they left, one of them stopped for a moment telling them that they'll be back and the house would be fully ablaze.

The feeling of relief I felt can't be described when familiar faces entered the sauna we were hiding in, telling us that it was over and we could come out of hiding. But it was still too early to celebrate it being over. While most of the boys got away with minor injuries and cuts, two of us got sent to the hospital with severe concussions, broken limbs, and potentially internal bleeding. The police apologized for not taking us seriously. They managed to catch a few of the gang people while they were walking away from the scene. We also had the name of the guy who called them and informed the police.

We wrapped things up, filed our police report, and called our parents to come pick us up. We refused to stay at the house even for one more night. We all camped at one of our friends' houses and tried to calm down with some games and movies there, but it was clear that we all had been very scared of what went down. The two guys who were sent to the hospital both luckily survived and got compensation from the guys who were caught, including the guy who called them. All of the ones that got caught got away with doing social services and paying compensation, but if you ask me, some of them should have gotten stricter punishment. To this day, I still imagine how the scenario could have gone if the police didn't take it

seriously in the end. The beatings could have been much more severe and not to even mention what if they were to find the three helpless girls hiding in the sauna with no way to escape. I'm forever thankful that this didn't end up worse than it did. I'm a 22 year old female in South End, England. This seems like a good place to share my experience. So for starters, my house is a relatively new build, circa 1960s. My dad bought it from the original owners in the 80s and has been here ever since. When my mom fell pregnant with me, there was no longer enough room so there was an extension built to the side

Mid 90s and it's that newer part that has always felt uncomfortable to me Also worthy to note is that now it's just my dad and I living here He works long long days and I do shift work so it's quite often I'm home alone for long periods of time As a young child I remember having vivid nightmares most nights and I was terrified of sleeping in my room. Not uncommon I know, but my fear was quite specific to certain dolls I had in the loft space above my bedroom. I would see the dolls move, again product of fear most likely, but was too scared to move them into the loft because I'd hear them

scratching around up there. As an adult, I have an interest in the spiritual but mostly try to look at things scientifically. Now my real experiences started a couple of years ago. They happened almost in sequence. The first experience was when I was home alone in my room. I could hear the floorboards outside my room creaking like someone was walking around. I assumed my then boyfriend had come in and was trying to scare me. Not to be a killjoy, I decided to pretend I hadn't heard it and ignored it. A few minutes later, I was still hearing it so I opened my bedroom door to see what was going on and of course, there was no one. Almost as I opened the door, to see what was going on and of course there was no one. Almost as I opened the door the creaking stopped.

That happened twice more over the next couple of hours. I rang my then boyfriend who was at home just to make sure then went downstairs to make sure I didn't have an intruder. Getting into my kitchen there was a knife on the counter. I know absolutely that it wasn't there before as I had done the washing up earlier in the day and the knife wasn't even one of the items I'd washed. Sensing it was some kind of sign, I kept the knife with me until my dad got home. Roughly a week after, the start was the same as before. Hearing footsteps, no one there. I went downstairs and this time, five of our cupboard doors were wide open. A few days after, my dad is really strict about certain things and ever since I have had a key, it's been drilled into me to double lock

the front door when I leave the house. I've never not done it. In this experience, my dad came home from work whilst I was out to find the front door wide open. He was mad at me and I insist that, like always, I lock that door. At this point, I'm beginning to worry we have someone living in the loft or garage or something. I've asked my dad to do checks around the house and of course we don't have anyone else living here Now I was home alone and on the phone with my mom We were chatting and I'm sitting in the dining room, the newer part of the house And she suddenly says, who's there with you? I say no one

She says, no seriously, who's there? I hear a man's voice I'm completely alone but she's so convinced that she just heard a man talking to the speaker that she drives to my house straight away and does a check for me. My mom is the last person who would play a prank like that. She would never try to scare me. My then boyfriend is an absolute non-believer. I'm kind of on the fence, always trying to come up with an explanation, but he straight up tells me I'm kind of on the fence, always trying to come up with an explanation but he straight up tells me I'm stupid and shuts me off whenever I've told him what's happening. One morning I go to work when he's stayed over, leaving him in my house alone. He hears a man's

whistling coming from downstairs and naturally assumes it's my dad who came home early. He decides to go downstairs to say hello, still hearing the whistling as he's coming down and there's no one there. That skeptic of a man left my house immediately. My mom believes about the same amount as I do so I've kept her up to date. I don't bother telling my dad anything as he's another to brush it off. My brother who doesn't live with us is another complete skeptic so I don't tell him either. My mom decides to tell my brother about it unbeknownst to me. She always felt anxious and off in this house when she lived here but never said anything and decided to ask my brother about it when he lived here.

My brother has two stories to tell from living here. He lived here up until he was about 15 and since he started school, most nights he would roll over and face the wall because a pencil on his bed table would rhythmically roll back and forth like someone was pushing it. He never did it any other times and it's something that stuck in his brain as a kid. This is the big one. Hold your horses. This. When I was two and he was ten, we went on a holiday to visit family in Mauritius, getting picked up by a taxi at 6am to go to the airport. My brother woke up at five and was getting his things together. He was grabbing some things off of his windowsill and happened to see our neighbor in the garden. He looked up at my brother and smiled and waved. He waved back and thought nothing of it. When the time comes, he's putting his suitcase in

the taxi and our neighbor's daughter comes out to wave us off and said, Sorry to tell this before you go, but I thought you should know that my dad died in his sleep about 11pm. And it makes my brother go cold to this day to think about it. He remembers exactly what our neighbor was wearing when he saw him, every detail of his smile and wave. But this man was dead. This happened to me about six years ago. My name is Amanda. I'm a 28-year-old Hispanic female and I was born and raised in Southern California in a town called Paris.

It's a small sort of ghetto area, but it was home. We lived in the nicest house on our street, but because of how bad the area got over the years since I was little, we had to have a wrought iron fence, bars on all the windows, and two German shepherds just in case. To be honest, my mom and I used to think my dad was way too paranoid. Growing up, I used to walk up and down the streets of my hometown with friends and even though it wasn't the best area, nothing ever happened that made me feel unsafe until this happened to me. My dad had had enough of living in the ghetto and my parents had been wanting to move for years. Finally, my dad found a job in Arizona where my uncle lived. So he left to Arizona to temporarily

live with my uncle to start his job and house search for us while me, my mom, and sisters stayed behind to pack everything in boxes. I only had a couple of months to get everything in order but when I found time I wanted to hang out with some friends before I left California. The night this happened I was planning to hang out with my ex-boyfriend, we'll call him Freddy. We were both kind of broke so we just grabbed a couple of Arizona iced teas from the gas station and went to hang out at the small park in town. Keep in mind it was about 8 or 9 at night and it was very dark. But I had grown up going to the park and been there so many times I didn't see a problem with it at the time. That was a dumb mistake.

When we got there I decided just in case to leave my wallet in my purse and tuck it under my seat. I thought I was smart. And we grabbed our drinks and started to walk around the big grassy area of the park to talk and show each other funny pictures from our phones. There were some people when we first got there, but not even 15 minutes passed and it seemed like everyone had just vanished. First red flag. We also passed by a suspicious looking guy with his dog sitting at a bench like he was waiting for someone who also whistled when we passed by. Another red flag that I stupidly ignored. Freddy and I ended up sitting on a small hill behind the restroom still continuing our conversation about god knows what when all of a sudden I heard some footsteps approaching the left of us and that's when everything happened so fast.

I remember looking up and seeing four Latino guys with bald heads and if I had to guess, they all couldn't have been older than 20. One ran up to Freddy and yelled, Hey, where you from ese? Freddy's response was, what, but before the guy could ask again, Freddy just jumped up and ran while just the one guy chased after him. And yes, he left me there, alone, with the three remaining guys just staring at me. I had never felt more fear in my entire life.

So scared that my legs felt too heavy to move and I knew that these guys could catch me. Then the one that looked like he was the youngest approached me with a long knife in his hand and pressed it against my stomach. Not hard enough to puncture but enough to hurt. He also kept one hand on my shoulder. I guess to make sure I couldn't or wouldn't think about moving or trying anything. My phone was kind of small at the time and it was so dark that luckily I was able to slip it into my sleeve while they weren't looking so hopefully if I made it out alive I

could call 911. Give me everything you got girl, empty your pockets. He said to me. I remember thinking he was trying to convince me and the guys behind him of how tough he wanted to be but wasn't yet. I put both my hands up and said I didn't have anything, I swore. He looked back at the other guys and back at me and that's when I started to cry and sweat and thought, please God, I just want to see my mom again, please. And then he said, pull the stuff out of your pockets now. I pulled my car keys out in a dollar bill and for some reason got either brave or stupid and said, See, like I said, I have nothing. Again, he looked back at his friends who were clearly getting impatient and nervous,

and that's when it hit me. Oh my God, this is a gang initiation. God help me. Then he said, I know you got a phone, so give it. Again, I put my hands up and told him, I don't have it on me. You can check if you want. Stupid, I know, but I thought if I told him that he would just believe me. He didn't, so he checked my pockets of my sweater and I kept thinking, God, if my phone rings, these guys are definitely going to kill me. Finally, the guy who was chasing Freddy ran back, but no Freddy. I'm guessing that was their signal to get out of there because

all of a sudden the guy grabbed my keys and the one dollar bill, gives me a shove and then they all took off running scattering in different directions of the park and guessing as planned still in shock i was still alive and had not been stabbed to death or worse i stood there for a minute or two looking around to make sure that they were gone not knowing what happened to freddie and angry that he betrayed me and left me. Finally I felt like I could move and start running, crying, breathing hard, feeling like I was going to pass out from all the shock. I found a lit area of picnic benches where I sat

and all of a sudden I heard Freddy call my name and run to me. I wanted to slap his face but for some reason I was glad he was alive. Looking back now I have no idea why I even cared. I pulled out my phone and called the police and called AAA because my keys had been stolen and my mom didn't know where the spare key was. The cops took my statement and I distinctly remember how the cop looked at Freddy in disgust when he heard that he had left me. They never found the guys that did this of course but the keys were replaceable and the dollar bill was a small cost to pay for my life. I had nightmares for weeks after that night and I always woke up with a pain in my stomach in the same spot where the guy pushed the knife to me. This was a traumatizing experience that made me a very paranoid person.

I have since moved out of California and now live in another state with my husband of four years. I have developed a habit of checking and rechecking the locks on my doors and my car. I'm constantly looking behind me and have had panic attacks because I always think I'm being followed even though the town I live in now is very safe. Freddy and I didn't talk for years but he has since apologized to me and admitted to being scared which to me is a lot for a guy to admit. He now has a family of his own and we have remained friends on Facebook but don't talk often. What I learned from this experience is to not ignore the red flags, and to never ever hang out in parks alone at night.

This story is going to sound strange to anyone who isn't spiritual or doesn't believe in demons. I encourage you not to skip the story because maybe you'll learn something from it. And it is a thousand percent true in what we experienced. So be warned now, but I know what many others and myself have experienced. I accidentally exorcised some demons from someone, which is the theatrical term for it, but we call it deliverance at church, usually, and it was terrifying. I just recently figured out what the Holy Spirit can do in my life personally, speaking in tongues, when I'm praying, just me and God, not to a whole room with an interpretation.

Miraculous healing and prophecy are the things that I didn't know were true outside of the Bible, too, until I received those gifts for myself. After I got baptized in the Holy Spirit, the demonic dreams that plagued me my whole life changed and then went away. I started casting the demons out in my dreams instead of cowering from them or crying or screaming or other things like that. Thank goodness, because it's not fun to be afraid to go to sleep and being afraid of being awake at the same time. That's sort of symbolic for what I'm about to share. I had a best friend that I was super close with that I met at church. Over time I saw him starting to drift away from the faith and church culture a little bit so I started praying for him from afar. Then it turned into blatant disregard for Jesus and I became devastated. I've never interceded more for someone in my whole life. Long story short, way down the line we were at a church retreat one year and the spiritual atmosphere was tingly like god's

presence was just everywhere it was crazy anyone who has felt this knows that i'm talking about expectation was in the air two weeks before this retreat my mentioned friend's sister came up and prophesied to me like i said this probably sounds ridiculous to anyone who doesn't know what God can do to people. That my demonic dreams changing and leaving was a sign that deliverance was part of my calling and that I would be part of deliverances or exorcisms in my life. I was freaked out. No thanks, that's too scary. Two weeks later, here I am at this retreat.

I knew God was going to do something big, but I didn't know what it was. The last night, which is always the most spiritually intense, in a good way, I walked into the chapel with all the students worshipping and immediately began looking for my friend. I wanted to pray over him. I couldn't find him for the life of me and was afraid he left early since he doesn't participate in this stuff anyway. He was just going to these events to appease his parents. I go to the corner to worship and I open my eyes and four feet in front of me, there he is. Sitting in the only chair in the room, head rested on his hands, arms rested on his legs,

blatantly trying to ignore the electrifying atmosphere. So the setting, the worship is concert level loud as this is happening. I suddenly begin sobbing uncontrollably and feel an intense love in my heart. I open my mouth to start praying from four feet away but I just can't stop praying in tongues. All of a sudden through my tears I see him start beating his head with his fists due to the loud music and the focus people had on God no one noticed this at this point then he begins screaming at the top of his lungs blood curdling male screams as he keeps messing with his head I didn't know what to do so I just kept praying and crying. Suddenly he stands up and starts heading for the door and I need to pray over him now but I don't move. I was terrified.

A student stops him and begins praying over him. Thank goodness this bought some time. I watch him and as this student is praying his eyes are darting back and forth. He wants to get to the door, so the kid stops praying and doesn't even get a thanks from my friend. His mind is elsewhere, and I approach him. I ask, can I please pray for you? Keep in mind, we were best friends, very buddy-buddy. He says, sure, in the most flat, unamused voice ever. I look into his eyes, although he refuses to make eye contact with me, and sees something else behind them. It was otherworldly, and I wish I could explain it further. I put my hand on his shoulder. Laying hands is biblical and whatnot, that's what our church automatically does, and he smacks it off of him. He says,

don't touch me. And I remember something a pastor told me once about how once when he was casting out a demon from someone, whenever he touched the person, the person would feel physical pain and burning wherever his hand touched. So I said, okay, I'll just pray then. He stops me again and says, when you're praying, pray to me. What? No, I'm going to pray to God, but I don't respond to that, I just pray. I am literally rambling and can barely even speak because my sobbing only got worse by this point. Then four of his close friends surround him too as we stand there and they lay hands on him and begin praying. He kneels over and bent in half and begins screaming manically. We know what's happening so we just keep praying. Luckily the worship music

was concert level loud. After about two minutes of him bending over and screaming as we continue praying, he stands up perfectly calm and leaves the chapel. We all just watch as he goes. None of us know what to do or how to acknowledge the situation so we just walk away and continue to worship, but obviously I continued praying over what just happened. I had heard demons manifest before from a distance since our church is so spirit filled and they literally cannot stand the presence of God, but I had never had it happen due to my prayers before. I sadly don't believe that whatever demons he had came out of him that day, but they were fighting and reacting without

a doubt. These days my friend and I hardly ever speak but we recently caught up and he's attending a different church than his family and he's probably better than he's been in years unless he's lying to me. It was a very scary situation but also gave me more confidence for if that ever happened in the future. After all, his sister did prophesy that that would be part of my calling. I'm a 26-year-old female from Michigan, but I was 20 at the time this took place. I live in a safe town and I was working at Walmart in the next town over which is an even safer town. I work midnights because I am

definitely not a people person. Every day I would go home on my lunch to see my new puppy who to this day has kept me going through countless problems in my life. Working midnights there were basically no cars on the road when I was going home on my lunches. I was, when I was four miles from work, at a stoplight that I noticed a car had been behind me for a mile or two. I drive like a grandma and always go the speed limit so there wasn't a reason for someone to stay behind me with clear open road all over. I keep on my way home. The car is still behind me another mile. I thought okay that's weird but maybe coincidence. I then had to turn on a side street that only had neighborhoods along either side for about a mile. You guessed it the car turned too. I started to get worried

but still brushed it off. Maybe they lived down that street. It was then I turned into my neighborhood I started to lose it when the car was still following me. I turned down my street but didn't pull into my driveway because I didn't want to lead this creeper to my house so I kept driving and took another way back out of my neighborhood. The car is still following me. Just to be positive, before I called 911 I drove through my neighborhood the same way as before and he followed again. I got back on the main road from the side street and called 911, crying because I was terrified, and explained the situation to them. I headed back towards my work. She asked where I was and I told her the crossroads and lucky me, there was a

patrol unit a mile up. She stayed on the phone with me and told me to pull into the 7-Eleven at the crossroads the police were close to. The car pulls in after me too. The dispatcher lady told me to turn my hazards on so the police know which car was which. The car must have seen the police car and tried to leave. Not today, buddy. They stopped him on his way turning out. I just parked in a spot, crying hysterically. An officer comes over and asks if I know Michael Stonebreaker. I say no, I don't. The officer continues to say that he has a good amount of illicit substances on him and this isn't his first arrest so he'll be going away for a while. Why did he follow me? What was his motive?

The officer also said the creeper said he was following me because he thought I was his friend. Why didn't he pull up to me at the red light that we were stopped at? Why wouldn't he have tried to get my attention somehow? That was a very terrifying experience for me even if it doesn't sound scary to some of you. This taught me a very valuable lesson though. Please pay attention to your surroundings day or night. Anything can happen anywhere, even in a safe town. Grey and Bruce counties in Ontario, Canada often get rolled into one region referred to as Grey Bruce due to the relative similarity between the terrain and general lack of urbanization anywhere besides the city of Owen Sound, which is roughly in the middle of the region. It's not an area known for any kind of mysterious happenings as it is a pretty sleepy place inhabited mostly by farmers, sweet old ladies, and drug addicted teens. The only notable exception is the blue mountains on the far east side where Gray and Simcoe counties meet. This

area is a tourist hotspot but the rest of the region is just your typical boring farm towns where nothing ever happens. This is why when sightings of UFOs in the area started popping up, I just chalked it up to people suffering from cabin fever due to the ongoing pandemic. But as time has progressed, I'm starting to become more and more convinced that something is up there in our skies. The first time I heard any of this was at dinner a few weeks ago. My dad mentioned he had seen some kind of elongated light in the sky the previous night. None of us really thought anything of it, figuring it had just been a meteor since due to the pretty much non-existent light pollution in the area, meteors are very easy to spot.

That was the end of it for a few days and I just forgot about it until 4 or 5 days later. I'm part of this Facebook group called Weird Stuff You See in Gray and Bruce which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. People mostly just post pictures of funny bumper stickers they've seen on cars or strange things they've found on the side of the road. nothing too crazy. However, I started noticing a lot of people who were asking if anyone has seen any strange lights in the sky that pretty much exactly matched the description my dad had given of what he saw. Everyone else had also come to the same conclusion that it was just a meteor shower but the people who had seen them insisted that the lights didn't move and just

seemed to hover there so they couldn't have been meteors. It wasn't until a few days ago when I actually saw the lights myself. I was up late, as I have been ever since this pandemic started, browsing reddit and watching some youtube videos when I finally decided it was time to try and get some sleep. I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and I was about to turn on the lights when I saw them out the window. Two very distinct, elongated lights hovering pretty far apart in the night sky. I walked up to the window and cut my hands around my eyes and pressed against the glass to get a better look. Of course, I don't know what

I was hoping to see. All I got was a clearer view of the lights and some of the surrounding stars, but no real clue as to what it was. Now, anyone who is familiar with this area knows that there is a military base just outside of Mayford. However, I don't think this is the military. The Mayford base isn't some kind of top secret Area 51 type place, it's pretty low security. In fact, its gym facilities are open to the public to use and you can just drive onto the base to go there without even having to pass through any kind of checkpoint. It's primarily a training ground for land vehicles such as tanks and large military trucks but no aircraft. They do occasionally hold off-site training

exercises that do involve some aircraft from Borden but they are always very open to the public about what they're up to as to not raise any alarm. As you can imagine, it would be kind of concerning to see a bunch of military trucks roll through your town unannounced so they usually give a few weeks notice before they start any operations. Because of this, I find it very unlikely that these lights are military helicopters because if they were, they would likely be all over the local radio stations explaining exactly what they're up to. The other reason I don't think it's military is that these lights don't appear to make any noise. When I saw the lights from the bathroom window, I opened the window a crack to listen and all I heard was silence. If these were helicopters, there should have been the usual thumping of far-off helicopter blades

cutting through the air, but there was nothing. Furthermore, I don't know what kind of helicopter would have a light like that. As the days have gone on, more and more people have been reporting sightings of these mysterious lights in the sky on the Facebook group. No one really seems to be taking it that seriously and making jokes about aliens being the next catastrophe of 2020 after the virus. I'm not convinced whether these lights are aliens, however, it doesn't seem to have any kind of logical explanation either. The following story happened when I was about 16 years old and still to this day, I reflect on it from time to time. A bit of background, I live in Australia and I live

reasonably close to the Royal National Park where this story takes place. If you aren't familiar with the park, it is a large area over 100 kilometers in space with winding roads and nothing but bushland that are quite fun to drive through. On a night like any other, I was doing just that. I was a passenger in my friend Ash's car and my brother Lucas was with us. It was approximately 1am and we were driving deeper into the park as we had done hundreds of times before. As we came quickly around a bend in the route, we were face to face with a girl, standing at the edge of the road close to one of those barriers as we must be near a cliff.

She looked to be in her teens, her age I couldn't be sure. Though this sounds cliche, I swear she was wearing some kind of white dress and was pale faced. I am an avid horror movie fan so I understand how all this sounds. Her immediate appearance wasn't what was concerning to us. We had stopped virtually in the middle of the road and the car headlights were shining directly on her. We became uneasy when the girl didn't blink, flinch, or move a muscle despite facing us directly. I remember wondering why she would be out here standing in the pitch black night. I can't remember if my brother or our friend suggested it but someone said, Should we help her?

In that moment, so many questions were racing through my mind. I think I was the first to speak and said no, firmly. As much as I wanted to help, I reasoned with the boys, saying that if she was in trouble and needed help, she would have indicated it by now. I also suggested that it could be a trap used to distract us since someone could be nearby to attack us if we aided her. After what felt like hours, though really it was only a minute, we got out of there. We had to drive past her to continue our route and couldn't do a u-turn or a three point turn because the road was too narrow.

As we drove past her I was in the back seat and turned my head to watch her. I still get chills when I think about this but the girl's head turned slowly in sync with the car's movements and watched us drive by. I kept my eyes on her and still she didn't blink or move as the light around her started to dim until she was in the darkness again and I could no longer see her face. Oddly enough, the three of us didn't mention it the next day or for a long time. At least I don't remember having a conversation about it with Lucas. It was only a few years later when I had started to question if I had dreamed it when I asked my brother and our friend if they remembered that night. To my horror and somewhat relief, they did. They recalled the details as I had recalled them, so I know it was real.

Over the years, I have wondered what became of her. I regret not going to the police, and you may ask why I would even go to the police if she had done nothing wrong. Truth be told, there are no residents that deep in the park and she was a good hour's walk or so from the nearest highway. So I simply wonder if she was a ghost, a lost catatonic girl who needed help, or maybe she was something more sinister. I have gone back to the park several times since specifically to find the girl or see if there is a common occurrence. I have researched online for any clues as to who she may be. On one drive when searching I said to a friend of mine, Nick, who was happy to come along, that there could be bodies in the bush and no one would ever know.

A week after I had said this, the dead body of a man was found a few feet away from the road in the bush by a motorist who had stopped to relieve himself. It was in the news and it makes me wonder how many people are out there in that park, but most of all, I just wonder, who was she? To be continued... and give and receive feedback from the community, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And join my Discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends.

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