The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - TRUE Scary Stories To Fall Asleep To (VOL 2)

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Christmas and ghosts stories go hand in hand. So, tonight I bring you 21 terrifying true scary stories to keep you up all night (or fall asleep to, depending on how twisted you are). As well as an extra bonus of three of my favourite fictional horror stories that we've featured on The Tape Library this year. Get comfortable and lay down in the darkness as the sounds of the crackling fire fill your ears and I tell you over 3 hours of scary stories. This episode is a compilation of some of the most terrifying real life horror stories that people have submitted to The Tape Library archives over the last few months. If you’ve already listened to all of our entries into The Tape Library up until now then you might be familiar with some of these stories, but for those that enjoy the longer episodes to relax or fall asleep to, I thought these compilation episodes might be enjoyable. Get comfortable around the campfire, I've got some scary stories to tell you. Relax as you listen to terrifying tales, true paranormal encounters and incidents that can't be explained. Scary stories with the sound of a campfire in the background, giving you the perfect ambience to fall asleep to, if you can... So dim the lights, and get comfortable for another entry into The Tape Library. Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in video form at www.youtube.com/thetapelibrary Sources - https://pastebin.com/ngeHhAgW Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We don't associate it as much these days, but Christmas is a time of death. The winter solstice is said by many to represent the time of year when the veil between our world and that of the afterlife is that it's finished. And as such, it is the perfect time to indulge in a ghost story or two. During the Victorian age it was something of a tradition. Ghost stories and Christmas went hand in hand. Many, including one of the greatest tellers of ghost stories ever, Mr. M.R. James, would invite some friends or colleagues over on Christmas Eve, light a candle, and settle in for an evening of chilling tales. I hope that tonight you will join me in keeping this tradition alive. Welcome to the tape library. I've tried one of these compilation episodes a little while back, and it proved to be very popular.

So I'm going to make it a habit to put out one of these every couple of months going forward. If you haven't been here before, then welcome. These episodes are compilations of many of the stories I have featured on the channel in recent weeks. I know there's a lot of you twisted individuals out there who like to fall asleep to terrifying tales to the paranormal. So I strip back the sound effects and visuals and create these longer versions for you all to relax to. Once we get into the stories, all you'll be left with is a blackish, screen, the crackle of the fire, and my voice filling your ears.

Before we get into the first story, I just wanted to say thank you. I started a tape library project a couple of years ago, as a place to store my 40-esque short films. I only really revived it a few months ago and have been blown away by the response from you all out there. I didn't expect this to become a regular thing, but at an extremely short space of time, I can already see a small but dedicated community springing up. It's genuinely touching when I see such positive comments and reviews after each episode, so I fully intend to keep bringing new stories of the unexplained and the paranormal, all throughout 2023 and beyond.

If you will keep coming back and spending these dark evenings with me. With that in mind, if you have your own supernatural experience you'd like to share, or have a suggestion for a case that I should do a deep dive on, then you can find my email address in the description. Tonight I have over three hours of stories to share with you. The first 21 stories will feature all of the most recent real-life ghost stories that we featured on the channel over the last couple of months. should be just a little under two and a half hours of true paranormal experiences.

But as a little bonus, after that we'll be retelling three of my favourite fictional horror stories that I've had the privilege of featuring on the tape library this year. So without further adieu, let's get into it, shall we? Take a few seconds to dim the lights, get yourself comfortable, Maybe grab a hot drink and get cozy. It's time to tell some ghost stories. About eight or nine years ago, me and some friends were on a camping trip, and we encountered something weird in the woods that seems to have followed us home. I was in high school at the time,

and me and my friends went camping in some private land in western Nebraska, where there's some bad lands in the foothills of the Rockies. Beautiful land over there. Late one night, we were playing airsoft on top of the beach. plateau. It was the sort of zombie survival game mode that we made up. Survivors would hide. The zombies search for people to shoot. If you were shot by a zombie, you became a zombie. Last Man Standing wins. Me and one friend were hiding in some tall grass near the edge of a roughly 50-foot cliff drop that was to our backs, so no one could sneak up on us. At one point we spot a strange orb of light.

They hovered around the area for a few seconds, then with insane speed, accelerated into the air and disappeared. We have it on GoPro footage, but it was pitch black and the quality sucks. Unfortunately, it's not worth much. Right after we heard movement in the grass behind us. The grass was indented as if something was there, but there was nothing. Like I said earlier, there's a cliff drop behind us. So no one could have snuck up on us. And if it was an animal, we would have saw it.

Nothing else happened during that trip. We kind of just shrugged it off, and sometimes weird shit just happens in the middle of the woods at night. However, things got more strange a few days after getting home. Me and my friends both had dreams and witnessed the same symbol in both our dreams. In my dream I was in the woods at night, and there was a deer in front of me. The deer was just eating some grass doing deer things. Then I heard some movement in the grass behind me,

much like what me and my friend heard behind us that one night playing airsoft. Then everything went black, and I saw a glowing red symbol in front of me, which almost resembled a dream catcher. At that point I woke up, happened to look out my window, and there was a deer in my driveway. I live in the middle of the city with no parks or wildlife around me, so it was very unlikely for a deer to ever be anywhere near me.

In my friend's dream, from what I remember he told me at least, he was exploring an old abandoned factory that was on the land we were camping at. When he opened a door inside, a blast of hot air hit him, and he saw the glowing symbol through the doorway. We told each other about our dreams and that we saw a weird symbol. Without saying what the symbols looked like, we both went into separate rooms to draw the symbol on a piece of paper and compared them. They were exactly the same. Nothing else happened until a couple of years later, when we went back for another camping trip. One morning I'm out on a hike and I end up finding a deer skull that was missing an antler. I thought it was pretty cool, so against my better judge,

I took it home with me. I left the skull in my closet on the top shelf, with the closet door closed. Keep that in mind. A few days after the trip, I have yet another weird dream. I'm in the woods at night again, and that same deer is in front of me. However, the deer is now dead, and on its side, as if carved with a knife, is that symbol. The deer is also missing the same antlet that the skull is. I hear the same movement in the grass behind me, so I began to turn around. What I saw behind me is the silhouette of a tall, bipedal creature with long arms, long hair, glowing white eyes and large antlers. An intense fear washes over me as I immediately woke up, panicked and sweaty. First thing I do is look out my window, to see if the deer was there again. But what I actually saw was worse. The deer skull was on the floor in the middle of my room and facing towards me. It's been years since anything else has happened.

And I still have that skull displayed on top of a bookshelf. I don't know if it's smart to keep it or not. But I guess I'll find out the next time I take a camping trip to the same area. I had a very, very odd experience about 17 years back. I was driving to a friend's house It's important to say that I worked one mile from my friend's house So I drive the same ways to get to both places I just drive further to get to my friend's house

So I'm driving and I get to a red light I'm taking a left To get to work I drive straight And I'm waiting at the light A car identical to mine A brown jeep grand Cherokee pulls up next to me and stops at the light. I looked at the driver and swear the driver was me.

I saw myself driving my own Jeep, wearing clothes that I would only wear to work, usually on a Friday, driving towards my job. My other self looked right back into my eyes with a weird look that told me he knew something I didn't. I've only told three or four people this story. Two of them believe me

and told me they also had very weird stuff happen at that intersection. One friend told me he saw what looked like small electrical pulses or crackles coming off the ground. And my other friend saw some sort of apparition there. A friend's wife said she saw moving shadows in the middle of the day. She said two adults and a child crossing the street together and a huge bird standing near them. And she swore she saw its wings flap.

The friend who saw the electrical pulses said he thinks it might be some sort of interdimensional nexus point. But I don't know what he's basing that on. I don't tell too many people. I wish I got the number plate of the Jeep. But I was struck done by what I saw. I was quite freaked out for days. It took a few minutes for the details to sink in. I moved to upstate New York in 2000, specifically Lake George.

History buffs noticed as an important area during the French and Indian War, France versus Britain, using natives as soldiers and cadden fodder. Larson and the Mexicans took place around here as a reference. There is one fort at the end of each lake. One is famous for a turning point in the war, and the other is infamous for horrific slaughter of surrendered Britain. British troops by natives who did not agree with the gentleman's agreement of surrender. This fort is literally the centre of the village of Lake George, located on Battlefield Park and

next to a road named Bloody Pond. There's a separate story on this name and it's definitely earned. So it's an intense area for sure. Now to me, my great-grandfather bought property, developing a marina on Lake George in 1908. I moved to this property with my family to run our business in 2000. The property is literally between Fort William Henry and Bloody Pond Road. They are both in visual sight of our house and docks. My first supernatural experience of the property was my senior year of high school. I was in the upstairs living room at the main house and out the windows on the right about 50 feet away

is another house for our family we called the Crawford House but when my aunt passed in 1975 my grandmother walked out of the house and locked it never to go back no joke this house sat untouched until

2002 when we decided to reopen the house the dirty dishes was still in the sink and there was mail on the table from 1975 It was a fucking trip for my teenage brain And I wish I knew how much cool shit she had

Anyway Fast forward to 2003 I'm 17 years old and watching a movie With my 24 year old big brother upstairs in the main house When I look out and see a light on upstairs in the other house We had just begun the long process Going through every single item in this three-story house About a month before

It immediately gave me a freaky and uncomfortable feeling, but I just assumed it was a reflection from a light on our house. I didn't say anything to my brother, but I kept glancing at it with confusion and fear for like five minutes. Suddenly, my brother yells out. Why the fuck is there a light on upstairs in the Crawford house? I was like, no way. I thought I was seeing things, but it is inside.

the house, right? He agreed, and the moment we both looked out the windows again, it wasn't there. We were confused and talking shit about it being a ghost from our family, or maybe a spirit from the Mohawk tribe, when two minutes later, it comes on again. So he says, we should go check it out, in case someone broke in. But I was not fucking going. and I said Let them take whatever they want

That shit was a lamp Not a flashlight And oh yeah The goddamn power to this place Wasn't set up It literally wasn't on the grid for the town The newer systems Because she shut the place off in 1975

He made me go Mean Big Brother tactics We enter the closed And locked front door Into a silent pitch black house house, we make our way through the open layout, around a corner and into the common room. When we get to the first step of staircase, about to go up, and a door upstairs, slam shut. I immediately nope and start heading for the front door.

Now I didn't run but I was definitely moving quick. And as I get to the doorway of the same door we came in from, I hear the clear voice of the door of the door we came in from. the clear voice of a man in my left ear say take your leave i fucking scream and run the remaining two feet out the door i turn around to see my brother walk from all the way around the corner into the open space towards me at the door there is no way it could have been him from where he was so he told me to stay outside and he went through the house alone, but he found nothing and no one. He said he didn't hear a voice like me, but he was terrified as it took ten minutes to search each room and closet and space where someone could hide. I can tell you nothing in this story

is made up. Yes, the house should be condemned, nobody should be living in it at all. But I live in a very impoverished area and big old Victorian houses are super cheap because they need so much work to be livable. This house was not livable, but they were making it work. I have so many stories about this house and crazy things that happened there, but this one in particular is something I could never forget. Even typing it, I have goosebumps the whole time. The feelings felt there that night are ones that aren't forgotten. I was visiting my ex who lived in a super old house. It had been a hotel, brothel, store. and a funeral home in its former life.

At this point it is a home that would look so beautiful if you could only see the beautiful architecture and grand wallpaper as they used to be. Instead, the house looks like it has been forgotten for some time. Dust and cobwebs are visible on every surface, but especially on the deep mahogany carved trim that encircled every room and sometimes protruded into elaborate carvings of guardian protectors.

It was unnerving to be in this house at any time. The hair on the back of your neck would stand up every time you switch rooms. As if you had walked in on something that couldn't be seen. That feeling is something you can get used to though. It was a feeling that fades quickly and grows comfortable after a while. This was a feeling that you don't mind because it didn't trigger any emotion. It was just more of a reminder. that some people are unseen.

At night, the house was a different story. Not often, but some nights. The house after the sunset felt different. It filled with tension. You could still feel the hair on your next stand, but the energy of someone being there is much different. This feeling causes goosebumps. It's uncomfortable.

tension filled and chilling. This feeling doesn't fade and sometimes returns just from mentions of the stories I encountered. Not lasting as long as before, but definitely there. This night I went over because my boyfriend's parents and siblings had gone out to town and needed us to dog sit.

We hung around the house and watched TV. That night we decided we would travel to the upstairs back hall just to scare ourselves. The house felt quieter than normal that day. We were worried we might not see anything in the back hall, like all of the last spirits were on vacation. But that night it changed.

Everyone knows this house is haunted, there is no doubt. But as you climb the stairs to the second story, you are met with another level of paranormal, almost constantly you hear things that don't make sense. You feel that negative tension in the air and you catch things out of the corner of your eye that you can't find reasoning for to add a little extra spice.

The upstairs had lost all of its electricity several years prior. Instead they had extension cords running to the three main bedrooms. The upstairs is split into two parts. One of the parts is at the top of the... the staircase and it opens to three main bedrooms each with a giant door made of solid wood and sharing the same grand crown molding as downstairs immediately to the left of the staircase

was another identical door this door leads to a hallway the hallway has a few rooms in the bathroom room numbers still grossed the front of each door to let hotel guests know which room would be accommodating them for the evening As the sun went down, we got excited to go exploring and maybe dig up some trouble. Live for the adrenaline of it, get a little spook in. As we went up the stairs, things felt different. Even in the dark, nothing was happening. Just like earlier in the day, the house was quiet.

It just felt like we were in any old house. No goosebumps, no presence of another, no noise. As we turned the knob and open the door to the back hallway, it changed immediately. Suddenly all around us was a presence of darkness and a feeling of terror. We immediately had the same fault. No. We closed the door and almost immediately the air cleared of the terrible feeling it had presented just moments earlier. Since the house felt so calm, we decided to spend some time in my boyfriend's bedroom upstairs.

As we lay there watching a movie, the lights flickered, not uncommon because of the extension called fire hazard that ran from the living room and up the stairs. The flicker brought with it to that horrible presence we had felt opening the back hallway door rushing back to us. As we glanced at each other in terror, the lights flickered once more, and a loud crash came from outside the door.

and their repetitive beats like a toddler running pounded loudly in the hallway directly outside of the room there was only five or six steps but they were incredibly loud as soon as the pounding footfall stopped the air changed to normal again we sat catching our breath together for what seemed like forever Neither of us saying a word. When we did speak, we decided we should leave for the night. The dog would be fine until the morning. Upon opening the door to his bedroom to get out of the house, we heard a crunch.

Lifting his shoe, we noticed that my ex had just stepped in broken glass. Upon further inspection, we realised it wasn't just broken glass. It was broken Christmas bulbs These were special ornaments that his mum put up every year And keeps in totes with locking lids to prevent breakages These totes are behind a closed door Down a hallway And inside a room that also had a closed door

Far away from where they now lay At our feet we left Hello all I've been lurking for a while now to get a feel for the group and I've had my fair amount of experiences that I knew eventually

I'd write about one to share while this evening I had an experience with an entity that's followed my wife and I through several moves that we've come to termed with knowing is attached to either us or something we own

and that it's going to keep following us unless we do something to get rid of it we simply call it the pika the pika is of unknown origin but for as long as my wife and i have been living together which is 2012 we've had experiences with it starting off while we were just dating neither of us told the other that we saw it you know not wanting to sound too crazy to the other we both have had paranormal experiences separately before we got together and had had a parallel experiences separately before we got together and had a few conversations about ghosts. But it wasn't until we moved in together that things escalated a bit.

We realised that the house we were living in was haunted by more than one thing. And slowly we talked more and more about those things and were having matching experiences. It was great to feel validated that someone else saw and felt and experienced the same crazy moments, but also mildly frightening, because, you know, ghosts. Well, the peeker got its name from what it does. For the most part, it's the shadowy silhouette of a person

that we would catch peeking around corners or from behind furniture through windows and doorways before ducking out of view just as you turn to look at it. It doesn't always duck out of view fast enough though. We see glimpses of it. One of its best tricks is when it peeks out at you from a mirror. like the mirror is really just another window or something.

That always gives me a good scare. What's also been validating is that our dog has seen and reacted to it on several occasions, as well as the pets of some of our roommates we've had over the years. Through several years of different apartments and different rented homes, it's come along with us to all of them. And because it just gives us a bit of a jump scare and hasn't tried to harm us in any way, we've just cohabited with it. Well, tonight is the first time that it's severely shocked and scared me.

I'm watching a show on Netflix called The Midnight Club, and I've got the lights low in the room to add to the fright factor. My wife's watching something else in the other room, so it's just me, my snacks and my comfy recliner while I'm watching. Things are getting a little intense, and I'm subconsciously rocking in my chair ever so slightly. The episode's gotten to a pretty visually dark scene, so I can faintly see myself and the chair I'm in reflecting in the low light off the screen, and I see a silhouette moving, rising from behind and to the right of me. As soon as I start to turn to look, I see two large, very not-shadow white hands grabbed the side of my seat,

forcibly stopping my rocking, pulling the chair back, and thrust its face around the back of the chair to just inches from mine, before disappearing into nothingness. This was the most physical experience I've had with the pika, and probably any other parent and went to see I've come in contact with. Not only was it very up close and personal with me, but it grabbed my seat, stopped my rocking, and jerked the seat back. Needless to say, I stopped my show and turned the lights on, while I mentally processed what just happened.

Then I detailed everything out to my wife, before sharing it with you all. This happened to a friend of mine quite a long time ago, even before WhatsApp was invented and smartphones were still a rarity. The time when we were still charged a few cents just to send an SMS. Anyway, this friend will call him Jay. He was a fresh grad and he got a job offer at a college town. He didn't know anyone in this town. He looked up ads for a room to rent and found one in an apartment block. The majority of the apartments in the block were rented by students.

Even his neighbours were students. His apartment had three bedrooms and two bathrooms and he got the master room with an attached bathroom. His housemates were four underage. undergrad students, but he only dealt with one of them, whom we should call, R. He paid all the rent and bills through R. He wasn't close with the others, but just enough to remember their names. Small talk here and there. In the second month, Jay was assigned to the night shift, 12 a.m. to 12 p.m., with three off days per week. So most of the time he just came home straight to his room and slept all day.

didn't even have lunch at the house. And on the three days off, he went back to his hometown. So he rarely stepped out of his room, but he knew his housemates were still around, because he can still hear the little sounds they made. The sound of water running from the shower outside. Someone cooking in the kitchen. People talking and watching TV in the living room. He was too tired to mingle with them, and his housemates didn't seem to care.

The rent was due on the first day of the month, and he paid in cash to R. So he messaged R and asked if they can meet up at the house. But then R told him this. R and the rest of his housemates already moved out on the second week of the previous month. Coincidentally when Jay started his 12-hour night shifts. The house was empty all this time. For some reason they were in a hurry to move out. they thought well maybe the landlord would inform jay and r completely forgot about jay j was in disbelief i was surprised jay told him what he had heard in the house r told him that weird things happened to them and what happened their night they decided to leave the house really broke their last straws r and his friends even lost their rent deposits but they didn't care ar didn't

elaborate further but he wanted Jay to move out as quickly as possible so Jay did that he stayed in a cheap motel for a week before he found another place to stay as an atheist I believe that religion is truly the cancer of our world therefore I don't believe in religion that being said I've had some first-hand experiences that have persuaded me to believe in an afterlife of some sort and have some scientific theories that could possibly back my thoughts on the whole ghost thing. Firstly in the nutshell, my theory is that since human consciousness is nothing more than a spark that travels around in our brain, mixed with the third law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed.

It can only change forms and retain and transfer information. The consciousness leaves the body upon the minutes following death, and once it is a little, travel too far from the host. It can no longer go back. Hence why reanimation isn't a thing. First account that threw a wrench in my nothing exists outside of life way of thinking was during my temporary successful suicide attempt. I was outside my body and was greeted by this thing. Death, grim reaper, fairy man, whatever you want to call him. But to me, all I thought to call him was my guide. He looked horrific, but during this time I felt no emotion, good or bad.

The best way I can describe it was weightlessness or true peace. We talked while the EMTs was busy saving my life. I remember specific details about them and blew the mind of a few nurses when I came to when describing them perfectly. But the main reason why I didn't pass it off as just a crazy MDE trip from the chemicals being released in my brain was that one of the EMTs I was describing to the docks and nurses had his phone ring and the ringtone was fake it by CFA

As I said this One little nurse almost went into a panic attack And turned pale as Well as a ghost The reason being was that she was the one who called the phone on her lunch break And it was her fiancée who answered, telling her he couldn't talk and he'd see her soon since she worked in the ER. Now the part that makes this even harder to explain was I was non-responsive for just under 11 minutes

from what my friend who found me said before they got there and for another 8, 10 minutes after they arrived, then three shots of Narcan, a shot of epinephyrion and 16 hours of well-needed sleep. I wake up and started explaining what I had seen. My second experience. I've had several things happening in my house over the course of three years. So much so I created a small YouTube channel called Borderline Paranormal to document it. Me and all who have stayed at my place have several stories. Some we experience together.

But the one that made me truly believe in an afterlife of some sorts was one earlier morning. Everyone was gone but my brother-in-law who was crashing on our couch. I was in the half-bathroom attached to my bedroom, brushing my teeth, and over the sound of our fan in the bathroom I heard footsteps on our thick shag carpet and had that spidey sense tingle in my spine, like someone was staring at me, so I quickly turned around, taking up most of the doorway, and look where he was supposed to be standing.

where he was supposed to be standing, which was forward and to my right. But he wasn't there. As my vision came into focus, I realized something was standing towards my left, about eight inches from my face. I was frozen instantly. This thing took two steps, but never changed shape, but did change thickness. It walked right through me, and the entire left side of my body had this buzzing feeling like I've never felt before go right through me, and I can't make this thing.

I can't make this shit up, stepped in front of my toilet like it was taking a piss and disappeared. As soon as it was gone, I ran out of there, down the hall and into the kitchen, busting my ass on the kitchen floor and had a massive panic attack. I don't get scared easy being six foot three inches, 240 pounds, and prior military service. But that... That thing shocked me to my core. I could see you down to about knee level and the mist smoke was white transparent and it changed vickness in almost like random pulses originating from different points in the body.

I have several new clips of shadow figures disembodied voices and finally after three years of living in this house I found out 16 years ago there was a woman who was having an affair and the guy she was having the affair with shot her in the head. in the bathroom that I had the experience in after an argument about her coming clean and telling her husband and his wife. Her husband a few weeks later committed suicide

via hanging. Earlier this spring, me and a friend were in Naples, Italy. One night, around 2 or 3 a.m., we were headed home to our hotel. A girl, between 9, 12 years old, danced up to us and asked for a cigarette. She did this in perfect English.

We told her we didn't have any cigarettes and she followed up with, Do you have a lighter? I had a lighter on me so I gave it to her. The fact that this was literally a child didn't cross my mind even once. And I, to be completely honest, would have given her a cigarette too if I had one. It felt like she could have asked for anything and I would comply instantly. It felt like she was in total control. After she received a lighter, she said thanks and danced along further up the street.

During this whole interaction, I had the feeling that something isn't quite right. And after she moved on, I said to my friend, Yeah, that was a spirit or something. What the fuck was that? My friend totally agreed. Both me and my friend are not very superstitious or spiritual. We sat up until early more. morning just talking about this experience. Both of us began crying somehow after she left,

and it all felt really weird. I really can't explain what that was, but it was like a rush all through my body. And both me and my friend are still to this day convinced she wasn't human. Also, she had a boy with her, even younger, but he did not say a word. I don't know if this make sense at all, but it is what it is. Has anyone ever experienced something similar to this? I think about it pretty much every day, and I just can't let go of the thought that this was something out of this world. Since posting this, many have asked. No, she did not have black eyes. She took the lighter with her. It isn't the fact that a child asked for cigarettes in the night that's eerie. It's just the feeling we got.

Either you believe me or not, it doesn't really matter either way. Mainly I just want to know if someone has felt something similar to this. My family had a house built along with two other families on an extremely old farm. All three families experienced the same paranormal stuff and no one told each other for a couple of years. It was three new houses in the back and the original farmhouse up front. In the five years I lived there, three families lived in a farmhouse because no one could stand it. It was called Sam Tilden Farm and it was built on an old native lands a very long time ago.

They closed it down after Sam killed himself. I guess there were a number of tragedies on the farm and Sam may have drunk himself into insanity. When it came to the farmhouse there were a bunch of issues that kept families from stage. The barn light had to stay on at dusk or stuff would happen, like out of a movie. Pictures falling off walls, glass breaking, doors slamming. The one story I remember was that the barn light died while they're away. When they got back, all the pictures in the hallway fell down at once. Seems a little far-fetched, but these people didn't even last a year.

At the new houses, you could hear a tally. tapping from the attics. It was really loud and it sounded like someone tapping their foot. I forgot who figured it out but someone decided to yell, Sam, stop tapping. And it would stop. Sometimes you could hear what sounded like large animals running up and down the stairs. But faster than a large animal would be able to run. They'd go up, down, up, down, up, down.

A few people said they heard what sounded like 20 brooms all falling. and hitting the hardwood at once. Female voices and singing from the garages. The girl in the middle house asked why my sister was out in the front yard in the middle of the night, in a white nightgown. But we kind of think she was full of shit. Who knows? There was a bunch of shit I don't really recall.

Now that I'm thinking, there was a Tilden tombstone inside the barn for some reason. Not sure if that's just normal. I guess the Tildens were among the first. settlers in the area. Oh we also had a basin of sorts in the backyard. My mum started digging through it and she found lots of pottery and arrowheads, all Native American. I guess it was a native site until the end of the 1600s it sounds like. I was a non-believer for a long time, but eventually it got to be too much and I couldn't deny it anymore. Back in 2009, my dad was on holiday in Greece. While he was there he kept finding piles of 47 little gemstones in his hotel bed.

He would put them to one side trying to explain it away as the housekeeper or similar. This continued happening after he got home from holiday however. Every day he would end up finding 47 beads and gems in his bed. Fast forward a few months and he had a routine chest x-ray which found lung cancer. Further investigation found it in his spine and lymph system. So he was a terminal case. The 47 beads and gems still continued. Now when I visited, I would hear someone walking upstairs. I would go and look and there would be a fresh pile of gems and beads on his bed.

I spoke to it and asked it to put a bead on my wallet if it was there to comfort and look at it to comfort and look after my dad. A bead was left on my wallet that night. This went on for three years. I kept asking it to look after my old man and a bead would be left to show it had heard me. The last nine months got more intense though. My aunt was visiting and was awoken by a woman weeping in the corner of the room. She was so scared she couldn't move. So she closed her eyes, but it got louder and louder, until she felt the hair touch her cheek, and the sobbing, right in her ear, then it left as quickly as it arrived. The same night, I had a woman appear in my bedroom.

I thought it was my wife, until I looked down and saw she was asleep in bed. again it disappeared as quickly as it arrived my old man started to get worse but the beads was still coming one night a few months later i had a vivid dream of a man in the bright-lit room who told me that i needed to stop asking them for help they had done all they could and other things were starting to notice me that morning i woke up with beads on my wallet as if to confirm what I had dreamed. The night before my dad passed, I had two pink heart-shaped stones left on my wallet. After that, I had a couple more single stones left, and on one occasion where the woman I had seen by my bed was coming through again,

I told it it had to leave. There was the sound of heavy feet, running down the hall and stairs. Then the fire alarms in the house, house went off at the same time. That was the end of it. I thought I'd share something interesting that happened to me about 15 years ago. Most won't believe me, but for what it's worth, I promise everything I tell you is 100% true and how it happened to the best of my memory. However, names have been changed. I was about 18 and I was hanging out at my friend Joanne's house.

with some other school friends, can't quite remember how we got onto the subject, but towards the end of the evening, Joanne thought it would be fun to perform a seance. Joanna and her family were from Cape Town, South Africa, and had a deep rooted interest in the spiritual, or at least that's what Joanne made out to us. With the lights off and candles lit, we all sat at a round table, with cards fanned out around the edges. Each card had a letter of the alphabet arranged A to Z, and there was a shot glass placed in the middle.

Joanne starts speaking out to the spirits in Afrikaans. I remember pulling a face and rolling my eyes. It was too dark for anyone to take offence. At the time I was an insufferable, enlightened, atheist teen dork. You know the type. cringy 4chan edge lord, who thinks any form of spirituality or religion is beneath me and my superior intellect. I never wore a fedora but I was down close. However, what was about to happen made me question everything. It started mundane enough. A few questions were asked and the shock glass

we were resting our fingers on started to move to and fro, until eventually one of my friends asked the spirit, if they were associated with anyone in the room. The shock glass moved directly towards me. In credulous, I asked the spirit, if you're associated with me, then what's my mother's maiden name? My eyes fixate on the letters that spell out her maiden name, Jones.

But the glass started spelling out something different. First the glass went to T, then H, then O. I thought then it was bullshit, as it was completely wrong. It was struck by horrific realisation. When my mum was six months old, her biological father died of a heart attack, and a year after that, she took her stepfather's name. I completely forgot this in the moment, as I was ex-month. expecting the glass to read out the maiden name she had for the majority of her life.

But it was actually spelling out her original maiden name of Thompson. It was a fact so trivial that I barely remembered it myself. It was something never talked about even within my family as it happened so long ago. It would be hard to believe that any of my friends would know this esoteric piece of my family history that occurred 20 years before I was even born. But nonetheless, somehow, it was being spelled out in front of my very eyes. Thompson. My school friends and I wouldn't talk about anything deeper than video games and tits at that age.

Yet there's no way I ever mentioned this to any of them. It's not like one of my pot-smoking loser friends has a copy of my mum's birth certificate. And none of them had even met anyone else in my family. There was literally no way anyone could have known. known this. Before I could contemplate this for too long or ask any other questions to my ghosty associate, Joanne's mum came into the room and turned the lights on, and with a thick South African accent shouts something like, bloody hell, Joanne, stop messing around with this silly crap and put a definitive stop to proceedings. Of course, at the time I played it off as a

prank, but the more I think of it, the more my mind wonders. Did something actually paranormal happen that night? I know it's nothing dramatic or exciting. I didn't see an apparition or a cryptid, but unlike 90% of the shit you read on Reddit, this experience is actually true. And something to this day I can't explain. So I'm an 18-year-old female college student, and all the residential areas on my campus have a different name.

have a different name. Highland, Park, Historic and North. I chose to live in the historic district because it was the one with the most greenery. It was close to all my classes and my brother stayed in the same dorm when he went to my uni. I live on floor three of three at my dorm and I notice something really odd after moving in. There's an intercom right on the wall at the foot of my bed. I inquired about it at the front desk, asking if it was hooked up to the desk or campus security, anything like that. The desk assistant had no clue what I was talking about, and directed me to the most popular RA in the building. I asked him about the intercom, and he told me the story as follows. Back in the day, the rooms had intercoms that went to the basement.

Not sure why the basement. But the basements of the historic dorms are closed. But the basements of the historic dorms are closed after someone unaligned themselves in there back in the day. There's also rumours they're connected to the bomb shelter on the campus, but I don't know. I was aware of the bomb shelters. We have staircases that lead down at random spots all over campus. One was just outside and to the right of my dorm and you can even hear the pressure release from them every half hour to hour. But it seemed to come, this intercom thing spooked me, so I chose to ignore it. My roommates and I had pretty opposite schedules,

so we were rarely in the room together. Weird stuff would happen to us, though. I'd be working at my desk and hear a woman go, Hello? Who I'd assume was my roommate or friend from down the hall? But I'd turn around and no one was there. My closet is about two feet from the intercom, and sometimes I'd hear the door-knob turn.

It's all good stuff in this dorm, everything creaks. My roommate would text me, asking if I forgot my keys and was knocking on the door, which obviously I wasn't. There was even a time where we were both in the room and a huge bang hit the door right next to the intercom. We freaked out, looked through the peephole, but saw no one. We slowly opened the door to look down the hall. and because we're in the centre, there isn't anywhere to run. But no one would be there. My roommate broke her leg a month into the school year and had to drop out,

leaving me on my own. These weird occurrences would happen, so I spent a lot of time in my friend's room, only ever sleeping in mine. Eventually we migrated to hanging out in my room. But my friends would always comment about how bad the energy was. It seemed to subside after a bit. But there are still some days I walk in and it's absolutely draining in there. There have even been instances when my boyfriend and I are about to fall asleep.

He will say, what do you mean? And I'll ask confused what he's talking about. And he'll go, Didn't you just say, some weird clicking, almost like a telegraph, started coming from the intercom around October. I asked the RA about it, but he assured me the intercom was disconnected. I started making more friends, meaning I was in more rooms in my building.

And the more I spent time elsewhere, the more I realised, my room is the only room with an intercom. Even as I write this, I have an uneasy feeling, like I shouldn't be saying any of this. For as long as I could remember, I've never been able to escape the paranormal. whether it be the television turning itself on at night as a child, or imaginary friends my older sister and I could both see for years. I've grown to become almost desensitised to anything out of the ordinary. Out of all the things that have come in and out of my current home,

there's one being that's been there for as long as I can remember, and quite the odd one at that. For simplicity's sake, I'll just refer to him as, the old man he's often heard walking through the basement mostly in the spare living room that connects to another spare room he's not spoken a word to any of us but he really seems to dislike my mother's best friend

as when she lived with us for a short while he'd bang on the laundry room walls when she was alone in there and she'd swear up and down that he told her to get out nobody else had ever been told the same typically the most we'd get would be a whisper calling our names. And who knows if that was ever from him in the first place. So this was always perplexing to me.

Personally, I think the old man is all right. He's been docile with my family and never moves things or bugs any of us. I've only seen him briefly here and there. The description I have of him matches whatever else in the house has seen of him. Everyone, except for my mum's friend. and pretty much agree that he's harmless. When my room was in that spare room, connected to the basement living room,

I'd often come home to an empty house after school and crash for a couple of hours while waiting for anyone to come home. Sometimes I'd be so tired from staying up too late and having to get up so early, that I'd fall asleep with the lights on, and in those cases I'd wake up 90% of the time with the lights having been turned off for me, No one in my family ever omitted to doing this.

And my parents really wouldn't have been the type to turn the lights off for me to sleep since they found my messed up sleeping cycle and daily inaps to be frustrating. With both of my siblings being gone most of the time around then, it was also unlikely that they'd lie about not doing that for me. So I can only assume the old man was the one who helped me with the lights. I've always wondered if perhaps he's some sort of guardian. Yet the way he acted towards my mum's friend contradicts that. Since she's by no means a bad person or deserving of it,

though I can't even say for certain if the old man is the one who did that, since she never saw him when the walls will be banged on. I wonder how many of you have had a similar experience with a being, acting hostile to some and docile towards others. When I was 18, I hitched hiked to California with someone I met at the local transit station. He had previously warned me lots of people went there in search of the Sunshine State, but in reality it changes you. He claimed there was something weird about the whole place.

After staying with him for a few months, I started experiencing very frequent sleep paralysis episodes. One of them I specifically recall because it was terrifying. We slept in the car garage attached to the apartment building. The space was used as a music studio. The walls were covered in soundproof material and there were dim lights in the keyboard. I slept on the couch in that room. The arm I laid my head on was by the garage door and facing the walkway entrance. There was no knob on the door to the walkway entrance, so it was a little knob on the door to the walkway entrance,

so it was always a jar. We hung a tassel there to open and close it. I was falling asleep late one night and started experiencing a paralysis episode. I was fixated on this corner in the top of the room that gave me the creeps because no light ever reached that spot. I heard the door creak and averted my eyes from the darkness

to see who was walking in. It was dim and I was having trouble sleeping. But it was all. almost like my vision zoomed in on its face. Peaking through the space in the crack doorway, I saw a long, crooked nose that led to a red cracked bleeding face. The flesh on its face looked like Jack Link's beef jerky, with blood oozing from the dried cracks. Its eyes were yellow, and it had long fingers that wrapped around the door with more joints than a human would have. I couldn't move.

I could only stare at every gruesome detail of the thing. I was so scared it would intrude further, but eventually my mind gave in to sleep, and I faded off terrified. When a completely different occasion on the same couch, I was woken up early morning to the sound of a scream that seemed to fly across the apartment parking lot. I heard it coming up from the street,

and it flew by the garage door. door, shrieking the entire way. I ran outside, thinking maybe someone ran by screaming and needed help. Even though it really didn't sound like a noise that could come from a person in my opinion, there was nothing there. No cars. No people. No blood trail. Silent night streets. I walked into the apartment to see if anyone else had been disturbed. There were two people awake. One said they woke up suddenly but wasn't sure why. They were looking for food. Another one was watching TV and claimed they felt something that startled them awake.

Later, I was informed. A passenger plane crashed into the complex in the 80s. It had recently been remodeled. Needless to say, I didn't go back to sleep that night. The scream gave me chills. It was around 3 a.m., so I ended up going to get drinks with friends. California has to be the most spiritually active place I've ever visited. The first shot rang around the house around 3 a.m. on Wednesday, November the 13th,

1974. There were seven people in the house, six of whom were tucked up in their beds, cozy, warm and safe. For me, the most chilling aspect of the entire story that we're covering tonight is this very moment. A marlin rifle is fired, an exceptionally loud gun, nine times over the next 15 minutes. No neighbours hear a thing on this quiet, early winter night, but more disturbingly, neither did anyone in this house. Six people were shot. If the official story is to be believed, not one of them got up. They laid in their beds and one by one waited for death to visit them. This bizarre act of brutal violence would lead to one of the

most infamous real-life horror stories of all time. Ronnie Defeo Jr., or Butch as he was known, was the oldest of five children. To say he was a troubled young man was an understatement, and it speaks volumes that after the story of what happened came out, no one in the community was seemingly surprised. His family lived at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amateurville, a beautiful waterside village on the south shore of Long Island. It appears that at around 3 a.m. in the morning, Ronnie Jr walked into his parents' bedroom and then shot both his father, Ronnie Defeo Sr., age 43, and his mother, Louise Defeo, 42, firing at them both twice

before then heading to the bedrooms of his siblings, his brother's John and Mark, aged 9 and 10 respectively, his younger sister Alison, 13, before finally heading up to the top of the house and entering his sister Dawn's room, aged 18. All the bodies were found, faced down in their beds, as though they hadn't moved an inch, as Ronnie walked around the house, executing his family, one by one. No neighbours reported any kind of disturbance, although one declaimed to have heard at the Fayeau's pet dog barking around the time. of the murders, but they did not hear a single gunshot. It's reported that both Alison and

Louise appeared to have at least woken up before they died. However, the official evidence suggests that none of the bodies were moved post-mortem, despite the appearance that they have been placed in their beds, almost deliberately. 6.30pm that evening, running Defeo Jr. runs into Henry's bar. Just, to block away from his family home and starts shouting that his parents have been shot. He gathers a group of guys and they head to the house to discover the grisly scene. It didn't take long for the police to arrive and they moved Ronnie Jr. away for both his safety and to ask him questions. This is when the stories began and Ronnie Jr. had a lot of stories.

He told the police that the killings had been carried out by a mob hitman, connections between the mob and the family had long been the talk of rumours in the community. Ronnie Jr. said an old associate of his father's, by the name of Louis Fellini, was behind the killings and had threatened to murder his father after a falling out some years earlier. Ronnie Jr claimed he hadn't been there for dinner earlier that evening, as he was sick of his mother's poor cooking. A detail that didn't really hold much water. Once it became evident, the family of his family of killed some 14 hours earlier. After 12 hours of interrogation it all came spilling out of Ronnie Jr. He spoke about his hatred for his family, how Ronnie

Sr. had abused him for years, how he hated his family. He referred to his younger brothers as pigs. The previous night, while sat in his basement, watching the in 1969 film Castle Keep. He decided he had had enough. He went to his parents' bedroom and shot them both in their sleep. Seemingly, his intention had only been to kill his parents. But after that first act of violence, he couldn't stop himself. In a frenzy, he stalked from room to room, executing each and every one of his family members.

a fact that Ronnie Jr. has never been able to explain. No one was surprised by this turn of events. Ronnie Jr. had been threatening to murder his parents for years, even leading to a psychologist warning Ronnie's mother that they needed to have him committed before he finally acted. Ronnie Jr. had been the victim of his father's abuse for years, and that combined with his heavy use of heroin, acid and speed took a severe toll on his mental health, until one day he just decided that he couldn't take it

anymore. Then the court case began, and as did Ronnie's many, many different versions of events. Ronnie Jr. seemingly decided he would try to persuade the court, he was insane, and therefore not responsible for his actions. This could explain the conflicting and downright strange stories that Ronnie came up with. However, these conflicting stories continue to grow and spiral up until his death in 2021. Among his many claims over the years, he said that he was sat in the basement watching TV when he overheard his family plotting to kill him, and he decided to murder them first. He also claimed his sister Dawn had in fact killed his father,

and that his mother had killed his siblings before he turned the gun on to. her. He claimed he drugged his family, which would explain why they were all found in their beds in such a strange manner. However, there were no drugs found in their systems. He's claimed that his sister and a number of other assailants assisted him in the murders, he's claimed he heard voices that told him to kill them, and even that a female demon in a hood with black hands brought him the rifle to do the deed. Ronnie's wild stories didn't help though. A court psychiatrist diagnosed him with antisocial personality disorder

and he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Just two weeks had passed when a new family arrived at 112 Ocean Avenue, ready to start a new life. George and Kathy Lutz looked up at their new home that they had just paid $88,000 for. They knew the history of the house, and had spoken to their family about it, declaring themselves as not a superstitious bunch. The family couldn't turn down such a beautiful home, and at such a still, and decided that the unfortunate history was worth it. They entered their new home to discover it still full of the Defeo's belongings, all except for the mattresses that were missing from each bed.

What followed are 28 days that would become one of the most infamous hauntings of all time. The information in this section is all taken from Jay Anson's best-selling novel about the Lutz's experience, as well as from interviews with George and Kathy. Much like the murders themselves, there are a lot of conflicting stories on what exactly happened here. But we'll get to that later. The strange activity began almost immediately. In the first hour of being there, the Lutz's dog was chained up to a tree in the garden. For seemingly no reason, the dog suddenly decided to leap over the gate,

his chains still attached to the tree, hanging itself over the fence by its neck, as the family rushed to save it. One of George's friends suggested that due to the history of the house, they should ask a Catholic priest to come and bless it, thinking they had nothing to lose, George agreed, and shortly after they moved in, a priest came to clear the house of any residing spirits, and may be remaining there. The house unsettled the priest from the moment he laid eyes on it, but it was only once he entered the upstairs bedroom, the room where Dawn had slept, that he was overcome with a true sense of dread. He asked the Lutz what they were planning to do with this room, and they stated. it was to become a sewing room. The priest declared that should be fine, but in his opinion,

no one should ever sleep in this room. The incident with the priest suddenly became more extreme, when he felt what he claimed was a slap across the face, before hearing a deep voice, telling him to get out. Later after getting home, it was reported that he was covered in and boils all over his hands. Kathy claimed that early on she felt a presence embracing her from behind. She wasn't sure why, but she instinctively felt that it was a woman, and that the embrace was supposed to be comforting, rather than threatening. She often smelled the woman's perfume around the house.

The Lutz's youngest daughter suddenly started talking to an imaginary friend called Jody. She claimed that Jody was a pig with glowing red eyes that would watch over her through her window as she slept. Jody told their daughter that they would always live there. Both George and Kathy claimed to have seen those red eyes peering through windows at night. In December, on a snowy night, the family once again saw Jody's glowing red eyes, watching through the window as they watched TV. George ran outside to investigate and found hoofprints, in the snow. George also discovered a hidden room that was not on any of the floor plans of the house.

Hidden in the basement, the room was painted red, and they claimed it had a strong stench of human feces inside. One of the more subtle moments among the grander examples of haunting phenomena is one that I find most chilling. Over the weeks that the family stayed in the house, the children. began to sleep on their stomachs, something they hadn't done before. All of this is strange, but it seems George was the focus of whatever was residing in the house.

He started to become obsessed with fire, insisting that he needed to keep the fire burning in the living room. He would spend hours out back chopping wood, seemingly due to the fact that since he was in the house, he was constantly cold. something the rest of the family were not experiencing. George would hear sounds at night. It would range from footsteps to screams,

and even loud music being played from multiple sources, all at odds with each other. But he could never find the source of any of these nocturnal noises. One night he tripped over a lion ornament in the living room, and when he looked down at his leg, he saw what appeared to be bite marks. While Cathy may have felt a kind embrace and their daughter was making friends,

the house was having a dark effect on George. He became increasingly irritable and aggressive with his family. His personal hygiene became considerably worse, and he began to wake up every night at 3.15 a.m., the same time the Defeo murders. were said to have taken place. The activity grew more and more extreme as time went on. Their possessions would be covered in what appeared to be strange black mold.

Green slime would ooze from the ceiling, dripping down to the carpet below. Swarms of insects, most notably flies, would be in the room Dawn once slept in, but there seemed to be no way to get rid of them. Then the activity became more violent. Covered doors would be slammed. doors broken off their hinges. The banister rail on the stairs was found ripped off. In one incident an open window suddenly slammed shut, trapping one of the children's fingers in it. It came to a head a little after a month of moving into the home. George woke up in

the middle of the night once again, but this time he couldn't move. His bed shaking from side to side, as if it was being lifted over and over by some unseen force. He then saw Cathy levitating across the bed. Her face switching to that of an old woman before his very eyes. What happened after that is unknown. The Lutz family always refused to talk about what happened, that final night in the house. A secret that both George and Kathy took to their grave.

Since this is one of the most well-documented paranormal cases of all time, it really makes you wonder what happened. It was so bad, they could never bring themselves to talk about it. Whatever happened, the family left the next morning, leaving their belongings behind and never returning. Before we jump into the investigation, I noticed something odd. Although I knew the story of the amateur horror, it'd been a long time since I'd read the details. I started writing this video on the 13th of November, just a fun coincidence that I didn't notice when I sat down to create the video.

However, to add to it, the same night I started writing this episode, the app I used to track my sleep, claims I was awake, around 3.15 a.m. for 20 minutes. I have no memory of this. Two months later, the Lutz story was beginning to get a lot of attention. A reporter decided to pull together a team of psychic researchers and spend the night in the home. And it just so happened they were able to get two of the most notable paranormal investigators of all time, Ed and Lorraine Warren, a controversial pair that we have covered on the tape library in the past.

George Lutz met with the warrants to give him the keys to the house, but he refused to go any closer than a restaurant four blocks away. Ed tried to ask George more about what had happened there. But George refused to talk, Ed suggesting that he appeared to still be too shaken to want to talk about it, especially what had happened on the final night. The investigators were all shocked by what they saw when they entered the house. It felt like a ghost ship.

All of the lots of belongings were still there. Dirty dishes sat in the sink. Their brand new boat sat in the boat house. George hadn't even come back for his custom motorcycles that were kept in the garage. When entering the house, both of the Warren's claim they were hit with overwhelming sensations. In an interview of the pair, Ed makes it very clear that he is not clairvoyant. Nor is he sensitive to the spirit world. However, he said the second he stepped in.

the house, it reeked of death. The pair went in separate directions. Ed down to the basement, Lorraine upstairs to the bedrooms. Both claimed to be hit with the strange sensation of powerful rushing water, falling on them. In the basement, Ed encountered what he described as a powerful demonic force. While Lorraine saw in her mind's eye the image of bodies all lined up on the floor of the sewing room. Supposedly the bodies of the Defeo's, before the coroner, took them away. The warrants have shared many photos from the investigation. One of them appears to show a number of religious statues in the back garden. Apparently these predate the Lutz's moving in. The statues all come from St Joseph's shrine in Montreal. Ronnie Defeo's senior had traveled to

Montreal, just six months before his murder. But he didn't even return alone he came back with these statues as well as a priest who was supposedly an exorcist when asked why ronnier brought an exorcist to the house he simply said i've got a devil on my back the warrens weren't the only paranormal researchers and psychics that were brought to the house that night all of those that partook and the investigations claimed to have experiences in the house ranging from feelings of intense terror, heart palpitations all the way up to communicating with spirits, and even visions of an Indian chief. The group conducted a seance, during which Lorraine Warren proclaimed that there was an evil in this house from the bowels of the earth.

They claimed that this evil had been there long before the murders. It's worth checking out interviews with the investigators. if you want to hear further about the many experiences they had, but I really wanted to highlight what I think is, regardless of your beliefs, one of the creepiest events to take place during the entire Amityville saga. A number of cameras were set up around the house that were placed on automatic timers. These cameras were sets they would take a photo every five minutes,

with various people walking about, and hours worth of photos that seemed to show. showed nothing in particular. Most of the photos were filed away, not investigated much further. However, some years later, a young secretary was going through the Warren's Library of Photos from the Amityville investigation. She was pregnant and said every time she got to one specific photo in the set, her baby would kick. She looked at the photo. There's the same doorways at the top the stairs she had already seen a dozen times. That was until she noticed something odd in the bottom corner. There, looking from the doorway, appeared to be a young boy, his eyes glowing,

staring directly into the camera. The haunting at Amityville has ignited my imagination, as it has for many others for decades now. Everything about this story feels like it's ripped straight from a horror movie and as much as I want this whole thing to be true there are a lot of inconsistencies that need to be addressed first let's take a look at the crime itself in the story of his life Ronnie Jr is the very definition of an unreliable narrator picking holes in Ronnie's various accounts of the murders would be a video in and of itself just because of the sheer number of different stories he has told over the years a number of people have interviewed

Ronnie, and a book on the murders was written in the early 2000s that suggests Dawn was an integral part of the murders. In some versions of the story, she convinced Ronnie to do it. In others, she carried up the murders herself. It's also been suggested that Ronnie committed the murders along with Dawn and two others. There was evidence found on Dawn's body that suggests she may have fired a gun that night. Ronnie claimed that the plan was just to kill their parents. But Dawn had gone crazy and started shooting the kids. Ronnie tried to get the gun off her, killed her by a mistake. On the night of his arrest, supposedly Ronnie's grandfather was overheard telling his grandson

that he didn't want to hear any more about his sister and that he was going to take the blame for this. There have also been numerous rumours over the years that Dawn and Ronnie Jr. were extremely close. and may have even had an incestuous relationship. To add to the version of events it seems to implicate Dawn Defeo, supposedly the family had been involved in something rather shady, leading up to the murders. A DEA agent had been placed outside their home to stake it out. The night of the murders,

the DEA agent supposedly saw Dawn Defeo, walking out of the house carrying a rifle, wearing a hood and black gloves, much like the description of the demon. that Ronnie claimed had handed him the gun. One criminologist suggested that it appears the bodies were in fact moved after their deaths, be placed in the beds. However, this has never been confirmed, and the official ruling by the investigators in court

was that the bodies were not moved. It's worth noting that despite these rumours and accusations, no one else has officially been implicated in the murders of the Defeo family. The official story is that, Ronnie Defeo Jr. murdered his family as they slept in their beds. Then the hauntings and subsequent events. As I said, this story feels like it's been ripped from a horror film. And many have suggested that maybe it has been.

The Lot's story came out, not long after a little-known novel or movie came out. The Exorcist. The Exorcist was a worldwide phenomenon that brought the idea of the devil back in the devil back into the public zeitgeist battle between the good Catholic priests against the demonic entity that could move furniture, levitate people and spray green slime around all very familiar concepts that are contained in the Lutz story the priest who claimed he visited the Lutz home later made a statement under an affidavit that he never actually stepped foot into the property and only spoke to George Lutz

over the phone This is completely at odds with every other account of the incident the priest gave. The Lutsi's neighbour had a large Persian cat that Ronnie Defeo apparently referred to as piggy due to its size. It was prone to sitting in a tree next to 112 Ocean Avenue. Its eyes reflecting light as it watched the inhabitants through the windows. The day they claimed they saw the hoof prints in the snow, There was reportedly no snow in Amethfield on that day. The new owners of the house, after the Lutz, point to the discrepancies in the weather,

as evidence that the stories contained in the latter book, the Amityville horror, are fictional, although Ed Warren suggests this might not be that much of a smoking gun. Speaking of the new owners, they were adamant that there is nothing wrong with the house. The key point of this is that when they moved in, despite the Lutz's claims of doors being blown off the hinges, along with a whole host of other incidents of destruction. They claimed that when they purchased the house, there was nothing to suggest anything had happened.

Once again, Ed Warren takes issues with the new owner's claims. In an interview, he states that visitors to the house since the Lutz left, complained of horrific smells, and also that the new owner's parked car burst into flames. outside the house. The window that supposedly would slam shuttle by itself was apparently caused by a creaky floorboard and a window with an incorrect counterweight. In a bizarre turn of events, Ronnie Defeo Jr's defense attorney William Weather became involved with the lots of the lots of they left the house. He brought them the proposal

of a book and movie deal for their story. In a long drunken conversation, Weber is said to have revealed elements of the crime they wouldn't have previously known that likely could have influenced their story. Jay Anson wrote the best-selling novel The Amityville Horror, which made him millions. When asked if the story was true, he was always very reserved to give a definitive answer. However, Anson didn't get to enjoy his riches for long, dying of complications of heart surgery in 19. In 1980, heart-related conditions are a fate that appears to have befallen a number of people involved in the investigations into the Amateurville hauntings. And that creepy photo of the boy with the glowing eyes? There are a couple of apparent explanations for this as well.

Some suggested that it is in fact one of the investigators who was in the house that night. His glasses reflecting light to give off the impression of glowing eyes. Others had claimed that someone had brought their 10-year-old nephew to the house that night, although the reporter who arranged the whole thing refutes this, and claimed that there were no children present. So where does that leave us with the Amityfield horror? Did George and Kathy Lutz make up the entire story, to make money? It's worth noting that while they did make a decent amount out of the book and movie,

it paled in comparison to what Jay Anson made. George Lutz has said before that he wishes the movie, the book had stuck a little closer to the original story. Speaking of the original story, before it became the best-selling tale of demon pigs and blind priests that we all know today, the Lutz's story first appeared in an issue of good housekeeping, but as a substantially more reserved version of events, mostly centred around unexplained sounds and strange feelings in the house. Both George and Kathy took polygraph tests and passed them, While these are obviously not perfect, it does suggest that something did in fact happen to them in that house.

I'm also drawn back to Ed Warren's first description of George Lutz, how he didn't want to talk about what happened in the house, how the family refused to discuss what happened that made them leave the house in such a rush, how they left all of their belongings, rather than staying in that house a second longer. whatever happened to them in those 28 days both George and Kathy kept to their story until the day they died I don't believe as so many others seem to now

that their entire story was made up I don't think anyone could have predicted the incredible success of the Amityville horror and as far as quick-rich schemes go faking a haunted house as a bit of a wild card I think the Lutz family did encounter something in that house. What that something was, who will never know. I think they were encouraged by a number of outside sources

to exaggerate the story, to make it more marketable, to create something that could be scarier than the exorcist. And with dollar signs in their eyes, they went for it. Maybe what they experienced was a simple trick of the mind, brought on by the fact that they were staying in the house where they knew six people had been brutally murdered just one year previous, maybe sleeping in the beds that once belonged to those victims, wasn't the smartest of choices. But maybe, just maybe, there was something, maybe it wasn't demons,

maybe it wasn't some sort of all-powerful poltergeist that could rip doors off of hinges, and assault priests, but maybe there was some sort of an echo. Maybe if you happen to move into a house where something so unbelievably evil happens, some of that grief, some of that pain, some of that horror, remains. Regardless of what you believe, the one thing we know for sure is that we don't know what happened during that 12-month span in 112 Ocean Avenue. George and Kathy Lutz are dead, and one year ago Ronnie Defeo Jr. passed away. He never came clean about what happened in that house on November the 13th, 1974. Or if he did, we would never know what parts were truth and what parts were lies.

The mystery of the Defeo murders died with Ronnie. This is an actual experience I had, and it still freaks me out to this day. Growing up, I have multiple little paranormal experiences. I was always very skeptical, so the experiences I had I considered genuine, and I tried my best to explain them away, but I couldn't. Many of them would happen, even with company or family around, to see it as well, so I knew I wasn't imagining it. As a teenager, I started getting a little too interested in the paranormal,

and not being scared of anything. I got a little cocky at times. And at some point, I guess, I started to dabble with something I shouldn't have. So it got a bit too intense for me. I would talk about the things that happened, or mentioned spirits, or attempt to talk to presences I couldn't see. And it would, as I'd like to call it, stir shit up. So when I was a teenager, I had this friend.

He would be in mid-conversation with me, and randomly trial off on some weird shit that sounded creepy and didn't make any sense. Then come to and not have a clue about what he had said. Be like, whatever man, I don't know what you're talking about, and continue on the normal conversation like nothing happened. Usually it ended at that,

but when we were 15-ish, he went into one of these things, kind of like a trance or whatever, as we were on the phone. He said something like, follow the tracks to your right, Then on your right again, near the end, you'll come to their resting place. I'll explain the layout of where I was living, because it's important for the next parts.

I lived in a pretty nice trailer park, off a main road and a small town, heavily wooded and nowhere near town. The main driveway came down the middle of the trailer park, and dead-ended at the rear. A little past that dead end was an embankment, and at the bottom was the bottom was a little bit of bottom was a railroad track that was very rarely used. To the right it dead-ended in some woods with the one side being at the back of an abandoned old mill. The other side had a pretty dense set of woods behind a neighbourhood. So I follow his weird cryptic directions after getting off the phone. It was late afternoon in summer. I head to the

railroad tracks and head right towards the end. At some point before the end I hear footsteps in the woods on my right, being curious. I head up the embankment and towards a noise. There was nobody there. But I did see a small graveyard, curiously tucked away in these woods behind the neighbourhood. Likely a small family plot, ranging from the early 1700s to the very early 1900s.

It was only about 20-something markers. I was intrigued and of course brought that friend later and he was weirded out, insisting he had no idea it was there. But he wasn't the lying type, so I believed him. It became a hangout spot of mine, as I was dumb and brave, and I would go there at night at all hours, acting fearless. Nothing really weird ever happened there, so moving on.

Another day, another conversation, and my buddy randomly breaks into another trance. He says, head to the tracks, cross them, And when you enter the woods, you will see him. My cocky self immediately does just that. Late afternoon once again. This time I head to the tracks behind the trailer park, but I cross them, which goes through a bit of woods,

and comes into a clurring with an old mill on the left, a different one because it's an old mill town. On the right is miles of cutout for power lines, cutting through the woods supplying all the random neighbourhoods scattered throughout the area. Straight ahead across the street from the mill there's a more dense wooded area. So following in these directions again, I head towards the tree line. The moments I set foot into the tree line, I hear branches snapping and immediately see just a black shadow or silhouette of a guy in all black,

on a black horse, galloping through the woods away from me, and towards the left, disappearing into the trees. I was a bit shocked as it was not common to see horses around my town at all. But being cocky and brave, I decided to head to where he came from, which was right to the edge of the tree line, following the cut out of the power lines. Near the edge of the tree line, I found an old collapsed horse stable. Literally nothing else near it.

There was another neighbourhood about a mile in the direction of where he had disappeared, but nothing else around the stable. So being intrigued and a little freaked out, I go call my buddy and tell him the following day I bring him with me to show my finding because he just refused to believe me and I was getting suspicious of him playing stupid possibly. But the most unbelievable part,

as we entered the tree line where I saw the horseman the day before, we both saw him taking the same path as I did previously. broad daylight, clear as possible. There was no way we both imagined it. Both of us were a little freaked out, but we continued on, and I showed him the stable also. The strangest part of all was

brought a couple of friends to see the stable, and each time he appeared to us. So after finding the stable and hanging around the graveyard, things started to ramp up with the little encounters becoming much more intense. TVs and stereos were turning on by themselves multiple times, even in the presence of company or family. Intense fittings are being watched and just inexplicable moments of dread and terror for no reason. Hearing people having loud conversations or music like a radio was turned on in the other room, while home alone and literally nobody in sight outside surrounding my home.

Stuff lying across the room violently. fresh handprints in the steam on my bathroom mirror after a shower. I hear the distinct sound of my mum coming home, throwing the door open, tossing her keys on the table, and the cabinet and fridge slamming open and closed, while she made herself a drink. She was not a quiet or subtle woman. Just to walk out of my room to talk to her,

and realised that nobody was there. Yet still one night, around two or three a.m., I got bored and decided to head down to the graveyard. I was feeling watched and just super uneasy. I was trying to be stubborn and refused to feel scared for whatever the hell reason. I was rebelling, I guess, telling myself I couldn't be harmed. So I get to the graveyard and all is normal and quiet. I hang out for a while and realise I'm being dumb.

Decide to head home and get some sleep. I head back down the tracks towards home. I get to where I need to head up the embankment to enter the driveway for the trailer park. I'm about halfway up the bank when I hear something Russell. I look up and I see the horseman on this horse looking down at me. Pitch black. Almost like a shadow in the dark. You can still see outlines of everything.

Yet nothing reflected light. I hadn't heard of it at this time, but it was like how so much. Some describe the shadow people. I remember staring at him for a few seconds in disbelief and shock. And the horse makes that little noise with his lips and I snapped out of it. I turned down the bank and ran along the tracks as I hear the hoofbeats following behind me. I turn up a shallower part into the woods and next to the trailer park, weaving through the trees trying to slow him down,

until I reached the street and run to the trailer I lived in, which was at the front. I jumped through the door down there bursting through the screen door as I hear the hoofs thudding behind me. My mum was at work so I was turning on every light, TV and radio in the place to try and make it loud or bright to keep whatever at bay, as if that would help. I sat on the couch waiting for my mum to get home and I eventually fell asleep. I woke up as she finally came home as daylight was coming in. I told her everything and she told me I shouldn't be messing around with this stuff She believed me because she always had experiences and she told me about them regularly

Once the sun was finally up I went to the embankment where I saw him Wondering if I had somehow imagined it all Even curious if there was just a horse out in the area for whatever reason However unlikely but just trying to find an explanation I found hoof prints in the sand at the top of the embankment, and only in that spot. That's when I decided it was getting to be too much for me, and while not being religious normally,

I started praying to make it all stop, and swearing I would stop messing around with it. It all kind of died down, until around when I turned 18 and suddenly it all just stopped. I haven't had a single experience since. This event happened about 1981, and I was 11 years old. My younger cousin Kathy was also visiting our grandparents and staying the night. We were in an upstairs bedroom of the farmhouse that was located right in the centre of the 100 acres.

Just beside the house to the east was what I called the old tractor road. I've heard this type of road referred to as a two rut road. My upstairs bedroom window overlooked this old farming road, which was probably in use, even before the old farmhouse was built. Right next to the house was a stacked wood pile and in a four or five foot wide grass walkway. On the other side was our grandmother's 15 foot wide garden that ran parallel to the old road. So even in the dark, I could easily see the road since it was so close to the house. On the opposite side of the road was a huge 35-acre cornfield.

That at the time easily stood five to six feet tall. It was a warm summer evening and we were supposed to be something. sleeping by this time. But we were talking about music and our favourite bands. Being Canadian, she naturally liked the band Rush. My cousin and I began to hear a distant conversation between at least two people that was definitely coming from outside. We could also faintly hear footsteps on the two rut-dirt road. As the conversation got closer and the footsteps also became louder, we slowly kneeled down at the open window and listened. It was probably around 11 o'clock or so and our eyes were already well adjusted to the dark, so we would easily be able to see what was happening just

below the window. The conversation and footsteps gradually became louder, and we knew for sure we would see who was trespassing on our land. Maybe our grandmother would hear what we were hearing, and she would appear with her shotgun, as she had done many times before, when she thought there was a threat our property. Grandma was no joke and once grabbed a huge knife and told me to go get the front end loader. When I returned she had already gutted a cow and had it ready to hang from the loader, while grandma did not show up to save the night this time. The conversation and footsteps gradually became louder and louder. Then, without my cousin or eyes seeing a thing, they just as slowly became quieter and quieter, and slowly stopped. There was no possibility of this walking

conversation taking place in the cornfield, because we did not hear the familiar and unmistakable sound of at least two people making their way through a tall cornfield. It should also add that we saw no flashlight or lantern. We only heard the conversation and footsteps. We did not recall what the conversation was about, and at this time I'm unsure of the conversation was understandable at all. Well, we never saw anything or anyone. This probably happened over the course of maybe two minutes or so. But I have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours, thinking back to this warm country night and what we were able to hear but not see. I cannot explain this event and can only describe it as the first of two experiences I had on that farm. Rock Island is a state park, located

at the tip of Dorr County, Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan. It's a difficult place to get to. To get to the island, you have to take a car ferry from Ellison Bay to Washington Island, drive across Washington Island to Jackson Harbor, and then take a pedestrian-only ferry to Rock Island. No vehicles or bikes are allowed on Rock Island. Even though the island is relatively smaller about 975 acres, it has an interesting history. In the early 1600s it was inhabited by a tribe of Potawatomi Native Americans, as well as a small fishing village of European settlers. The two groups did not trust each other and did have a few bad encounters that almost led to violence.

But for the most part, they've lived peacefully together on the island. By the 1640s, the Potawatomi had migrated to other parts of Wisconsin. Shortly after the Potawatomi had left the island, some settlers from the fishing village reported seeing a new group of people on the island. They seemed to be more white settlers, but they wore strange clothes and kept themselves. No one from the fishing village was ever able to talk to one of these new settlers, or even find out where they were living. It was around this time that strange things started to happen in the village. Several animals, it's not mentioned to the village. it's not mentioned what they were, maybe it was pigs or chickens kept by the settlers,

were found slaughtered in the village, and seemed to have been used to make markings in blood on some of the buildings in the village. On a different night, a building used for preserving meat burned down. The villagers felt that these things must have been done by these new people on the island, and they intended to find them. But after a thorough search of the island included the wall, wooded inland area. They never found a single person. These strange occurrences seemed to stop soon after the search, and none of the other settlers were ever seen again. In 1836, the Potawatomi

Lighthouse was built on the northern part of the island. After construction was finished, the lighthouse was inspected, and it was reported back that the material of which the lighthouse and dwelling are made are of the best quality, and that the work is done in the substantial, and that the work is done in the substantive and workman-like manner. David E. Corbyn was appointed the first keeper of the light on December 19th, 1837. Only three years later in 1840, despite the apparent quality of the construction of the lighthouse, David Corbyn started to complain that plaster started to fall off the building and some sort of liquid would ooze through the cracks, leaving the house constantly damp. Corbyn was completely alone most of the time at the lighthouse,

and some have said when visiting him that he would stare at a certain wall and sometimes spoke vaguely of the other visitors. In 1845, after eight years of relative solitude at the lighthouse, an inspector visited the lighthouse keeper and determined that while Corbyn was fulfilling his duties, he was acting strange. The official report says that the inspector ordered Corbyn to take a 25-day leave of absence

to find a wife to live with him at the lighthouse. However, some think that the inspector was startled by Corbyn's mental state, caused by years of solitude, and thought they would be best that he spent some time away from the island. In 1852, Corbyn reportedly fell ill and died that December in the lighthouse. He was buried in a small cemetery just south of the lighthouse. The next lighthouse keeper also reported the surprisingly quick deterioration of the lighthouse. Some friends that have visited the new keeper say that he would talk of seeing the strange things in the house at night, but he wouldn't elaborate on what he had seen.

In 1858, after only 22 years of service, the original lighthouse was torn down in the new one was built. From that point on the lighthouse keepers were required to have an assistant keeper or a family with them at the lighthouse. No strange occurrences were further reported in the lighthouse logbook outside of strong storms and occasional shipwrecks except on January the 20th 1876. The keeper at the time named Betts reported that he saw two men attempting to road to the mainland from Washington Island. He wrote a terrible storm came up shortly after their departure and they never made it to their destination. Over three months later on May 3rd 1876, Betts wrote, the two men who were lost

last January have been seen several times, once from Caney Lighthouse and once from Jacksonport. The men were apparently frozen stiff and sitting upright in the boat. among a mass of ice. At last account they were still adrift. There is not much hope that they will be found and buried. By 1900, most of the island's inhabitants left for better fishing areas on Lake Michigan. In 1910, a successful business owner and inventor, Chester Forderson, purchased all of the island, except for the land of the lighthouse occupied in the north. He used the island as a private summer retreat, from his business in Chicago. Forderson is responsible for the unique and mystifying buildings and structures

that are still on the island today. On the south end of the island, he built a giant stone hall that has a boat house on the lower level. A stone water tower was built on the east side of the island and an imposing wooden gate was constructed on the west end of the island. The Great Hall was used to store Forderson's immense book collection. book collection. He had over 11,000 books and it's rumoured that he possessed some very rare books on the occult in his collection. Forderson died of heart failure on January 6,

1945, although some have speculated that he saw something that actually scared him to death. I couldn't find any writings from Fordson, however, that mentioned him experiencing anything strange on the island. After his death, multiple churches. churches and universities were interested in this book collection. But he awield it to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, providing that they had to purchase it for $300,000, which they did. Some of this history is hard to find on the internet, but there are a couple of binders in the Great Hall that has a lot of this documented.

Forderson's personal papers are housed in the archive section of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. All of this history I gave is just to provide a little content. provide a little context for experiences I have had, directly or indirectly on Rock Island. In August of 2021, I took my first and last trip to Rock Island. After taking two ferry rides, I arrived on the island at 2pm. I had booked the remote campsite E, which is a backpacking site that is a little over a mile from the dock. I took my time hiking out to the site to enjoy the scenery and took a couple of breaks just due to how heavy my pack was. I was definitely packed more for camping than hiking. I got to my site, set up my tent, got everything situated, and started

gathering sticks and driftwood from the beach so I could start a fire. On my third trip back from the beach before I got back to my site, I heard a single high-pitched squeal noise come from the forest. It didn't sound close. It was such an unusual. sound that I stopped in my tracks and waited for a good 30 seconds, waiting to see if it would happen again. It didn't, so I continued back to my site. When I got back, I began working on getting a fire started. The remote camping sites on Rock Island are pretty well spaced out. Sites C, D and E are grouped together, but there's probably a hundred yards between each site. There's not a real real trail connecting the three sites directly, but enough people have walked along the ridge

between the three sites that there's an obvious path. As I was setting some sticks up in my fire ring, something caught my eye and I looked up, fairly far away. It looked like it might have been at site D or a little further. Was a person running in my direction. My first thought was, Well, that's odd. Because like I said, it's not even really a trail they were on. Then my mind just went to, there must be something wrong. And this person needs help. They got a little closer, and it looked like maybe it was a woman in loose grey clothes, maybe in a hoodie.

It was still far enough away that I couldn't really make out any details. I quickly stood up from the crouching position I was in. And just as I did, I heard that high-pitched skim. wheel noise again. It was behind me, and it was much closer this time. This startled me quite a bit, so I turned around to look behind me. I scanned the trees for a couple of seconds, but didn't see or hear anything. I turned back around because I knew that the running person must be getting close, but now they were gone. Again, I stood there and scanned the trees, but did not see them anywhere. I was so confused I was kind of frozen for a few seconds. It was all very strange,

but I was able to reason it out in my head that it was just a fellow camper from site C or D that was maybe running to the pit toilet that was a couple of hundred yards west of the sites. I tried to forget about it, but it was really just bothering me. I did not like whatever that squill noise was, and it just felt strange. With some effort I decided to to let it go and started my fire. I had a quick meal on a couple of adult beverages and then decided to take a little walk. I hadn't seen site C or D yet, so I thought I would check those out and see if I did have some neighbours camping nearby. Site D was empty. I did see the path that led from the site to the main trail and pit toilet, so that made me feel a little

less uneasy about the runner. I figured that it maybe was someone from Site C that took a strange way to get to the main trail by going through Site D. It didn't make a ton of sense because I probably still should have seen them, but it made me feel better. I continued on to Site C and saw that there was a tent set up. I really didn't want to bother anyone, but I just thought I would go over with the excuse that I wanted to introduce myself as a camping neighbour from Site E, and see if anyone looked like there might have been the person running earlier. I came up on the site and there was a couple sitting at the picnic table. Neither of them looked like they would have been the person I saw running.

I introduced myself and I introduced themselves. They were both in their mid-30s. They were very nice and both seemed to be pretty drunk, but a quiet drunk. I didn't ask about the runner or the squealing noise because I thought it might be weird. I wished them a good night and walked back to my tent. When I got back, I had a cigar and a few more drinks.

It got dark, and it started as a perfect night. The sky was clear, and I was just staring up and looking at millions of stars. I felt better about everything from earlier, and felt stupid about the whole thing, decided to get some sleep. It was a long day, so I fell asleep almost immediately. At around 2.30 a.m., it was woken up by a huge boom of thunder. It started downpouring. The wind had picked up and the temperature dropped.

I love camping in the rain, but I do not like camping in a lightning storm. A pretty big storm came through and I was starting to worry. The wind was whipping at my tent and the ground was shaking from the thunder and lightning. I did not feel good about being out there in a tent and felt very exposed. The storm lasted for about an hour before it became just a light, steady drizzle. I was just starting to fall back asleep. When I heard the squeal noise again, I opened my eyes up wide in the dark and just laid there silent. There was another loud squill noise, and it was pretty close.

I knew there are no real dangerous animals on Rock Island. There are deer and porcupines, but nothing like bears or wolves. Knowing that still didn't make me feel better, though. There was something about the squirrel that I didn't like. I say squirrel because that's the best I can describe it. It sounded to me like a pig squill. I honestly don't know that much about pig noises, but that's what I thought of when I heard it.

An injured or angry pig squill. I continued to lay in my tent and started to hear footsteps outside. It was still raining, so the sounds were a little buried in the sound of rain. But it definitely sounded like a somewhat large animal or human walking around. I sat up in my tent and took a knife I had out. just to feel better. In my head I just kept saying you know it's just an animal, it's fine. There's nothing in these woods that can hurt you. I listened as the footsteps started moving away from my tent. I just sat there being still, holding my knife for maybe 10

minutes without hearing anything else. I started thinking to myself, it's fine, it was just an animal. You're being stupid and you need to get some sleep. I was just about to lay back down when there was a very loud squill and it was right outside my tent. It felt like my heart just stopped and a shiver went down my spine. My heart was beating so hard my entire body was pulsing and I felt it in my ears. It took everything in me but a false day, get out of here, not shouting, but as stern and mean sounding as I could at that moment. I didn't hear any more squills or footsteps at night. But I also didn't sleep.

I just sat there in my tent for maybe an hour before I laid down. Eventually the rain stopped and I kept laying there until the sun came up. All that time reassuring myself that I was just being stupid. It was just an animal. It was probably 7 a.m. before I decided I had to get out of my tent to relieve myself. As soon as I stepped outside my tent, I saw at my picnic. table had been turned over and was upside down. When I saw this, I surprisingly calmly thought, OK, this is enough. I'm leaving the island today. I checked my surroundings and nothing seemed out of

place. I eventually reasoned with myself that the wind had blown the table over during the storm. It still seemed a little strange, because the table was pretty heavy, and I felt like I would have heard the table flipping over, but that might have made sense. I made sense. I made a little bit of a little bit of I made some cold instant coffee, had a bite to eat, and started to feel better about the whole thing, then decided to go for a hike. I admit I get easily scared when I'm camping by myself in the woods. Maybe that's natural. After I had some coffee and food and the sun came out, I realised that nothing I heard or saw was really anything that couldn't be explained. Other than not getting a good night's sleep, I was having a pretty good time.

The reason I came to the island in the first place was to hike the seven-mile Fordeson Loop Trail that has a lot of interesting things to see and I was excited to start the hike. I packed a few things in my backpack and started off. Fairly close to my site is the water tower. I have no idea how it originally worked or why it had to be a tower, but it's an impressive building with a fireplace that looked like someone had recently had a fire in it. A little further down the trail, was a cemetery where two sisters and a few others are buried. It's believed there are still more buried here in unmarked graves. These are likely some of the settlers from the old fishing village. The island has three cemeteries. There is one by the beach and that's where Chester Fordson is buried. There's one on the eastern part of the island where the two sisters are buried and there's one on the northern part of the island where the original lighthouse keeper David E. Corbyn is buried. There is also at least one Potawatomi burial area on the island, but no one knows exactly where

that is. I kept walking on the trail until I came to a nice scenic overlook area with a bench, where I sat down and drank some water. I started to hear some talking on the trail ahead of me, but I couldn't see anyone. There was a bend in the trail where the trees were thick, so I sat on the bench waiting for these people to come around the bend. The voices were coming closer. They could tell they weren't speaking in English, but I couldn't place what language it might have been. Both voices were very, very deep and guttural. Then back in the woods, I hear a loud and quick. Immediately, both the voices I was listening to respond with their own.

I kind of smiled, because it sounded like these two heard whatever it was in the woods, and they were trying to be funny and mock it by responding. I got off the bench, put my backpack on and started walking in the direction further down the trail, where the voices were coming from. But I never did find these people. The rest of the hike went very well. I visited the cemetery where David E. Corbyn is buried. I took a self-guarded tour of the Potawatomi Lighthouse.

I passed a wooden gate that apparently used to be part of the larger structure. I walked by the Great Hall and the dock area. from where I arrived on the island, visited some of the other structures on the island, came across the cemetery where Chester Forderson is buried, then finished a loop by returning to my campsite. It was a very nice hike with a lot to see and wasn't especially difficult, but I was tired. I did walk down to campsite sea to ask the couple I spoke with the night before, how they did with the storm during the night, but they had packed up and left. I was disappointed because I also really wanted to

who asked them about the squealing noises during the night. The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. I built a fire, made some meals, had a cigar and some drinks. As soon as it got dark, I was ready for bed, since I had so little sleep the night before. I got in my tent and quickly fell asleep. I might have been asleep for about three hours

when I woke up suddenly and was immediately fully alert. Nothing I was aware of caused me to wake up, but I felt something was wrong. I sat up in my tent and this part is a little hard to explain. A feeling of complete dread washed over me. It was unlike anything I'd ever felt before. It felt like there was something in the tent with me. I could feel that it was angry, seething with anger,

rageful even, and I could feel its hatred for me. It felt like something very bad was about to happen. and I couldn't do anything about it. I started to shiver uncontrollably. It was a smell of garbage or rotten meat, and it got stronger and stronger to the point where I wanted to throw up. I couldn't because I was frozen.

I had never felt so exposed and helpless. I stared forward at nothing, just frozen. The weird thing is, I accepted whatever was about to happen to me. It was like my brain telling me whatever is about to happen. Even if it's death, will at least be a relief. And then I passed out. At least I assumed I passed out.

That's all I remember until I woke up at about 8 in the morning. When I woke up, I was laying outside my sleeping bag, on top of it, and my legs were in an unnatural and uncomfortable position. I was on my back with my left leg straight out, and my right leg was bent and my foot was up against my left knee. My heart started pounding, but I kept thinking to myself. It was a dream. I'm leaving right now.

It was a dream. I'm leaving right now. I packed up everything very quickly and started back towards a dock to catch the first boat off the island. Since the first boat from Washington Island doesn't arrive until 10.30 a.m. I had to kill a little time around the Great Hall and Dock area. I wanted to get off the island so bad. But I did feel a little better just being out of the woods. then I could see other people.

I sat down on the bench a little to the east of the dock and lit a cigar just to give me something to do while trying not to think about the night before. I was sitting a few minutes and scanning out over the water when I was startled by someone behind me, saying, Hi, I jumped and was embarrassed when the person came around saying, Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Didn't mean to scare you. I saw you spoken and just came to ask if you had a lighter.

I felt like an idiot and told him that's fine. I just didn't sleep well last night and was kind of zoned out. I hand was in my lighter. He thanked me, lit a cigarette and then handed the lighter back to me. We started talking about the usual things you might talk about. He was from the Madison area. We talked about the storms we've been having. He seemed to be a real outdoorsy type of guy

and talked about his plans to move to Washington Island. It was a nice normal conversation and kind of took my mind off the night I had just had a little bit. He seemed like a pretty nice little bit. He seemed like a pretty nice guy. Then naturally he asked me what sight I had been staying at. I told him I was staying at Site E the last two nights. He said he usually books that site, but I must have reserved it before him. He said he had to book Site D the last two nights.

I was surprised by this, because no tent or anything was that Site D the two times walked past the site. I told him this, and he said he comes to the island a few times a year, and you have to book a site, but he actually camps at different areas on the island. I asked him where he camps, and he told me most of the time he camps in the East Cemetery. But he also likes to camp in the woods south of the lighthouse. He told me that he hikes about halfway down the Fernwood Trail, and just heads north into the woods, where he finds a place to camp. He said that one time he found the ruins of a small log house in those woods.

He's going to try and find it again and camp inside of it. At this point I started to change my opinion about this guy, and wanted to change the subject. But then he asked me If I had heard the screeches in the woods I took a second to reply I knew he was talking about the squealing I had heard I told him I had And I asked him if he knew what it was

This time he took a second to reply And I saw his face change He looked as if he was thinking if he should tell me something Like a secret With no expression at all on his face He said matter-of-factly A demon lives on this island.

Under any other circumstance, I would have laughed this off, but not after what I had experienced the night before. He looked at me and must have seen the anxiety and fear I was feeling. He surprised me by letting out a quick laugh. He asked me if I saw anything that night. I told him I hadn't seen anything and he stared at me like he was trying to figure something out. I felt like he could tell why I had experienced something. At this point I was ready for the conversation to be over.

Then he told me he had seen something in the cemetery that night. Now his face and mood kind of changed again, like he was trying to confide in me. I really did not want to ask the question, but I knew he wanted me to ask it. So I asked him what he saw in the cemetery, but my voice was shaky. Then I could tell he had changed his mind about telling me. He actually looked at me with empathy and told me, and told me that what he saw was hard to explain. But if I was afraid of the screeching noises,

he didn't think I should go near the cemetery. I didn't say anything right away, but he said four words without any context. Keepers of the flame. I looked at my cigar and the ash was long. I put it out and told him I was going to wait by the dock for the boat. He nodded and I started to walk away. after a few steps he said hey I turned around to look at him he just said don't come back here

I turned around and started walking again I don't know if that was a warning or a friendly suggestion but I took it to heart I was definitely not coming back to Rock Island when I got home I looked up keepers of the flame as it pertained to Rock Island I found three things that he could have been referring to. The names of the Native Americans that lived on the island of Potuatomi could be translated to Keepers of the Flame. The lighthouse keepers on the island were sometimes referred to as the Keepers of the Flame. Then there was a 19th century cult that was said to visit the island from time to time. They called themselves the Keepers of the Flame. I know that hundreds of people visit Rock Island every year and have a great time camping, hiking the trail.

and exploring Chester Forderson's buildings. My humble suggestion is this, do not go to Rock Island. When I was little, about eight or ten, I was lying in bed trying to sleep, but hadn't actually fallen asleep. My bedroom door was open and the hallway light was still on. Suddenly, I felt someone kissed my cheek.

I thought it was my mum coming in to say good night. I opened my eyes, but instead of my mum, what I was seeing was a figure, made of pure light. It stood over me for a brief moment and then left the room, faster than any human could travel. I laid there for a moment, somewhat freaked out. I finally called for my mum and asked if she had been in my room. She said no. I think back to this moment and I've always wondered who it could have been, if it was actually someone at all or just my imagination.

Both my mum and dad passed away within the past few years, and it has made me wonder of the dead, if ghosts are even real, can travel to any point in time. Maybe that was my dead grandfather. The only one close to me who had passed away many years prior. Or maybe. That was one of my parents visiting me as a child again. Who knows?

Maybe it was even myself from a future time after I die. Anyway, it's something I probably never have an answer for, but I have always thought about. Has anyone else ever been visited by a light being before? I'm kind of hesitant to share this story because I know people will not believe or judge, and I don't blame them. When I was 17 years old, I hit a huge bump in my life,

causing me to lose myself. and what little innocence I had left. I lost faith in myself and in life. Then, on February 23rd, 2019, I came home from high school, extremely tired from all the schoolwork. After getting off the bus, I immediately went straight to bed for a nap.

I woke up to someone pushing me, trying to wake me up with urgency. I opened my eyes and saw a little girl with black hair, crying, Get up. Get up. He's coming. I responded with, who is coming? Who? She said, he is coming. You need to go right now. Right there I heard something full from the kitchen. She immediately stopped crying and looked at me wide-eyed. And she said, he's here. I got up and she was hiding behind me.

For some reason I was not afraid. only concerned. So I saw the door knob start jiggling, like if someone was trying to turn it. Then the door flew open, and I saw nothing but darkness. Before I could even question the darkness, a probable seven foot or taller creature stepped into my room, bent over, due to it being too tall and the roof too low. low. It sounded almost like a clicker from The Last of Us, combined with a police siren. It had pointed teeth and a long, sharp tongue, but the eyes were just two yellow glowing dots in

the middle of the eye sockets. It was just pitch black and it was dripping with some sort of black liquid-like oil, but it smelled terrible. It smelled worse than the decaying animal. I had no idea how to explain it. I stayed there, the little girl gripping my hand, and she started crying again. Then from behind me I saw a pure white light start to shine. Before I could turn, I felt a hand lay on my shoulder. I did see the hand, it was the hand of an elderly man, and he said with an echoing voice, This is not your fight, son.

It is mine alone. I then woke up, jumping out of my bed. struggling to breathe. I never got out of my room until my family came home hours later. I am 20 years old now and I still can't get over the trauma to this day.

I'll tell you a story. This is something I witnessed not experienced. So I live in a rural area, a residential zone far away from the city. I've lived here for 26 years now. To get to the place, you need to find.

follow through a very long road out of the city into the rural area. Not the roads we see in movies, but a normal bumpy cemented road with a lot of tight turns near the end of it. So more or less 24 years ago, if I remember correctly, right in the last turn of this road, a biker got run over by one of the residents. The guy was drunk and invaded to the other lane, killing the guy from the bike on the spot. People left. I left across there for a couple of weeks, but eventually it was removed. Now I always come back home from work at night, and usually there's one or two cars in front of me the whole way. That's people coming home too.

This particular day there was a car in front of me the whole way that I recognised from one of the families that had moved into the area, more or less three years ago. It was the older daughter of the couple. She was 19 at the time, so everything was normal all the way. the way until that last turn where the guy died. A girl in front of me was driving fine until eventually she hit the brakes hard in the middle of the road and tossed the car full blast into the other lane. Like she was dodging something, almost hitting into a tree. I stopped my car and ran to her car to ask if everything was okay.

The poor girl was frozen solid, panicking in a car with tears and her. her eyes, asking if she had run him over. The moment she said that it hit me like a hammer right in the guts, even more because there was absolutely nothing on the road. I didn't want to make things worse, so I just said, no, I saw the dog running away. We just stood there for a couple of minutes while she explained to me there was a man in the street and she had tried to dodge him. I kept telling her that since there was no light on the road, she must have been confused, and that she could just be tired, and that it was a dog, until eventually she calmed down, and I escorted her to her home. The next morning her dad came to my door and asked me about what

happened. I explained to him what she had said and what happened up there so long ago. The looking at man's eyes spoke more than anything he could say to me. I don't know if he told her what I told him, but one thing is clear to me. That girl saw the ghost of the guy that died there 24 years ago in the exact same spot. Well, at least that's what I believe. I've been a nurse for about six years, with the last two years being spent in an ICU at my local hospital. I am a 28-year-old woman who is barely five feet tall. and weighing close to 110 pounds.

Even with my small stature, I have never been the type of person to fear the unknown. I have always been a strong believer in science, and that there is a logical explanation for most odd events. Though raised Catholic, I truly don't believe in any religion, more agnostic than atheist. But that's not the point.

Basically, I am saying I do not believe in the supernatural, or spooky monsters. That is until, the last five months, I cannot explain what is going on with me. I am either experiencing a mental breakdown, or there is something unnatural in this world that I never thought was possible. Let me start from the beginning. I had just clocked in at 701am on my 18-bed unit. It was my last workday of the week, but also my on call. meaning I had to stay an extra four hours after my regular 12 hour shift. We were surprisingly not full and less than half the beds were occupied with patients. This was not long after that most recent wave of COVID,

when we were so packed that we had to open up another ICU to hold our vented critical patients and constantly had overflow waiting in the ER. So coming into work with only eight patients and five nurses on schedule, felt too good to be true. I was only assigned one patient at the time, but was open for the first admission. My morning went by pretty slow and uneventful, as I cared for my one patient, and helped out co-workers with the basics. Around 11 a.m., my charge informed me I was getting new ER omission. Great. I took the name of medical record number from her,

and began looking them up on my computer. Gary Nelson, 31-year-old male, main diagnosis, ETOH withdrawal. Oh, I hate alcohol withdrawal patients. I thought as I continued to read the chart. His vitals look stable, and I could see that they started him on a pre-Sidic strip in the ER, which is why he has to come to the ICU. I go to the notes and find the admitting physician's note. What I read surprised me a little.

31-year-old male with no significant past medical history. Presenting in ED for hallucinations and seizures, most likely due to the ETOH withdrawal, patient is a poor historian, refusing to answer many questions. Upon examination, appears malnourished, but all systems intact, accompanied by two officers of SPD, currently in police custody. I read the remainder of the notes, which just reviewed all labs and medication had been given. I couldn't find anything else on why this man was in police custody. I guess it was not pertinent

to delivering medical care. But in my six years as a nurse, I have never actually dealt with this situation. It's a decent size size. suburb I live in, but my hospital isn't the biggest in the area, or even the closest to the police station, so it was odd that we would get someone in custody. I was curious about what the person had done, but honestly was expecting a DUI or some type of petty crime. I'd jot down some information on the patient and just continue going about my day, waiting for him to come up to the unit. Around 1145 I see Erica pushing a stretcher down our hall. Now Erica is a veteran the R nurse like 20 plus years working in level one trauma hospitals and very underfunded

hospitals in the bad parts of the city before coming to this hospital, meaning she has seen some shit and knows how to handle herself with crazy and dangerous patients. So when I see her face looking a little paler and walking faster than usual, I can feel little buds of anxiety starting to blossom in my head. On either side of Erica are two rather large policeman with stern faces, eyes surveying the unit. I look onto the stretcher, expecting some big guy covered in tattoos and wearing leather or something. I guess the stereotypical criminal pops into mind. What I see instead is his average-looking man. Well, almost average. He looks very disheveled. His brown short hair was sticking up at random angles, almost appearing matted

on the side. His eyes look sunken in his head, with large, dark, puffy bags on the He was staring down at his lap, or maybe it was at his hands which were both restrained to the side rails. Now these weren't the usual restraints we used. They were violent restraints that were rarely used except for patients who were a threat to themselves and the staff. He did indeed look rather malnourished, with the regular sized gown drowning on his thin frame. When they arrived to his room, the police undid the restraints from the rails and put handcuffs on his wrists in front of his body. As we slid him onto the ICU bed, the officers were standing there like they were ready for him to jump up at attack. Luckily, he did nothing, just lay down and kept staring towards his feet.

They then took off the handcuffs and put the restraints back onto his new bed. One officer stayed in the room and one stood outside the door. When Erica and I walked out the door, so she gave me a report on this patient, the officer outside spoke to me. Do not go into this room unless you see me or my partner in there. One of us will always be in the room. Got it? I was in some state of shock, thinking how bad could this guy be?

I just nodded at the officer and walked to the counter. counter. As soon as I saw Erica, I just started asking questions. Who is this guy? Did he kill someone? Is he actually dangerous? Like, am I going to get hurt? I was whispering to her with my back to the room and the officer. I don't know. He has barely talked and when he does, it's just creepy. I can't really explain it. He just gives me such a bad. vibe. I overheard Giant 1 and Giant 2 over there talking when they first brought him in. Have you read about those recent murders in the area? Erica took a deep breath as she handed me this paper chart. Uh, sorter? I think I heard about some girl found near the river a month or so ago. Honestly, I don't watch the news often. Was that him? I was trying to rack my brain on any details. I remember my fiancee telling me a while ago about the case. I only remembered that she was young. In high school I think, she was found after being missing for three days

under the bridge near the river. Apparently, they think he's the one that killed her and four others. That's not even the worst part. He was found with his last two victims a few nights ago. They were his wife and four-year-old son. She eyed the room and police officer as we kept whispering back and forth.

The officer gave her a strange look, and she stood up a little taller. Okay, well let me give you the report on this guy. She didn't go much more into what she had overheard, but she just stated the facts that she knew. He was arrested two days ago, apparently very drunk. He was being kept in holding when earlier this morning, he began having vivid, visual and auditory hallucinations, and experiencing seizures according to the officers who brought him in.

She told me all the information I needed to know to provide him with care. She ended the report with one last look back at the door, and almost more to herself than me, she said, Just be careful, okay. I've dealt with criminals before, but something is off with this guy. I don't know what, but just have a bad feeling. Always know where the door is, and never let him be between you and the door.

If you feel like something is going to happen, just leave. She looks back at me and forces her laugh. Sorry, I'm probably being overdramatic. You'll be okay. She grabbed her stretcher and monitor and left the unit quickly. My charge nurse, a couple of co-workers and myself go into his room and start doing what we do to every ICU emission. We are wiping his body with CHG wipes.

changing the gown and putting our monitoring devices on him. It was a little complicated since the officers would not let us remove the restraints in order to turn him fully, but we did what we could. During this cleaning we noticed he was not only covered in dirt, but also what appeared to be blood. He had small splatters everywhere on him. His arms, chest, back. His hair was in fact matted on one side with blood. The officers gave us permission to wipe him down, as they had already collected enough evidence and photos. When we were all done, we were surprised not to find any cuts or abrasions on him,

thus proving further that this was not his own blood in my mind. Throughout this whole process, Gary did not say a single word. He would follow our commands when asking him to turn or move his body, but never said anything to the questions we were asking. When we were done, my co-werecturned. workers all left the room. Only Gary, the officer, and myself were left. The anxiety I'd felt earlier was so much worse now. I had to actively remember to breathe and make myself stop shaking. I should also mention I can be pretty awkward in uncomfortable situations. My mind often goes

blank in these situations, so I end up usually saying the first thing that comes to mind, which is almost always something awkward. And this, my friends, was a very very very very. uncomfortable situation. So, Gary, as I said before my name is Gwen, I'm gonna be your nurse today. Since you just came into the hospital I have to go through some boring admission questions with you. No response. I looked to the officer then back to Gary. Well at least you're not in jail right now. I mean like you're arrested but not physically in jail. You're in a hospital.

And, um, it's nicer, I guess. Like at least there's no metal bars on the door. Still have the scary cop watching you, though. So, yeah. I was wincing at everything I said as I stared at the computer. I glanced quickly behind me at the officer, who was just staring at me like I was crazy. Then I peaked at Gary,

who surprisingly had a faint smile on his face. The better comelier here than in jail. Gary whispered. Oh, cool. Anyways, can I ask you some questions? I quickly changed the subject. My awkwardness somehow warmed him up to talking to me. A little bit of my anxiety ebbed the more we talked.

He answered almost all of my questions regarding his health history and any medications he had been taken. On paper this was a healthy, normal 31-year-old. No mental health issues. physical issues. He had a stable job and a good family life prior to four months ago. When I asked what happened four months ago, that changed everything. He became quiet again. I figured he was not going to tell me, and I began to get ready to leave the room. Then he started talking. According to him, everything changed when he witnessed a stranger kill himself.

He said he was riding the train back home after working late one night. There were not many people in the car and he was one of the last stops. When there was just one more stop to go, only him and a young guy were left on the train. They were sitting across the aisle from each other. Gary hadn't paid him much attention until then. When he started noticing the guy was staring at him. He asked the guy what he wanted, and the guy was. The guy said to just be able to sleep for once.

Gary said this guy looked sickly, wearing baggy clothes, had sunken eyes and greasy hair and skin, so thin it looked translucent. He initially was just going to ignore the man, but then the man got up and sat directly in front of him. Gary said he felt nervous and wanted to leave, but he couldn't for some reason. The man just sat quietly, staring at Gary.

As the train began to slow, coming up to Gary's stop, the man pulled out a gun. Gary was frozen and still couldn't move. The man said, I'm sorry, but I can't live like this anymore. Please forgive me. I need sleep. Then shot himself in the head. Splattering Gary with the bloody aftermath. As Gary was telling me this story, he had a grief-stricken look in his eyes.

Tears slowly running down his face, I looked at the officer, he was scribbling rapidly into his notebook. When I left the room, I was actually feeling bad for Gary. The anxiety I had earlier was almost gone. He seemed rather nice, and to have something so horrible happen in front of him, No one deserves to see that. I had almost forgotten what Erica had said about him murdering his family. Allegedly, that is. I continued on with my day, doing my hourly

checks on my patients. Every time I went to the Gary's room he would engage in conversation with me. He was always friendly and actually was a pretty good patient. Since he was there for alcohol withdrawal, I had to keep assessing his C.I.W. score to see if he needed medications to prevent withdrawal symptoms. He kept scoring high, stating he kept seeing people who were not there and hearing them talk and touch him. His hands were visibly shaking every time I went in the room, yet he seemed cheered up whenever I would enter. He said when I came in, the people would leave until I left. I had given him multiple higher doses of Ativan throughout my shift.

but it did not seem to be working. He was already maxed out on a sedation drip, so he just kept giving him more and more medications. A normal person would probably be knocked out from the amount of benzos we were pushing, but not Gary. He looked absolutely exhausted, but he would not close his eyes long enough to sleep.

When I mentioned it, he just stared at me and said, I cannot sleep. If I sleep, then I'll not be me. I can't let that happen. I knew if we kept giving him the meds, he would not be able to resist sleeping. The drug would take over and nothing he could do would stop it. Around 6pm, I walk into his room and I see he is sleeping. I feel almost happy for him, that he is finally resting.

I go into the room, change out my eyes. I'm being extra careful not to make a lot of noise because I don't want him to wake up. The IV pole is on the other side of the bed, meaning I have to walk past him and the bed to get to it. At this time, the officers were also at shift change, so as I'm switching out my old bag for the new bag, the two new officers were huddled together with the two that have been there all day in front of the door. They were not technically out of the room, but they did not have a clear view of me or Gary the way they were standing. I did not notice this at first, since I was focused on the medication. I turned my head slightly to look at the sleeping patient, but what I saw made me freeze.

Gary was almost crouching in the bed, with both hands on the railing closest to me, leaning towards me. His face had a wide, almost unnatural grin, like he was clenching his jaw so hard it was about to break. And the skin was being forced to widen as far as possible. His eyes were wide. Pupils dilated so much you could barely see any colour of his iris, making them look like black holes, sucking you into their depth. It felt like the room was on fire.

I could feel sweat dripping off my back and down my legs, yet I felt cold inside, like something was trying to steal something precious that was deep in me. My head felt heavy, and felt like the room was spinning as Gary got closer and closer to me. I couldn't make a noise or move an inch. Time seemed to be moving so slow. All I could think was, how did he get out of his restraints? Where is the cop? I'm going to die. Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. My eyes shifted from this horror in front of me to the door. The cop stopped right when he saw me, then looked to the bed, then continued towards the chair that was occupied by the previous cop. I wanted to scream at him to do something. But when I looked at the bed, I saw Gary laying down, sleeping as he had been when I first entered in his restraints as if nothing had happened I practically ran out the room straight to the bathroom and started sobbing what just happened

i had to have imagined that there is no way he could have got out of those restraints and if he did he would not be able to get back into them in a blink of an eye i convinced myself it was all in my head and I was just tired having worked the past two days. I wanted to avoid his room, but I knew as his nurse I was responsible for providing care. I was just going to be more cautious when I entered again. I did not tell anyone about what I thought I saw, because I had to believe it wasn't real.

The next time I entered, Gary was awake. He looked at me as if nothing happened, but I could sense something was off. I was asking him the usual questions about having hallucinations, being anxious, headaches, etc. When I looked down and saw his right hand was out of the restraint, I slowly started back into Walter Door and was about to yell at the officer when Gary looked me in the eyes. His eyes were more normal, but looked deeply sad, like he was watching something horrid unfolding in front of his.

him. I'm not sure if he was really looking at me or something else. Tears were running down his face. He whispered something I couldn't hear. It felt like something was pulling me closer to him. I was now an arm leamps away from him. I saw something shiny, like still in his unrestrained hand. He looked down and then back in my eyes and said, I'm so sorry. I never meant to do it. Please forgive me. I need sleep. Quicker than I thought possible, he raised his hand and ran it across his throat.

I was splashed with red, hot, sticky blood. In his hand lay a scalpel. As if this was all in slow motion up until he slit his throat, everything after was sped up. I remember screaming and trying to apply pressure to his neck as the police officer grabbed me and took me out of the room. I remember sitting in room after room, being asked the same questions over and over again.

How did he get the scalpel? How did he get out of his restraint? What did he tell you? What did you do? I did not have any of the answers. Fast forward to now, five months after Gary's death. I keep waking up in strange areas that I don't remember. remember going to sleep in. I've had people say that they have seen me at night, but I ignore them

when they try to get my attention. I feel like I haven't slept since that day at the hospital, even though I know I fall asleep every night. And today, I find myself covered in blood, but I have no wounds on me anywhere. This isn't my blood. I don't know who I am when I fall asleep. Can you tell me where your problems began? The infidelity? Is that what you mean? We can start there if that's what you want, John. I could feel the air leave my lungs then. Hear the incessant ticking of the analog clock on the wall. Count the amount of times my thumb ran against the picked skin around my other nails. The pattern was the same. The way she spoke was the same. Hell, everything was the same. The infidelity. That too had been the same. John? Yes.

The last time we spoke, you said that Sam couldn't have betrayed you because of the Blackbird song. That it had been the only proof you needed that the problems had gone away. Then after the accident, you mentioned that it was where it all began. So let's begin there. She crossed her legs, smoothing out her skirt, in the manner that most did subconsciously. She had the same habits when we did our sessions.

As if she was trying to cover something up, she analysed me. What is the Blackbird song, John? When did your problems begin? My mother used to tell me of the Blackbird. bird's song. We would be sitting together out on the porch with the summer's breeze blowing across us and the hum of nature filling our ears. Mother would still be wearing her Sunday's best from church. Her fine shoes long gone with the dust of dried summer dirt coasting her feet. I'd still be wearing my finest clothing too. My cloth, like my flesh, stained by Montana soil. The cool stone of the steps and chipped painted porch of the house would act as our own altar as we merely existed, our hands working away on the green beans that we had picked earlier as we separated them between our woven baskets.

Building up a decent rhythm that was only beaten by the rest of the world. Those were the good days. Good in how predictable they were. I always knew that when we finished we'd go inside. washed them and cook them, that we would have a good dinner for the night before the week would start again. And somewhere in between, mother would tell me of the Blackbird song, although the time of days she gave it was inconsistent. I still considered it a part of the routine that I held dear,

and I listened intently each time. I could paint the picture for you even. my mother a fond smile on her face her eyes dancing to the sunset or sunrise of the swaying of distant trees the blackbird song she would tell me was one that meant many things that it was comfort from family long gone that it was a promise of return

that it was a reminder that even in isolation you were never alone She would hum the song then, or at least a short tune of it, before giving me a fond smile. She'd stroke my hair or kiss my cheek, and promised me that one day it would come for me. Not once did she provide me of the lyrics. She would never whisper a single word of it. Not even when we would move the cattle or horses and she'd hum the song to completion, would she say the word. One day, she would always promise.

One day, I would promise right back. Always loving and remembering and forgetting the Blackbird song until it, like our routine and my very life, came to an end. It felt like an end anyways, because by this point in my life, on the verge of starting high school, I had been left an orphan. Nothing really prepares you for something like that. for something like that. People always go on about the old dying or the sick. You're prepared all your

life truly for those around you to eventually go, or to go before them. But no one ever prepares a child, not to experience it so quickly without decades having passed, without the exceptions. I certainly wasn't prepared when the officer came to my doorstep, with his hat in his hand. I am knew deep down, I swear I did, but everything that followed felt wrong. I felt ill-prepared, as if my life had ended with theirs. When I had been informed what had happened, car accident, drunk driver, my father always had an issue with his liquor, and my mother had paid the price with him. My baby sister I was told was found yards away in a ditch. Her scalp removed from her head

Due to a rusted fence pole Her body mangled in the old fences barbed wire They said she was still alive After it all happened That she died slowly on that gravel road Her body so badly meshed That the casket had to remain closed The funerals that followed all came and went within the church

as if everyone was ready to put my family in the ground, to be done with them. A few spoke of how awful it was and offered to help me with anything I need. The majority, though, told me to my face that I couldn't be sad for them. There was no point in being sad when someone dies and goes to heaven. Those same people turned to whisper in the other's ear to gossip about the accident itself. The details carving themselves into my head until I finally asked the preacher why no one seemed to care that death had come and taken them. That's the whole point, isn't it, son? The preacher had told me before sending me on my way.

And in truth for a split second, I agreed. I almost joined them. I spent the entire walk home from the cemetery, wondering what would be the best course of action. It wouldn't be an accident like theirs, but I was alone, alone and forgotten. By the time I got back to the house, I was sure that I must have hated myself, because I had already made several plans. All of which were cowardly things. I almost went through with it, too, until I met her. Liza Harlow.

I never knew of any other Harlows. my mother's family had all been dead aside from her, my sister and myself. My father didn't have any family to begin with. I'd been alone for an entire day and an entire walk home, and then suddenly I wasn't. Eliza claimed that we were cousins, that she was here to take care of me. I can gratefully state that I stood there on the porch, sweat collecting beneath the cotton of my suit, as she smiled up at her. me. She couldn't have been more than a couple of years older than me in her late teens. Her light blonde

hair was pulled back in a braid, tan round face scattered with freckles, with a smile that was all too white, all too sharp. Her brown eyes matched mine though, and they were warm, and I was alone. I didn't care whoever Eliza was, if she even truly was my cousin, because she was. I was a cousin, At that time I was just happy to have family. To have some sliver of life brought back into me, I didn't think of the Blackbird song for a long time after that. A full year had passed before the memory of it came curling within my chest. A full year I had spent carrying on as if my life hadn't changed and ended. Eliza lived in the house and kept company with me. She'd tend to the crops and the livestock.

and ensure that I had dinner, even on the nights when she would simply walk off into the darkness of the plains, though she always returned bringing groceries and news, and ensuring that I continued with my schooling when winter came. It wasn't until one specific night when I caught her humming that I felt a pain chill fill my bones. Eliza hummed the Blackbird song from the porch Her gaze lost within the sunset As the sound reached my ears Bringing with it a hollow kind of sorrow

As the knowledge that he had died with my mother Carved itself into my soul Only it hadn't died Had it Just as all my family wasn't dead The song wasn't dead either but I couldn't bring myself to move, to speak, to ask. I contemplated the song, feeling it dance across my tongue, before I finally got the courage to ask,

do you know what that song is, the one you were humming the night before? Eliza looked at me then, a warm smile crossing her face. The Blackbird song, she questioned, though it didn't feel like a little. question. I already knew deep down that she knew what the song was, that she knew perhaps more than she should have. I could only nod. It's a song of remembrance, of calling when you feel alone in this world, a calling to family. She says it as she has said it a thousand times before. The words feel scripted, no matter how much calm emotion she places behind it. Do you know the lyrics I ask? feeling temptation creep in as if I was a young child again.

Why do you ask all of a sudden? I've been here for a year, it's you never spoke of it. I thought it died with my mother. She kept the knowledge to herself of the lyrics. I didn't expect to get it until you were older, holding her at the edges of death. That usually is how it goes. But she died too early for her time.

Eliza purses her lips, folding a strand of hair behind her ear, before turning away from him. The chimes on the porch blew in the wind. The birds and the crickets began their own song. Eliza didn't dare look at him. Something like that. I feel knots from within my stomach. Hot molten lead dragging me down,

as every warm memory of my mother seemed to surface. Words like that bring out a certain kind of feeling in your soul. Make you wonder if the wording has any meaning, or if it's merely for show, like a preacher standing on a pew. Only in my case, Eliza was the preacher, and I was the follower in the pews.

If I tell you the Blackbird song, then I will have to leave you. You will never see me again Say from your deathbed Should you be the last And with that I will never be able to help you Why

You don't need to know why John You just will If I tell you You will understand But then I will have to leave Can I think on it She huffs then A shrivel of annoyance flaring in the way

she holds herself. Go to bed, John. You've never spoken of your family, but I imagine Eliza held importance to you. Through what you have said, it would seem that you fought on it and accepted it. I swallowed then, counted the books marking the shelf on the back wall until the entire row was completed, traced the outline of the dolls that sat imprisoned forevermore on the shelves above it. Eliza told me everything and then she left. I never thought I would see her again until long after Sam was dead and our grandchildren were roaming my family's land. The weight of it, the importance of such a thing

is why I didn't think Sam would cheat. The laugh that threatened to claw from my throat for a sickening kind of dread as the words left me. The image of Sam drifted into my mind with it. as if she herself was crawling from my fruit. I trusted her with something that wasn't hers to take. Well, let's start with the beginning for Sam and lead up to the end. Sam. Sam. Sam. Samantha.

She never liked going by the name Samantha, but always insisted on it when her maiden name was involved. Sam Miller sounds like a man, she'd say, on our long walks home. to which I would usually joke that Sam Harlow was no better. A terrible comeback really, but that's what builds relationships from what I found. I didn't think much of Sam at first. I'm not even sure of when we exactly decided to become friends, or if we had just been brought together by one too many school projects.

Though it didn't matter much to me. She was all long-limbed and thin-boned, one of the only redheads I had ever seen, with pretty green eyes and skin that stretched over herself too tauntly as if she had been starved for the majority of it. That was my belief at least, considering she was, by all accounts, a hippie, and the daughter of one. We made an odd pair when we'd press our desks together or eat by ourselves in the cafeteria. The same went for outside of school, the gas station, the supermarket, the long walks to my home. We had joined at the hip during our junior year of high school and the oddness just stuck, all the way up until graduation.

That was when our first problem started, if you could call it that. The cold dry winter was sweeping across the lands and Sam was caught dead in it on my front porch. Her lips were dry, hair frozen, and if one had ever seen a corpse, she certainly looked apart, clutching that fancy flimsy paper within her hand as if the wind would take it away and in case it's in ice. College, John. Don't you ever think about such things? She would ask. And my response was always the same. I can't leave this place, Sam. Because there's some family member that abandoned you years ago. John, can we please talk about this instead of dancing around it? We are talking, Sam. Don't you get that? It's more than just Eliza, okay?

It was his mother sitting on the porch, his baby sister laying bent and butchered in the road, his father roaming the backyard for some tool he'd lost. It was his family, the memories of them, and all those that came before him. Each one singing that same song until they two passed, and were sung for. Leaving for college just seemed like closing a door,

on it all. It felt like abandoning them, like forgetting. Sam didn't understand that though. She never did. John, Sam ran her hand along her head before slapping it to her side. She seemed to give up in a defeated slump at the small kitchen table, abandoning her acceptance letter right next to the salt shaker. I love you, John. I love you. And I never let it stop me before. Not when it led to me being bullied more than I already was. Not when it left me feeling isolated out here. Her green eyes welled up with tears. Even freezing and on the verge of tears, she was as beautiful as the fresh green of spring coming into the world. I want this one thing and I want to understand it. You. I just don't know if it'll be worth it when I'm giving up

my entire life for it. The Blackbird song. The words felt heavy across my tongue. I had rarely spoken of it when Sam was involved. Oh, don't get me wrong, she knew of it, knew the importance it held and what she'd have to do to get her hands on it. She had even heard a brief melody caught within my throat to her summer back. It had actually been one of the reasons she came back to me in the beginning. One slip-up, one small mention, and that's all it took.

Sam was hooked on the mystery As if my family was some mystery novel That she couldn't quite skip to the end of You know what will happen for me to tell you that song The bond we would have then John Just fucking marry me already then Be a man and marry me

She married you to get the song then She married me because she loved me The idea of me at least I wouldn't lower her into being that obsessive and willing to throw her life away for a simple family tune. She did love me, somewhere in that heart of hers. I just wasn't enough, clearly. All right, we have to start. Typically I don't jump to the end, but why don't we bring clarity to the matter? The Blackbird song shows you that Sam wasn't being faithful. Let's restart there then. A marriage came with

the summer sun that following year. Sam pushed off. going to college, but it wasn't solely due to her marrying me. That night that she had placed her college acceptance letter on the table and asked me to marry her, had simmered down to an agreement. She would do the community college while I ran the family farm. Then after two years I would take care of our first child, while Sam would begin online university courses. She'd never have to go too far and I get to have my new family by my side. I'd never have to leave the place where I walked the earth for so long and she'd get to not be so strapped down to me, a win-win for everyone involved and it had been good. Sam made for a beautiful bride and our honeymoon had been spent

with us chasing the other around the outside of the house with a paintbrush. We'd have movie nights in the living room with wine, that we kept saying we would save but never did. I'd ask her how her day at school was and kissed her goodbye when she said she needed to head off to her classes once again. There wasn't anything spontaneous in our lives other than the odd meals Sam liked to make, and I enjoyed that. I really did. I never saw any problems until the problems made themselves was abundantly clear. Our first problem was when the pregnancy test came back positive. Have you seen the Angelus painting? It was created by a French painter during the late 1850s. The old painting depicts two individuals, a man and a woman standing in the Great Plains. The man has a hat

within his hand. The woman prays. Buried in the ground between them is their dead child. Sam had insisted on it, a burial behind the house. We'd stand there like that couple for the painting, as if we were recreating it. The first time Sam had silently wept. The second time, a single tear ran down her face. The third time, she had asked me to sing the Blackbird song to her. We had looked at each other then as if time had stopped, as if both had nooses around our necks as the winds of the planes blew away the top layer of soil at our feet, and the horrific part, the part I still wonder about, is the fact that I wanted to say no. Without even thinking, I already knew the answer that I was going to tell her. I hated myself for it, bit the inside of my cheeks, until the taste of copper

filled my mouth and slid down my throat. Don't make me regret this, John. She'd say, as if it was a warning towards me rather than a damnation, which leads into the second problem that came, because I didn't say no to telling her the song. I took her out that night as the sun began to set, and our third child laid to feed the carrionyses, and I sang the Blackbird song, repeating the lines over and over until the lyrics drifted into the darkness.

We both cried as we held each other, The worst of it all, being that this was the first time in our entire existence together, that we truly felt for each other. After that, the next morning to be precise, I almost regretted finally telling Sam. Anxiety beat around my chest and made me chew my nails down to the quick. I feared that Sam would leave me now, that maybe it had been for nothing, that Sam was obsessed, or that it just hadn't been worth it, all of the pain and sacrifice. The walk down the stairs into the living room was like my own personal funeral. How fitting it would have been had the divorce papers sat where her acceptance letter had once been.

Only Sam didn't leave me. I found her sitting at the kitchen table, a brilliant smile on her face that I hadn't recalled for so much. long as Eliza sat across from her. She hadn't aged a day despite the near five years that had passed since she left. She hadn't even changed the clothing that she wore. Well good morning John, I must admit that I've missed you. Eliza's smile felt like deja vu, like I was that young teenager once again that thought he was alone in the world. Only I hadn't been alone for a while and now the last of my family had returned again. It should have brought me mirth, but I couldn't help the sinking feeling that something was wrong, that I had done

something that I shouldn't have. Liza, I didn't expect to see you here. I did. I knew what singing the song would bring and she knew it too. She cocked her head to the side and gave me a look that said she was calling me out for it. Only before either of us could speak up, Sam had interjected, turning to me with a pleading look of horror across her face, as if she was begging for me to help her get away from some unheard conversation that they had had.

She just stopped by and I couldn't turn her away. John always went on about you during high school. Sam began to shake then. Her hands were overlapping. Her right knee was bouncing. A nervous sweat was even breaking out along the back of her neck. I doubt that. Eliza pursed her lips as she studied us.

Like a tiger studying its keeper at a zoo. Eliza Sam has classed today. Why don't we catch up while she heads on out? Eliza smiled at that. Then as Sam practically jumped from her seat at the opportunity to run? I'd like that. So your wife suffered miscarriages, and you didn't notice any infidelity before then, or any issues at all. The only thing I find odd is that Eliza reappeared.

It sounds like you didn't call or text her. Yet she came the following morning you told Sam the song. Sam couldn't keep a baby in her if she tried. It didn't change anything for me. I still loved her just as I always had. Tell me about Eliza, John. You ignored my comment on her, but I want your opinion on why Sam was afraid of a family member that she had never met before. When I sang the song to Sam, I had to tell her about the Blackbird song, the true meaning of it.

That's why Sam knew why Eliza was there. That's probably even why she feared her. My tongue rolled across my teeth, then, as that last night painted itself across my eyes. The three of us standing alone in the living room, as Sam truly entered my world. I learned of Sam's infidelity due to the song, on the last night that we were together. Fate has never been something that I had believed in, not when you get down to over-specific details and heavy religious implications that typically come with it. I tend to apply that same mindset with many things in my life. herding cattle upon a horse, recalling the last moments I spent with my family.

Monsters being in our world. Sam returned home as if fate had declared it. She entered the house with heavy feet, not even bothering to hang up the keys as she always did, as she caught sight of us in the living room. Her face scrunched up, as it did when she stumbled upon a problem that she didn't understand. and those green eyes were drowning in unshed tears. I wanted to go to her then, to take her face within my hands and promise to her that everything was going to be all right,

just as I did on our wedding night, only I couldn't. I wouldn't. Something inside of me tore as Eliza frowned at my wife. Come here, Eliza ordered, and Sam followed. Those heavy feet dragging against the old wooden floor as she came to stand in the centre of the room. Her eyes no doubtily burning as she refused to blink. As if doing so would cause her to lose sight of us.

Do you want to tell him what you've been doing? Eliza tilted her head to the side. She appeared like a teenager then, all innocent and confused over the world. Yet it was nothing more than a mask. We both knew that. Sam opened her mouth As if she was going to speak before closing it Several more times her lips move like that

Before Eliza slowly stood Placing herself in front of Sam As if she was now the priest The family home, the altar Tell him what you have been doing The pupils in Sam's eyes widened into large saucers Before collapsing into pinprinks over and over until Sam's mouth fell open

and bloody drool fell from those lips that I had traced over for so many nights I I've been cheating I haven't been going to classes I've been cheating and an ugly gurgling cry left her mouth as blood and vomit seemed to rise from her throat

Sam couldn't seem to move though as her body fought to cough it up, frozen in place, yet fighting to stay alive. To hold command over herself once again, the children you lost were not yours. She's been cheating, lying, even trying to place poison within your food. She wants to steal the land. She wants every piece of you, right down to the song. Eliza's tone was lowly, menacing. even as a southern drool bled into her words,

like sticking a knife into a carcass and slowly cutting down into the darkness. Thankfully, you've never liked her cooking. Eliza looked at me as if she had been watching it all from the start, rather than from pulling it from a confession. I knew, of which deep down I knew, that it wasn't an entire lie in my own observation. She may have disappeared all those years ago, but I knew she never truly left. She knows everything, Eliza.

Eliza looked at me then, as my mother had when I told her I was sorry for so many small irrelevant things. A pitiful look that one usually received from a parent or elder when the realisation of reality and fate was met with a child's painful understanding of the world. I'm going to deal with it, John. Then I'll come again when you sing the song on your deathbed. Just promise me that you'll do better for yourself next time. I hate seeing my family hurt itself. I promise I vow to Eliza. In the same motion, Eliza told Sam to follow her.

She took her hand and walked her out the back door and into the Great Plains. Like death leading a lot of her. soul back to the grave and I let her dear God I had letter you're saying that Eliza is responsible for Sam's death that it's because of the song that the infidelity was exposed and Sam was murdered for it there is a heavy pause the sounds of intercoms threatening to come on with the continued ticking of a clock a pen snapping John, when I looked up Eliza Harlow, I couldn't find anyone by that name in the entire state system. I even looked in the surrounding states, and I can't find anyone, even a second or third cousin with that identity.

Dr Jensen seemed more upset than curious, as the revelation of it all settles between us. I wish I could say that she understood, but I knew then that she didn't. She wouldn't, not unless I told her. You wouldn't find her in anything modern. The Blackbird song is Eliza's song, and she died back in 1882, right before my family settled on our land. She's not my cousin, Doc. She's my ancestor. A sister of my ancestor. Killed along the Oregon Trail.

And she didn't stay dead. Her killers made sure of that. John? I never left the house that night. I only went out searching the next morning, hoping, praying that Eliza had spared Sam. But I knew she wouldn't let her go now that she knew the family secret about Eliza.

I knew how I would find Sam, and it wasn't because I killed her. Her body was drained of blood, John. Her brain showed significant brain damage. You knew those things when the sheriff pulled your body off of hers. You told the county court system those things before the autopsy even came back. You did those things. You can't blame it on Eliza.

Not when she doesn't exist. Dr Jensen looked as if she was going to be sick as she slid the pictures across the metal table. Sam Sam Samantha You want to know the blackbird song doctor I'll sing it to you Then you can tell Eliza that I told you everything

From my beginning to my very end Right down to the fact that a vampire Is going to kill you for it And what will it matter to me? I wondered When those cops outside the door are going to to take me right back to prison once we are done. I guess I'll let you think on that one. Just promise me you'll get rid of that report. Before Eliza comes in and finds it, I'd hate to have broken the family secrets for a second time. It's been a few weeks since it happened and I haven't

really come to the full realization of what that day has made my life into. It's a living hell or maybe it's an empty husk of what it once was. I know that writing the story out will help me to get my thoughts out in a somewhat coherent way. So here's the trauma and psychology practices. It happened back in August, near the beginning of the month. It was dark out and I was riding my bicycle just to clear my head. Things weren't going so great at home and a braver was needed. My mumma called me with an update on my dad's treatment.

She said he might not make it. He might be gone by the end of this month. She also didn't seem too well off either. I tried to calm her. But she seemed almost in a daze throughout the whole phone call. I probably sounded like a desperate, annoying mess, try and tell her to calm down, especially when her husband of 25 years is about to pass away.

No, the man was not my blood-related dad, but he was still family in my eyes. He did so much for me, more than my actual father has ever done. I still held out hope for his recovery, but I wasn't sure he'd make it. That's what led me to the decision of a night bike ride, as I peddled and felt the wind slapping against my face, blowing my hair backwards and shifting my hoodie from side to side. I felt slightly alive once again, as though the world was not literally falling apart at my feet. I had a sudden bout of panic as I came back to reality and realised that I had no idea where I was. I looked around at a loss for how I even got to where I was. I heard no sounds.

it was very dark. The only things making sounds were my own low, jagged breaths. The tyres of my bike, the light fixtures buzzing with electricity, and random garbage spread throughout the ground. I stopped my peddling and stood in place, as I tried to gather where I was and approximately how far I had ridden from home. At least, that was the plan.

However, when I looked back at where I'd just come from, I found a black void of darkness sitting there. It felt almost inky and alive is the best way to describe. I got a spine-chilling feeling of being watched, and I slowly began to ride to the only area where the light was. It was a hidden alleyway. I got a burst of relief, because if there was an alley, then there must be something. doors close by, which means a location marker probably is nearby for me to get back home before early morning hit. As I rode, I felt this hazy and relaxing mellowness fall over my head. I was getting tired is what I acquainted the feeling to. Now, I'm not so sure that's what the feeling

meant anymore. I found a road and sped down it once again, enjoying the wind slapping me in the face. There were so many big glaring red flags that somehow were not picked up on by me, and I have no idea how I didn't realize sooner. But once I stopped on a street that is usually populated, I realized extremely fast. Where were all the people? I looked around in amazement, but I continued on my merry way, thinking it was nothing more than a night time, making it less pleasant. populated. After that usually populated street, which was a semi-home stretch marker for me, I found a chicken place that I had a golden horse statue in front of it, which was another location marker for me. It meant I was close to home. I rode until I passed a small bus station

and got ready to carry my bike back up to my apartment. I carried it with heed, and once it was over, I was so out of breath I lay down on the couch. At this point I was so tired I didn't care about much else other than sleep, so I grogly made my way to my bed. In the morning I woke up, still feeling groggy, but also this really warm hazy feeling, as though moving would literally be wasteful of my energy. But I forced myself up. Though I didn't want to get up, I was pretty sure I was late for work, because my alarm clock did not go off, which meant I might have slept through it. I walked over to my bathroom and did my usual morning routine, until finally I realised that something was off. Just like last night, where were the typical chaotic sounds of an urban cityscape?

I heard no one yelling at anyone else about who had taken whose last breakfast ego. My roommate wasn't listening to his god-awful country music on full volume. My dog wasn't barking. I heard no cars, no horns, no trains, no buses, no singing, nothing. Where was everyone at? I ran to my window expecting the traffic to be piled up and people to be walking or sitting in various places. I saw nothing. There was no movement, not a soul in sight for miles.

I was once again overcome with this anxious, panicky feeling. I ran back to my bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My reflections stared back, pale and sickly brown eyes stuck in shock, and my messy bedhead falling all over. I ran some water and splashed it onto my face. The sense of pukin was trying to make itself known, but I kept pushing it back, not wanting to ruin my breath, mostly for my sake. I noticed my hands were shaking.

I slowly brought them up to rake through my hair. I walked backwards and slowly slid down the back wall of the bathroom until I sat on the floor. So many emotions and thoughts were flying through my mind at dizzying speeds, trying to process the situation that I now found myself in. Did the world end while I was sleeping? Or did it end last night while I was riding my bike? Was I the last survivor of the human race? And if so, how? I was literally the bottom of the barrel when it came to strength, and as far as everything else, I was what you would consider your average show. Why was I was I still? still here. Maybe it was God. He came and took all of the good people. And now only the douchebags

were left over. And apparently, I was considered to be one of those douchebags. Was I really that bad of a person? I mean, I've never stolen or killed, which I think are probably the worst things you could ever do. I consider myself to be an all right person. So why was I counted as one of the baddies? Maybe this was punishment for something If so, what And how should I reflect on it To get out of this situation I dug the ends of my palms

Into the back of my eyelids And I felt them watering Why didn't I go with the rest of the world What did I do Then I heard something besides my own crying Off in the far distance It sounded like music I quickly wiped my eyes

and ran back to my window. I looked out of it, searching for anything. But once again, nothing was moving. I didn't even see birds flying. Everything looked so desolate. I could still hear the music off in the distance. So I grabbed my work bag for some reason,

and ran out of the apartment. I ran down the stairs and towards the ominous sounds of the chiming music. I ran and ran. As I got closer and realised it was ice cream truck music, there I found it laying in all its glory. A white van with happy faces, an acutely decorated ice cream truck. Sitting there, with the music playing, as though someone was inside of it. I ran up to it and knocked on the side of the truck.

I heard no discrepancies from the music, no movement in the truck. I yelled but nothing happened. A strange creeping feeling of being watched came over me once again. I stopped and looked around me. I quickly ran over towards an alley and hid behind a dumpster, watching the truck to see if anyone else heard it and will come out to check the sound. Then something terrifying and unimaginable happened.

The ice cream truck moved by a few centimetre metres. And then, just as if I were inside of a game, it glitched further down the street, music and all. I jumped back and fell onto the disgusting ground. I started to feel a tiny heart attack taking place. I tried to breathe easily and controlled, but no matter what I did, it still came out ragged sounding. I got up very slowly from the ground. I looked at the truck, still playing ominous music. further down the road. My heart was slowly coming back down from panic mode.

When I saw the form of a woman glitch in and out of reality, she looked like she would have been walking on the sidewalk towards me. I ran away as fast as I could with my stuffy breathing and jumping heart. I didn't stop until I found somewhere away from whatever I had just witnessed. I looked down to see I was standing on a very lightly veiled line. line. I looked really closely and saw that it led to a door-knob of a restaurant. Just then I saw the line disappear, and the door glitch open and then closed. This happened in what I would consider to be a blink of an eye. I felt my heart jump into my throat again, and I started running again. I didn't know where

I was going anymore, just away. Maybe if I found another city or town, it wouldn't be so terrifying. Maybe I could find actual people, a dog, a companion, anything. So there you have it. I got freaked out and ran as far away from the crazy. But what I didn't realize is that the crazy is everywhere I go. I haven't found anyone. No animals, no fish. The only companions I have are plants. I can watch movies and shows. I can even stream shows, but I feel like there is something huge here. I just don't understand what it is. The food in the markets and even restaurants are restocked as though there are people here. But where are they? I sometimes see glitching figures of people walking, doors opening, music playing and random things that make

no predetermined sense. Right now I am in someone else's home, but I have no idea where anyone is. I sleep, eat and do everything I normally do everywhere now. The whole world is mine, and I don't want it to be. I want to see my dad before he passes if he hasn't already. I want to hug my mum again. I wish, and I can't believe I'm saying this. I could yell at my roommate for having his music up too loud again. I want to pet my puppy, at least once again. I want my life back. I'm posting this in a random place in the world,

with no one else around for countries upon countries. And I'm asking, Do you think if I keep walking, I will eventually find someone? Or will I find the end of this hell and be released back into my world? Or should I stop here? Should I settle where I'm at and find companionship in the herbs and trees around me?

That's all we have time for this evening. Pleasant dreams. I'll see you next time.