October '24 Compilation: 42 True and Terrifying Reddit Stories
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Stay focused on what's important to you. With Noom's psychology and biology-based approach, sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. That's N-O-O-M dot com. A few years back, I was renting a house in Northern California. The neighborhood was just outside of the suburbs. It seemed like the perfect balance of having space and having nice neighbors close enough to not feel isolated. The area itself had no streetlights.

So, it was particularly dark at night, especially if there were clouds blocking the moon. It didn't bother me though, it made my little house feel even more quaint on those dark nights. I got home from work one day during the middle of winter. It was a cloudy evening, so pulling up to my house, I saw only what my headlights and front porch light illuminated. When I got out of my car, I caught a slight whiff of cigarette smoke. That was odd as I had never smelled that before around the house.

I didn't see anyone nearby, so I ignored it and made my way inside. I had just gotten off a shift with a few hours of overtime, so I was pretty tired. Even though it wasn't quite 7 o'clock yet, I decided to take a shower and call it a night. I woke up sometime a little bit later, sure that I had heard a noise coming from inside my house. I wasn't worried right away because a friend of mine would sometimes stop by to use my shower after work and on his way to his night classes.

I had even given him a spare key so that he could stop by even when I wasn't home. He would always text me to let me know beforehand though, and I hadn't heard my phone go off. I reached over to my bedside table and picked up my cell phone to see if my friend had sent me a text. The bright light from my phone's screen and number pad blinded me. These were the days before phones had a light sensor that would automatically dim the screen in the dark. And this specific phone was so bright that I could use it as a flashlight, through squinted eyes,

I could make out that it was 9 o'clock, but I couldn't tell if I had an unread text or not. I set my phone aside and called out my friend's name. There were a couple of seconds of silence before I heard loud footfalls as someone started running through the bottom floor of my house. I instantly leapt out of bed and ran to my closet. Whoever it was, was already up the stairs by the time I had opened the door and stepped inside. That house had three rooms upstairs, two bedrooms on either side of the hallway,

the one I was in, and a spare, and a bathroom at the end of the hallway. The bedroom doors were both closed, but the bathroom door was cracked open. I heard whoever was in my house thunder down the hallway, right past my door, and into the bathroom. Thank god they did. That gave me just enough time to open the attic access in the ceiling of my closet and hoist myself up. I had just started to lift myself up when the person ran back out of the bathroom. My feet were barely inside of the attic,

when my bedroom door burst open. I heard loud footsteps run into my room and abruptly stop. When they didn't see me, they ran back to the hallway and into the other room, which just had boxes stacked up in a corner, some weights, and a table where I painted my miniature models. I guess they decided that if someone were hiding, it would be in the bedroom because they charged right back into my room and flipped on the light. A moment later, the closet door was ripped open. I was crouched inside my attic,

just a foot or so away from the access, so I could try to stop them if they started to climb up. From my vantage point, all I could see was from their knee down. They were wearing dirty blue jeans with frayed cuffs and worn work boots. After a few seconds of looking through the closet, they stepped away and I heard a loud crash emanating from my room, followed by a pained scream of frustration and anger. That scream had to be the most unnerving part of the incident for me,

It reminded me far too much of my stepfather, who would scream in a similar way when he lost his temper. The man in my house then ran back down the stairs. I heard crashes and clatters as things were thrown around and furniture was knocked over. I stayed crouched in the attic, silent. I had accidentally left my cell phone when I ran for the closet, and I wasn't certain I could climb down without him hearing. After some time, the noises stopped, I started counting slowly, and when I reached 1000,

I decided that it was safe enough to climb down and call the police. The first thing that I noticed when I exited the closet was that the intruder had flipped my bed over, I assume in an attempt to find me. That was a loud noise that I had heard after he stepped away from the closet, and I couldn't find my cell phone. So I went to the landline by my bed and phoned 911. I waited in my room until I heard the authorities call out from downstairs. As I made my way down, I noticed that the first floor was a mess.

but I had expected that. Chairs had been knocked over, the sofa had been flipped, all the books, pictures, and knickknacks I had on my shelves were strewn across the floor. The cupboards in the kitchen had been opened and all the boxed and canned food had been thrown to the ground. As far as I could tell, the only thing missing was a single knife out of the wooden block in my kitchen. The police checked my house from top to bottom. They found that the side door had been forced open by something, likely a crowbar.

They also found a few cigarette butts along my fence line, along with some tin foil and an empty pen tube, which the police told me people often use when they're smoking meth. So they think that whoever this was had been watching my house for quite a while. I realized that he must have been out there smoking a cigarette when I got home. The police collected up the evidence and told me I should stay with family or friends that night and get that door fixed as soon as possible instead of leaving the house.

I just opted not to sleep. I moved a shelf over to block the broken door and spent the next couple hours cleaning things up. I would often go to the window with a flashlight and shine it along the fence line where the police found the cigarette butts and foil. But each time I did this, I didn't see a thing. The next day, I called to have the door fixed and motion lights installed at the back and sides of my house. I ran a phone cable up into the attic and added another landline. I never wanted to be stuck up there without a phone again.

Nothing else happened at that house though. I lived there another three years without any further incident. One more precaution that I took was practicing getting out of my bed, going to my closet, and climbing into the attic as quickly and as quietly as possible. I even kept at it when I moved, except now I go to a crawlspace at the back of the closet instead of up into the attic. I try not to think about what would have happened if I had been a bit slower getting to the attic.

or if he hadn't gone into the bathroom at the end of the hall first. I started reading the posts here recently and I realized that I had my own story that would fit in well. So here goes. I'm a 27 year old woman and this happened to me maybe 10 years ago when I was a senior in high school. My family and I lived in a pretty large house but at this time my siblings were all the way at college or boarding school so it was only me and my parents in the house.

I'm a crazy light sleeper, so when I woke up in the dark and saw my alarm clock flashing 3:11 AM, I wasn't too surprised. However, I was wide awake, not just groggily stirring in and out of sleep. I lay there wondering what had caused me to wake up when I heard a set of very soft footsteps on the stairs right outside of my bedroom door. The door to my room was parallel to the left side of my bed and I happened to be laying with my back to the door.

When the footsteps approached, I thought it must have been one of my parents checking on me for some reason. Then the doorknob was turned ever so slowly. Still, I thought they were just trying not to wake me. The door began to open again slowly and carefully. The heavy door itself made a creaking noise when you opened it, no matter how slowly or carefully you went. So whoever was behind the door finally just shoved it the rest of the way to silence the creak.

Still, my naive teenager brain thought that it was my parents, until whoever it was clicked on a flashlight. I froze, laying there as terror flooded me, and I remember that I instantly broke out in a sweat. They were behind me, I was facing away, so they couldn't see my eyes wide open as they shunned the beam straight onto me. I always used to think that if something like that ever happened, I would be such a badass, and I would whip out of bed, punch them, attack them.

shout and scream, do something, but I could do nothing at all. All I could do was try to keep my breathing deep and even, despite the pounding of my heart in my chest. That way the intruder wouldn't know that I was awake, when after about 10 seconds, they finally moved the light away. I prayed, begged, and bartered with anything that would listen to me as the intruder walked around my room, looking at my things. I could vaguely see their shape and shadow form,

move along my dimly lit wall. They were large and bulky, almost as if they were wearing multiple coats. They had a baseball cap on, they didn't shine the flashlight on me again, and after a few minutes, which of course felt like hours, they finally exited my room. I could still hear them though, walking around the rest of the second floor, through my siblings' empty bedrooms. I was still in a cold sweat, frozen and paralyzed in terror, just not knowing what to do.

I wanted to grab my phone and call my dad, who I know was sleeping downstairs. I wanted to call our landline so that the phone would fill the entire house with its ringing sound and undoubtedly wake both my parents up. I wanted to call the police. I wanted to get up and run for my room. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't bring myself to do any of those things. I was afraid that whoever it was in our house would hear me and I didn't know if they had a weapon and would try to hurt me or my parents.

I wouldn't wish the helpless feeling of terror that I felt that night on my worst enemy. I don't know how, but I must have passed out from fear or the adrenaline wore off because the next thing I knew, it was 6am and I could hear my parents downstairs. I basically ran down to our first floor and as calmly as I could, I asked them if one of them had been in my room last night. Their faces went blank and they said no, they hadn't. That was the last straw for me.

I broke down in sobs and told them, "Then someone was in my room last night. Even as I share this now, my hands have begun shaking and I've teared up." The police were called, even though there was little that they could do at that point. Apparently, when my parents woke up, all of the doors to the outside were standing wide open and there was a duffle bag at the bottom of our stairs. All that was inside was a coil of nylon rope and an empty USB flash drive. I don't want to think about what those items were for.

The intruder hadn't taken anything, and we have no idea why they left our house in what appeared to be a hurry. That, in and of itself, I find to be rather unsettling too. It took me about a week to be able to sleep in my own room again, a sanctuary which felt violated and frightening to me now. I carry pepper spray, sleep with a machete next to my bed, and double check each and every lock of my house every single night. Hopefully this will never happen again, but if it does...

then I hope I won't freeze. It's been a decade now, and my most common nightmare is that someone is in my room, standing in the shadows, just watching me. This story that I'd like to share came from when I was very young. I was probably no older than five or six at this time, so I don't remember a whole lot, and my parents have filled in the gaps for me. So I'm going to tell the whole version of the story, both my parts and my parents. We were living in an old farmhouse at the time,

My parents were pretty poor, so they rented from a landlord that owned a few small properties in the area. My dad worked in the local steel mill on the midnight shift, so he worked what I'd call odd hours. This is relevant because it might be the only reason that we're still alive and that I'm able to share this story today. In the middle of the night, we hear a crash right outside of our house. Then we hear frantic screams. Help! Help! He's going to get me! Somebody please help me!

We all jolted out of bed and were fully awake in an instant. I was sleeping in bed with my parents at the time because I had been having awful night terrors. I'm sure that a lot of us can remember those from being a child. My dad, who had actually just been switched from the midnight shift to days, jumped out of bed and cautiously made his way down the stairs, grabbing a stoking pick from the fireplace in the living room as he moved towards the door. He got to it and that's when he heard it again.

"Help! Oh my god, he's coming! Somebody help me!" It was a woman's voice on the other side of the door, and they began sobbing hysterically. "We have to help her! Open the door!" said my mom. My mother is an inherently good woman who always goes out of her way to help people every single chance that she gets. I'd say that it's one of her distinctive qualities that makes her the person that she is, but on this night, it was almost a fatal flaw. As she reached for the deadbolt, my dad stopped her.

He shot her a look and said cautiously through the door, "What's going on? Who's after you? Where are they?" The voice through the door responded, "I just need to get in before he gets here. Please, please." More sobs. My father turned on the porch light and said, "Stay on the porch with your back against the door." He then opened the deadbolt, but not the chain lock. He slipped a brick that we used as a doorstop through the crack. "Take this and use it to defend yourself if you need it."

I'll be right on the other side of this door, and if he comes after you, I'll be out there in an instant to help. But right now, I'm calling the police. They'll be here soon." This is when the woman started to absolutely lose her mind on us. She began slamming her entire body into the door in a mindless fury. "What the fuck's wrong with you? Let me in this goddamn house right now. What kind of fucking people are you?" My dad forced the door shut and clicked the deadbolt home once again.

That's when he phoned the police like he promised he would, and they arrived at our front door within 10 minutes. When they got there, the woman was simply gone. The doorstep brick was sitting on one of the porch steps. My parents gave a description of the events and the woman as best as they could. We tried our best to get some sleep in the following evenings, but mom and dad checked all of the locks and windows several times throughout the night, so even as a kid, I knew that something was amiss.

I don't remember understanding what had happened, but I remember thinking that my parents were acting strange and wondering why they didn't help this woman. I thought that the man snuck up on her and got her while we were calling the police, but it turns out that that wasn't the case at all. A few days later, we found out that the police had been called for a similar situation down the road. My dad's brother-in-law worked in law enforcement, and he told us that this time, the police had happened to have a car right down the street.

and arrived without using lights and sirens. The officers saw the woman that my parents had described at the front door of another house. When the cops got out of their car and began walking up to the woman, a man dashed away from the bushes on the side of the porch. They chased him down pretty quickly and recovered a long kitchen knife from the bushes where he had been hiding. The man and woman had been working together to try to gain entry to houses. The police surmised that the panicked woman would get people to open their door

let her in their homes, and then she'd let her partner in. God only knows what he would have done once he got inside. Once I heard this story and put it together with my memories of the event, it sent chills down my spine. Imagine what would have happened if my dad had been working the midnight shift, or if he had stayed asleep. He grew up in a particularly bad Indiana neighborhood, so he was always overly cautious about people around him. Growing up, I always found it mildly irritating, but this time,

I have no doubts that it likely saved our lives. This happened back when I was in college. I lived in Isla Vista, the student community at University of California Santa Barbara, a place notorious for being a party school. It fully lived up to its reputation. I liked to party, but holy sh*t, these people were off the wall. And as such, there were a lot of people who put themselves in dangerous situations: drinking to excess, not being careful,

not locking doors. It had a very isolated and insular vibe, and anyone who was hanging around who wasn't college-aged immediately looked out of place and strange. One night, after having a few drinks, I came home to my small house where I lived with two other girl roommates, no later than 2:30 AM. We were all the serious student types, I was likely the least serious of the bunch, and when we partied, it was not your typical UCSB mega rager.

More like a small get together with friends. We would often have a few people spend the night sleeping on our couch or in our beds, as the case may be. That night, my roommates had had a few people over who I didn't know, and I saw when I returned home that one of them had opted to sleep on the couch from the shadow that I saw there. I say shadow because I didn't turn the light on. I didn't want to wake anyone up, but as I was passing by the couch to enter my bedroom,

I noticed that the figure was lying very stiff. He had this weird energy to him. He was lying down, but it was like he was putting all of his energy into lying as still and rigid as possible. I paused, and that's when the guy quickly jerked his head to face me without moving any of his limbs. He did this so quickly that it startled me, and I could see his wide open eyes glinting in the darkness, figuring that I'd maybe startled him or that he was drunk.

or maybe even on some kind of stimulant and unable to sleep. I just hurried past him into my bedroom before locking the door behind me. The dude made me nervous, and I wasn't taking any chances. I quickly settled into bed and fell asleep myself. At 4:30 a.m., I woke up. There was a strange sound at the door, almost like somebody was drumming their fingers against the wood very quietly. I lay still and listened.

There were more quiet sounds like someone scratching the door with their fingers, which got louder and louder until it was clear that he was using both hands and scratching as fast and as hard as possible. It created an extremely loud and intimidating sound that filled me with fear. That's when I got my cell phone out, texted my roommate because I was afraid to make a sound. Hey, your friend's freaking me out. Is he coked out or something? Can you talk to him? He's banging on my door. She didn't text back.

likely because she was asleep. I texted my other roommate to the same effect, covering all my bases. Keep in mind that the scratching had been going on at this point for a couple of minutes now. I have no idea how he could have sustained it. Scratching a wooden door with your fingernails can't feel good. He had also grabbed at the knob and jiggled it super forcefully at times. Because neither of my roommates had answered, I decided to call and really wake them up, though I was scared to make a sound.

I know it sounds stupid, but there was something seriously horrifying about being teased through the door like this. I knew that he was trying to terrify me. I felt like a child, but I could tell that this guy was messed up or something, and maybe the police needed to be called, and I wanted to loop my roommates in, since it was one of their friends that was likely to have the cops called on them. The scratching stopped abruptly, and I called my roommate, who answered sleepily, "'Yo, your friend is messed up. Can you please deal with it?'

Like, do I need to call the cops? He's seriously scaring me, and he was scratching at my bedroom door. It's really f*cking weird." She didn't say anything for several seconds, and when she did speak, her voice had no sleepiness in it at all. "What friend?" she said. "That guy that was sleeping on the couch," was my reply. She went quiet again. "We didn't have any guys over though," she said, quickly cutting herself off with a statement. "Call the police."

My adrenaline surged and I told her to lock her bedroom door as quick as possible. I realized that I hadn't heard scratching in a while and I had no clue where the dude had gone. Suddenly, I heard a loud banging at the other end of the house where my roommates, Lauren and Monica, shared a bedroom. The bangs were followed by the sound of them screaming in fear. I quickly dialed the police as this maniac proceeded to bang against the locked bedroom door of my two roommates as they screamed for their lives. The heaviness of the blows left no doubt

that he was trying to break the door down. I told the 911 operator the situation and she dispatched two squad cars. The police in Isla Vista are generally used to peeling drunks off the sidewalk and breaking up brawling frat bros. This was really serious and strange and I think the dispatcher got the sense from my tone of just how terrified I was. She stayed on the phone with me. At one point, the banging stopped and everything went quiet for a while. I spoke with the dispatcher

and suddenly looked down to see that this guy had slipped his fingers through the 1 inch gap between my door and the floor. The whole time, just waggling his fingers around, making this weird growling sound as he did. I screamed and backed away, which is my biggest regret about this entire situation, since when I look back, it would have been so awesome to just stomp the shit out of those fingers just to hear the guy howl in pain. When the cops rolled up, I heard the sound of running through the house,

And then, our sliding glass door opening and shutting. And just as quickly as it all began, the man was gone. The cops never did catch him. Apparently, he had broken in through our side door by jimmying the lock somehow. My door was covered in what turned out to be huge gouges. Gouges he'd made using a pair of scissors, which he had discarded on the ground before he left. What terrifies me the most about this entire situation was that I had walked right past him. I looked him dead in the face.

I realize now that he wasn't trying to sleep, nor was he on drugs, but was lying so still like that because he was attempting to hide. He probably heard me open the door and freaked out because he hadn't realized there was another girl living there and then tried to blend into the couch under the cover of darkness. They say college is a time for new and first-time experiences, but I'd be content living my entire life without experiencing anything like this ever again.

I'm going to preface this by saying this isn't my story, but it's that of my grandparents. One that they've reluctantly shared with the family that simply horrified all of us upon hearing it. The year was 1978, well before I was born, so some of the details may be a bit off. One night, my grandparents were hosting a huge party. Neighbors, co-workers, friends, all came and the party went on late into the evening.

Two of the guests, a husband and wife who lived right down the block from my grandparents, decided to leave early as they were planning on having people over the next day to celebrate the wife's upcoming birthday. The couple says goodbye to everyone at the party, heads out the door, and the party continues. Well, the next day, family of this couple shows up for the planned celebration only to find their loved ones deceased, shot multiple times, and the commission of a brutal home invasion.

Obviously, their family and the entire neighborhood were completely devastated and at the same time terrified by this macabre discovery. Months later, their murder is linked to several others that have occurred throughout the year in which the victims were all shot with a .22 caliber pistol. And fortunately, one of the creeps committing these crimes wasn't very bright, eventually getting himself caught and arrested while attempting to use their last victim's credit card. An investigation ensues

and two men, who happen to be brothers, confess to the crimes and are charged with the murder of my grandparents' neighbors as well as eight other people. Now, that story alone is terrifying, but the creepiest part for me is what my grandparents learned while attending the trial of these two disgusting individuals. They confessed that my grandparents, not the neighbors, were their intended target that night, having the largest and most secluded home in the neighborhood.

The brothers had been to my grandparents' house previously, had watched them, and decided to come back that night to carry out their plan, not expecting them to be having a party. Those two guys stood outside my grandparents' home, watching and waiting for everyone to leave. Apparently they got tired of this and seized their opportunity when they saw my grandparents' neighbors leaving the party early and heading home on foot. They decided to follow them instead. There could be no better ending to this devastating story than those two creeps rotting in jail

and I'm happy to relay that that's exactly what happened to them. For anyone hearing this and thinking that this must be sensationalized, exaggerated, or completely made up, I implore you to look up "Thad and Gary Lewington". You tell me if I'm making it up. Alright, a bit of background before getting this stuff going. At the time of this story, I was 18, I'm female, and it was the first few weeks in college.

I had moved hours away from my hometown in order to get some space from my family and actually do something I wanted to do. I'm not sure if this is the same for every college out there, but the first few weeks, people seem to be scrambling for friends and are super outgoing. I was like that as well. In my major, I had made a few friends, especially this one girl named Kelsey. She was pretty, tall, and we were very similar in what we liked as far as hobbies and interests.

So, when she invited me to a house party that a guy friend of hers was throwing a few weeks into the semester, I immediately said yes. I'd been drinking since I was 15, I knew all the good drinking games, and in general, I'm a very fun drunk to be around. At least, that's what I was told. Now, this is summertime in the Midwest, so we're talking 90+ degrees, not including the humidity. I showed up at this house party in shorts and a tank top.

I hadn't really done anything special to my makeup or hair because, honestly, in this weather, why bother? It would have legit just melted off my face anyway. Why I'm telling you this much detail is important. I promise that for later. So right away, I'm not super into the scene. It's a four bedroom, two bathroom, two story house in one of the rougher neighborhoods in the large town that we're in. The music was so loud and the old windows were rattling so hard that the house was practically bursting.

I was about to nope the F out when Kelsey appeared and grabbed my wrist. She was super excited to see me and pulled me inside, claiming that we had next at beer pong. Inside the house was literally like an oven, no windows open, and the AC obviously off. Just the front and back doors wide open to let the non-existent breeze through. I decided, whatever, I was going to have some fun here and then leave kind of early to get home in time to shower before passing out.

Everyone was sweating, dancing to the music, and drinking lukewarm beer. It was pretty horrible if we're going to be honest about it, but as a college kid, I could deal. Beer was free for girls, so I drank for nothing that night. It began getting kind of creepy a few hours into the party. I would guess at around midnight, there had been this tall, thin guy that had been hovering, and I thought that he was Kelsey's friend because she grew up in the same town that our college was in. He had dark hair, cut short,

dark eyes, this nervous smile, and a ratty white shirt with dark basketball shorts. It pretty much blended in with half the guys there. After dominating in beer pong for a solid hour, we were eventually defeated, so I excused myself to go outside and cool off for a bit. Kelsey said that she would join me after a quick bathroom break. Outside was still horribly hot, but much better than being inside, surrounded by BO and warm bodies.

I recognized a few people from earlier beer pong games and the campus, but no one I really cared to talk to. I turned around to watch for Kelsey when I almost ran into the guy. He was way taller up close, I would guess around 6'4", and he smelled like weed, beer, and body odor. I stepped back and looked up to chew him out. That awkward smile was affixed to his face as his eyes were glued to my chest. "Excuse me, can I help you?" I snipped at him with hand on hip.

"Did you get all pretty for me?" he asked, his voice much deeper than I thought it would be. As stated before, no makeup, hair half pulled up to keep my neck cool, and just wearing casual clothes. I didn't look hot, pretty, any of that. I was there to drink and hang out with a female friend. "Uh, what? Was that a bad pick-up line? I've been watching you all night." "Yeah," I said and went to take another step back. I noticed. "Are you looking for Kelsey?"

He looked confused. "Who's Kelsey?" "I don't know a Kelsey." "Alright." Red flags going way up. "So you were legit watching me all night?" He nodded, the creepy grin coming back. "Dude, what the fuck?" He seemed genuinely surprised that I was upset. "Seriously man, you smell and are hella creepy. Just get away from me." I went to move away, and he grabbed my wrist tightly.

It hurt to the point that I winced, and he practically snarled at me. "Hey dude, what's up?" A random guy from the party had taken a few steps off the porch and was checking in. Just my girlfriend being mouthy, the string bean of an assaulter yelled back. He began to drag me down the road, literally dragging me so hard that my flip flops came off and my bare heels were scraping on asphalt. He was muttering to me the entire time how he was going to punish me, hurt me.

and do with me what he wanted until I behaved. He was livid. I grew up fighting with all six of my brothers and dealing with an abusive father. No way this human trash was going to scare me. I squirmed like an alligator on a line, spinning and screaming. He grabbed my hair, but all that did was make me more angry. So I bit him hard. I tasted blood and started punching at anything I could reach. His hand loosened on my hair.

So I reared my head back, spitting his own blood in his face. As he stumbled backward, he went to go hit me. I think maybe he did at one point, but with the anger and adrenaline coursing through me, it was like a light tap on my shoulder. I didn't feel a thing. Out of nowhere, Kelsey seemed to appear with the guy who had called out to check on us. Kelsey restrained me as I was flailing to claw at this man's face, and the guy went to go kneel on the creeper's chest so he wouldn't be able to get up.

The next few minutes were a blur. I remember my heart pounding so hard in my chest that it echoed in my ears. I was ushered back to the porch where someone got me water to clean out my mouth and a few paper towels. Apparently, I had a cut on my cheek and his blood was still on my chin. The guy who had jumped in to help ended up letting the creeper go. He got away and no one called the cops. I blame this, at least in part, on the fact that there was underage drinking going on at this party.

All of it was a stupid combination of dumb teenagers, booze, and adrenaline. Needless to say, I didn't hang out with Kelsey again because she turned out to be the worst kind of person. She told me it was my fault for walking out with him, and I had probably done something to lead him on. I found out later that the kid who tried to take me was named Jordan, and while at one point he did attend the same college, he had dropped out after a few months due to not attending. Funny and ironic twist to all of this is

A few years back, I was looking around on Facebook and one of the suggested friends was Kelsey. She was, shockingly, in a relationship with Jordan and they were expecting their second kid. A few people had told me over the years that she had gotten into some hard drugs and gotten together with a total loser. So, that's fun. She's contacted me a few times, trying to explain why Jordan acted the way that he did and also trying to defend her baby daddy to me. No thanks.

So, in short, Creepy Jordan who tried to do whatever he wanted to me and s**t friend of the year Kelsey, let's never meet again. Disappearances often leave us with more questions than answers. The mystery of a person vanishing without a trace haunts their families, their communities, and even the investigators who search for them. Such is the case of Jason Jolkowski, a 19-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska who disappeared in 2001.

Unlike many other missing person cases, there was no sign of struggle, no evidence of foul play, and no leads. Jason simply walked out of his home one morning and was never seen again, a fact that still baffles his friends, family, and the community that surrounded him. It was June 13th, 2001, just a regular Wednesday in Omaha, Nebraska. Jason Jolkowski, a shy but friendly young man, was scheduled to work his shift at a local restaurant that day.

His car was in the shop, so he arranged for a coworker to pick him up and drive him to work. The plan was simple: Jason would walk to Benson High School, just eight blocks away from his home, where his coworker would meet him. This was around 10:45 in the morning. It seemed like a routine walk through a familiar neighborhood, but Jason never made it to the school. Walking out the door that morning was the last time that anyone would see him. What makes Jason's disappearance so strange is that he vanished in broad daylight.

in a residential neighborhood with seemingly no witnesses, no commotion, and no trace of what happened to him. In fact, less than 30 minutes before he disappeared, Jason was spotted by a neighbor taking out the trash at his family's home. This was a confirmed sighting, meaning that the last time anyone definitively laid eyes on Jason, he was just at the edge of his family's driveway. Jason wasn't known to be reckless or someone who would take unnecessary risks. At only 19, he was described as responsible

quiet, and introverted. A guy who was happy to spend his free time on the computer or working on a future career in radio broadcasting. Jason also had no known enemies, no ties to criminal activity, and wasn't involved in drugs or alcohol. The most unsettling part is that in the hours and days that followed his disappearance, there was no evidence to indicate where Jason went. No items of his were found, no signs of a struggle, and no witnesses who saw anything suspicious.

He simply disappeared on what should have been a routine walk in a safe and quiet neighborhood. The police initially thought that Jason might have run away, but his family quickly dismissed that theory. Jason didn't take any personal items with him, including his wallet or his keys, and there was no indication that he was unhappy or planning to leave. In fact, Jason had a paycheck waiting for him at his job, something that he wouldn't have left behind if he were indeed planning on running away. What's even stranger

is the distance. The walk to Benson High School was less than a mile from his front door, and it should have only taken Jason about 10 minutes to traverse. Investigators believe something must have happened to him during that very short window of time. But what? There's no evidence to suggest that he was abducted or that anyone had followed him. As with most missing persons cases, several theories have emerged over the years about what happened to Jason Jolkowski, though none have ever been proven.

One of the most widely believed theories is that Jason was abducted during his walk to the school, although there's no direct evidence of this. The fact that he disappeared in broad daylight within a span of only minutes with no signs of struggle suggests that someone may have taken him quickly and quietly. But how could someone pull off such an abduction in a residential neighborhood without anyone noticing? And why would someone target Jason, a quiet young man with no enemies?

Another theory is that Jason may have encountered someone he knew and something went terribly wrong. But again, this raises more questions than answers. Jason had a close-knit group of friends and family, and none of them had any issues with him, nor did they report seeing him that day. There's also the possibility that Jason suffered some kind of medical emergency or accident. However, extensive searches of the area, including nearby parks, wooded areas, and vacant buildings,

turned up no evidence of Jason or his belongings. Additionally, Jason had no known health issues that might have led to a sudden medical emergency. Finally, some have speculated that Jason's disappearance might be linked to human trafficking or organized crime, though any evidence to support this is negligible at best. Investigators have kept an open mind, but none of these theories have led to any real breakthroughs in the case. Over the 23 years since he disappeared,

One of the most frustrating aspects of Jason's case is the lack of physical evidence. Investigators have described the case as a black hole. There are no witnesses, no leads, no suspicious sightings, and no evidence left behind. Jason's bank account was never touched, and his cell phone showed no unusual activity leading up to his disappearance. It's as if Jason simply vanished into thin air.

Jason's family has been devastated by his disappearance. His mother, Kelly, became a vocal advocate for missing persons after her son vanished. She started Project Jason, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping families of missing people. The organization works to raise awareness, provide support, and advocate for stronger laws regarding missing persons cases. Kelly and her family have continued searching for answers, holding out hope,

that one day they'll find out what happened to Jason. Jason Jolkowski's case remains unsolved, and after more than two decades, the family is still desperate for answers. If you have any information regarding Jason's disappearance, even if it seems insignificant, please contact the Omaha Police Department at 402-444-5818 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.

Every tip matters, no matter how small it may seem. Life can change in an instant. In some cases, it's a wrong turn or an unexpected moment that sends someone down a path from which they never return. This may be what took place in the bizarre disappearance of Rico Harris, a former basketball player whose life took an unexpected turn when he vanished in October of 2014. What makes this case so strange? The clues left seem to lead nowhere.

And despite a brief trail of evidence, Rico hasn't been seen in almost 10 years. And as investigators continue to work on his case, plenty of mysteries remain. Rico Omar Harris was 37 years old when he disappeared. He was once a promising basketball star, a player with all the potential in the world. Harris stood a staggering 6 feet 9 inches tall and played for the prestigious Harlem Globetrotters for a very short time.

But Rico's basketball career was derailed by struggles with alcohol addiction and personal issues. After years of battling his demons, he seemed to be on the verge of a new chapter in his life. In 2014, Rico was living in Alhambra, California with his girlfriend Jennifer Song. He had just moved in with her and was looking for a fresh start. Rico had plans to work in security and was focused on rebuilding his life. However, things took a strange turn in October of that year.

On October 9th, 2014, Rico left Alhambra for a solo road trip to visit his family in Seattle, Washington. He called Jennifer along the way, giving no indication that anything was amiss. His drive seemed ordinary, and there was nothing unusual in his behavior. But the very next day, Rico's mother received a concerning phone call from her son. Rico told her that he was in the mountains and feeling disoriented. She urged him to pull over and rest, not knowing that that call

would ultimately be the last time that anyone would speak to Rico. Hours later, Rico's car was found abandoned on a remote stretch of Highway 16 in Yolo County, California, near the small town of Cache Creek. His black Nissan Maxima was parked in a turnout with his wallet, phone, and a few personal belongings left inside the vehicle. At the point of discovery, the car had a dead battery and it appeared that Rico had left on foot.

But this is where the mystery begins to deepen. Search teams, including helicopters and scent-tracking dogs, were deployed to find Rico, but their efforts yielded little. For a brief period, it seemed like they were on the right track. Rico's footprints were found leading into the surrounding woods, but they abruptly stopped. The trail seemingly went cold. No more prints, and no more signs of where Rico could have gone. In the days that followed, there were a few strange developments.

Rico's phone pinged a cell tower 70 miles away from where his car was found, suggesting he might have traveled further north. And on the evening of October 10th, a witness reported seeing a man matching Rico's description walking alongside a rural road in the area, although that sighting was never confirmed. Theories about Rico Harris' disappearance range from the plausible to the downright bizarre.

One of the leading theories is that Rico might have succumbed to the elements or suffered a medical emergency. The area where his car was found is remote with rugged terrain and dense forests around. If Rico wandered too far into the wilderness, he could have become lost or gotten injured. However, multiple search teams scoured the area and no trace of Rico or his belongings were ever found. This theory is plausible, but the complete lack of evidence

cast doubt upon it. Another theory is that Rico may have had a mental health crisis and chosen to disappear. His family revealed that Rico had a history of battling depression and the stress of his career struggles and personal life may have pushed him to a breaking point. Some believe that Rico may have intentionally walked away from his life, but this raises even more questions. If that's the case, why hasn't he been spotted anywhere since? Rico, a man standing at a towering six foot nine,

was not someone who could easily blend into a crowd. A more unsettling theory is that Rico may have met with foul play. The rural area where his car was found is isolated, making it difficult for anyone to stumble upon him. But the fact that his wallet and phone were left behind suggests he may not have been planning to leave for long. Did someone pick him up? Or was he coerced into leaving his vehicle? If foul play is involved, there's no evidence to suggest who might have been responsible.

Perhaps the strangest part of Rico's disappearance is just how little evidence there is. It's as if he vanished into thin air, his family remains adamant that he wouldn't have walked away from his life intentionally. Rico was excited about his future with Jennifer and had plans to settle down. Yet, as with so many missing person cases, the answers seem just out of reach. In the months and years since Rico vanished, there have been a few leads, but nothing concrete.

Despite extensive searches, no new evidence has ever emerged. The case has left investigators baffled and his family heartbroken. Rico's mother, Margaret Fernandez, continues to hold out hope that her son is still alive somewhere, waiting to be found. Rico's family has struggled to make sense of his disappearance. His mother has described the pain of not knowing as unbearable, and his girlfriend, Jennifer, has kept hope alive that Rico will one day walk back into her life.

It's a tragic reality that many families of missing persons face. The endless waiting, the lack of closure, and the ongoing questions that haunt their days and nights. Margaret Fernandez has worked to keep her son's story alive, speaking to the media and advocating for continued search efforts. But after nearly a decade, the case remains unsolved and the whereabouts of Rico Harris are still unknown. If you have any information about Rico Harris' disappearance,

please contact the Yolo County Sheriff's Office at 530-666-8282 or the National Missing Persons Hotline. Even the smallest detail could help bring answers to a family that has been left in the dark for far too long. Disappearing without a trace is an absolutely terrifying thought, one that has haunted the families of countless individuals who simply disappear without any explanation.

Some cases capture national headlines, while others remain in the shadows, unknown to the public, yet no less strange. That's the situation surrounding Zeb Gwynn, a young man who disappeared back in the year 2000, leaving a case filled with bizarre twists and eerie clues. More than 20 years later, Zeb's fate still remains a mystery. What happened to him, and why do the details of this case

seemed so unsettling. Zeb Wayne Quinn was 18 years old when he disappeared on January 2nd, 2000 from Asheville, North Carolina. He was described as a kind, quiet young man with no known enemies and no clear reason to vanish. Zeb worked at a local Walmart and was saving up to enroll in a local college. He had dreams, aspirations, and everything ahead of him until that fateful night when he was last seen.

On the night of January 2nd, Zeb had just finished a shift at Walmart when he made plans to meet a friend, Robert Jason Owens, to look at a car that Zeb was interested in buying. The two young men drove separate vehicles and were last seen together on surveillance footage at a gas station around 9:15 p.m. According to Owens, Zeb received a page while they were on their way to check out the car. After reading the message, Zeb appeared upset

and told Owens that he needed to cancel their plans. He asked Owens to follow him to a nearby restaurant parking lot so that he could make a phone call. After completing that phone call, Owens stated that Zeb then sped off in his car, leaving Owens behind. That was the last time anyone saw Zeb Quinn alive. The next day, when Zeb failed to show up for work, his mother grew concerned. Zeb was reliable and had never missed a shift without notifying someone. By the time Zeb was reported missing,

things had already started to take a strange turn. Two days after Zeb's disappearance, Robert Owens was involved in a mysterious accident. He showed up at a local hospital with fractured ribs and a head injury, claiming that he had been in a car crash. Oddly, there was no police report or evidence of a crash involving Owens. When asked if his injuries could be related to Zeb's disappearance, Owens was vague and claimed not to know what had happened to Zeb. But things didn't stop there.

On January 6th, Zeb's car was found abandoned in the parking lot of a local restaurant. The car appeared to have been intentionally staged. It had been left with the headlights on and a pair of lips drawn in lipstick on the rear windshield. A live Labrador puppy was found inside, along with several empty drink bottles and a jacket that didn't belong to Zeb. Even more bizarre, there was a hotel keycard in the car, though no one was ever able to determine which hotel it belonged to.

It was as if someone had carefully arranged the scene in order to confuse investigators. The clues left behind only deepened the mystery of Zeb Quinn's disappearance. Investigators were baffled by the seemingly staged nature of the car and the bizarre items found inside. The most troubling clue, however, came from Zeb's pager records. The page he had received on the night of his disappearance was traced to the home of a woman named Misty Taylor, someone that Zeb had been romantically interested in.

Misty was dating another man at the time, and it's possible Zeb's feelings for her were unreciprocated. When questioned, Misty denied knowing anything about Zeb's disappearance and claimed that she wasn't involved. The case grew colder with each passing day. As the time passed, rumors swirled about Zeb's fate. One theory was that Zeb may have been lured into a trap by someone close to him, possibly involving a jealous boyfriend or a romantic rivalry.

Robert Owens, who was the last person to see Zeb, remained a person of interest, though no concrete evidence linked him directly to Zeb's disappearance. Another theory involved the staged nature of Zeb's car. Some speculated that the items found inside, including the puppy, were left as a diversion or a message meant for someone involved in Zeb's life. But if that were true, what was the message? Investigators couldn't find any clear motive for foul play,

Nor could they explain Zeb's sudden decision to abandon his plans with Owens that night. The clues were odd, but none of them led to answers that Zeb's family so desperately needed. In 2015, 15 years after Zeb's disappearance, there was finally a break in the case. Robert Jason Owens, the same man who had been with Zeb the night that he vanished, was arrested for the murder of a local couple, JT Codd and his wife Christy, who had been reported missing in March of that year.

Owens had worked as a handyman for the couple, and his arrest shocked the community. During Owens' trial, investigators began to re-examine his potential involvement in Zeb Quinn's disappearance. A very brief aside from this story, I want to give a little insight into what went into the creation of this content. I originally began researching this case as a bizarre, unsolved disappearance, but over the course of dissecting it, I can let you know that there has been a resolution to this story.

As tragic as it may be, this is something that I happened to discover after recording this episode. However, I feel like presenting you with this update is much more fitting than our originally planned conclusion. In 2022, after being found guilty for murder in the case of the missing couple, Robert Jason Owens took a plea for playing a role in the murder of Zeb Quinn. However, Owens stopped short of claiming responsibility for taking Quinn's life.

Instead, Owens laid the blame at the feet of a deceased family member of his, stating that on the night that Quinn allegedly went missing, Owens' uncle shot Zeb Quinn in the back of the head before enlisting Robert Owens to assist in the disposal of the body. Owens claimed that in order to do so, they burned both Zeb Quinn's body and his possessions at that time. Although, after telling authorities where this all took place, no remains of Zeb were ever found.

Robert Jason Owens was charged with accessory after the fact to the first-degree murder of Zeb Quinn. He was sentenced to 12 to 16 years to run concurrently with his sentence of 65 to 75 years for the other murders that he was involved in, what will effectively be a life sentence for him. While this puts the Zeb Quinn case to rest in a way, it leaves many other questions wide open, questions that we will likely never get the plain answers to.

Given Owens' loose relationship with telling the truth, I don't personally believe that there was anyone else involved in Zeb's demise. But due to the lack of physical evidence, the accused family member of Owens being deceased, and the prosecutors being unsure of how this would fare at trial, I understand why the plea was offered, though the closure that this offers doesn't encompass what really happened on the night of January 2nd, 2000, nor does it explain why Zeb's life was so callously snatched away.

What it does allow for is the Quinn family to grieve their lost son, brother, and grandchild properly, knowing that no matter what time passes or what further details emerge, that Zeb won't be walking back through their door, whether in part or in whole, because of the acts of an individual that will spend their remaining years behind bars. Hey everybody, if you'd like to directly support us as a channel, please consider joining our Patreon.

Your support allows me to dedicate more time and effort into creating the content that you enjoy. And by becoming a patron, you'll be able to interact with me directly, be listed within our content as a backer, assist with content creation, and even gain early access to all of our upcoming releases. Find me at patreon.com/malevolentmischief or simply click the link in the description. Now, let's get back to the stories. I live in Florida,

And this incident happened about three weeks after Hurricane Irma, back in 2017. In July of that year, the ex and I had just finalized a divorce, and I moved into a gated neighborhood where every house was rented out by the same rental company/landlords. It's a very small neighborhood, with about 15 houses tops. All 15 houses are bordered around a man-made lake with the backyards facing the lake. No one really has a fenced backyard.

When you walk out your back door, you see the lake in front of you and your neighbor's backyards on either side of you. Everyone in the neighborhood seemed very close. Someone was always hosting a family-friendly party or barbecue or having people over to watch sports. I was still depressed about my divorce, so I never partook in any of these social gatherings. The only person I got to know was my next-door neighbor, Steve, an active Navy soldier with a huge love for guns.

Steve is an absolutely awesome guy, and this story only serves to reinforce that idea. My daughter Alice is four years old, and I get her every weekend. Alice's bedroom window faces the backyard towards the lake. I do my best to spoil that girl to death. She truly is my everything, and I count down the days to the weekend every week just to be with her. That's why I was so upset when Irma came, and I had to go almost three weekends without seeing her.

The weekend before the storm, she was with her mom. Then, obviously, the weekend of the storm, she was with her mom. Then, on top of that, the weekend after, she had to be with her mom because my power was still out. No lights and AC in Florida is miserable. The humidity was so bad that week that I slept in my daughter's room the whole entire week because she has the only room with a window that faces the lake. I open the window, exposing just the window screen.

so the breeze from the lake could cool the room as much as possible while I slept. Eventually, the power returns and Alice starts visiting me again like normal. That was when the nightmare started. My daughter would complain about the "singing lady" and how she doesn't like her anymore. I thought maybe she was referring to one of my ex's friends or one of the teachers at her school. Maybe there was an educator there that sang to the kids that she didn't like. That Saturday night, Alice woke up in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder.

I ran into her room and turned on the light, only to find her hiding underneath the covers. I asked her what was wrong, and all she could do was point to an empty corner of her room, saying, "Look! Look!" But there was nothing there. She was acting as if she saw a ghost, and after I calmed her down, she started to talk about the singing lady once more. "Daddy, please tell the singing lady not to come back. Just make her go away." I showed her that there was nothing in the closet, nothing under her bed.

and that there was nothing to be afraid of. She calmed down and went back to sleep. I returned to my room and quickly fell asleep myself, but it couldn't have been more than 20 minutes before Alice comes running into my room screaming, "She's back! She's back!" Alice absolutely refused to go back to her room, so I let her sleep with me. The next morning, Sunday morning, I took Alice out to breakfast, and we stopped by Target to pick up a baby monitor. I haven't used one since her mom and I were still married,

but I wanted to easily be able to hear her if and when she started having these nightmares again. That way I could respond quicker. After I set them up, I showed Alice how they worked to give her assurance that I could hear her and that she was safe. That night, she slept soundly and didn't make a peep. The following weekend, Alice had to stay with her mother again because she had caught a stomach virus from one of her friends at school. It was Saturday night, and I was sound asleep in my bed when around 2 a.m. is when I heard it.

It was a woman's voice humming a soft nursery rhyme through the baby monitor. The humming got louder and clearer as the voice got closer to the monitor. I wasn't dreaming it. I could hear a woman softly singing lullabies in my daughter's bedroom. I had never been so scared and dumbfounded in my life. I was feeling a mixture of pure terror coupled with disbelief. Then the voice spoke out. "Alice? Sweetie? Are you awake?"

Adrenaline shot through my veins. I jumped out of bed, locked my bedroom door. I instinctively grabbed my cell and called Steve from next door. He didn't waste a second. As soon as I was off the phone with him, I heard him storm out of his back door, screaming, "Don't you f*cking move." I ran outside and found him aiming a shotgun at a woman crouched outside my daughter's window, the one that I had left open after Irma and never closed. Steve quickly dropped his guard when he recognized the woman. It was Jean.

who happened to be the neighborhood maintenance woman. Steve's wife came running out after him and confirmed that it was indeed Jean, but the woman crouched in my yard, played dumb. She said she wasn't singing and that she didn't even know my daughter's name. She said she was near my daughter's window because she was doing her weekly patrol for gators and thought she saw one approach our house from the lake. I call bullsh- That b*tch was singing and she called out to my daughter by name. Now, yeah, it's true there have been a few gator spottings around the neighborhood,

And yeah, part of Jean's job was to patrol the lake at night, every now and again. But at 2am? I obviously knew that it was a lie, and even though neither Steve nor his wife called her out on it, I could tell from the looks on their faces that they didn't believe her either. The next morning, I went over to Steve's house to thank him and tell him exactly what had happened. He told me Jean and her husband have been known to be a little cuckoo, but this is by far the craziest thing to happen so far.

Steve helped me to install metal bars on Alice's window that afternoon. I then logged a complaint with her HOA about Jean's behavior, and funny enough, I think she was let go shortly thereafter. Which is great, because I'm not so sure that I could have maintained my composure around that woman if I ever saw her again. It's one thing for someone to attempt to harass me, a fully grown adult man, but the thought of doing it to my daughter makes me see red. A part of me feels like, "Had I seen Jean again?"

it wouldn't have been good for either one of us. I'm a 28 year old guy and I live in a state in the middle of the US that most of you would likely refer to as a flyover state. And to be honest, I wouldn't blame you one bit. It's hot, flat, and far from exciting. If I didn't grow up here, I would have left long, long ago. But amidst the bleak, I found something that I enjoy doing out here during the spring to fall months. I've been growing cannabis in my backyard for a few years now,

It's not a big operation by any means, just a handful of plants, enough for my own use and to share with a couple of close friends. I live in a fairly rural and secluded area, so I figured it was safe, and for years, it was. The plants thrived under the sun, and I got pretty good at taking care of them. Harvest time always felt like a personal victory, but all that changed last year, when my quiet hobby turned into a nightmare.

It was late September, and my plants were looking better than ever. Tall, thick stalks, healthy leaves, and the buds were just about ready to harvest. I was proud, as usual, but I guess I wasn't the only one who noticed how amazing my little garden was doing. One night, just as I was getting ready for bed, I heard something strange outside. My backyard isn't easily visible from the street, but the rustling sound was unmistakable. Something was out there. I glanced at the clock.

2:34 AM, not exactly the time for casual visitors. At first, I thought it was a deer or some other animal messing with the plants. They've been known to rummage through gardens, so I grabbed a flashlight and went to the back door. As I stepped outside, I froze. The rustling was louder now, and through the dim light of the moon, I could see shadows moving by the plants. But they weren't animal shadows. It was very clearly people. There were two of them, crouched low.

their dark clothes blending into the night as they quietly tried to cut my plans. My heart pounded in my chest, adrenaline pumping. These weren't casual thieves, they were after my crop. I don't know what exactly possessed me but in that moment, all I could think about was protecting what was mine. I grabbed the closest thing I could find, a rusty old shovel propped against the wall and began to walk towards them, determined to scare them off. "Hey!" I shouted, my voice breaking the silence of the night.

The two figures jumped up in shock, and for a brief second, I thought they were going to bolt. But then, one of them stepped forward, as his face was covered by a mask, but his eyes were visible, and they were cold and mean. I didn't hear exactly what the cold-eyed guy said, but it was something to the effect of, you should have stayed inside, man. And it was in a tone that was low, and almost sounded amused. Before I could react, the second guy rushed me. I was winding up with a shovel, and I felt a sharp pain in my side.

It froze me, and when I looked down, I realized that he'd stabbed me. Everything just happened so fast. My legs buckled, and I fell to the ground, gasping for air. They didn't stop, though. They kicked me until I could barely move. My vision blurred, and the last thing I remember before blacking out was one of them laughing as they both dragged my plants away, leaving me bleeding in the dirt. When I came to, it was still dark out, but they were gone. I dragged myself inside, called 911.

and waited for what felt like an eternity for help to arrive. I spent a few days in the hospital, internal bleeding, cracked ribs, and a nasty stab wound. They said I was lucky to be alive, but I didn't feel lucky. I felt violated, humiliated, and angry. Those guys had come into my space, taken what was mine, and left me for dead. And worst of all, they got away with it. At least, that's how it seemed at the moment. The cops were utterly useless.

I mean, they took a report and all, but pretty much intimated that because I was doing something in a grey legal area in my state, that I had invited this upon myself. Also, due to there being no smoking gun or any real leads, they let me know that any investigation was likely not going to go anywhere. I felt like I had gotten kicked again with this, but I couldn't let it go. So, while I live in the boonies, I'm not so far off from the town closest to my house.

And that community is kind of like that TV show Cheers. No matter where you go, it seems like just about everybody knows your name. I also have a friend from town. We'll call him Jay, who I'll typically employ each October when I need help trimming and drying the year's haul. I've known Jay for years now, and I get to pay him in bud. So it always felt like a win-win. Jay has gotten to the point where he depends on the seasonal work in order to have greenery for the rest of the year. So when he heard that I had been beaten and wronged,

He was particularly bummed. A portion of that was because I'm sure that he cares about my well-being, but mainly it was because he knew that his connection for the year was dry. Well, kind of out of the blue in early October, I get a call from Jay. He tells me a story that has me wide-eyed with each detail he conveys. He says that he's been looking for bud around town and that one of his acquaintances connected him to a few guys that were selling and at a good price.

Jay had met up with them a few times for a couple of small pickups before the two guys began asking Jay if he was in the market for bulk. Jay's funds are limited, putting that lightly, but he's always looking for a deal, so he asked "how much?" referring to both price and quantity. The plugs let Jay know that they were trying to offload 2 pounds of outdoor and were willing to do it for cheap. It was while Jay was sitting there on their couch.

that one of the guys emerged from a back room with a garbage bag filled with bud. But the thing that stuck out to Jay the most was that the bud was untrimmed, still attached to the stalks, and even had a tag denoting the plant's strain halfway down the main stem. Jay told them that he couldn't afford the deal, but if anything changed, he would give them a call. However, when he left that house, he called me instead. He asked me what strains I had had in the yard this year when I rattled off purple this and cookies that.

He stopped me and said that was what the plant in the bag said on it. It was then that all thoughts of coincidence ceased to be in my mind. Jay had just solved the case, and that's when the gears in my head started to churn. Now, I'm not Rambo by any means. I'm not going to storm into a trap house and take anything by force, but I'm a poor sport. If I'm going to lose, I want everyone to lose too. After having Jay show me the house that he was in when all this happened,

I scoped it out one afternoon on my own. I did exactly what you see on TV shows. I parked down the street, slouched down, and just watched. During the hour that I was there, I saw several cars park, many people walk in, only to leave shortly thereafter all the earmarks of someone selling. Here's where I think that the cunning came into play. I knew that I couldn't call the cops and say, "Hey, I found the guys that stole my weed." That probably wouldn't fly.

And even if it did, I didn't like my chances of getting anyone out there to do anything about it. Instead, I called 911. I said that I was a neighbor, and I heard screams of a woman coming from that house. I told them that it sounded like someone was being murdered, that there were kids there, and just about anything else I could think, they would get a response from law enforcement. It didn't take long for two squad cars to show up at the house, and that's when I sat back, wishing I had popcorn for the show. Two officers went up to the door.

The other two went around the side of the house where the back gate was located. After they knocked on the door, it was almost like clockwork. Two sketchy looking guys came running out of the back gate at full speed. They knew the cops were at the front door, but they obviously weren't expecting the extra cops on their escape route. The look of shock was something I could see from several houses down, and before I knew it, they were on the ground in cuffs. In short order, the cops were inside the residence.

and while they didn't find any battered women or children, I know they found a few bags of the sticky green stuff, because they walked those out before too long as well. At that point, I felt like my job was done. I made my way home, cracked a beer, and sank into the couch feeling like I had just pulled off my own heist, only in reverse. The cops never reached out my way, never told me that they had caught the guys responsible for stabbing and robbing me. In fact, I'll never know if they ever put two and two together,

And while those guys may not go down for assaulting me, possession with intent is no slap on the wrist in my state. And if you have any record, it likely means going to sit down for 5-10 years minimum. They say crime doesn't pay, and that's something that I believe. They also say revenge is best served cold, although when it's served up hot and fresh, it's awfully delicious. One summer night, when I was around 5 years old and my sister was around the age of 8, I woke to hear through our open bedroom window

My parents yelling loudly on our back patio. This wasn't exactly a common occurrence, because when my parents fought, it wasn't typically anywhere that there was a chance of us kids hearing it. Although, this sort of thing may have happened from time to time. And though the situation was mildly unusual, me and my sister both shrugged it off, shut the window, and went back to sleep. We promptly forgot about the ordeal, and it wasn't until years later that we learned the truth behind the yelling.

As a young adult, I overheard my mother explaining the situation to a family member from another room. I'm still a little fuzzy on the details, as this all occurred a long time ago, but here's the gist of it. Apparently, at some point in the night after my sister and I had gone to bed, my parents received an unusual phone call from someone using an electronic interpreter, the same type of technology that a person whose death might use to make calls and communicate over the phone with.

I'm rather unsure how this technology works exactly, so please excuse my lack of knowledge on this topic. But understandably, my parents were a little surprised because we didn't know anyone who would use this service to contact us. Although, either way, they accepted the call. I'm not sure how the person on the other line introduced themselves, or if they even did at all, but they knew the full names of everyone in my family, which was immediately concerning and creepy.

The conversation began to escalate as the person on the other end of the phone very specifically explained what our house looked like and told my parents they were hiding somewhere in our backyard, a yard that was large, dark, and full of all kinds of plants and trees that made it hard to clearly see. There were too many places to hide, too many places to look, and at this point, the tormentor made it clear that they had intentions of entering our home and dismembering my sister and I. At that admission, and understandably so,

My parents were beginning to become frantic. There was a chance that nobody was out there at all and that this was just some kind of cruel joke, but that notion was not worth the risk of believing. My dad asked, "If they were really where they said they were, what were my parents doing at that very moment? What were they wearing?" And just like that, this infection of a human on the other side of the phone explained exactly what my father was doing, which was waving his middle finger in the air, told them exactly what they were wearing,

where certain things on our patio were placed, even the expression on my mom's face. My dad, a rough guy with a heart of gold, charged out into the night ready to kill any person he encountered. There were no cell phones at this time, so my mom took the house phone, which had finally been placed down by my dad when he ran out, and she called the police. As brave and as stupid as my dad was for venturing into the dark that night, he found nothing, and when cops showed up soon thereafter, they found nothing as well.

The police weren't able to trace the call because of the electronic interpreter, which they said was a common device used by people trying to anonymously harass other people over the phone. Given the time frame and the accuracy of recounting what my parents were doing, we eventually came to believe that one of our neighbors was to blame for this. We could never confirm it though, and when the cops made contact with the one we suspected, he just said how horrible it was that someone would say such things. He feigned ignorance in regards to the technology needed,

and even pretended to not even know us, his next-door neighbors. We never had any resolution to this, but we only ever received that one disturbing phone call, and our parents pretty much kept the details to themselves until my sister and I were much, much older. I remember little to nothing about the neighbor himself, so I can't tell you if he had those real creep vibes about him, but he lived alone, wore camo pants a lot, and I can't ever remember him greeting us kids anytime we saw him back then.

I know that crank calls can be fun and even a rite of passage for some of us that grew up during a certain time. But to take the time and effort to use a voice changer, threaten someone's kids, observe a family in unsettling detail, it really gives off the air of sociopath. I'm glad that it was only ever a phone call, but even hearing the full extent of the terror it caused years after the fact, it still makes my heart pound. A bit of preface here, I was around 10, maybe 11 years old when this happened.

Old enough to stay home alone, but not old enough to recognize some very obvious red flags. I attended camp over the summer, the typical 8-3 routine. My house sits close to the end of my street, which forms a U, but for some reason, the camp bus driver would never drop me off right at my house. I would always get dropped off at the end of my street, where I would toddle myself along back home. Both my parents work late hours, sometimes not getting home until 8 p.m.,

and it would have been very expensive to hire a babysitter for 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week. So, starting in the 6th grade, when the bus dropped me off at home, I would be all by myself. I'd do the usual middle school routine, play games online, watch TV. Occasionally, my neighbor's cat would come into my backyard, and I would feed and pet her as a way to stave off boredom and spend a little bit more time outside. The only computer in my house was in my dad's workroom,

which has a window overlooking the deck and a window overlooking the side of the house. We have large bay windows in the living room, dining room, and the kitchen of my house. And since we sat on a hill, you can pretty much see the entire backyard from a nice vantage point. So most days when I got home, I'd toss off my backpack and go right to that room, and you'd be able to see me walk from my front door and pop up by the computer from the outside. Unfortunately, this would lead to something that I had forgotten about

up until now. When I got off the bus this day, I did as expected, went into my dad's workroom and played computer games. About a half an hour into this, I can hear faint meowing coming from outside the window. I pause the game and look outside, thinking maybe my neighbor's cat had wandered over, but I didn't see anything. I sat back down and resumed playing, only to hear that meowing again moments later. It was a quiet sound, but noticeable, and so I checked the other window, but nothing again.

This routine happened for a good 10 minutes, and eventually I got frustrated and went into the living room to watch TV when not even two minutes later, meowing from the window I was sitting right beside. Now I was a bit more confused. Where there's meowing, you should see a cat, but there was none, so I shut the blinds and kept trying to watch TV. The meows continued, but only when they came from the window right behind me did I jump up and leave the living room, officially a bit skeeved out.

I went into my bedroom where the blinds were drawn but still cracked for some sunlight. I tried to read a book only to hear a meow come from outside my bedroom window. This was enough to make me call my dad, concerned that maybe the neighbor's cat was hurt but I couldn't see it to be sure. He said he would have the neighbor come check it out and call me back in a bit. Ten minutes go by and I get a call from my dad saying that he was on his way home from work. Nothing urgent in his voice, just that his job had gotten cancelled.

and that he could come home early for the day. I thought nothing of it, and only when he got home did I realize that the cat noises had stopped. Fast forward to the present day, and I asked my dad about this strange incident, thinking that it was funny that the cat had followed me around the house. But what he told me next is something right out of a nightmare. After I called him that day, the neighbor did indeed come to check on the house. What he found were large footprints, leading in circles all around the house.

clustered close to the walls so that even if I looked outside I wouldn't be able to see a thing. Someone had been stalking me through my house, seeing where I was through the windows and making cat noises to try and lure me outside. They must have known I was home alone since it was easy to see me walk by myself down the street only to let myself in my house. My neighbor immediately called my dad and searched our property yet found no one. The police were never called

since there was nothing but footprints that led off into the woods and eventually got lost. And like I said before, I never saw a soul. My dad stayed home with me for the rest of the week. It sickens me to know that there are people who would use these tactics to try to get kids out of their homes and then from there, do whatever they wanted with them. I have kids of my own now, one just about the age that I was when all of this took place. While I don't plan on ever leaving them home alone,

I also make sure that they're knowledgeable in all the areas that I wasn't when I was a kid. It's bad enough that I lived through something and had no idea just how close I was to something terrible happening. I want to ensure that the same thing never happens to my little ones. I'm going to share a story from my childhood, one of the ones that still gives me a good haunt to this day. Have you ever seen those memes where it says, people react like a criminal when an unexpected visitor arrives on their doorstep?

They freeze and drop everything they're doing, throw themselves to the floor just to avoid being seen through a window. This is my story of how I became one of those people. At the time, I must have been no older than eight. I was visiting the Midwest from South Korea where I was born and raised, and we were here just visiting family, nothing major. On this particular evening, the adults of the house, which consisted of our aunt and uncle and our parents, were going out to have a date night.

My parents had ordered us pizza before they left and waited for it to arrive. That way we wouldn't have to open the door for anyone. My aunt and uncle had two kids, two boys, and they were ages 15 and 8. Like I said before, I was just about 8 years old myself, my older sister was 11, and our baby brother was a young tender age of 3. So all in all, we're ready to have our own night of fun games.

After all, it wasn't often that cousins got to get together like this. They lived in the States. We lived in Korea. But we loved each other dearly. We saw our parents out the garage entryway, and they made sure that we knew the rules and we could recite them back to them. They also made sure that we knew where the telephones were, as well as the emergency numbers to accompany them. It was just going to be a typical night of no parents. At least, that's what we thought. It had been maybe an hour or two after our parents had left.

We were all downstairs in the basement playroom or game room or whatever people call it these days. We were down there watching movies, playing air hockey, things of that nature, pretty much just being kids. We weren't being overly loud or anything like that. And even if we were, it wouldn't have been too big of a deal because the way houses are in Kansas, the basements are built into the ground, just in case of tornadoes. I had gone upstairs with my eldest cousin because I wanted a drink of chocolate milk

and I couldn't reach the cups by myself, so we wandered upstairs into the kitchen, which was on the far end of the house. The other cousins stayed downstairs playing their games. We had maybe been upstairs for 10 to 15 minutes, because while I was drinking my milk, my cousin was making snacks, since we were planning on watching a movie. That's when, all of a sudden, we hear the doorbell ring. I remember my cousin looked at me and told me to stay where I was, because it was odd that somebody would be at the door.

I don't remember it being late, but it certainly wasn't early. My cousin started to creep towards the door quietly. It was unnerving for someone to be ringing the doorbell. We weren't expecting any guests, and pizza had already been delivered, so who could it be? Before my cousin's even halfway to the door, whoever's on the other side starts rapid fire ringing the doorbell over and over again, the ringing now echoing throughout the house. By this point, I had looked over toward the staircase.

and I saw my siblings and other cousins start to creep up the stairs with the exclusion of the baby who was still asleep in the crib down in the guest room. The eldest of the kids involved, let's call him James from here on out, put his finger to his lips and told us to be quiet, doing our best to pretend that nobody was home despite all the lights being on. He crept closer to the door as the banging and ringing on the doorbell continued and he peeked through the people. I had never seen my cousin look so freaked out

His face drained of color, and he slowly backed away from the door. He told us all to go downstairs, but of course, we didn't really listen. Honestly, we thought he was just playing a joke. Maybe it was some of his friends wanting to scare us, since he did cancel his plans that night to stay home and watch all of us. My older sister shoved past him and looked through the peephole herself, and for whatever reason, whatever was on the other side of the door caused her to have the same exact reaction as she stumbled back into the hallway.

just as pale. At the time, I didn't understand what was going on. I don't think any of us younger kids really did, but something wasn't right. After a while, I'm gonna guess another 15 or 20 minutes, whoever was at the door stopped ringing the doorbell and all was quiet again. It seemed like they gave up. Maybe they really bought that nobody was home. If only we knew how wrong we really were. We all sat in silence for a little while. My other cousin, I'm gonna call him Kyle for the purpose of this story,

mustered up the courage to ask his brother James who was at the door and why James and my sister were acting so weird. James told us that there was a man wearing dark clothes and he seemed to be carrying some type of package or large box, but they couldn't see his face. Of course, Kyle being the little smarty pants he was at the time, started to mock James, saying that he was just being a scaredy cat and maybe didn't recognize one of their neighbors.

Kyle was convinced that it was just a neighbor trying to drop off a package that may have gotten mixed up in the mail, seeing how this type of thing happened all the time. So we all agree that that was the probable cause, until we realized that whoever was ringing the doorbell didn't just leave the package on the porch. I mean, if you're delivering a package to the right house, you'd just leave it, right? But also, why would they try to bring it over to the house at night? Instead of just waiting until the next day, we thought that it was over and done with.

So we pushed it to the back of our minds. We didn't think it was important enough to call our parents and let them know what had happened. After all, it was over with. We went back to the kitchen, grabbed the snacks, and started to head back downstairs until we heard the banging again. But this time, it wasn't from the front porch. We were all in shock. We all froze in fear. I mean, now it was coming from right behind us. We turned slowly and looked back in the direction from which the sound came. We were currently standing in the dining room,

It was like someone was banging on the kitchen window, you know, the one that's typically above the sink, the one that your mother or father can watch the kids while they play in the backyard, while they wash the dishes. So James and my older sister, who we'll call Nicole at this point, got down on their hands and knees, and they crawled back into the kitchen, much against our advice. Just as quickly as they crawled into the kitchen to take a peek, they crawled back to us, almost in hyper speed, and they told us to get low and stay low,

as we all crawled into the den further down the hallway. James had us all huddle close to the fireplace, out of sight from all the windows. He told us to stay there. He was doing his best to take charge. He was protecting his house and family the best he knew how. James quickly crawled away. I didn't know where exactly he was going, but I was scared. The banging was getting louder, and he was getting closer and closer. At some point, I remember starting to cry. I remember Kyle putting his hand over my mouth,

and my sister hugging us all tight. Around that time, we saw James start to reappear back around the corner, and he had his baseball bat. He had crawled up another staircase to get to his room, just to grab his weapon. He crawled past us, putting a finger to his lips again, and that's when we realized that he was crawling towards the doggy door. He was attempting to close off the one entrance to the house that wasn't secured.

Thankfully, he managed to get it latched in time because we don't think the man outside had realized that the house even had a doggie door. But when he heard the lock click into place, the banging became more erratic, more violent. Then, all of a sudden, much like before, the banging just stopped, although he heard someone pacing back and forth across the porch. Slowly, deliberately, his heavy boots thundered across the red oak porch, and then, without warning again,

The pacing stopped. Everything was quiet now, eerily quiet. Then, to break the silence, we hear a man's voice call out, "Won't you open the door? I have a package for you." We didn't respond. We stayed as quiet as we could. "I'm sure you could have heard our ragged breath if you really tried." The stranger called out again, "Open the door." Again, we didn't answer. The man called out angrily, "I said, open the door." Like before, we didn't answer. Nor did we make any sudden movements.

That's when the banging began again, this time directly on the panel window of the room that we were sitting in. He was yelling, "I know you're in there. I know you can hear me. Open the door or I'll open it for you." Bang! Bang! The window rattled and shook violently with each impact from the strange man. Thankfully, our cousin's house had reinforced windows, so they weren't easy to break, but unluckily, we didn't have any neighbors close by.

so we didn't think anyone could hear any of the commotion that was happening. But while that man was making all this noise, we took the opportunity to book it into another room and get to a phone. At one point, while we were on the phone with police officers, they asked us if we could describe the man, and all we knew was that he was tall and wearing black. So Kyle and I decided to be brave, so if something did happen to us that night, they would at least have a better description of who did it. We crawl our way back into the den,

and we dared to look out the corner of the window. We gently moved the curtains out of the way, and lo and behold, the man was still banging. He had pretty much ripped the shutters off the outside of the window. They were basically hanging off their hinges, rattling with the wind. We made eye contact with the deranged man. Direct, soul-searching eye contact. I don't think before this night I had ever believed, but now I knew there is pure evil in this world, and when I looked into that man's eyes,

I didn't see that soul that I was searching for. I know it sounds crazy, but those weren't the eyes of a human. He was something unlike anything I've ever seen before. Animalistic might be the only word I could use to describe it, besides demonic. When he saw us, he smiled a twisted grin that I'm sure he thought was reassuring, but then he crouched down. That way he could get a better look at us. "Don't you want your mail? You have mail. I can give it to you if you open the door."

I remember grabbing onto Kyle's hand for dear life. Kyle shook his head no, threw the curtain back over the window, and before we even had a chance to move any further, the man started his tirade again. At this point, James had had enough. He passed the phone to my sister and yelled, Leave us alone! The police are already on their way and you're not getting in here. After that, it seemed like the man panicked and his banging abruptly stopped. We heard those same footsteps on the porch, but this time they were retreating.

Kyle and I peeked out the window again, and we saw the man running through the yard, through all the trees, before jumping the fence. The fence behind my cousin's house dumped into an alley that separated the neighborhood from the old cemetery. We stayed on the phone with police until they arrived, and our parents not long after that. But whoever that man was, was never caught, and we don't know what happened after that night. He just disappeared into thin air.

That's why even now, at the ripe age of 21, whenever the doorbell rings and I'm not expecting a visitor, my heart drops and I break out in a cold sweat. I don't know what mail that man had that night, but I'm glad to never find out. I originally shared this story in a different sub, but was told that it might fit in better here. My bedroom has floor-to-ceiling windows which face the backyard of my house. I rarely feel the need to close the curtains because I don't want to shut out my great view.

It also makes my dogs and cats happy too. And the only way anyone would ever be able to see in is if they're flagrantly trespassing, which I've made difficult to do. My yard is encircled by both a tall fence and a thicket of bushes. My yard is encircled by both a tall fence and a thicket of bushes and trees on both sides of the fence, all on my property. A couple weeks ago, I pulled into my driveway and was greeted by a woman waiting for me.

She claimed that she was there, quote, "out of concern for the neighborhood children." According to her, "She and her kids had seen me through my windows, dressed inappropriately while they were on a hike. I told her plainly that that wasn't possible because the only way anyone could see into my windows would be through my own backyard, which is far from any hiking trail." She replied with a condescending, "Well, sweetie, I'm sorry, but I have proof." She pulled out her phone.

and showed me a picture taken of me in my underwear through my window. It was blurry, but I knew it was me, mostly based on the fact that my hot tub, pool, and garden were in the foreground of the picture. I pointed this out and included the fact that the only way those things could possibly be in the picture was if the photo had been taken from inside my backyard. I asked her directly if she and her kids had hopped my fence. Instead of giving me a direct answer,

She began lecturing me about how inconsiderate it is to be an exhibitionist around children. I explained that I would never exhibit myself in a situation where I thought young children could see me, but I wasn't expecting anyone to trespass in my yard. She ignored the mention of trespassing before launching into a tirade about how she's sure I must be "very proud of my body" since I've clearly paid enough for it. For what it's worth in regards to that comment, I've got breast implants and some skin removal due to weight loss.

I've also got a few tattoos to cover up scars, just as an FYI." She then continues, "But that's no excuse to expose yourself to children." She ended her smug little rant by saying, "So honey, you'll be closing your blinds from now on?" I told her that no, I absolutely wouldn't be because only people on my property could see in the windows and that she and her children were not welcome on my property. She dropped the sweetness, started bitching.

saying that the previous owner of my home had been family friends and had never locked their gates. And why even have a butterfly garden if kids can't visit? That it takes them half an hour to walk to the park unless they go through my yard. And that she'd seen kids at my place before. And why were only she and her children being excluded? At this point, I was absolutely pissed. I told her that I locked my gates to keep a**holes like her out.

but she just kept harping on the fact that she'd seen other kids at my place. That's when I told her, "Those are my nephews, who I love. Whereas your kids? Well, I don't give a single f*ck about them." She started scream-crying, almost as if she was possessed. I don't know if you guys remember that insane God-warrior lady from Trading Spouses, but that is the caliber of yelling that this woman in my driveway was doing. I ended the conversation. I went inside my house.

but she stayed outside for a few minutes, going on and on about being disrespected and how she was going to call the cops because I was a pedophile whore making death threats towards her family. A few days afterwards, the psycho returned along with a police officer. She had reported that I was exposing myself to her kids and making threats on her life. I told the officer my side of the story and showed him my backyard so that he could see that the crazy lady's photo evidence

could have only been taken while trespassing on my property. He had printouts of her evidence, and I'm showing him on the pictures that they had to be taken inside my fence, when I realize that the pictures are actually from several different occasions. I'm wearing different garments in some of them. I pointed this out, and I point out again that all of them had to be taken while trespassing. At this point, it seemed to click for the officer that the lady was batshit, though perhaps he already had an inkling.

That's when he began questioning her about trespassing and taking pictures of me without my consent. He told us both that actually I could pursue charges if I wanted. That's when she started babbling an insane stream of consciousness meant to paint me out to be some sort of amoral heathen. This included allegations of being a prostitute, having an onslaught of men over at all hours, comments about my body, questions of how I could afford to live in such a nice neighborhood, more comments about my body.

And the wild thing is, I don't think there was a single period in her entire 45 seconds of verbal vomit. I swear, I'm not even doing it justice. But this was a masterclass of insane babble ranting while me and the cop just stared at her. Once she stopped, the cop essentially said, well, okay, I'll look into that, but right now we're discussing the issue of trespassing, ma'am, and photographing someone without her consent. This woman ignored that and blurted out,

She said she didn't care if my children died. The officer looked at me with a raised eyebrow, but told her that that's not a crime, and attempted again to redirect to the issues of trespassing and photographing. Well, once again, she ignored that and asked the officer if he had any kids. He told her that he didn't, and she kind of threw up her hands like, oh, well, that's the problem here. The officer assured her that the law doesn't change based on whether the responding officer has children or not.

The cop then asked me what I wanted to do about this. I said I wanted to drop the whole thing on the condition that she delete the pictures of me and her phone, and never again set foot on my property. She didn't want to agree to either condition. But ultimately, the officer persuaded her to hand her phone over, and he went through her pictures and deleted them from all folders. His words. Like, did she have them saved in multiple places? All the while, this acts like she's the one being violated.

My second condition was more of a sticking point. This woman did not want to agree to never set foot on my property. She kept diverting the discussion by saying she has other kids over all the time. So I don't see the issue. Well, what if my husband is with the kids? How is he supposed to know? Or if they're with their babysitter? And tearfully, over and over again, I just don't understand what the problem is. Eventually, the officer just gave up.

and told her that she'd officially been warned whether she wanted to accept that or not. This woman started weeping as if someone had slapped her and had to be escorted out of my yard. I thought that that would be the end of it, but it's come to my attention that she's going around door-to-door in the neighborhood claiming that I'm a pedophilic prostitute and asking people to sign a petition to get me to move. Absolute insanity. So now, I'm gonna have to figure out how to issue a cease and desist to this bitch.

I guess. What a fucking headache. I can tell you right now, lady, don't come back to my door with this stuff. A little over a year ago, I had a job working overnight at a gas station close to my home. I'm a woman and was 31 years old at the time. I noticed some, it seems unsafe for a woman to work graveyard shift by herself, but this was a slow store and the sheriff's office was a mere 20 feet from it, right across the street.

I really didn't think that I would have that many problems. There would be about 30 customers in an 8 hour shift, and that was on a busier night. It was about 3:30 in the morning. I had gone outside to sweep the parking lot and do a last minute check of the trash. It was also time for a cigarette, and I had one headphone in, kind of just jamming out, across the road in the parking lot of the sheriff's office. I saw a figure with his back to me. He was swaying back and forth, all while looking down.

Honestly, it looked like he was right in the middle of enjoying a much-needed piss. Against the sheriff's office, though? Yeah, the building closed at 4pm and wouldn't open again till 6 the next morning. But why? Seeing the back of his ripped white t-shirt? I remembered that he had come into the gas station about four hours earlier. He was a total creep then, and I could already tell that he had a good buzz going. I didn't say anything. I just minded my own business, kept up with my sweeping.

and tried not to draw attention to myself. It was working, that is, until a car pulled in. I was still outside as they pulled up. I saw him look at the car, then at me, and then back and forth between the two. The customer paid at the pump, although we made eye contact when she first got out of her driver's seat. After acknowledging this woman, I continued with my duties until we both heard him start to swear angrily and seemingly engage in an argument with himself. This woman looked across the road, then turned to me,

and told me to be careful before getting back into her car. I made an awkward joke about him being the one who should be more afraid of me, or something to that effect. The man was still there but now closer to the road, now facing the parking lot to my store. Whatever he's yelling was completely unintelligible. He was obviously very drunk and could barely stand up straight, still just swaying away. I didn't engage with him, but I was sure not to let my eyes leave him.

I just slowly walked myself back into the store. Something about his face really bothered me. It had a darkness to it, but his eyes were so wild that I could see them from across the street. And in my own experience during graveyard jobs, it's the crazy-eyed ones who tend to be the worst. I didn't like it at all and wanted absolutely zero part of it. I still had almost three hours to go on my shift and two before any of the other employees got there.

Instantly, I went to the computer and typed up a "temporarily closed" sign just in case he wanted trouble. I was coming around the counter on my way to the doors when I saw that he'd walked across the road now on my side of the street. I literally had just gotten the second door locked when he stumbled into our very small parking lot. At that instant, my hand mimed the hand signal for "cut" going across my neck, basically saying "Nope, sorry you can't come in here, we're closed."

I shook my head back and forth too, hoping that this would further discourage him. He started walking away, but screamed something at me while he was walking. I don't mean like he was grumpy and shouted at me or yelled that I was an asshole or anything. I mean like he was at an enraged volume and was violently throwing his hands everywhere, definitely knowing I'm in the wrong shift of the wrong job. I got a bit creeped out. I decided to call the cops, and it's a good thing too, because the moment I hung up with

There he comes again, only this time right up to the door. He starts pulling and banging on it. He backs up and runs into it at full speed, trying to ram it open. Not that it would have done any good, but after two or three attempts of that, he backs up about six feet before pulling a large rock from his pocket. I already knew what his plan was before it even unfolded. He reared back and threw that rock as hard as he could. Thankfully, those doors are shatterproof.

because I can only imagine what would have happened had he made his way inside the store. After his fastball to the glass, I made the mistake of telling him that I had called the cops and that they were on their way. I say I made the mistake of telling him because once I said it, he bolted. The police who arrived less than 10 minutes later never found him. They drove around the road and the surrounding neighborhoods for over an hour but found absolutely no one. He was on foot so I don't get where he could have gone to.

He didn't harm me, and with them not finding him, the only report that I could help them fill out was for the damage that he had caused to the property. While the doors showed obvious signs of trauma, I was safe behind the thick glass, and they stayed locked for the rest of my shift. It just sucked. Maybe if I didn't warn him ahead of time, I wouldn't have had to spend the last three months of my job constantly looking over my shoulder. I'll never know what the right choice was. I'm just glad that I don't work there anymore.

If you ever want to hear some of the most fucked up stories you'll ever find in your life, just ask the regular graveyard guy at your local all-night convenience store for some of the shit that he's seen. And I implore you, bring some popcorn. In my life, I've been the graveyard guy for not one, not two, but three different 7-Eleven locations. And I'm going to bring the bulk of my horror stories to you lovely people here online.

I'm going to start with one of my favorites, which is also one of the weirdest and one of the saddest. It was my last night at my favorite 7-Eleven, the one I'd worked at for almost two years at that point. It was a little bit before 5:30 in the morning. The assistant manager for the day shift had already counted in and the reports had already been pulled for the night. His name was Dave. I was counting out my register. That's when she walked in. A pleasant looking older woman, well dressed and quiet.

She poured a couple of cups of coffee, then brought them in front of Dave. He greeted her with a good morning, rang her up, and asked if there'd be anything else. She responds by silently walking away, back over by the coolers, staring up at the products, thinking that she'd forgotten something. Dave voids her purchase and waits patiently for her to return. After a few minutes, the woman comes back to the register. He rings her up and again asks if there'd be anything else. She said something, but

quickly trailed off, and then she silently walked away again, back over by the coolers. He looks at me with a look of slightly panicked confusion. At this point, I realize that this pleasant-looking older woman was well-dressed, all in black, quiet, and was wearing a gold cross. I looked at her, I looked at Dave, and mouthed out, "I think she's going to a funeral." I look at the clock and said, "Alright, I have time for this."

It was about 5:35, and I wasn't technically off until 6, so I put the cash drawer back into the register, and I walk across the store to where she was standing. She turned and looked at me with the strangest, most hollow eyes that I've ever seen. I looked at her with as much compassion as I could muster, and I asked, "Who was it?" She gave me a look like she didn't understand how I knew. She opened her mouth to answer, but instead started to wail. She began crying hysterically.

loudly sobbing right in our back aisle. She threw her arms around me, collapsed to the floor by the coolers, and just crumpled into this broken person. I wrapped the woman up in my arms, I held her while she cried, and I tried my best to comfort her with generic well-meaning platitudes. She told me that it was her brother. It had been an accident, a sudden and violent death, and she blamed herself. After ten minutes of the most soul-shattering crying you can ever imagine,

I help her to her feet and I walk her out of the store to the parking lot. I run back in, buy her coffee, buy her cigarettes, and I go back out to talk with her. She hugs me and continues to cry. I speak to her about the fragility of life and how you can't blame yourself for accidents, no matter how much you believe or may want them to be your own fault. They're just not. I light her a cigarette and check the time to find I could have clocked out and gone home 20 minutes ago.

but I didn't want to leave her in such a terrible state. Finally, almost an hour had passed since she had first walked in, and she seemed like she'd finally pulled herself together. She stops crying, fixes herself up, and looks up at me again. That's when she asks me, "What church do you go to?" Well, I don't actually go to church. "Why not?" Well, it's not really for me. "Well, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?"

"No, I can't say that I have. Well tell me now, why not? I see myself as an atheist." That's when the woman's face churned in total disgust. "You're a monster." I was absolutely blindsided by this. "I'm sorry?" He, voice booming at this point, who has not accepted Jesus, getting louder and louder, will suffer an eternity, now practically screaming this inches from my face, in the darkest pits of hell.

I crush out my cigarette, picked up my items, and I start to walk back into the store. She screams from behind me, "You touched me! How dare you touch me! You with your unclean hands! You who dares to make a mockery of the Bible! Who has turned your back on the Lord! How dare you touch someone like me!" I let the door shut, allowing her to scream more and more obscenities at me. I walk behind the counter, and Dave asks me how it went.

After two years of one strange, horrible thing after another, I said, Dave, this is officially my last night here. And that was the perfect example of exactly why the fuck I'm leaving. I clocked out and left. I walked out and she was still screaming, yelling, and pointing. I glance up and notice her face was bright red. This woman was absolutely boiling. I tuck my head down and I walked.

I thought about how I had held her, how I did everything I could to make her feel better, and as soon as she did, she verbally attacked me. I thought of how horrible she made me feel, that she called me a monster. As big of a guy as I am, I'll admit, I cried a little bit on the way home that morning. Believe it or not, this story doesn't end there. According to the police report, that woman returned my 7-11 the very next morning, at nearly the exact same time that she'd come in the day before.

She didn't actually come into the store though. No. She chose instead to drive her SUV over the concrete parking stops and press the front bumper against the doors, effectively locking everyone inside. That's when she exited the vehicle with a Bible in one hand and some kind of knife in the other. She jumped on the hood of her car and declared that she was there to "rid the store of the evil that dwelled within." I believe with every ounce of me. She had returned to the store that morning

to attempt to kill me. Working late at night and into the early morning is not something for the faint of heart. You get all sorts of people walking through those doors after midnight, from the benign to the very much malignant. Drunks, downtrodden, and downright batty. I'm not sure which category the person from my story falls into. I figure I'll let you decide after you hear all about him. His name is Richard.

Working the graveyard shift, I was the lone employee at my store from just after 10 o'clock p.m. to just before 6 a.m. Not only that, but the next nearest all-night anything was another convenience store over two miles away, one that from my store, you could just barely see the light pollution of their neon. This setup alone made for many interesting happenings. And this particular evening, it was a Saturday night going into Sunday morning, just after 4 a.m.,

when a middle-aged male with thick glasses and week-old stubble walked in. He wasn't unpleasant at first. He made small talk as he walked through the store, sometimes to me, sometimes to no one in particular. He mentioned things about the weather. He asked about the hot dogs and taquitos on the grill. It was what it was at first. But then the comments started slipping in, minor vulgarities coupled with weird things. And after walking about the store for a good twenty minutes,

He comes up to the register to check out, without anything to actually buy. I asked if he needed help with anything and that's when he asked me what I knew about the Antichrist. Alright, well, I know enough, I guess. I was raised Catholic, so I know quite a bit on the subject, I suppose. And to this admission, he stares at me, eyes wide, mouth pursed. I wasn't sure if he was about to bite me on the face or kiss me on the lips.

and not being able to tell the difference made me uneasy. The man. I should get a hot dog. Me. Alright. Which one would you like? The man. One of the king-sized ones. I want to enjoy it. There will be no more hot dogs once the Antichrist comes. Now, it sounds like a ridiculous statement, and I'll admit, it is one, but when said with genuine menace, it becomes a thinly-veiled harbinger of doom. I did my best to ignore it,

I got the bun and his hot dog and handed it over to him. He walked around to the condiment bar before continuing. "You have onions?" "Yes we do." "I love onions." Pregnant pause between us. "Yeah, a lot of people do." They better enjoy them, because you know, there'll be no more onions once the Antichrist comes. There's no real way to respond to this, so I just try to go back about my work.

But even as I walk, as I stock cigarettes and start my nightly count, I can feel him watching every move that I make. He comes up to the register with his hot dog, pays, and I hope to hell that we're just done here. "Thanks for coming in, man. Have a good night." That's when I turn my back. He asks if he can eat this hot dog here. I tell him it's probably not a good idea. The manager usually comes in at about 5:30, and he doesn't like it if anyone's just hanging around.

You know, stuff to do and all. The man. Oh, I'm not worried about him. The shit part about this is that I was actually partially lying. The manager, James, my boss, and a really awesome guy, did arrive somewhere between 5.30 and 5.45 every morning, Monday through Friday. But he avoided the place like the plague on the weekends. I was trying to sell something that I knew wouldn't fly if this guy actually stuck around long enough for no one to show up.

and now he was telling me he wasn't concerned about someone else showing up. Saturday nights are busy times for convenience stores, but after about 3:30 they become a ghost town and it was just me and this guy for one extended uninterrupted conversation after another. I try to walk to stock cups, lids, and straws and he'd pop up right behind me. There will be no cups and straws when the Antichrist comes. I arrange the beer and the coffee

There will be no more coffee when the Antichrist comes." I realize that it sounds like a joke, but his panicked eyes and horribly hinting smile made it clear that he was dead serious in everything he said. 5:00 AM rolls around. "Well, you should probably get going. Don't want boss man getting mad at me now." The man. "He won't get mad at you." Me. "It's just, he doesn't like people hanging around the store." The man. "We're just talking. Talking about the Bible."

He said this so sickly sweet it made my stomach churn. "Yeah, but he's still going to be here soon." The man repeating one of his original statements. "I'm not worried about him. I need milk." "Uh, okay." I point to the display case. He walks back, grabs a carton of milk, slowly and robotically inspecting it all the way back to the register. "I love milk," he says. "Oh, really?" "Yeah, but there'll be no more milk when the Antichrist comes."

The devil won't allow that. It's holy sustenance. Alright, so at this point, I'm now sizing the guy up. He's about 5'9". I'm 6'4", and I've got at least 100 pounds on him. So if things head south, I think I can get a few good knocks in before he pulls out my liver and puts it on his head. 5'10". Should really probably get going. The man. Jesus loves all of his children. 5'15". Boss is going to be here soon. The man.

I told you, I'm not worried about him. 5:20. Is there anything else you need? The man. The devil is real. Before reciting my full name. This is where two things happened that if I hadn't lived through it, I would have called bullshit to the person telling the story. At 5:30, for the first time in almost two years that I'd worked there, my boss James comes walking into the store on a Sunday morning. He managed to unbluff my bluff with this guy.

Secondly, and this is the jaw-droppingly hilarious part for me, James had been to the beach on Saturday. James had fallen asleep at said beach on Saturday. James had shaved his head fresh before going to the beach on Saturday. In other words, just as I told him he would, my boss came walking in at 5:30 on the dot with a completely shaved head, a long dark goatee, and bright red skin. Me. "What the fuck are you doing here?" James.

I honestly have no idea." He looks at the guy. "Who's this?" I didn't answer. I looked at James, I looked at the guy, and back at my boss. He looks at the guy before saying, "Let's go outside and chat, friend." Less than ten minutes later, the guy was walking off and James came back into the store. "So how are you?" he asked. "Dude, what the fuck was that all about?" "Oh, Richard?" "Well, he started telling me about Jesus.

I started telling him about witchcraft. He said the Antichrist was coming. I said I was the Antichrist. Absolutely blew his circuits. Then he left. This only solidified my love for James as a person. Now, I wish this is where the story ended. But about three months later, I'm outside of the store and smoking a cigarette with a few regular customers of mine. Just chatting away. Somewhere off in the distance, I hear, Jesus, Lord God, help me.

I perk up, but the people I'm with don't seem to notice. "Jesus, please, I know you can help me!" It's closer now, and I actually say, "Oh, please don't be Richard. Jesus, Jesus Christ, come down from heaven and save me. Please, just please don't let this be Richard." Sure enough, barreling around the side of the building and heading right in my direction is a panicked, screaming, and sweaty Richard. He's covered in his own blood.

The people I'm with ask the appropriate question: "Dude, is he fucking covered in blood?" I, on the other hand, only had one thought coursing through my mind, and it repeated over and over again: "Don't go in the store. Don't go in the store. Don't go in the-" God damn it. I crush my cigarette out and run into the store behind him. In the few seconds that he's been in there, I now have blood all over the doors, the floors, the rugs, and countertops.

"Jesus Christ, please come down and save me!" I grab him some towels and toss them in his general direction, trying to get an idea of the nature of his wounds, all while dialing 911. Now, I can't be sure because I can't say I've seen it before, but it looked, quite possibly, like he tried to crucify himself. When the dispatcher picks up, I say, "I've got a gentleman in my store who's injured," screaming profanities, yelling about Jesus and is covered in his own blood.

They were instantly taken aback. I tell them, his name is Richard, and I don't know how badly he's hurt, but I hear her typing. She asked me in a confirming manner that I said that he was screaming profanities. Richard, who can't hear her, lets out a long, loud fuck. I ask the dispatcher if she heard that. She confirms that she did. And you said he's talking about Jesus. Richard, who still can't hear her,

"Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, please come and save me!" "Did you happen to hear that?" The dispatcher confirms that yes she did. And then Richard, in all of his glory, does the one thing that makes any convenience store clerk go aggro, especially one working graveyard. I turn away from him to give the operator the store incident number, and when I turn back around, Richard is now behind me, behind the register. I drop the phone. "Richard, I don't give a f- what's wrong with you.

"If you don't get out from behind my counter, I will hang up with 911 and let you bleed to death right here in the store." But that confrontation didn't last long. Before he could respond, there were four PD officers through the door. I think the 911 operator hung up and left the area. Richard was handcuffed inside of the ambulance, and even the officers said that it appeared that he'd tried to do something harmful with religious significance. I thank them for arriving so quickly.

and we all laughed about the strangeness of this entire situation. Then I asked a question that I wish I hadn't. "So who cleans up all this blood?" The lead officer replies with, "That'd be you. Fuck my life, right?" After hearing other people's ordeals, it's reminded me of something from my young adult days. I used to do a considerable amount of driving for work or for pleasure, and sometimes it got me into very weird situations.

This evening, it was well past midnight, and I was somewhere along I-10 in Texas, miles away from the nearest town. I'd been driving for hours, my eyes burning from staring at the road. The trip from Houston to El Paso was supposed to be straightforward, but exhaustion was starting to creep in. I knew I needed a break. When I saw the sign for a rest stop up ahead, I figured it would be the perfect place to stretch my legs and use the restroom. The rest stop itself was nothing remarkable.

Just a small building with a couple of picnic tables under a flickering streetlight. No other cars were parked there, which made the place feel eerier than it should have. But I reminded myself that it was just late, and people didn't stop at these places much after dark unless they had to. I pulled in, parked, and made my way to the restroom. The building was old, concrete walls cracked and weathered by years of Texas sun. The inside was surprisingly clean though, and brightly lit.

As I used the restroom, the hum of the fluorescent lights above was the only sound that I could hear. It was dead silent when I stepped back outside. The stillness of the night hit me harder than I expected, and I stood there for a second just breathing in the cool night air, taking in the vast, empty stretch of road ahead. Looking back, there was something unsettling about being in such a remote place, all alone, but I chalked it up to my tired mind playing tricks on me. Just as I was about to head back to my car, I heard it.

A soft, faint sound coming from the woods behind the restroom building. It was the sound of a child crying. I froze, listening carefully. The crying was quiet, almost like it was coming from within the trees. At first, I thought maybe I was imagining it, but then I heard it again, clearer this time, more desperate. I thought to myself, "A child? Out here?" It didn't make any sense. My heart started racing, and I felt an overwhelming urge to help.

I couldn't just leave a kid out there in the dark. What if they were lost? Or hurt? I took a few steps towards the edge of the woods, peering into the blackness between the trees. "Hello?" I called out, my voice obviously shaky. "Is there someone there? Do you need help?" The crying stopped abruptly. I stood there for a moment, just waiting, but the silence only stretched on. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could feel it then. Something wasn't right. The crying started again.

This time louder, but still distant. I moved a little bit closer, my phone in hand, using the flashlight to penetrate the thick darkness. I felt uneasy, but I couldn't shake the thought of a child being out there alone. I took a few more steps forward, calling out once again. "Where are you? I can help!" That's when it hit me. The crying wasn't moving. It wasn't getting any closer. Nor did it sound like it was coming from a specific direction. It was too steady. Too perfect.

My stomach began to twist as a realization washed over me. This wasn't a child. It wasn't even a real cry. I was hearing a recording. A wave of dread crashed over me as I quickly stepped back towards my car. Whoever was playing that recording was somewhere nearby and they were watching me. They wanted me to go into the woods. They were doing all they could to lure me away from that rest stop. I began to make my way back towards my car.

As I walked, I could still hear the cries, but they became fainter and fainter as I put distance between myself and whoever they were coming from. I'm a person that naturally wants to help others, sometimes to a fault, but I'm so glad that my brain had a chance to catch up with my body in that situation, and I didn't aimlessly go walking off into whatever was awaiting me. Once I got back to my car, I kept my eyes trained on the darkness, where the sounds were coming from while I phoned the police.

I got through to dispatch and didn't see any kind of movement or light or anything coming from where I just was. The dispatcher said they would send a unit to investigate, but if I felt at all threatened, I should continue down the road to safety. I didn't need to hear that twice. I pulled out and got back on the highway immediately, although I'm pretty sure I would have left even if they wanted me to hang around. Everything about that situation terrified me at that point, and it even creeps me out now to share it.

About an hour later, I'm flying down this desert road, powered by adrenaline, when my phone rings. It's the same familiar voice of the dispatcher I had spoken to earlier. He asks me if I'm still in the area, because the responding officers would like a word. I said that I was now 50 or so miles away from that rest stop. He asks if he can patch a call through to the officer, so he could speak to me over the phone then. I say that would be fine. Next thing I know, Officer So-and-so is on the line.

and is asking me if I made my way behind the restroom building at all. I told him no, that I had stopped maybe 15 feet short of there when I realized that something wasn't right. He let out a long breath and said a sentence that still sits with me now. "I'm glad you listened to your instincts, because if you hadn't, I think something terrible would have happened tonight. I never learned what they found, or perhaps who they found that night. I don't have a great idea of what would have happened to me if I ventured much further.

But I'm thankful that whatever was awaiting me, I dodged it. Moral of the story: don't let your heart cost you your head. A few days ago, my girlfriend and I, both young 20s, were on the home stretch of a big road trip with our dog. As it had been a while since our last stop, we pulled into a rest stop off the freeway to stretch our legs and have the doggo handle its business. When we pulled into the rest stop, there were no cars, but three big semi-trucks parked in a line.

Immediately, my girlfriend got out to go to the restroom. I leashed up the dog and stood next to the car. As she was walking towards the entry door, I thought I heard someone yell behind me. To my surprise, it was a trucker in the driver's seat of his truck with the window rolled down, trying to get my attention. Now, I'm generally pretty friendly towards all people, whether they seem shady or not, typically willing to lend a hand to help. Behind me in the truck was an older gentleman, large.

with gray hair and sunglasses. His truck was so loud that I couldn't hear what he was saying, so I yelled back, "What?" The trucker then yelled out something inaudible three more times, as I continued to ask him "What?" while shaking my head and holding up my hands to inform him that I couldn't hear him. At this point, he seemed visibly annoyed that I had replied "What?" four times. Okay, understandable.

I wanted to see what the deal was with this guy, so I walked halfway between the car and his passenger side. "What did you say?" I asked one more time. "Can you help me look for my phone? I lost it somewhere," the trucker said. At this point, I was caught super off guard as this had all unfolded within 20, maybe 30 seconds that we had parked at the rest stop. To me, it was weird that a trucker was asking some random person stopping to help look for their phone.

but maybe he just wanted me to call it. Where did you lose it at? I asked. I lost it in my truck. Do you think you could come up here and help me look for it? He replied in a rather unnerving tone. In that moment, I was sketched the fuck out. I thought I was about to be abducted. A phone call, I could do, but no way was I about to get into this trucker's cab to look for his phone. Yeah, no, I said sternly, but half-heartedly, as I almost thought this guy was just joking with me.

After a few moments, the trucker then says, "You're not going to help me look for it?" My adrenaline was pumping, so I yelled back, "Dude, get out of here with that!" in a threatening tone, knowing damn well that I had nothing to defend myself should something go wrong. I put the dog back in the car, pulled out my phone, and pretended that I was calling the cops while this man slowly drove and then stopped again just to confirm that I wasn't going to help. I then screamed once more,

"Man, no! Get the f*ck out of here! I'm calling the cops!" After that reply, he stepped on the gas and exited to the freeway. I stood and watched when finally my girlfriend emerges from the restroom, wondering why I looked like I had just seen a ghost. I don't know if this was an overreaction, but it sketched me out to high heavens, and I just keep wondering why he wanted me to get into the truck. So this just happened a few nights back at around 2am.

I was driving on my way up from Virginia to Maryland, had a few sodas and a Red Bull to help stay awake at this point, and had to pee pretty badly. I stopped by the next rest stop, close to the Northern Virginia area, and go inside to use the restroom. When I walked in, there's one family hanging by the entrance, heading out to their car, I'm guessing, and another couple looking at the vending machines. This was already more people than I'd imagined being in a rest stop so late on a Thursday.

This is also when normal begins to cease, and things get unsettling really quickly. I walk into the men's restroom through an open entrance hallway, and there's only one other guy inside the bathroom besides myself. This man was of a pretty hulking size, at least 6'6" if I'm guessing, and was standing staring at the wall, or the mirror next to it. He looked deep in thought, or maybe sleep deprived, so I didn't think anything of it, as it wasn't my business.

I did head straight to a stall instead of a urinal though, just because the guy was giving off slight negative vibes, but I still really needed to piss. As I'm using the bathroom, I hear footsteps coming closer, and someone entered the stall directly next to me. I keep continuing on about my business, and as I look out of the corner of my eye, I can see in my peripheral vision that it was the same man as before, the one who was staring at the wall that just entered the stall next to me.

I could tell it was him since he was pretty tall, as mentioned before, so nearly his whole face was in view over the stall wall. The reason why it suddenly became weird was that this man was not using the bathroom, and the reason I could even tell this was because he was not even facing the toilet, but rather me instead. His face reminded me of a sort of less vampiric version of Nosferatu, and he was just staring intensely right at me as I'm going to the bathroom.

I make sure not to turn my head, to not give this person any acknowledgement. A sense of dread was taking over though, as I was imagining the possibilities of him either grabbing me from the stall, as he could have easily reached over using his size, or him exiting and blocking my stall door and the only exit out of it, trapping me. In what felt like the longest pee of my life, I finish just in time to see him begin to grip the top of the stall with both of his massive hands.

I take this opportunity to exit the bathroom as fast as possible, and no, I didn't stop to wash my hands. As I make it back outside, I quickly notice that the entire rest stop is a ghost town at this point. My smartwatch alerts me that a friend sent me a text during all of this, so I knew he was up at this odd hour. I quickly pulled out my phone and called him, so I could give the appearance that I wasn't all alone. My friend, who is a godsend at this point, answered and chatted with me as I explained the situation.

As I'm walking to my car, I take a quick look back and see that same man from the bathroom is now slowly but surely following me. He was stumbling forward in a walking dead sort of fashion, all while continuing to glare at me with an emotionless expression. I make it to my car, and as I'm simultaneously turning the ignition and activating the GPS on my phone, the man walks until about 10 or so feet from my car before planting himself and staring some more. I don't even bother turning on Google Maps now,

I just quickly drive off, trying not to hit him in the process. As I drive away, he's just staring at me while standing in the middle of a dimly lit parking lot, alone, after midnight. I hope to never feel the type of vulnerability that this giant man made me feel ever again. I learn late that night that rest stops after dark just aren't for the faint of heart. Some stories just stick with you, not because they're unsolved, but because of the unsettling details that surround them.

A person leaving work should be a normal part of their day, a moment when they step out of one routine and head into another. But sometimes, that simple act can turn into the last time that they are ever seen. Such is the case in the disappearance of Terrance Williams, a case that has left investigators and his family grasping for answers for nearly two decades. How does a man simply vanish after clocking out for the day? And why have the details of this case left so many people disturbed?

Terrance Williams was 27 years old when he disappeared on January 12th, 2004 after leaving work in Naples, Florida. He worked odd jobs at the time, trying to get back on his feet after moving from Tennessee to Florida in order to be closer to his mother and children. On the day of his disappearance, he had finished his shift and headed out to meet up with some friends. At this time, Terrance didn't own a car. He had lost his license due to a previous DUI.

but he often borrowed vehicles from friends and family. On this particular day, he was driving a white Cadillac that belonged to a roommate. Though it wasn't in the best of conditions, it got him where he needed to go. After finishing work, Terrance had made plans to attend a party, but for reasons that remain unclear, he never arrived. His final movements remain a mystery, but what is known is that he vanished after being pulled over by a local deputy from the Collier County Sheriff's Office.

From that moment forward, Terrance Williams ceased to exist in the eyes of the public. What makes this case so chilling is that it's not just that Terrance vanished after being stopped by law enforcement, it's who stopped him. The deputy in question, Corporal Stephen Calkins, would later become a central figure in the investigation, and not for the reasons you'd expect. Witnesses reported seeing Calkins pull Terrance over that evening. According to Calkins,

Terrance was driving the borrowed Cadillac without proper registration or tags, so the officer had no choice but to impound the vehicle. Calkins claimed that, after some conversation, he gave Terrance a ride to a nearby Circle K gas station because he didn't want to leave the man stranded on the side of the road. He stated that he dropped Terrance off, watched him walk away, and then went about his duties. That, according to the deputy, was the last time he saw Terrance.

But things quickly took a dark and unsettling turn. When Terrance's mother, Marsha Williams, couldn't reach her son later that night, she immediately grew concerned. She knew that something wasn't right. Terrance wasn't the type to just disappear without letting someone know where he was. After multiple days passed with no word from her son, Marsha filed a missing persons report with the Collier County Sheriff's Office. During the initial stages of the investigation, Calkin's account of his interactions with Terrance was taken at face value.

However, when Marcia pressed for more information, the officer's story began to unravel. As investigators started to dig deeper, it became clear that Calkin's story wasn't holding up. For one, there was no official record of Terrance's Cadillac being towed. Typically, when a vehicle is impounded, there's a paper trail, a towing receipt, a report of some kind. But none of that existed.

The Circle K gas station where Calkins claimed to have dropped off Terrance had no surveillance footage or witnesses to corroborate his story. It was as if both Terrance and his vehicle had simply vanished. When asked to provide a more detailed statement, Calkins' recollection of the events seemed inconsistent. His report had changed slightly from his initial claims, and he couldn't offer a solid explanation as to why there were gaps in his timeline. Terrance's family grew increasingly suspicious

and their fears deepened when a shocking connection emerged. Just three months earlier, another man, Felipe Santos, had also disappeared after a traffic stop involving Corporal Calkins. Felipe, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, had been involved in a minor car accident. Calkins arrested him for driving without a license, but later claimed that he had dropped Felipe off at a nearby convenience store. Felipe Santos, just like Terrence Williams, was never seen again.

The parallels between these two cases are deeply disturbing. Both men were young, both had been pulled over by Calkins under seemingly minor circumstances, and both vanished after Calkins claimed to have dropped them off at gas stations. Neither Felipe Santos nor Terrence Williams has been found, and Calkins remains the last person known to have seen either of them alive. Given the eerie similarities between the disappearances, investigators turned a critical eye toward Calkins

He was placed on administrative leave while an internal investigation was conducted, but no charges were ever filed against him. Calkins has denied any involvement in the disappearances and insists that he was simply doing his job. However, his conduct raised significant red flags. When investigators dug into his record, they discovered that Calkins had failed to follow proper procedures in both cases, pointing to the fact that he never filed an official arrest report for Felipe Santos.

and his towing logs for Terrance's vehicle were missing. These procedural missteps led to Calkins being fired from the Collier County Sheriff's Office in 2004. But his dismissal has not kept him from maintaining his innocence. Despite exhaustive searches and investigations by both law enforcement and private investigators, there has been no trace of Terrance Williams or Felipe Santos. Their disappearances remain unsolved,

and no physical evidence has ever surfaced to explain what happened to either man. One of the most frustrating aspects of this case is the lack of closure for the families involved. Marsha Williams has been relentless in her search for her son, working with advocacy groups and appearing on national television to raise awareness about his disappearance. Yet, after all these years, she's still left with more questions than answers. Many believe that Corporal Calkins knows more than he's let on,

but without any hard evidence, the case is stalled. The fact that two men disappeared under eerily similar circumstances, both involving the same deputy, is too much of a coincidence for some to accept. Yet, despite the suspicions surrounding Calkins, there has been no resolution to this date. If you have any information about the disappearances of Terrance Williams or Felipe Santos, you are urged to contact the Collier County Sheriff's Office

or the national missing and unidentified person system. Even the smallest lead could help bring justice to these two men and bring their families the closure they so desperately need. Vacations are supposed to be a time to relax and enjoy yourself, especially when you're on a cruise. It's a floating city, right? You're surrounded by people, endless entertainment, and safety measures everywhere you turn. But for Amy Lynn Bradley, a young woman enjoying a Caribbean cruise with her family,

The dream trip turned into a nightmare. Amy's disappearance has left both investigators and her loved ones haunted, not only because she vanished, but due to the deeply unsettling and mysterious circumstances that surround her case. Amy Lynn Bradley was 23 years old when she embarked on a family vacation in March of 1998. Described as outgoing, adventurous, and athletic, Amy had just graduated from college and was looking forward to a relaxing getaway.

She and her family, her parents Ron and Iva, and her younger brother Brad set off on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship called the Rhapsody of the Seas, heading through the Caribbean on what should have been a memorable trip for all of them. The Bradleys were enjoying themselves, soaking in the sun and the views of the ocean as the ship sailed towards Curacao, a tropical island off the coast of Venezuela. But as they would soon find out, this trip would end in terror and confusion.

The night before Amy disappeared, everything seemed normal. On March 23rd, 1998, Amy and her family had dinner. They enjoyed a show and even went dancing at the ship's nightclub. Witnesses reported seeing Amy having a good time, chatting with other passengers, and mingling with the ship's crew. At around 3:30 a.m., Amy returned to the family's cabin with her brother. Both were exhausted from the evening's activities, and according to Brad, Amy seemed fine.

if not just a little tired, although nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. Amy even stepped out onto the balcony of their cabin to get some fresh air. This would be the last time that Brad, or anyone in her family, would see her. When her father Ron woke up around 6:00 AM, Amy was gone. Her shoes, cigarettes, and lighter were still in the cabin, but she was nowhere to be found. Assuming she had just gone for a walk around the ship, he didn't think much of it at first.

But as time passed and there was no sign of Amy, panic began to set in. The cruise ship was massive, nearly a thousand feet long with over two thousand passengers aboard, and it was unknown where on the ship Amy may have been if she was still on the ship at all. As the minutes turned to hours, Amy's family became increasingly frantic. They alerted the ship's crew who began an immediate search of the vessel.

but despite a thorough sweep of the ship, including public areas, the pools, restaurants, and even restricted zones, Amy was nowhere to be found. The ship docked in Curacao later that day, but Amy still hadn't been located, fearing the worst. The Bradley family pleaded with the captain to delay disembarking the passengers in case Amy was still on board, but the captain refused, and the ship continued its schedule. Passengers were allowed to leave, and by the time the search was expanded to Curacao,

crucial hours had already been lost. As the days passed and the search turned up no traces of Amy, questions began to arise. How could a 23-year-old woman simply vanish from a cruise ship? The unsettling answer is she didn't just vanish. Something far more sinister may have happened. From the start, Amy's disappearance didn't resemble a typical case of someone falling overboard or simply wandering off. There were details that didn't add up.

details that pointed towards something darker. First, Amy had expressed discomfort with some of the ship's crew members before she disappeared. Amy had confided in her family that certain crew members had been overly friendly with her, making her feel uneasy. She mentioned how one of the ship's waiters in particular seemed to be watching her a little too closely. This interaction, while innocent on the surface, would take on a much more sinister tone in light of her disappearance. Then there were the witnesses,

Multiple passengers reported seeing Amy with members of the ship's crew after she was last seen by her family. One witness claimed to have seen her near an elevator with a crew member in the early hours of the morning after her family thought she had gone to bed. Another disturbing report came from a Canadian tourist who later claimed to have seen Amy on a beach in Curacao days after her disappearance. The witness stated that the woman who strongly resembled Amy appeared to be in distress and was accompanied by two men.

When the tourist attempted to approach her, the two men hurried her away. But it didn't stop there. Over the years, there have been multiple reports of Amy sightings, each more chilling than the last. In 1999, a US Navy officer stationed in Curacao claimed to have seen a woman matching Amy's description in a brothel. According to him, the woman told him her name was Amy and begged for his help. Unfortunately, by the time authorities were contacted, the brothel had been raided

and the woman was now gone. These sightings fueled a horrifying theory that Amy hadn't just vanished, but had been abducted and possibly sold into human trafficking. The idea that Amy was abducted is one of the leading theories in her case. Her family believes that she may have been targeted by individuals who intended to exploit her. The cruise industry, despite its luxurious appeal, has long been criticized for its lack of oversight

and the potential for crimes to go unnoticed or unreported. With thousands of people coming and going at every port, it's disturbingly easy for someone to be trafficked or abducted without raising suspicion. The Bradley family has worked tirelessly to raise awareness about Amy's disappearance. They've appeared on television, collaborated with investigators, and even hired private detectives to follow leads across the Caribbean. But despite the occasional sighting,

There has been no concrete evidence to prove what happened to Amy on that fateful night in 1998. Was she taken by someone on board the ship? Did she manage to leave the ship on her own, only to be captured and trafficked later? Or is there something even darker lurking beneath the surface of this case? More than a quarter of a century later, Amy Bradley's disappearance remains one of the most haunting unsolved cases in modern history. Her family continues to search for answers.

clinging to the hope that one day they'll find out what happened to their beloved daughter and sister. The cruise line, Royal Caribbean, has denied any wrongdoing, maintaining that they did everything in their power to assist in the search. However, the Bradleys and many others believe that vital mistakes were made in the early hours of the investigation, and that had the ship been locked down immediately, Amy might have been found. If you have any information about the disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley,

You're urged to contact the FBI at 1-800-225-5324 or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov. You can also reach out to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678. Her family has endured years of heartbreak and unanswered questions, holding onto hope that one day they'll finally get the answers they've been desperately seeking.

The uncertainty of Amy's fate has left them in a constant state of anguish, never giving up on the possibility of bringing her home. Sometimes people go missing under circumstances so strange that it leaves everyone around them baffled. One moment they're living their everyday life and the next they simply vanish. That can be no more true than in the case of Tiffany Daniels, a young woman from Pensacola, Florida who mysteriously vanished in 2013.

Despite extensive searches and countless questions, Tiffany has never been found. The questions that prevail, where did she go? Why did she leave? And of course, is she still around to this day? Tiffany Daniels was a 25-year-old artist and theater technician working at Pensacola State College in Florida. Described by her friends and family as free-spirited, passionate about the arts, and someone who loved the outdoors, Tiffany was living a vibrant life.

before she disappeared. She rented a house with a few roommates, truly enjoyed biking, and had plans for the future. That is, until everything changed on the evening of August 12th, 2013. On the day of her disappearance, Tiffany seemed completely normal. She went to work, arriving at the theater department at around 8am. That morning, she asked her boss for some time off, without really cluing her in about why she wanted it.

This went unquestioned by her supervisor, and she was granted the leave. Tiffany finished her shift by 4:30 PM that day, and her last known action at work was logging out of her computer before she was seen leaving the campus parking lot in her grey Toyota 4Runner. After this point, things start to take a strange turn. Eight days later, on August 20th, 2013, Tiffany's 4Runner was found abandoned in the parking lot of Park West, a beach park on Pensacola Beach.

no more than 25 miles from where she lived. The car was locked, and inside of it, investigators found her phone, wallet, and bike. Even more strangely, a pair of flip-flops, not belonging to Tiffany, were left inside the vehicle. What's eerie about this is that Park West is a popular beach with visitors year-round, yet no one reported seeing Tiffany during those eight days. The beach was heavily populated, yet it's as if she vanished the moment she left her car.

The investigation into Tiffany's disappearance uncovered a series of unsettling clues. First, the location where her car was found was near Fort Pickens, an isolated area known for its beaches and trails. The spot is secluded, and police began wondering if Tiffany had gone hiking, swimming, or even possibly met someone there. But none of these theories could ever be substantiated, adding to the strangeness

several witnesses claimed they saw her car being driven erratically in the days following her disappearance. A traffic camera even picked up her vehicle crossing the Bob Sykes Bridge, which leads to Pensacola Beach, the day after she vanished. The camera wasn't able to capture the driver's face, so it remains unclear if Tiffany was behind the wheel or if someone else had taken control of her car. The mystery only deepens when you consider Tiffany's state of mind leading up to her disappearance.

Some friends reported she had been stressed and overwhelmed with personal matters, including the recent end of a relationship and financial struggles. But her family insists that Tiffany was not the type to just walk away from her life without a trace. They describe her as someone full of energy and ambition, with no history of mental health issues that might suggest she wanted to disappear voluntarily. Then there's the location. Why would Tiffany's car end up at such an isolated spot on Pensacola Beach?

There were no signs of foul play in the car, and no major leads developed from the park itself. One troubling theory suggests that Tiffany may have been abducted. Some believe that she could have met with foul play either on the beach or during her drive. Others speculate that she may have encountered someone she knew, leading to an unknown confrontation. But what makes her case so unsettling is the complete lack of evidence. Despite extensive searches of the park, nearby woods, and ocean,

No trace of Tiffany has ever surfaced. No belongings, no clothing, nothing. Other theories about what happened to Tiffany are varied, and none have led to any conclusive answers. Some suggest that she may have decided to disappear voluntarily, perhaps to start a new life. But for Tiffany to do so without accessing her bank accounts, credit cards, or leaving any sort of digital trail seems unlikely.

Another theory is that Tiffany may have had an accident while hiking or swimming near the park, and that her body was somehow lost to the ocean. However, search efforts by local authorities, including aerial and underwater searches, found no sign of her. Then there's the chilling possibility of foul play. Could Tiffany have encountered someone dangerous while driving that evening, or even at the park itself? If so, who was this person, and how did they manage to leave no trace?

Tiffany's family continues to search for answers to this day. They've never stopped hoping for her to return or some breakthrough in the case that will help solve the mystery of what happened to her. It's been over a decade now, and yet the disappearance of Tiffany Daniels remains one of the most baffling unsolved cases in the state of Florida. If you have any information about the disappearance of Tiffany Daniels, you're encouraged to contact the Pensacola Police Department at 850-435-7000.

I stumbled on this sub recently, and it put me in mind of an old story. This happened nearly 20 years ago now. I was dating around at the time, and had a few creepy encounters, but this one absolutely takes the cake.

He was an acquaintance my brother had met at a bar and was showing around the local area because this man was new to the country. My brother sets us up because he was apparently desperate for a girlfriend, and I guess I was pretty desperate too because we went on that date together. The date itself was probably the worst first date that I've ever been on. I showed up to the restaurant we were meeting at. He was late, which isn't a huge deal, so I let it slip and we went to sit down. To be honest,

I knew from the start that I wasn't really attracted to him, but I thought I would be polite and see if we had a nice night. He started off politely too. He held the door for me, pulled my seat out. It wasn't really necessary, but it was nice anyway. Then, as we sat there waiting for someone to come and take our orders, I was reading the menu, and he started talking about how much his fiancée would have liked this place. That took me by surprise, and naturally, I asked about this fiancée.

He revealed that he had a fiancée before moving over here, but he had just left her to move to another country. I asked why they had broken up, and he said they never really broke up as such, but he got fed up of her nagging him and he just moved away. I really didn't know what to say after that, so I changed the subject and started asking him more about himself and where he used to live. He wasn't really that forthcoming. Eventually, our waiter turned up and began talking to us.

To clarify the next part, our waiter was a man of color and he had an unusual accent for our area, so my date stares blankly at him for a while, then turns to me and says, "Do you understand this guy?" I said that yes, I did understand him, before telling the waiter our orders. After he left, my lovely date continued to shock me. He said, "I wouldn't normally leave ordering to the lady, but that brown guy talked really weirdly and I didn't get it. Wow."

"Way to tell me you're a racist and a sexist in one breath." Again, I was speechless for a few moments before I ultimately got angry with him. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of, "Well, I'm not such a little lady, so I can order for myself just fine. Thanks." And also, "Why make any racial remarks?" That's when he got annoyed with me and told me that he wasn't being racist. He just wasn't used to that kind of person where he was from.

I pointed out that he wouldn't have met me if he just stuck to people he was used to in his own country. He then calmed down, told me that he wouldn't want that because he's glad to have met me. Honestly, I found that a little weird given that I didn't see any way to say that this date was going well and he didn't know me very well at all, but I decided since we had ordered, I would just stay, get my meal, and try to redeem this evening before I leave and never see this man ever again.

So I answered some of his questions about me. Basic, getting to know me, and small talk stuff for the most part. Then he started in about my previous dates. If I was a virgin, whether I would be willing to wait until marriage, and then be submissive to my husband or not. It was at this point that I realized, I was most likely on a date with a religious bigot. Hence, the misogyny, weird attitude to sexual stuff, and all his other close-minded bullshit. So I settled for...

"That's none of your business. Now, I need to leave." I checked the prices on the menu and left money for my half of the food, plus a tip, and got up to leave. He said he didn't see why I was being so unreasonable with him, as though this had been a normal date, but then told me that I couldn't expect him to take my money because that was an insult to him. "Fine, dude. You want to pay for a meal that's not getting eaten? You pay for it. I'm not so crazy about spending my money that I'll stop you."

So I took my money back and walked straight out the doors. I just assumed that, yeah, it was an awful evening, but I wouldn't have to see him again. I wasn't even back to my house by the time my brother started texting me, asking me where I was, because my date had called him in tears, saying that I had gone off for no reason and he didn't know where I was or what to do. Thankfully, my brother was pretty calm about it and assumed that I had left for a reason. I explained everything to him,

and he was just as surprised too. After that evening, we both tried to cut contact. My brother stopped meeting up with the guy, and we both blocked the Facebook account that we had for him. My brother also blocked his number because he wouldn't stop texting him just to ask about me, alternating between being really worried about me to saying he hoped that I'd drop dead. Then he started making endless different accounts on social media just to harass us. He told my brother he didn't know why we weren't talking to him,

He posted a bunch of weird posts describing me in detail before going on to call me a lot of horrible names. We just kept blocking them and moving on. But then the harassment got worse. He either found me and followed me at some point or got my address from a friend and turned up one day, standing around outside of my house asking to come in to speak to me. When I refused to let him in, he grabbed me by the arm in order to prevent me from going in either and started to tell me that he didn't want to let me go.

because I would never find a man who would love me like he did, and that if I walked away from him again, I would regret it one day when I was old and lonely. He went on and on like this for ages and ages, all while I tried to pull my arm away from him, before I finally got fed up and yelled at him to get off of me and leave me alone, before kicking him as hard as I could right in the shin. He let go of my arm, yet cursed at me all the same and said I was being ungrateful to him.

but I took that opportunity to run inside and lock the door behind me. He followed me and started banging on my door, then attempted to push it inwards. I was getting both upset by this man and super fed up of his presence in my life, so I grabbed my phone and called the police, telling them that someone was trying to get into my house. I was told that an officer would arrive soon, but 20-30 minutes later, there was no sign of them anywhere and I was getting even more upset because this man was now forcing my door

and I thought that the lock was going to break soon. So I called my brother, who happens to live nearby, just because I knew he would be there in an instant, even though I wasn't so sure he'd be able to help much. About 10 minutes later, my brother turns up, and after a brief conversation, I didn't quite hear what was going on outside, but the pressure on the door was now gone. I waited a few minutes, and then texted my brother to see what was going on, and if it would be alright to look outside now. He didn't reply,

and the next thing that I heard was the police turning up. I went out to see what was going on, and apparently after my initial call, they had received another call from a neighbor saying that there were two men fighting on my lawn. I surmised that this was my brother and the guy, since my brother looked out of breath and pretty shaken up, but the guy wasn't around anymore. My brother explained to the police that he had tried to stop the man from getting into my house, then the man had turned and hit him. I told my side of the story,

and some of my other neighbors were asked what they had seen and were able to tell them about his attempts to get in. Plus, there were even visible marks on the outside of the door where he had repeatedly tried to get in. The police went to look for him and a few weeks afterward, I was called and they told me they had found him, but when they wanted me to look at the suspected person, it wasn't the same man. I didn't hear anything else and I don't know what happened to him. I didn't see him again.

so I'm probably safe after 20 years. But regardless, I still find myself thinking "what if" on regular occasion. My mom has told me an alarmingly high number of creepy stories from her younger days, but this one in particular is the reason I triple check my windows and doors before bed each night. This started when she was 23 years old, freshly moved out of her parents' house into a garden floor apartment back in the early 80s.

She grew up in Palatine, Illinois, northern suburb of Chicago, and was working as a bank teller. She was 5 feet tall, maybe weighed 100 pounds soaking wet. She was this cute young girl excited to start the next chapter in her life, and admittedly, more than a little naive. Like any job, she became familiar with her coworkers, regular customers, and other workers who worked in the area that she would often see.

She told me about a cute guy that would walk by the bank that she saw nearly every shift. Her and the other bank girls would always chat about how gorgeous he was. And one day, to my mom's delight, he came into the bank and asked her to dinner. "Let's call this man Tom." Tom offers to pick her up. She gives her address, and they agree to 7pm for that upcoming Saturday. The date went fine. She described him as awkward and nervous, with a lack of anything to talk about.

He dropped her back off a few hours later. She told him thanks, but when he asked her out for a second date, she politely declined and said that she saw Tom more as a friend. She went to work on Monday, gossiped with the girls a bit about the topic. They stopped seeing Tom walk by the bank, and my mom thought that that would be the end of it, although sadly, it was just the beginning. After they stopped seeing Tom walk by the bank, my mom all but forgot about him.

and met my dad at a local dive bar a few weeks later. House, bar, bank, all within walking distance from each other, just as an FYI. Two months go by since her date with Tom, then one night she gets home from work to find that her apartment had been broken into. Front door is wide open, but all that had been taken were some of her undergarments. Nothing else was touched, aside from her underwear drawer. Weird, but she thinks this sort of thing happens,

It was a crummy lock, so her dad comes over the next day and puts deadbolts on the front and back doors. The back door in a garden unit, mind you. The door is actually attached to the laundry room of the building, and that laundry room is directly accessible from the backyard without a key. A week goes by, and one morning she sees her upstairs neighbor, Janet, a 50ish female, in the main hallway. Janet tells my mom that the night before when she came home from work,

She saw a man at my mom's front door messing with the handle. Janet heard the fumbling and actually had my mom's spare key. So, the only reason she even walked down the stairs to the garden area was because she thought my mom may have been locked out. Obviously, that wasn't the case. She asked the man what he was doing and he just ran up the stairs and darted out of the building. Mom luckily slept at my dad's that night. Nothing happens for nearly another month. My mom tells me stories of how that month

She always had a gut feeling that someone was watching her, but never saw anything, so she chalked it up to her being paranoid, given what had happened. Then, one stormy Friday evening, my mom went to bed early because she had the morning shift at the bank the next day. Lights out by 10pm and her fan on full blast. She falls asleep nearly right away. She wakes up around 2am to the faint sound of drilling. She thought it was odd, but it only lasted a couple of minutes.

So, she shrugged it off, thinking maybe a neighbor was making a late night snack. She tries falling back asleep, but all of a sudden, her fan shuts off and she realizes that the power is out. She gets out of bed and sees that the houses across the street from her all still had their porch lights on. Odd that it was only her building that was out. She's now getting really bad vibes, standing there in her living room where both the front and back doors are, standing in the complete dark.

She hears banging coming from the shared laundry room area. Mom described being literally frozen, staring at the door when she suddenly sees the doorknob turn and a hand come in attempting to undo the safety chain. She screams and bolts out the front door up to Janet's apartment, bangs on the door and Janet lets her in. Mom is hysterical and Janet comforts her while her husband Ray goes to check everything out and asks a neighbor to call the police since they don't have power to do so.

Police check the perimeter, see nothing, and say they'll come back in the morning once they can see what's going on in the daylight. Mom spends the rest of that night at Janet's. Morning comes, and they come to find out that someone had drilled a hole in the back door in order to bypass the deadbolt. They had cut the phone lines and the power to the building. Sawdust was sitting in piles in the laundry room along with two peepholes that see directly into my mom's living room and bedroom. Someone had been watching her.

and whoever it was, thought that the night of the storm was the perfect night to make his move. Eventually, my mom moves back home and they have zero leads on the case until Tom pops back up at the bank asking if my mom was around. She wasn't at the time and the only reason that Tom was ever caught was because he asked the other bank girls if my mom had quit and moved after her break-in. Nothing was ever posted in the newspapers so there was absolutely zero ways that he would have known about that

Had he not been involved, police go to interrogate him, and they find my mom's panties along with a necklace that she hadn't even realized was missing. It was then that my mom learned that Tom had been in and out of prison for much of his adult life, and it's likely that after all this played out, he simply continued along with that pattern. We don't exactly know what happened to Tom after this, but we're just happy that he didn't get to her, because who knows what would have happened had he been able to.

This story happened to me back when I was in my early 20s. I used to work at a major media corporation as a digital producer. It was one of my first jobs out of college and I was super excited to get dressed up every morning in my Zara pants and go to work in a fancy office. Our team was based out of Connecticut, but luckily I had a super cool boss that often let me work from our NYC location, which was much closer to my apartment in Brooklyn.

because I was hot desking and not a permanent member of our Manhattan staff. I often found myself sitting next to a sassy woman with a heavy New York accent who worked in facilities. She had that big maternal energy that Latin and Italian mamas often have where everyone is their child and everyone is invited over for dinner. I loved sitting in the seat and shooting the shit with her. It made what were often monotonous days feel like fun.

I eventually locked down this desk space as a semi-permanent thing, meaning I got to know this woman pretty well. Because my own mother was far away, I developed a close bond with this particular lady. I knew she had a son around my age, and as we got closer, she started to talk about him more and more. She would tell me how handsome he was, how successful he was as a teacher, and how much his students loved him, and more times than not.

These conversations ended with her suggesting that he and I should date. Now, for reference, I'm a lesbian and had a serious girlfriend at the time. So whenever she mentioned this, I just smiled and changed the subject. Eventually, I told her about my girlfriend, but that still didn't stop her endless refrain. You don't understand. You'd look great together. He's such a gem and he'll treat you like a queen. This was the early 2000s, mind you.

So, it didn't occur to me to speak up for myself or tell her how problematic it was to try and push a significantly younger gay coworker into a relationship with her son. I was also raised in the South where manners are paramount, so I simply let it go. Eventually, the woman's son started seeing someone and at this point, the conversation entirely changed. Now, her pleas to date him were replaced with humble brags about how wonderful his girlfriend was, how much she adored her,

and how in love they were. The pair eventually got married, and my co-worker was over the moon. And truth be told, I was happy for her as well. I knew just how much she wanted her son to meet someone, and not only that, but it got her off my back. After several years, I moved on from this job, but kept in touch with my facility's friends. Every once in a while, we'd message each other on Facebook with some greeting or inside joke, and then after a few years, even those stopped.

But because I still followed her on social media, I was among the first to find out when her daughter-in-law was murdered. At first, the authorities thought it was a gang thing. The daughter-in-law taught at an inner-city school and had overheard some concerning talk of murder. Maybe she had been targeted. But as more and more information came out, one thing became abundantly clear. The police were not looking at this as a random act of violence. They were looking much closer to home.

And it didn't take long before they zeroed in on my friend's son. It turned out he was seeing prostitutes instead of going to graduate school like he had told his wife. And when she found out and confronted him, he pushed her down the stairs before stabbing her to death while she lay there injured. Police found searches for throat slashing, neck snapping, bleaching blood stains, and destroying DNA evidence on his computer.

There were even rumors that his mom had helped him cover his tracks. I often look at my old co-worker's Facebook now and wonder how she's doing. She still has a picture of her son and former daughter-in-law as her profile pic. My heart aches for the family that had to say goodbye to their daughter way too soon, and I also thank God that I am who I am and never accepted that date. A little over 20 years ago, I decided to make a major life change. After graduating college, I packed up all of what I had.

and drove across the country to start a new life in San Diego, California. At first, I was fascinated with the idea of it being warm during winter and the allure of the beach. Having newly arrived and not yet employed, I would spend time drinking a few beers at night, listening to the waves crash on sunset cliffs while contemplating my future. One night, I believe it would have been February 5th, 2001, I was there drinking my beer alone

When I was approached by an elderly man, I'd say late 60s, he had been watching me for a while before he approached and initiated conversation. It started out with him asking basic questions like where I'm from, what I do, did I come alone, and so forth. This didn't concern me because he didn't seem threatening and I could take him down if he tried anything anyway. Then he seemed to get more excited and asked me if I was there because it was the anniversary of the murder.

I had no idea what he was talking about, and he continued to regale me with a detailed story about a double murder that occurred here in 1964. He deemed it very important to tell me all of the details about what the area was like that night, how the current pier was just being built, but there was a small metal pier the foot of which was where we stood. He told me about how the killer came down just over there and shot the couple, showing me where and how it happened. I found this very interesting.

and had no prior knowledge of it. He said the killer did this for no reason at all, and added that some speculate it was an early work of the Zodiac Killer, which it felt like he said somewhat teasingly before strolling off back in the direction that he had come from. "He told me to look into it, and I assured him that I would. He bid me a good night warning to be careful, citing there are a lot of crazies out there. It didn't occur to me until sometime later that killers often return to the scenes of their crimes.

to relive the adrenaline or whatever. In particular, Zodiac was known for his interest in the anniversaries of his murders, mailing taunting letters to the police and press on specific dates. As I remember back, the man was the right age and seemed to have an uncommon interest and detailed knowledge about this incident that had occurred so many years prior. The particular murders he was referring to

are often called "the honeymoon murders". In retrospect, I believe that that fateful night when I just happened to be alone on the anniversary and sight of a murder led me to having possibly a conversation with the Zodiac Killer himself. I can't verify it, obviously, but I haven't ever been able to shake this feeling. For those interested, he was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, medium build, not obese, nearly 70 years old, wearing normal clothes,

Not in a uniform or fancy business attire, nor trashy homeless. He had glasses like the type President Bush, the father, used to wear, and that overall kind of appearance. This whole interaction lasted maybe 10 minutes at the most. He didn't physically linger, but his thought hasn't left me alone since. This story is about a bad experience that I had when I went camping on the beach in the summer with my boyfriend.

We had this wonderful idea of camping on the beach instead of going to a hotel, since I always wanted to fall asleep to the sounds of waves hitting the shore, to see the night sky whenever I wanted, and just live this experience at least once in my life. We were supposed to stay in our tent for a week. The area had public restrooms with showers and restaurants, so the matter of hygiene and hunger weren't an issue. We bought all the supplies we needed for such an adventure, a two-person tent which was blacked out,

meaning the sun rays wouldn't come in, an inflatable mattress, a first aid kit, lanterns for the tent, as well as anything else that you could think two people might need for such a trip. The first nights were no issue. We actually enjoyed every moment of it. When we'd go out, we would take our valuables with us in backpacks in case anything bad were to happen to our tent. Think phones, chargers, wallets, etc. We weren't the only people that camped in the area.

There were plenty of other people, either single campers, couples, or even families, which even included people behaving less than appropriately. When night time would come, you would occasionally hear people laughing, partying, dancing, listening to music, smoking weed, taking drugs, or drinking lots of alcohol. We didn't mind it, as nobody had bothered us personally for the past four days and nights. People were having fun as they knew best.

and no one was being aggressive up to that point. Well, on one of our nights. We stayed out later than usual, around 1am, just wandering around the lively streets to listen to street performers, eating out, enjoying the vibes. When we stopped in front of one such street performer, who seemed to have a lot of people circling him and listening to his music, we realized then, he wasn't the main character that the people had been gathered for. In the middle of the crowded street, with live traffic mind you,

was a middle-aged woman dancing completely naked, clearly affected by the abuse of alcohol and/or consumption of drugs. She was incoherent, randomly flirting with people, all the while taking time to expose herself while dancing to the music, despite the disgust of the musician and those passing by. We didn't look much into it, and decided to head back to our tent and just have a drink in silence while watching the stars and falling asleep to the sounds of the ocean.

While drinking ourselves, we hear some lady shouting in the distance. It's the same woman we had seen before, but now she wasn't alone. She had friends with her, two men and two women. They had a camp set up on the same beach as us, a few tenths a distance away, but not far enough off so that we couldn't hear or see them, even in the dark. They lit a fire on the beach and continued to drink, smoke, and dance all around it. She, of course, is still nearly naked.

Although by this time, she's wearing a see-through skirt. She goes off into the ocean for what seems to be an eternity. I remember thinking, how is she not cold? That water must be freezing. My boyfriend just shrugged and told me not to be bothered. If we don't engage with her or them, they wouldn't bother us. So I did as told. But even so, I couldn't quite ignore the feeling that we were being watched. I put my thoughts aside. We decide to go to sleep.

but being a beautiful night coupled with the warm air, we thought of not closing the tent completely, just zipping the mosquito cover so the air would circulate inside the tent and we'd have the sunshine in the morning to wake us up early. I don't recall how long I had been sleeping for, but I remember being awoken by the sounds of footsteps circling our tent and a womanly voice humming a song softly. Our tent was not very thick. You could hear everything outside of it,

and even see things if they were to cast a shadow. I was too afraid to look out. Heck, I was too afraid to even change my position as to not indicate to the outsider that I had noticed their presence. All I could do was stay still and peer outside through the mosquito cover when, at that moment, I hear the footsteps stop above my head and the voice whispering through the tent, "Don't be afraid. I only want to sing you a lullaby." And the footsteps began again to circle the tent.

I see feet in front of our tent just passing by, noticing the very familiar, long, see-through skirt blowing behind her. Having a belligerent person attempt to come into your camp and serenade you is already unsettling enough, but it was when she leaned down so that I could very clearly see the lower half of her face from my vantage point that nearly sent me into a panic. And when she said, "I know you're awake,"

in a gruff and angry voice that was about as far from her sing-songy sound she had had only moments prior. I nearly pissed myself right there. I was still frozen, grasping at my boyfriend who, of course, slept through this entire thing. I wasn't sure what she was about to do. I didn't put it past her to crawl right into our tent and force whatever issues she was intent on instigating. But after lingering at the mouth of our tent for a few moments longer, she simply straightened up and walked off back towards her group.

I didn't hear any more footsteps the rest of the night, and I would have if they returned, because I don't think I blinked for the remaining hours of darkness. The next morning, after sharing what happened with my boyfriend and thoroughly draining his face of color, we packed our tent and moved far down the beach, as far away as possible from that woman and her friends. We positioned ourselves in a way that when the sun set, we could still see the faint glow of their fire and hear the sounds of their party.

But they could no longer see us, which is how we preferred it from that point on. This story dates back to the spring of 2016. At the time, I was in my late 20s, young and fit, with very long blonde hair. A total hippie chick that had quit her job to travel the US with my ex at the time, pre-pandemic, before the van life, tiny home movement really took off.

We left our home in the Midwest in January that year, after holiday celebrations saying goodbye to friends and family. By sometime in April or early May, we made it to southern Texas and decided to check out the Padre Island National Seashore. For those of you unfamiliar with Padre Island, it's a seashore that you can drive right onto with your vehicle. My now ex and I were in a 26-foot Class C 1976 Chevy motorhome.

We drove onto the island during the late evening hours, and waking up the next morning was the most insane and phenomenal experience of my life. The ocean was a mere 15 feet away. I mean, the visual was absolutely breathtaking. I'll never forget it. We arrived on a Thursday or Friday, and the beach was beyond packed. Another thing for people unfamiliar with Padre, it's where many Texans, high schoolers and college kids mainly, flock for their spring break.

Spring break was just the week prior to when we got there, or maybe even still going on. Either way, it was busy and we had an awesome weekend just partying away. During this weekend, we noticed that workers for the park would often drive down the beach. They're very protective of their sea turtle population there and would slowly drive by in marked vehicles a few times a day. By Monday morning, we awoke to find the entire island emptied out.

When I tell you we were literally the only ones when you looked left or right down the shore. We were the only ones for what seemed like miles. It was a gorgeous morning, so I took our dog out for a quick walk before coming back inside to sit at our pop-up dining room table to do some journaling. My ex was asleep on the very back couch. We were backed in with the windshield facing the ocean. So of course, I took a seat looking towards the beautiful view. Maybe 15 minutes after I sat down,

A grey beat up pickup truck drove by our spot kind of quickly, heading towards the direction of the park entrance. That was the first activity I had seen on the island that morning and thought nothing of it. However, maybe 10 minutes later, the same truck came driving back past our RV, this time much slower. The man driving the pickup was going so slow in fact that we made eye contact for several seconds as he went back by.

He also seemed to drive closer to our vehicle than before, given the interaction we had just shared. I can only assume it was to get a better look inside of our motorhome. Alarm bells should have been ringing loud and clear at this point, but I kind of just shrugged it off. I was very much in my free spirit phase and was not easily off put. This is where it really gets creepy though. So obviously, this guy needed to turn back around since he was now driving away from the park entrance again, but I was honestly minding my own business.

and I had almost immediately put him out of my mind. But yes, several minutes later, the man came back. This time, he pulled directly up to our RV with his truck, essentially nose-to-nose at a 45-degree angle, boxing us in. It was at this point my heart dropped, and I began to feel uneasy about the situation. I screamed my ex's name, and up he jumped from the couch. I know he could hear the panic in my voice.

I'll never forget how quickly he got up and how he had his arms spread while he ducked down to see through the windshield. He was 6'5", very bearded, and I'm 1000% sure the only reason that the man in the grey beat-up truck sped off like a bat out of hell. It took several minutes for my heart rate to return to normal. My ex and I just looked at each other, both noting that that was the most unusual encounter on our trip yet. Surprisingly, we stayed another week after that,

in the same spot. The idea never entered my head that the man could bring reinforcement and come back for me or us. I was so very foolishly fearless and naive back then. Anyway, it wasn't until later that day that another fact had dawned on me. When my ex and I had arrived over the weekend, we only pulled out one camping chair. That one camping chair was in plain sight next to our RV outside. Prior to this spot, we had never done that.

We always got both chairs out, but we ended up using driftwood to sit on when we had our bonfires. And so that was the biggest indicator for me. The scary man in the gray truck no doubt thought I was a young girl all alone. And I still wonder to this day, almost 10 years later, just what all he had in mind for me that morning. Edit. Just out of curiosity, after reminding myself of this occurrence, I googled Padre Island National Seashore Murder.

It didn't take long to parse through the first few results and learn that apparently, a couple who had been camping on the shores in their own RV in 2019 were brutally slain before being buried nearby in shallow graves. The two individuals that went on to be charged in this crime admitted that the only reason they took the lives of the couple was to take their recreational vehicle. While I don't believe this case had anything to do with my own strange experience,

I won't deny that it certainly sent shivers down my spine. I grew up idolizing my mother, as many sons do. She was everything I admired: protective, smart, beautiful, and successful. As a boy, I looked up to her, wanting to be just like her in many ways. But over the past three years, everything I thought I knew about her has unraveled, and now I feel only resentment.

The person I once adored has revealed herself to be selfish, manipulative, and untrustworthy. It's a harsh reality to face after spending 25 years loving someone without question. But the truth is, you don't really know your parents until you become an adult yourself. My dad, on the other hand, has always been a steady, reliable presence in my life. He owns a successful business and has been an incredible father to my sisters and me. He's the kind of man who will do anything for the people he loves.

Growing up, I always thought he was a bit too accommodating when it came to my mom. They've been together since high school, though their relationship started on a strange note. My mom literally pulled another girl out of my dad's jeep and took her place because she wanted him. That should have been a red flag, but at the time, he was smitten and too passive to resist her strong-willed nature. Throughout their marriage, my mom was the dominant force.

Whatever she wanted, she got. My dad, though a successful man, let her dictate their lives. She wanted a big house, fancy vacations, and a Mercedes, even though they couldn't afford it, and they went into $90,000 worth of debt when I was 13 just to satisfy her expensive tastes. They lived beyond their means for years, putting on a front of wealth and happiness. The only thing my dad stood his ground on was his annual deer hunting trip with the guys.

something she constantly complained about, wanting to be included in every aspect of his life. But it wasn't her materialism or controlling behavior that ultimately shattered my view of her. Four years ago, just before my wedding, we went on a motorcycle trip. My mom, dad, my fiancé, and an old coworker of my mom's, James. My dad and I often rode together, so this trip didn't seem out of the ordinary at first.

James was supposedly going through a tough divorce, and my mom thought the trip would cheer him up. But something felt off about the whole weekend. James was tall, handsome, and successful. And he seemed to focus a lot on my mom, constantly taking pictures of her and my dad. I brushed it off at the time, but it left an uneasy feeling. After the trip, my mom started acting strange. Secretive phone calls, changing her passwords, even putting a jar of rocks on her phone while she slept.

apparently to prevent anyone from checking it. My older sister, who was living with my parents at the time, noticed it too. One night, at an incubus concert, my mom disappeared for almost an hour. My sister casually mentioned that she and my dad suspected my mother was having an affair with James. That was the moment everything started to come together for me. My mom was no longer the person I thought she was. Weeks later, I went to my grandparents' lake house to pick up my kayak, and that's when I discovered the truth.

My dad had called me earlier, saying my mom claimed to be at the lake with her girlfriends. He told me to be prepared if that wasn't the case. When I arrived, I saw only two cars, my mom's and another girly one, so I initially thought everything was fine. But when I stepped inside, I saw James' motorcycle jacket hanging on a bar stool. My heart sank. I found his motorcycle in the garage, and when I looked through a phone charging in the kitchen,

there were photos of my mom and James kissing. I immediately called my dad and told him what I'd found. That call changed everything. My dad was heartbroken, but calm. He drove three hours with his brother, my uncle, to confront the situation. That night, he hid in the woods with binoculars and watched my mom and James cuddling and kissing like they were a married couple. The betrayal hit him hard, but he didn't confront them right away. Instead, he gathered evidence.

took pictures, and the next morning, he emptied their joint bank account and sent my mom a message: "I know everything. I'm leaving you." The fallout from this discovery was brutal. My mom, instead of taking responsibility, tried to manipulate everyone around her. She begged my dad to take her back, but when he refused, she dragged the entire family through her mess. My dad just wanted peace, but she wouldn't let go.

She dumped James and tried to play the victim, crying to anyone who would listen. She moved in with my little sister who was already dealing with her own financial struggles and spiraled into depression, taking the rest of us down with her. Her manipulation knew no bounds. She cried to my wife, who was new to the family and didn't know how to handle it, making my wife feel guilty for my mom's problems. It was exhausting. My mom's lies started surfacing more and more.

and I found myself growing angrier with each revelation. I remembered a time when I was seven, and my mom briefly left my dad for another man, a doctor. At the time, she had blamed the doctor, claiming that he had drugged and raped her. My dad reluctantly took her back, believing her story for the sake of the family. But now I realized that this was just another in a long line of deceitful acts. It became clear that this was who she had always been. My dad tried to move on with his life,

He embraced his newfound freedom, dating, hunting, and enjoying his hobbies again. But my mom kept trying to guilt him into reconciling. She used my daughter, their first grandchild, as a pawn, telling my dad that if he didn't forgive her, it would be his fault that their grandchild grew up with divorced grandparents. It was a cruel, manipulative move that only fueled my anger. Eventually, despite everything, my dad caved.

He and my mom sold their house and moved into a town home together, and things returned to the way they had always been, my mom controlling every aspect of his life. It was heartbreaking to watch him fall back into the same toxic cycle. But what hurt more was how my mom now tried to interfere in my own family. She constantly criticized how we raised our daughter, always playing the victim and trying to guilt us for not spending enough time with her. It took every ounce of strength to keep her manipulative behavior from poisoning my own marriage.

I love my mom, but it's impossible not to see her for who she truly is. Someone who manipulates those closest to her to get what she wants. She's torn our family apart twice with her affairs. And though we've tried to forgive her, the wounds are deep. My daughter adores her, which fills me with both happiness and frustration. My mom doesn't deserve the love and loyalty she gets. Especially for my dad, who has always been far too good for her.

It's a sad, complex situation, and I find myself at a loss for how to fully reconcile the person she once was with the person she's shown herself to be. If you made it this far, thanks for listening. It's been a hard few years for my family, and I just needed to get this off my chest. About 10 years ago, I was a vendor on the darknet. It wasn't a long-term thing, but I got into it because I was too lazy to get a real job.

At the time, the thought of a 9-5 felt suffocating. I wanted to start my own business, and I saw drug money as a way to fund it. I had been a user for years, and through that, I met a lot of people involved in dealing. Eventually, I started dealing too, but I have crippling anxiety. I hated meeting people in parking lots, and I definitely didn't want anyone knowing where I lived. That's when I stumbled upon the Silk Road and learned about Ross Ulbricht's arrest.

I became obsessed with the idea of the darknet, with learning how to cover my tracks through OPSEC, all with the goal of opening my own store. A few months later, I did just that. I started selling three drugs: ketamine, meth, and some cheap outdoor weed a friend of mine could get at a great price. Things were going well for a few months. I lost a couple thousand dollars in an exit scam, but I had about $25,000 saved up by

So, it wasn't a major blow compared to what some other vendors went through. Then, I met a local supplier who came to town once a week and had access to anything I wanted: LSD, mescaline, mushrooms, PCP, and fentanyl. Back then, fentanyl wasn't as widely used to cut heroin as it is now. People just did fentanyl, and people still do. I kept track of all my orders in an Excel spreadsheet.

I'd list the customer's name, zip code, what they ordered, and the amount. At the time, I was selling a pure white powdered mescaline. The fentanyl I had on hand was also white powder with a similar consistency. One day, my spreadsheet glitched, or maybe I made a mistake, and I accidentally mixed up seven mescaline orders with fentanyl. They went out, and I didn't notice. I went about my business for the next few days.

5 days later, I received a message from a customer saying their friend had died from the mescaline they bought. I immediately called bullshit. I checked my order log and measured out how much mescaline I had left. That's when I noticed. I had 11 grams more than I should have. My stomach dropped. I still don't understand how it happened, but it did. I wasn't using fentanyl myself, but I was high on dabs at the time, and I must have screwed up. I checked the market logs to see if anyone had finalized their purchases.

Some had, but none from that particular day, including the person who had messaged me. No one who ordered mescaline on that day had finalized their orders. The market had a feature that showed the last time users logged in, and none of those customers had been online for at least two or three days. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I had killed several people. I didn't need confirmation. I just knew. Without hesitation, I deactivated my vendor account.

I sold off the rest of my drugs, converted my bitcoin to cash, and got out. I packed up, moved to a new city, and cut off contact with everyone. For weeks, I didn't speak to anyone. I found a job in a restaurant, trying to start over in a place I had always wanted to live. I haven't touched drugs since that day. I completely walked away from that life, but I can't walk away from what I did. I think about those people every night. I save their names and google them a few days later.

I found information on four customers who had passed away. One of them had shared the drugs with a friend. Neither of them made it. I don't know why I'm even posting this. Maybe because I don't have anyone to tell. Even if I did, how could I? I live in constant sobriety now, just going through the motions. Clocking into work, clocking out, coming home, playing video games. I've become a recluse. The people I used to know have distanced themselves from me.

I know why. It's because I'm a shell of who I used to be. I feel hollow inside. Like, I'm not really living. Could I even tell a therapist about this? Do I deserve to be alive after what I've done? It doesn't feel like living anymore, anyway. I don't know. Maybe sharing this will help me feel better. Maybe it won't. But I needed to get it out there. Okay, fair warning. This one is long as hell. Apologies for that. But this is very hard for me.

and I've been carrying it for a lot of years. On the advice of my therapist, I've written it all out to try to work out my feelings on it. He didn't advise me to submit it to Reddit, of course. But I've struggled with this for a long time, and I need to hear other people's opinions on it. I still really have no idea how I feel about it, even after all these years. But I'll submit for judgment by the masses. I know I did wrong on some things, probably a lot of things. I tried to do my best that I could,

My son was very troubled, very troubled. If you have seen the movie, we need to talk about Kevin. It will really help to understand what I'm talking about because I swear to God, when I watched that film, I thought I was watching a documentary of my life. I felt like the writer must have had cameras hidden in my damn house. That's how accurate it was. The only difference is that in the movie, the boy appears normal to his father and only reveals his true nature to his mother. With my son,

He didn't have that mask. His insane behavior was the same with everyone. From the day he was born, my son just came out wrong. He was planned. My wife and I tried to get pregnant and were ecstatic when he was born. He was wanted and loved. We showered affection on him and really tried to give him a happy childhood. But from the day we brought him home from the hospital, he was miserable. He cried for 13 months straight. I'm not exaggerating.

13 months without a break. He cried until he had no voice left and kept crying. You could see his little face scrunched up and no sound coming out. Totally hoarse. There were times he would literally be crying in his sleep. I've never seen or heard of any other kid able to do that. We brought him to doctors, specialists, tried changing his diet, held him, rocked him, toys, swaddling, music, mobiles, everything we could think of. Nothing worked.

13 months of grating, grinding, no sleep hell. Once he got over the crying stage, we thought we were out of the woods. But it quickly became clear that for some unknown reason, he was just angry at being alive. I never saw that kid have a genuine, joyous smile once in the time I knew him. I saw him grin a vicious, horrible grin many times, taking a perverse pleasure from causing pain or suffering or breaking a rule, but a smile from real pleasure at something nice

No, never. Not once. He had no interest in anything positive. He was fueled by hate, and everything he did was bent toward that. As soon as he could walk, his mission in life was to destroy things. He would break or try to break anything that came in his range. Smash it, chew it, throw it in the toilet, whatever he could. After a while, he figured out how to get his diaper off and took great pleasure in shitting

and pissing anywhere he could. After a while, he figured out he could hide it, and started pissing and sh*t in places we wouldn't find right away, grinding it into carpets, making it even more of a problem to clean, and making the house stink. When he got older, he would piss and sh*t in our bed, until we got a lock on our door and he wasn't able to get in anymore. Then he'd just take a dump in the hallway in front of our room. That biological warfare started at around two and a half years old, and he never grew out of it.

I'll try to speed it up, as I could literally go on for days about this stuff, but as he grew older, he became more and more unmanageable. He would bite, kick, scream, scratch and spit at anyone trying to do anything with him. He was kicked out of school twice before he was 9. Then they let him back in, and then kicked him out for good. He had to change schools. The next one put him in a special class that kept him away from the other students.

We had to install a door and lock on the kitchen because he would steal knives and use them to gouge the walls or furniture or chase people with them. When he was 10, he stabbed me pretty good in the hip and ass. I still have the scars. As he grew older, he grew darker. He moved into setting things on fire and torturing local animals. There was a stray dog that hung out around the park near our house. My son blinded it in one eye with a barbecue fork.

He would dip cats tails in gasoline and light them on fire. He became a violent, stinking, vicious beast that lived in our house. We couldn't do anything with him. I will take this opportunity to preempt the tsunami of messages. Yes, we had the kid in fucking therapy. He saw a psychiatrist twice a week and had God knows how many different medications prescribed to him over the years. Nothing worked. Therapy didn't work. Meds didn't work.

Nothing f*cking worked. He was like a poison cloud of hate and fury, lashing out at anything in his reach. When my son was 16, my wife got pregnant again. I can't tell you how different our reaction was. Instead of joy, we felt horror. This pregnancy had not been planned, and we really were at a loss over what to do. My son had been such an unending nightmare for 16 years. We couldn't take the idea of starting again from the beginning.

We talked a lot about terminating, but A. Access to abortion was not as easy in those days as it is now for some, and B. My wife was very against it. We talked about many options. In the end, we decided that my wife would have the baby, and if it turned out evil, we would put it up for adoption. We knew we just couldn't do it again with another child like our son. We had a daughter. She was normal. Suddenly, we saw what our lives should have been like the whole time.

How things would have been had our son not been himself. She laughed at things. She breastfed without biting. She didn't have teeth yet anyway, but you could tell she was just trying to eat, not tear her mom's breast off. After four months, she was sleeping through the night. She was happy. She was normal. I can't describe the relief and happiness that we both felt. I don't have the words for it. This is where I believe I may have started really pulling back from my son. Up until that time,

Whatever mistakes I made, I had always tried to do the best for my son. I'm convinced of that. I tried to help him, and love him, and care for him. I really tried. But when my daughter was born, my wife and I both instinctively just turned toward her. She became our focus. Not for malice, but just because she was so much easier. She was so happy, and sweet. Every moment we were with her was like magic. I understand this was wrong, but we honestly couldn't help it.

I don't have a better explanation than that. My son hadn't given a shit about my wife being pregnant. I honestly don't know if he really understood it, but when we brought our daughter home, he started acting out even more. I didn't think it was possible, but he took it up another notch. At this time, he was 17, and we were having blowout screaming matches daily, usually after we fought. He would storm out of the house and disappear for hours at a time, or come back the next morning.

It was a relief. I started to actually look forward to our fights because it would get him away from us for a while. After the birth of our daughter, my relationship with my son was almost entirely gone. Our only real interactions were screaming at each other. My wife was even worse with him. She just had nothing left. By that time, if our son even came into the same room as her, she would just stop whatever she was doing and start screaming, "Get the fuck away from me! Get away! Get the fuck out!"

Until he left, he started spending more and more time out of the house, which was a blessing for us. I have no idea what he got up to out in the world, but we were just happy it wasn't being inflicted on us. As a consequence of our son's behavior, we had invested heavily in locks around our house. All of the cheap, thin interior doors in our home had been replaced with thick, dense wood doors that couldn't be kicked through, equipped with keyed locks that my wife and I carried keys to.

I know it sounds extreme, but locks and heavy doors were the best way we had found to create safe spaces from him. And again, before I'm inundated with messages, I was not locking my son in rooms like a prisoner. He had free reign of the house and could come and go as he pleased. My wife and I would lock ourselves in rooms to protect ourselves from him. If anything, we were the prisoners in our own home. On the day in question, I had fought with my son in the morning and he had left the house in a rage.

My wife and I were enjoying some peace and quiet in the kitchen while our daughter napped in our bedroom. And then my daughter began crying. Any parent who has young children can tell you. You get used to your child's cries, and you can tell after a while what they need. They cry differently if they're hungry, or need changing, or are just restless and want to be held. Babies can communicate pretty well before they can speak. This cry was none of those things. This cry was terror.

The second we heard it, my wife and I were both up out of our chairs and running to the room. The door was locked, of course, and it took a few seconds to get the right key and get it open. My son was in the room. We lived in a bungalow, and that bastard had climbed in the window to get to her. He was standing over a crib with a steak knife in his hand. I have no idea where he got it from. I have no idea where he got it. It wasn't one of ours. We controlled our knives very carefully and always kept them in locked drawers.

I think he may have stolen it from one of our neighbor's houses. He had broken her skin twice already, once in the belly area and once on her arm. I could see blood running down. When I entered the room, he was dragging the back of the knife down her face, not cutting, almost tickling her with it, teasing her while she screamed. He looked up at us and smiled. Before I knew what I was doing, I was already moving, running to put myself between them.

I didn't think about it, I just moved instinctively. Even with that, my wife got there faster. It was like a movie on fast forward. She got to our son and bashed his hand away, knocking the knife across the room and then shoved him with her whole body weight, so hard he flew away from the crib and bounced off the wall. I picked up my daughter and held her while my wife screened us. I could see her shaking, almost convulsing. I can remember the smell of the room.

The sound of my daughter screaming and wailing. The look on my son's face as he stood there. Just nothing. Blank. Dead. There was nothing in his eyes. No emotion. He looked like an alien to me. I watched my wife take a step toward him. I could have reached out and stopped her, but I didn't. She stepped forward again, very close to him. I could have stopped her again, but I didn't. She waited, looking at him for maybe 3-5 seconds without moving, and then…

She punched him in the face. Now, until this point, you may have been picturing my wife as a typical woman. Small frame, dainty, delicate. This is not the case. My wife does have a small frame, but dainty and delicate? She is not. Never has been, since I've known her. Since her early teens, my wife has been a boxer. MMA didn't exist back then, but karate and boxing were big in those days. And my wife was a very talented amateur.

She was about 130 pounds. She carried a lot of muscle, and she knew how to punch. I had 70 pounds on her back then, and I have no doubt that in a real fight between me and her, she could have and would have pounded me flat. Neither of us had ever laid a hand on our son in anger before, but something broke in her that day, and all the years of anger and pain and sorrow and frustration just came pouring out.

When she hit him, his head snapped back and blood started pouring out of his nose. He hardly reacted. He just looked at her with this shocked expression, like he didn't know how to process what had just happened. She waited another second, and then she hit him again. I could have reached out and stopped her. I could have dragged her out of the room, taken her away, calmed her. I didn't. I just stood there and watched while she systematically started to pound him to a pulp. Every time he brought his hands to cover one part,

She would blast him somewhere else. Body, head, body, head, over and over. He started screaming, crying out, yelling for her to stop. It's the most genuine reaction I'd ever seen him have to anything in his whole life. But she wasn't stopping. I watched her ramping up, hitting harder, faster, working him like a heavy bag. He tried to swing at her, and she slipped him easily. She was on autopilot, sinking down into her training.

I stood there watching for a minute. Then I turned my back on them and took my daughter out of the room. I brought my daughter to the kitchen and gave her a bath in the sink. I found that he had cut her a third time on the sole of her foot. All the cuts were superficial. I cleaned her up and held her until she calmed. I put polysporin and band-aids on her cuts. In our bedroom, I could hear my son screaming, calling my wife horrible names, telling her he would cut her head off and fuck her corpse. After a while,

I didn't hear him saying anything anymore, didn't even hear him crying out. I assumed that he must have been knocked out, but I could still hear her beating him. That went on for a long time, long enough for my daughter to drift off to sleep in my arms. I just sat at the kitchen table waiting for her to finish. Finally, she came out and sat down across from me. Her hands were swollen and red. Her face and arms were splattered with blood. Her chest was heaving. We just stared at each other without saying anything. After a while, I asked her,

"Is he dead?" She looked back at me and answered, "I f*cking hope so." I nodded. That was all there was to say about that. I understood how she felt perfectly. I felt the same. I didn't know what to do, so we just sat there waiting silently. Eventually, my wife started crying and went to go take a shower. I just stayed where I was, holding our daughter. After a long while, I heard moaning and sobbing coming from our room. It turned out that my son wasn't dead. I went in to see how bad it was.

and it was pretty bad. I've never seen a more merciless beating laid onto anyone before or since. He was lying on the floor, rolling around with blood leaking out of his face, lying in a pool of vomit. His nose was squashed flat out across his face. Both of his eyes were completely swollen shut and starting to blacken already. I could see that a couple of his fingers were bent out at weird angles, and he had pissed his pants. I think he must have been missing teeth, but I couldn't see any on the floor.

and I couldn't see inside his mouth. His lips were all puffed up and swollen. From talking to my wife about it later, I know now that she had systematically beaten every part of his body, focusing heavily on his legs. She told me she kicked him in the groin repeatedly until her legs got tired, and had kept beating his body long after he had passed out. When my wife came out of the shower, I still didn't know what to do about our son. I didn't know whether to call the police or an ambulance, take him to the hospital myself,

I honestly didn't have any idea what to do. After a while, I realized that I simply didn't care what happened to him anymore, and we decided to just let him live or die on his own. There was an in-law suite in the basement that we had never really used, and my wife, my daughter, and I just moved down there. We simply ceded the top floor of the house to my son and locked everything down, separated our lives entirely. There was plenty of food in the upstairs cabinets, enough for a couple weeks or more.

He had a washroom and bedrooms to use. We had a washroom in the basement, a small kitchenette, and a separate entrance so we just stopped going upstairs. We just decided we were done with him. I figured we'd let his food run out and see what happened. Over the next week, we could hear him moving around upstairs sometimes. I think he just spent most of the time lying in bed recovering. I went to work, watching on high alert in case he attacked me in the driveway, but he never did. My wife stayed home with our daughter.

She was never out of our sight. One night, we heard him going ballistic, smashing things and banging. We didn't respond. He never tried to get downstairs or get near us though. I think he was afraid that if he got near us again, my wife might finish the job on him. After three weeks down in the basement, we hadn't heard anything from up above for a few days, and I ventured upstairs to the main floor of the house. The place was demolished, and there was no sign of my son. He was gone.

It took months to repair the damage he had done and get the main floor back to normal again. There was food and shit smeared all over the walls, and broken glass on the floor, big holes in the drywall. He had ripped the place apart. He tore up the linoleum in a corner of the kitchen and emptied an entire foam fire extinguisher into the living room. I feel thankful that he didn't burn the house down with us in it. I'm honestly not sure why he didn't. The kid wasn't shy about lighting things on fire.

After that, I lived in fear every day that he would come back, that he would ambush us out of the blue and try to kill us. We moved houses about three years later, and I finally stopped being afraid that he would show up again, as now he had no idea where we were. I finally felt safe from him. All this happened a long time ago. My son was born in the spring of 1971. My daughter was born in 1988. I'm an old man now, and my wife passed from cancer in 2016.

My daughter is 36 now. I moved in with her and her husband after my wife passed. I've got two granddaughters and they are the joy of my life. I see a therapist a couple times a month to talk about all this. I don't know where my son is. The last time I saw him was when he was lying on the floor of our bedroom, bleeding and smashed. I haven't heard from him since he left, more than 30 years now. I don't want to. I carry a lot of guilt from that time and a lot of conflicted emotions.

I didn't beat him myself, but I allowed him to be beaten, and I thought he deserved it. I was happy it happened. I didn't try to kill him, but I would have been happy if he died. I will say that I do hope he was able to overcome his demons and go live a normal life somewhere. If he wasn't able to do that, if he stayed the way he was, then I truly do hope someone out there unalived him. When I knew him, he was a rabid dog, and whichever way it went, I just hope he isn't still out there hurting anyone else.

Young and dumb. The title tells you everything. This took place when I was about 14 or 15 years old. I would stay over at my best friend's house, constantly. She's an only child, and her mom would let us do anything, including leaving their place by ourselves at 1 or 2 in the morning. I'm surprised we're alive, because we were very trusting. Like, get into a car with a group of teenage boys we just met, trusting.

So one night, we were hanging out at a guy's house. The plan originally was that we were going to stay the night there, but his grandma ended up getting angry at him and told everyone to leave. It was around 1am and we had no other option than to walk back to her house. We decided on our walk to cut through a used car dealership, trying to save time, but their on-site security guy spotted us and told us we were trespassing. He asked us why we were out so late and where we were going.

After hearing about what had happened, he said, "If a cop stops you, they won't believe that. You'll probably just get into trouble." We didn't have cell phones yet, so he asked if we'd like to use his phone to call someone. My friend's mom was going through a rough patch financially and didn't have a phone, so we couldn't call her. My mother would have killed us if we tried to call her, so we told him we didn't have anyone. So, security dude offers to pay for us to stay in a motel for the night,

This man was maybe 30-35 years old, like I said. My friend and I were 15, but stupidly we accepted this offer, so we both go to get into the backseat of his car when he says, "One of you can sit up front." So my best friend promptly jumps in the back, leaving me to sit up front. We stop by this man's bank and then headed to the nearest motel. The entire drive, he was telling us that he was a war vet and got injured on tour.

saying that he would kill for a massage. He asked if either one of us were any good at massaging people. We as teenagers said, uh, no, not really. We finally get to the motel. This dude parks and tells us to stay put in the car, but before he exits the vehicle, he takes his handgun that I didn't see before out of his hip holster and puts it in the glove box directly in front of me. He then locks it,

Then he goes into the office to pay for the room. After returning to the car and handing over the keys, he ends up asking if he could come up with us and we could give him a massage, like a thank you of some sort. We immediately said no and booked it up the stairs, not turning back to see what this man was doing or what his face said. We deadbolted the door the second we were inside. We definitely didn't sleep that night. We were a little too creeped out from this experience.

And as soon as the sun came up, we made our way out of there and walked the good hour and a half back to my friend's place. It's now 14 years later, I'm 28, and was just browsing Facebook. I saw a news article about an army vet being arrested for abducting and assaulting two teenage girls. It was the same bald-headed mother f***er security guy that picked me and my friend up that night. It's a pretty unsettling feeling, thinking, what could have happened?

Had we not had the sense to bolt up those stairs and lock ourselves inside the relative safety of that motel room? We may have been dumb, but I'm so very glad that we weren't dumb enough to let him in that room with us. So this happened roughly two years ago. I worked at a fairly large motel, one that had 50 rooms between three floors. I was the only employee in the building after about 5 p.m. It should be noted, I'm a woman. The motel is on what's considered to be the nicer side of town.

So, a lot of companies will send their workers to us for room and board instead of the shadier motels on the opposite side of the city. Some of them were great guests, others completely trashed everything, but that happens everywhere, I suppose. The layout of the building was pretty simple. You pull up by the front entrance, enter the foyer, and the front desk/lobby is right through a set of automatic doors.

Right across the hall from the lobby was a staircase leading up to the second floor, and to the left was our elevators to the second and third floors. The first floor only has rooms on one side to allow for our pool, workout room, and a breakfast area/dining room, lobby and the office rooms all being on the opposite side. The upper floors have rooms in a single row, with the third floor having the most rooms.

Typically, the third floor, the highest, we kept only for business and long stays. Second floor was reserved for short stays or bigger parties. And the first floor we kept open for elders who have wheelchairs or walkers, or people who come in late at night for a one-night stay. I promise, this is relevant to the story. Anyway, it was getting towards the last few hours of my shift. It was slow that night, aside from a few work groups I had checked in a few hours earlier.

I noticed a raggedy, rusted, and beat up black pickup truck pulling up into the brightly lit carpet. So I got my paperwork ready for check in. A guy gets out of the truck, completely covered in dirt. I figured he just got off of work, as most guys come in covered in dirt or oil. I do specifically remember that he reeked, which isn't too out of the norm either. On the whole, I just chalked it up to him being in an oil field, or construction worker. I got his identification. His name was Michael.

and scanned it into the computer. He was rather reluctant to leave his vehicle information with me, but I explained if he didn't, his vehicle was at risk of being towed by morning. I thought he caved just because he was only going to be here for the night. Michael requested a second floor room close to the lobby staircase so he could have easy access to the front doors for smoking. Not out of the norm either. After taking his payment, I set up his room keys. I explained parking, policies, and explained how he could get to his rooms.

which was right up the staircase, and the door was on the opposite wall. He had a few bags with him, and he went upstairs. Almost immediately though, he comes back down the stairs and accuses me of giving him broken room keys. I had to explain if he put them next to his phone or anywhere near a magnet, potentially in his wallet. The keys will deactivate. I did offer to take him upstairs and open the room for him to make sure the new set of keys worked, and they did. He walked into his room by himself,

shut the door. So with that, I was on my way back down to the lobby. When I got back in the office, something odd caught my eye on the cameras. He hadn't left the building, but his car wasn't in the front anymore. He didn't mention anything about having another person with him. If there was, we're supposed to charge a $10 fee per extra person. The side doors don't open unless you have a room key or are on the inside of the property. So I started to watch the cameras to make sure he wasn't trying to sneak people in.

About 20 minutes pass, and I notice nothing happening except him coming down the stairs. I smile politely, and he heads outside. He stays outside for about 10 minutes, just standing in the carport. I can see it on camera. Now, while I thought that was a little weird, I just chalked it up to him having a smoke. I stopped paying attention after a while, and started to file my paperwork that was due before my shift ended. Michael ran back into the lobby, cigarette still in his mouth.

I told him there was no smoking in the building and he'd have to take it back outside. This was something I highlighted while checking him in, so it wasn't a surprise. He just threw it on the ground and put it out with his shoe. He turned his attention towards the TV and ended up sitting in the lobby for an ungodly amount of time. He kept glancing towards the door, which made me uncomfortable. During this time, the minute friendly demeanor he had at check-in completely disappeared. He seemed paranoid,

and agitated now. He would whisper to himself, although I couldn't hear what. After about 30 minutes of him doing this, I instructed him to go back up to his room because I cannot have people in the lobby when I'm working on closing procedures. It was a lie, but ownership allows us to make up reasons if we're uncomfortable with a guest's presence. Michael asked me to take him up to his room because he's uncomfortable and scared. I explained that I'm unable to do that for safety reasons.

What I could do was watch him go up the stairs on camera and he could call down to the office on his room phone when he arrived there. I was just trying to be friendly and get him upstairs as quickly as I could. He goes upstairs, but immediately comes back down and informs me that he forgot where his room was and I would need to show him. I told him at this point I couldn't leave the office or lobby, but I could explain to him where his room was because it was super simple. He was continuing his whispers. This time it was about him losing his phone.

I didn't pay any mind to it. After explaining to Michael where his room was, he went back upstairs and I heard the door slam shut. It echoed throughout the second and first floors and it gave me chills for some reason. Almost immediately again, he comes back down and starts yelling at me, accusing me of stealing his cell phone, that I was somehow planning on his demise and I needed to find his phone. This was completely bogus as I hadn't left the office since making sure his room key worked.

He asked me for help, and I just wanted him to go away, so I slipped his screwdriver in my pocket, just in case, and I began rummaging through the lobby couches looking for his phone. I didn't find it, but I did find his credit card, which he also began accusing me of stealing. I stood my ground and said if he wasn't going to respect me and my place of work, I would call the police and request they escort him into his room or off the property. He got angrier,

snatched his card from my hands, and went back outside. After about 20 more minutes, he comes back inside. He's calmer, but he asks if I would please go outside with him because there's something wrong with his car. After I absolutely refuse, he tells me that I need to go outside, that it's not fair he's the only person out there working on his car, and he just needs some fucking help. I had to explain I'm not allowed to accompany a guest outside of the building.

That's when he starts repeating that I absolutely have to go outside with him. Now, I have anxiety, and I tend to let my mind roam over wide horizons, and this was a situation that triggered that. I was about to have a panic attack, so I called the owners and asked them what I should do. It was my first hospitality job, and although I have tons of freedom doing it, I still want to know how to properly handle these situations.

The owner told me if I'm uncomfortable and suspect he's under the influence or a danger to myself or himself, I have full reign to call the police, have them ban him from the property. I asked if they could just keep an eye on the cameras they have access to at home because he's acting weird. I locked all the lobby doors and made sure the side and fire exits were all properly secured and closed so no one could sneak in. I did this while on the phone with my boss because I was scared to leave the office by myself.

After getting back into the office, I lock the door and I just brace for him to come back inside. My boss tells me to watch the cameras and keep my cell phone nearby just in case I have to call for help. Meanwhile, I noticed on the cameras I couldn't see Michael anymore. I didn't know where he parked, but I damn sure wasn't going to go looking. What I did notice was that there was another vehicle driving through our parking lot. I called the hotel next door to ask if the car was on their cameras too.

and I was informed it didn't belong to any of their current guests. Same situation with us. This just shot my anxiety up even higher. The car would drive around the back of the building to the front, but avoid the carport, turn, and then do the same to the building next door. The parking lot was almost empty, so I know they weren't looking for a parking spot. The car keeps going, and I'm watching it on the camera so focused that I didn't notice when Michael came back inside. Once I see him in front of me,

I tell Michael he either needs to go up to his room or vacate the premises. He just continues to yell at me, saying I needed to go outside with him. He won't move out from in front of the entrance. I imagine he was staying within view of whoever else he kept looking back at. Then, randomly, he turns and sprints across the parking lot and out of the camera's view. As I look down, I realize I didn't see the car anymore after that.

Since it was practically the end of my shift, I somehow managed to get everything done just in time for the next shift to arrive. I was so glad to see her, I almost cried. I explained to her what happened and that the owners wanted to keep the lobby doors locked. We put up signs explaining our doors were broken and due to safety reasons, guests would have to call for entry or use the side entrances for their room. I also deactivated Michael's room keys and told the next shift girl not to let him back. If he shows up,

To call the police, because he's a security risk. I made sure she watched me get into my Uber ride after triple checking the vehicle and driver matched what my phone said, since I was a regular customer of the driver. He asked why I was so riled up. I asked him to drive through the parking lot so I could see if Michael's truck or the other vehicle I saw driving across the parking lot were anywhere near the buildings. They weren't. I have no idea what happened to them.

The next day, I had my boyfriend come stay the entire shift with me just in case Michael returned because I was told by my bosses he never came back to get his stuff. He wouldn't pick up our phone calls either. Nothing happened that night or any other night. But a month later, Michael came in asking about his stuff and if he could get a room. I refused his room and luckily other people were there with me in the lobby and in the office.

I had our maintenance man go retrieve his items and explained he's no longer allowed on the property. If we saw him, the police would be called and he would be arrested for trespassing. Again, not exactly true, but we didn't want him coming back at all. I noticed Michael had a different vehicle this time. It was a newer model SUV and it was maroon. It matched neither his beat up black pickup truck or the dark colored sedan I saw driving in circles. If there was anything that sat with me even after all this time,

It was that he remembered my name. He addressed me by it when he walked up to the counter, and at first I thought, "Oh yeah, my name is part of my uniform." Until I realized I forgot to put on my name tag that day. After that, I refused to wear one in the hotel. Management let me create a fake name and wear that from that point on. It took me a while to feel safe in the building again when I was alone. I constantly had my boyfriend with me while I worked the evening shift. There's a chance Michael and the circling vehicle are unrelated.

But my anxiety and the aura I got from Michael that night didn't feel good or right. It was April of 2008, I was 20 years old and living in Denver for a year long work contract with a non-profit in Boulder. My girlfriend, now wife, and my best friend Tim drove to Colorado from our home state to visit me for my 21st birthday. The non-profit I was working for housed their workers in dorm rooms and drinking was not allowed on site.

nor were visitors allowed to stay overnight. So I booked what seemed like a nice hotel room in downtown Denver for the weekend, so we could have some place to hang and drink in honor of my 21st birthday. But when we arrived, we realized that this place precariously straddled the line between nice hotel and motel. It was big and in a central and safe-feeling part of the city, but all of the room entrances opened into a central courtyard that funneled to the open parking lot.

So to say, it was possible to see each and every guest as they entered or exited their rooms from many different angles. But that's only something that came to mind much later, as young adults. We were more focused on the cutting loose and being free parts. My wife and Tim arrived Saturday morning and we all met up at the hotel. The day was fantastic. We drank all across the city most of the day. By about 1am, we got back to our residence.

The room was typical with two queen beds. Bed number one was close to a big window looking out across the property. If you looked hard, you could see mountains off in the distance. Bed number two was pushed against the wall with a door that opened to the bathroom. You couldn't see the door or entryway to our room unless you were at the foot of bed number one. We kept the party going, drank more, and chatted in the room until about 4 a.m.,

My wife was laying at the head of bed number two flipping through the TV. Tim and I were seated at the foot of bed number one, staring out the window as we talked. As we spoke, I heard some movement and the sound of a door opening. Without looking away from the window, I assumed it was my wife getting up to use the bathroom. A few minutes passed by, and I thought I heard movement again, so I finally turned around to look. I saw my wife still lounging in bed number two, as she had been.

Did you get up to go to the bathroom a few minutes ago? I asked her. No, she replied. I thought I heard a door. I said back to her, with her just looking confused back at me. Yeah, I thought I heard that too, Tim said, breaking his own gaze from the window. It was then I started to run cold and sobered up pretty quickly. Very softly I heard Tim say, I think there's someone in our room. I lurched forward from the foot of the bed to look into the pitch black entryway.

I could barely make it out, and I wanted to believe I wasn't seeing it, but there was a man, dressed all in black, with a baseball cap, pressed into the 90-degree corner of the entryway where the room door and wall met. Absolute silence fell on the room, and it felt like hours passed by as I started to panic in my mind, like no other way I have in my entire life. We all knew. We knew we weren't alone, and hadn't been for a while, and now he knew we had spotted him.

Eventually, Tim got the courage to meekly speak in the direction of the entryway and said, "Hey man, is there something we can help you out with?" Another period of silence that felt like an eternity went by. The man slumped off the edge of the wall a little, into the light, and made eye contact with Tim and I. We all just stared at each other. Then, eventually he spoke up and said, "Is this room 1709?" "No man, it's not," Tim said stroking his beard nervously. The man stared at us for a while longer,

raising his eyebrows and shaking his head, before he turned and silently left. We then erupted into a million curse words and paced around the room. I called the front desk. They told me that this man was drunk and they found him in the stairwell but directed him back to the right room. Minutes later, Tim called down to the front desk and they told him that the man was not a guest, although he was apprehended in the stairwell before being taken into police custody.

Then a while later, my wife called down to the front desk just to follow up. They told her that he had disappeared and they had no idea who he was or what he was doing. They told her there wasn't even a room 1709 on the property. So we all got three very different versions of the story. All this time later, and we still have no idea what that was all about. How that man managed to get a keycard to our room. We were sure the door was closed. So it's not as simple to think...

that it was just a crime of opportunity. This was easily the most terrifying moment of my life. And now, I always use the latch when in hotel rooms. We got the stay refunded and about $200 in credit for food from the hotel. I don't know if we should have done something more than just accept their offer. Maybe we should have gone to the police, but we were young and dumb and all the partying from that day certainly didn't help in decision making. We finished out our weekend stay

and went back to our daily lives. But even now, almost 17 years later, my wife and I will have the odd conversation about this. The time that we hosted an uninvited visitor in our motel room for my 21st. Before my mom married my dad, she dated a man named Craig. At first he was sweet, but he slowly became abusive. My mom tried to leave multiple times, but Craig always threatened her after one violent argument.

My mom waited and fled in the middle of the night. Years passed, and she got married and had me. My dad's work included a lot of traveling, so it was mostly my mom and I alone in our large acreage home. What I'm about to share is a recounting of what my mom told me when I was old enough to understand. I may miss some details, but the bulk of what happened is included. My mom was in the kitchen making lasagna while I was sitting in my high chair. It was extremely hot that day,

so she opened the kitchen door to let in some air. She heard heavy footsteps enter into the kitchen behind her. My excited mother assumed it was my dad, and she turned around with a "Hello, my love," but her excitement immediately faded to horror. There was Craig, standing in the middle of her kitchen with a gun visibly tucked into his pants. Craig smiled at her and asked what she was making. My mom mustered enough courage and said lasagna. She was physically shaking,

As Craig sat himself down beside me, he playfully pinched my cheek and I laughed at the act. My mom was holding back tears as she finally asked what he was doing in the house. Craig said he just wanted to visit her and he would leave when he was done eating. When the lasagna was ready, she served him a plate. My mom took me and sat across from Craig so she could distance her unpredictable ex from her young child. Craig said he still had her things at his house and that she was welcome to get them.

My mom said that she didn't need any of it and he could throw it out. Craig started to get agitated and said, "Yeah, you're good at just throwing things away, aren't you?" Craig said that she was acting tough, but he knew deep down inside she was still the stupid girl that he had dated. Craig claimed that my mom needed him in her life and that she couldn't function if he wasn't there to help her. He said he needed to be there to raise me because my dad would never be able to protect my mom or me.

Craig said if he were crazy, he could have easily kidnapped us or done things to my mom because my dad was too scared and weak to protect what was his. My mom started to cry and told Craig it was time to leave the house and to not come back. Craig said that it wasn't her house and that for some reason, he had the right to be there. My mom said if he didn't leave, she would call the police, which really made him angry. Craig threatened if the cops got involved,

He would hire men to cut her up into pieces and film it. My mom started to cry even harder. That's when an enraged Craig threw his plate, smashing it against the wall, before yelling at her to stop crying. And couldn't she see that he loved her? I got scared and started to cry too, which caused Craig to stand up and approach my mom. She jumped out of her chair with me cradled in her arms. She begged that whatever Craig was going to do to her, just to leave me alone and not touch me.

Craig tried to reach over to grab my mom, but she got so scared that she fell to the floor sobbing. Just then, the house phone began to ring, and Craig became so overwhelmed that he ran out of the house. After phoning the police, the cops and his family found him about to shoot himself in the head. His adult son had to convince him not to do it. My mom was so traumatized that she didn't want to deal with any of it. Charges were never filed, although she did get a restraining order against him.

Her and my dad moved across the country shortly thereafter, and that was the last my mother ever saw of Craig. I was curious, so a few years back, I looked this guy up and was shocked to see that he was dating a college-aged girl, one who bore a striking resemblance to the woman he couldn't have. This isn't so much one encounter, but it was a terrifying experience nonetheless. I've never told this story to anyone besides the police.

But I've been thinking a lot about it lately and only recently realized how much the whole thing really fucked me up. So here goes. I met this guy at a bar one night. We had a great time, partied all night, and eventually ended up back at my apartment. After that night, he basically lived with me instead of at the hostel he was staying at. We clicked immediately and I enjoyed having him there. We dated for about three months before the first incident. It was the night of my 30th birthday.

We celebrated, had a blast, and passed out at about 3am. He had told me previously that he suffered from PTSD and night terrors. He had woken up many nights freaking out, so his admission wasn't very shocking. I was deeply passed out when I awoke to five quick blows to the head and face. I tried to cover myself, not knowing at all what the fuck was happening, when I realized that my arms were pinned at my sides.

After gaining enough sense to know that I was being attacked, I realized that he was sitting on my chest with his legs on my arms, now with his hands around my neck. I only remember the light fading and going black as he squeezed harder around my neck. When he let go, the blood eventually rushed back to my brain, and I remember seeing him walk to the bathroom. At that point, I grabbed my dogs and ran to my car and took off. He must have passed back out,

He called me hours later, completely confused as to where I went. I told him everything he had done, and he promised me he didn't mean to do any of that. He would never do that on purpose, and he promised to seek help. I agreed to come back on the terms that if he ever even scared me again, he'd be gone. Exactly one week later, again, in my sleep, I woke up to him on top of me, this time not doing anything. It rattled me, but I slowly pushed him off and pretended to be getting ready for work.

When, out of nowhere, he jumped up and sucker punched me straight in the mouth. I fell onto the bed, and he again tried to strangle me. This time, I didn't fight back, instead opting to pretend that I had passed out. He let me go once he thought I was unconscious, and went to the kitchen. As soon as he left, I grabbed my dogs again and booked it to the car. I jumped in and locked it. This time, he chased me.

That was when I realized this wasn't some PTSD nightmare sleepwalking freakout. He was legitimately a psychopath. He was wide awake and very coherent. He was screaming that he'd burn my house down if I didn't come out, trying to break the windows to get into my car. Once I was safe, I called the cops. He retreated back into the house. When the cops arrived, I told them he's crazy and might try to attack them. But when they went inside, he was quietly waiting for them.

and surrendered without any resistance. He knew what he had done. It wasn't until his trial that I found out that there was a knife in my bed when the police had arrived. When he let go of me and went to the kitchen, thinking that I had passed out, he went to get a butcher's knife and left it on the bed when he chased me outside. While no one could definitively prove what he was planning on doing within a court of law, I think it's pretty clear to any reasonable person that he had plans of putting that knife through me that morning. In the end,

He wasn't charged with anything, because the DA pulled some fancy lawyering maneuvers and tricked him into walking right into the arms of ICE as soon as he left the courthouse. I have to say, that was satisfying to watch. He was deported and banned from the country. He still tries to contact me on social media by making new accounts to try to get me to help with his appeal to be allowed back. Nope. He still claims he wasn't awake for any of this, I don't know what I believe, but

I know I feel a lot safer with him on the other side of the globe. I've been having a hard time sleeping since all of this. I kind of brushed everything off and carried on with my life as if none of it ever happened. Thinking about it recently though, I realized being attacked in your sleep and coming that close to possibly being a murder victim might cause some lasting psychological damage. I'm currently considering seeking help. I think maybe sharing this story for once might be a healthy first step.

My ex-best friend is on her way to becoming the next Dahmer. I'm warning you right now for mentions of various triggers in the story: abuse, both human and animal, SA, and a couple of different "philias". From junior year of high school until maybe two years after graduation, I was best friends with a girl named Vanessa. During this time, I was going through a lot of changes in my social and family life, and she was the one constant.

So, we became co-dependent. Her family life was never that great to begin with. Her dad was abusive and manipulative. Her mom, Lena, was a sole provider and wasn't around often. Her young sister, Sarah, acted out while Vanessa held it all together and tried to make everyone happy. Part of her father's abuse was to make the kids stay in their rooms until he woke up, usually well into the afternoon. He wouldn't even let them leave to go to the bathroom or eat.

I can only imagine that some of this played a part in the way things went. Vanessa loved creepy things, and all her friends just wrote it off like "Oh, that's Vanessa. That's how she is." When I say creepy things, I mean like creepypasta, gloomy bear, horror movies, blood and guts, and things like that. She wanted to be a coroner or a mortician when she grew up, and she collected roadkill and kept the clean bones in her garage

It's hard for me to put this all into terms that people who don't know her would understand, but ones like "seen" or "emo" or "fake edgy bitch" wouldn't be incorrect. My friend group all grew up pretty sheltered, so as young adults, we rebelled against that like any normal kids would by talking about getting into BDSM and other taboo things. Vanessa was into BDSM, specifically.

the inflicting pain, sadistic side. She was always the most edgy one of our group. But again, we all just wrote it off like, "That's Vanessa being Vanessa." At one point, she even admitted to being attracted to the idea of dead people. Like, she said she wanted to be intimate with a non-alive person. I have no idea how this wasn't an immediate red flag. But again, we all just shrugged it off. We'll get back to this later. She also had this habit of collecting animals.

From what I remember, the most she had at once was: two dogs, a cat, two hedgehogs, two snakes, two birds, a gecko, a couple of fish, two axolotls, three rats, four mice. For those of you who don't want to do the math, that's at least 20 pets. Around the time that we both turned 19 or 20, Vanessa's mom Lena finally kicked her dad out and divorced him.

It was a painfully slow process, and Lena forced her daughters to play nice with their dad to try and make everything easier. But all it did was suppress their anger and build up resentment toward their mother. I remember Vanessa ranting about how she just hated both of her parents, and she just wanted her dad to leave and be gone. Soon after her dad left, Vanessa's cousin on her mom's side, Jim, came to stay with them while in college. Now Jim was a fucking creep.

He had issues with hypersexuality and had no idea what boundaries were. Vanessa's house became a hub for her and Sarah's friends after her dad left, but often we didn't want to be there if Jim was going to be there. He would consistently hit on and make sexual advances towards one friend in particular, to the point where she wouldn't come over, period. Vanessa felt she couldn't do anything to stop it, no matter how many times she told her mom. Lena would just say something about family and needing to be kind.

Then it came out that Jim had assaulted his own little sister, and soon after, it was learned that he had done similar things to Vanessa and Sarah when they were younger as well. Finally, he was kicked out. At Halloween of that year, after all the rockiness that had played out, Vanessa and I ended up getting a bottle of shitty whipped cream vodka, which we drank all of, despite neither of us being drinkers. During that time, she confessed that she was in love with me.

Now, I had just gotten out of a relationship and I was feeling neglected and lonely, so I was down. We were kissing and touching, but then she wrapped a dog leash around my neck to choke me in a BDSM way. She kept telling me things like "I love you so much, I just want to f*ck your dead body. I would miss you so much so I don't want to kill you, but I would love to be with your corpse." At this point, my brain shut down. We went to bed soon after and she quickly fell asleep.

But I avoided her for two days after, anxious as hell, before texting her like, "Hey, I love you, but like a friend. I can't date right now. We stayed friends, and everything seemed fine. I can't explain why I didn't immediately bail after she told me that, but I'll blame it on the vodka. Easy way out, right?" One day after that incident, Vanessa called me while at work.

I wasn't able to answer, but I stepped away after a moment to check my texts. She had sent to me and another friend a video of her unaliving a small animal. I can't remember what it was now, maybe a mouse. The video showed her playing with it, then strangling it, then dissecting it. In the background, you could hear her speaking, as if replying to the imaginary voice of the mouse. "Before you accuse me of embellishing?"

She told me later that she did hear a voice, and of course she was talking to it. As soon as I saw that, I freaked. I called her back, told her she needed to stop, and what the hell is going on? She kept talking about how she felt bad for killing it, but also she wanted to do it again, only this time something bigger. I immediately left work, calling various centers near our area to see if we could get her admitted for a psych evaluation.

I had to convince her and her mom that this was necessary, and I stayed at the hospital for 7 hours while she was being evaluated. She ended up staying there for 2 weeks. It was hell. I took care of her 20 animals. I visited her when I could. We talked on the phone. We were extremely codependent, and I was mad at myself for putting her away because clearly she was fine, right? Lena was upset with me too.

because of the fees and the fact that she didn't believe anything was wrong with her daughter. When she finally got out, Vanessa wasn't any better. In fact, she told me and our friends repeatedly that being there just made her want to go after bigger and bigger things. I felt like I had to watch over her all the time to make sure she wouldn't give in to these temptations. We stopped hanging out as much because of my job and because I was just tired of it all. One day, she bought another rat

with the sole intention of torturing it. She ultimately didn't because I implored her not to, before pressuring her to give it to a friend that didn't have the same urges as her. That was the last straw for me. I was overwhelmed and couldn't handle taking care of her anymore and being so dependent on a single person. I didn't want to be responsible for her and I didn't want to try and control her anymore. So I broke ties, told her I needed a break. She had a hard time understanding that.

and she talked me to our friends. I only saw her once after that, when she tried to make amends, but my skin crawled the entire time she spoke. I haven't seen Vanessa since 2017, even though we still live in the same area. To be honest, the thought of running into her sends me spiraling into anxiety, and I'm just waiting for the moment when she's arrested for trying to sneak into a morgue or attacking someone. TLDR My best friend was a necrophile.

who told me repeatedly that the thought of my corpse really got her going. She started unaliving animals, and everyone thinks I'm the crazy one for trying to get her help. Although, I truly feel that attempting to get someone the help that they desperately need is never the wrong move. I just can't be the one to help. Halloween, the night when the veil between the living and the dead is said to be at its thinnest. For children, it's a night of adventure, costumes, and the sweet promise of candy.

For parents, it's a night of cautious fun, where the biggest concern might be too much sugar or a costume gone wrong. But in 1974, something far darker took place in a quiet suburban neighborhood, a real-life horror that forever changed the way families approached Halloween. This is the chilling true story of the night when Halloween candy became the deadliest trick of all. It's October 31st, 1974.

The sun has just set in Deer Park, Texas, casting a cool glow over the neighborhood. The air smells of dried leaves, carved pumpkins flicker on doorsteps, and excited children roam the streets, their plastic costumes rustling as they run from door to door. Houses are decorated with makeshift graveyards, hanging ghosts, and paper skeletons. But the scariest thing that night wasn't something anyone could see just yet, although it was hiding in plain sight.

In one of those homes, a father carefully helps his son, Timothy, into his costume, a Planet of the Apes outfit that the boy had been eagerly waiting to show off. The father, a church deacon, a well-liked figure in the community, looked every bit the part of the caring dad as he had volunteered to take a small group of neighborhood kids out for a night of trick-or-treating. It's a typical Halloween filled with innocent excitement as the children race from door to door filling their bags with candy.

As they approach a darkened house on their block, the kids knock but receive no answer. Impatiently, they run ahead to the next home, leaving the parent a few steps behind. After a short moment, the father catches up, holding five long pixie stick tubes in his hands, smiling as he makes his way back up to the group. The man finally answered the door, he says, handing the brightly colored tubes to the kids.

The kids hurriedly stuff the tubes into their bags. Just another score in their growing treasure troves of candy. The night wears on, and eventually everyone returns home, tired but happy. It's been a perfect Halloween by all accounts. Later that evening, eight-year-old Timothy asks his father if he can eat just one more piece of candy before bed. The father agrees and reaches for the pixie stick, the same one that had come from the dark house they had visited earlier.

Timothy eagerly tears it open and pours the powder into his mouth, only to grimace. He tells his dad that it's bitter, his face twisting in discomfort. His father brings him some Kool-Aid to wash it down and get the unpleasant taste from his son's mouth. Moments later, Timothy begins to complain of stomach pains. His face turns pale and he starts vomiting violently before collapsing on the floor in convulsions. His parents panic and rush him to the hospital, but Timothy's condition

deteriorates rapidly. Within an hour, the doctors deliver heartbreaking news: Timothy O'Brien has died. The family is in shock. The entire neighborhood is stunned. How could this happen? In the following days, the police launched a massive investigation. Halloween candy had been poisoned, something every parent feared but had never really expected to happen. The pixie stick had been laced with a fatal dose of cyanide, and it wasn't just Timothy's.

Four other children had also received the same deadly candy that night, although thankfully, none of the other children had opened and eaten them. A sense of dread swept through Deer Park and across the country as news spread. Parents scrambled to check their children's candy, throwing away bags full of treats in sheer terror. The idea that a random stranger could have poisoned a child's candy sent shivers down everyone's spine, but the reality was far more horrifying than anyone could have imagined.

The police began scouring the neighborhood, questioning everyone who had handed out candy that night. They interviewed neighbors, searched for suspects, and tried to trace the source of the poisoned pixie sticks. But something just didn't add up. The father, who had handed the candy to his son, couldn't seem to remember exactly where it had come from. His story kept changing. First he said one house, then another, altering the description of who handed him the candy in the first place.

As the investigation deepened, investigators made a chilling discovery. They found that no one had actually handed out pixie sticks in the neighborhood that night. It turned out that the dark house the father had identified, well, the homeowners weren't even home on Halloween night. The police became suspicious. How had this father returned with pixie sticks from a house that didn't give out candy? Under mounting pressure, more disturbing facts came to light.

It turned out the father had recently taken out life insurance policies on both of his children, policies that would pay out thousands of dollars in the event of their deaths. Then came the most damning evidence of all. Friends and coworkers came forward to tell investigators that the father had been asking around, inquiring about how much cyanide it would take to kill someone. He had even attempted to purchase cyanide from a chemical store just weeks before Halloween.

As the puzzle pieces came together, the horrifying truth was revealed. This wasn't the work of a madman or some deranged stranger targeting random children. The father, who had led his and others' children through the streets on Halloween night, had poisoned his own son, hoping to collect the insurance money. His plan was to kill not only his son, but also other kids, to make it look like a case of widespread candy tampering. The community's shock turned to outrage.

The father, Ronald O'Brien, was arrested and charged with murder. During his trial, the prosecution laid bare his cold-blooded motive and the chilling premeditation behind his actions. It ultimately took the jury less than an hour to find him guilty. Ronald O'Brien was sentenced to death and was executed by lethal injection a decade later. Ronald's terrible actions gave him the dubious nickname, one that he'll forever be known as, the Candyman.

the man who turned Halloween into a nightmare for every parent. The story of Timothy O'Brien's murder is a terrifying reminder that sometimes, the real monsters are the ones we trust the most. This tragedy sent shockwaves across the nation and changed the way parents viewed Halloween, with fears of poison candy persisting to this very day. The horror of that night still echoes, a chilling testament to how evil can hide behind the mask

of normalcy. This story is one that left a small town reeling and parents questioning the safety of a night meant for innocent fun. The terrifying part of Halloween isn't always what lurks in the shadows, it can most certainly be what hides behind the most familiar of faces. In 1973, the town of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin learned this lesson the hard way when one little girl's night of trick-or-treating turned into an absolute nightmare.

This is the true story of 9-year-old Lisa French. It was Halloween night, 1973. The cool autumn air was alive with excitement as children dressed in all manner of costumes hurried from door to door, their laughter and footsteps echoing through the quiet streets. 9-year-old Lisa French, full of energy and anticipation, was among them, ready for an evening of trick-or-treating, dressed as a hobo.

Complete with oversized clothes and makeup smudged on her face, Lisa carried a pillowcase to collect her candy as she set off on what was supposed to be a night of harmless fun. Lisa's plan was simple: stop by a few houses in her neighborhood, meet up with her friend, and be home by 7:00 p.m., just in time for dinner. Her mother, anticipating her daughter's quick return, sent her off with a smile, trusting that Lisa, like every year before,

would come back with a bag full of candy and stories about her night. But as the hours ticked by, Lisa's mother grew anxious. It was well past her daughter's curfew and there was no sign of her. Concern quickly turned to panic as she began to call friends and neighbors, desperately searching for any trace of her little girl. The streets, once filled with the cheerful sound of trick-or-treaters, were now eerily silent. By midnight, the police were called and a frantic search began.

The community came together in full force, combing the streets and nearby fields, hoping to find Lisa safe and sound. But as the hours turned into days, hope began to fade. There was no trace of Lisa, and no one had seen where she might have gone after visiting the last few houses. The entire town was on edge, wondering who could be responsible for the disappearance of a child on what was supposed to be a night of joy. Three days later, on November 3rd, 1973,

the worst possible outcome was realized. A farmer driving along a rural road on the outskirts of town made a grim discovery: a large garbage bag discarded in a field, and inside the bag was the lifeless body of Lisa French. The joy and innocence of Halloween had been shattered. The town was left in shock, and the question on everyone's mind was: who could have done this? The autopsy revealed the horrific details,

Lisa had been sexually assaulted before being suffocated. The brutality of the crime was almost unimaginable. The police worked tirelessly, tracking every lead, questioning neighbors and anyone who might have seen Lisa that night. But the trails seemed to run cold. It was as if Lisa had vanished in plain sight, and nobody could understand how this could happen in such a close-knit community. Investigators scoured the town.

re-interviewing witnesses, retracing Lisa's steps, and looking for any clue that might lead them to her killer. The police were under intense pressure, and rumors began to swirl. Parents were terrified. I mean, if this could happen to Lisa, could their children be next? The search for answers brought them back to Lisa's neighborhood. Witnesses mentioned a few houses Lisa had stopped by that night, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However, one house stood out, one on East Scott Street.

just a few doors down from Lisa's home. The man who lived there had once been friendly with Lisa, but now investigators began to take a closer look at him. His name kept coming up in interviews, but nothing solid seemed to tie him to the crime. Yet, the more they dug, the more suspicious the situation became. This man had been home alone on Halloween, claiming he didn't see Lisa that night. But as detectives pushed harder, inconsistencies in his story started to surface.

and it wasn't long before their suspicions led to a search warrant where they made a chilling discovery, something that would begin to unravel the mystery of Lisa French's murder. During their investigation, police discovered a letter written by the man, a letter never intended to be sent, but one that held dark confessions. In it, he described in horrific detail how he had lured Lisa into his home on Halloween night. He admitted to assaulting her, and in a panic,

killing her when she started to scream. Her death was no accident. It was the result of a calculated act of violence committed by someone she knew, someone her family had trusted. The man was named Gerald Turner, a neighbor who had once been friendly with Lisa and her family. No one could believe it. Turner had seemed just like another man in the neighborhood, a familiar face who would never have raised suspicion. But beneath that mask was a predator

Turner had killed Lisa and discarded her body in a field, hoping his secret would never be discovered. Turner was arrested in 1974 and charged with Lisa's murder. The town, already reeling from the loss, was further shocked by the betrayal. A neighbor, someone they had all trusted, had committed the unthinkable. During the trial, the details of Turner's letter and the forensic evidence made the case clear. He was convicted of second-degree murder,

and sentenced to 38 years in prison. However, his release on parole after serving just 17 years caused outrage across the state, and many fought to keep him from ever walking free again. Though justice was served, the scars left by Lisa's murder have never fully healed. Her death changed the way the town viewed Halloween, turning what was once a night of carefree fun into a somber reminder of the dangers that can lurk behind any door.

The tragic story of Lisa French is a stark reminder that real horrors of Halloween aren't always found in ghost stories or haunted houses. They can be much, much closer than we'd ever imagine. Lisa's life was taken by someone who wore no mask, but whose monstrous intent was hidden in plain sight. Her memory continues to haunt the town of Fond du Lac, where her story serves as a chilling warning for every family who trusts that Halloween will always be safe.

Halloween is a night when the unexpected often feels like part of the fun. Costumes, laughter, and spooky surprises. In 2008, one young woman embraced that energy, attending a lively Halloween party with her neighbors and friends. The night began with laughter and celebration, but by the following days, everything had changed. The events that unfolded would leave her community shocked, her family heartbroken, and the case still shrouded in mystery.

This is the story of Arpana Janaga, whose fate after Halloween night remains a haunting puzzle. It was October 31st, 2008, and the Valley View Apartments in Redmond, Washington were buzzing with activity. Arpana Janaga, a 24-year-old software engineer, was among those celebrating. She had moved to the area recently for a job and was known for her intelligence and warm spirit.

She was eager to make new friends and had a passion for bringing people together, which is why she hosted a Halloween party that night in her apartment. The party, a lively affair spread across multiple units in the complex, was filled with music, drinks, and guests in costume. Arpana, as one of the hosts, was seen laughing and enjoying the night with her friends and neighbors. The evening stretched late into the night, with guests moving between apartments and mingling.

By all accounts, the night seemed like a success, and by the early morning hours, the party began to wind down. Arpana's apartment, now quiet, would soon become the center of a mystery that no one could have anticipated. A few days passed, and friends and colleagues began to worry when Arpana stopped responding to calls and texts. It wasn't like her to be out of contact, especially with work obligations looming.

Concerned, one of her friends, along with a neighbor from the same apartment complex, decided to check in on her. When they arrived at her apartment on November 3rd, they noticed something strange. Her front door was slightly ajar. Nervous but determined, they cautiously stepped inside. The smell of cleaning chemicals hit them nearly immediately. As they ventured further into the apartment, they saw signs of a disturbance. Furniture out of place. Items scattered around.

Their concern turned to dread as they approached the bedroom. In a horrifying turn, they found Arpana lying on the floor of her bedroom. She was unresponsive. What they initially thought was a mere case of concern for her well-being quickly turned into something much darker. Authorities arrived on the scene and confirmed that Arpana had been brutally murdered. She had been assaulted, severely beaten, and strangled. The scene inside of the apartment was chaotic.

Her killer had taken extreme measures to try to cover their tracks, motor oil had been poured on her body, bleach and other cleaning products were used to destroy evidence, and her bed linens had been removed and partially burned in the bathtub. Despite these efforts, investigators did manage to recover DNA samples from the crime scene. These detectives quickly began to search for answers, starting with those who had attended the Halloween party. Given the number of people moving in and out of various apartments that night,

The pool of potential suspects was rather large, but the brutal nature of the crime suggested that someone close may have been responsible. One of the primary suspects to emerge was a man named Emmanuel Fair, a man with a criminal record who had attended the Halloween party. Fair wasn't a resident of the complex, but had been invited to the gathering as a guest of another resident. His DNA was found at the scene, and his prior convictions for crimes of a sexual nature made him a focal point of the investigation.

However, the case was far from straightforward. DNA evidence from multiple individuals was found in Arpana's apartment, including other party guests and her neighbors. Fair's defense argued that his presence at the party explained the DNA and that it didn't necessarily prove he had been involved in the murder. Fair's lawyers also emphasized the fact that other attendees had acted suspiciously, including a neighbor who was later found to have scratches on his face and hands.

though this neighbor claimed that they were from a motorcycle accident. Despite these uncertainties, Emmanuel Fair was charged with Arpana's murder in 2010, but the trial process was lengthy. Fair spent nearly eight years in jail awaiting trial, facing numerous delays in the proceedings. His first trial, held in 2017, ended in a hung jury, unable to reach a consensus on his guilt. In 2019, Fair went to trial for the second time,

Again, the prosecution relied heavily on the DNA evidence found at the scene, while the defense pushed back, pointing to the lack of any direct link between Fair and the murder itself. The defense also argued that multiple unknown DNA samples found at the scene had never been fully explained. After weeks of testimony, the jury delivered a verdict of not guilty. Fair was acquitted and released, leaving the case unsolved, while Fair's acquittal closed one chapter of the investigation.

it left many unanswered questions about who was truly responsible for Arpana's death. To this day, the murder of Arpana Janaga remains unsolved. Investigators have continued to search for answers, but the complexity of the crime scene, the multiple DNA profiles, and the failure to tie any one individual to the murder have made the case exceedingly difficult to close. For Arpana's family, friends, and the Redmond community,

Her murder is a chilling reminder of the darkness that can sometimes hide behind seemingly ordinary nights of celebration. Despite years of investigation and legal proceedings, the question still lingers: who killed Arpana Janaka, and why? This case remains open, a haunting unsolved mystery that continues to frustrate investigators and haunt the lives of all those who knew Arpana.

I'd like to take a moment to thank you for tuning into this episode and spending your time with us as we uncover these chilling Halloween mysteries. And if you enjoyed today's content and would like to support the channel even further, our Patreon is the perfect way to do so. Not only does it help us continue bringing you more spine-tingling stories, but you'll also get access to exclusive content, early content, and so much more. You can find us at patreon.com/malevolentmischief.

We appreciate every single viewer and listener that supports us. It means the world. Be sure to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell so you don't miss our next upload. Until then, and like always, I hope to catch you on the next one.

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