Scary Stories For Dark Dreams - Volume 18 | ATRD Podcast
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If you have a true scary story you'd like to share with the podcast, go to aztheravendreams.com and click the button to send it my way. Also, if the platform you're on has the option to rate the podcast or leave a comment, please consider doing so. And as always, thank you. There was a story that you told a while back about a guy that found what looked like a neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. The houses were all abandoned and empty...

and it reminded me of something that my now husband and I found back in the early 90s. It would have been the summer of 92, because it was our second year together. We had decided that we were going to take our vacation on a road trip, and we would go out and see some of the sights in parts of the country that are... less... incorporated.

We decided that we would go driving around parts of Kansas, Colorado, maybe head up to Wyoming so we could check out Yellowstone. It was going to be a long road trip, and we were prepared for it. We'd put a good amount of money into getting our car up to specs and making sure it didn't have any issues. We had cash on hand for any hotels we wanted to stay at, and we had loaded up on a good amount of food and first aid stuff just in case.

Things were going pretty well at first. We got through part of Kansas and saw a lot of the open area there. It wasn't until we got to western Kansas that we got to the parts of the state that had, well, nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. If you've never driven from the eastern part of Kansas to Colorado, then you have not seen literal nothingness.

When you hit parts of Kansas that are in the mountain time zone, there's really nothing out there. Just past Colby or Garden City if you're more to the south like we were. We got to a spot that had a lot of woods and looked like we could stop and maybe park the car while we got out to hike around the woods. Once we were sure that we were good, we stopped the car, got out our hiking gear and started out into said woods. It started out pretty normal.

We followed some of the paths that were out there, that other people had walked through, and we made our own way through some parts of the woods. I will note that as we got into the woods, I did start feeling a bit off, almost like I was going to get sick. I told him what was going on, and he asked if I wanted to turn back, but I told him that I didn't. For some reason, I was feeling like we should press on.

Like whatever we were going to see was something that we should see. I know that sounds really weird, but there was almost a voice in my head saying press on, keep going, don't turn back, or whatever. So I told him that we should just keep going and I would be fine. After a while, we came to what was a bit of a clearing, which was a bit odd in and of itself, but...

It got even weirder when I realized that there was what looked like an old barn, but there was nothing around it to indicate that there was ever a farm here or anywhere nearby. The area was overgrown with full-grown trees, which told me that it had been like this for a while. There were no fences or other buildings, just this random barn. Obviously, this was quite the find. We were definitely hoping to find something like this for some urban exploration,

but with it being so old, and we also wanted to be careful going into it. That said, we figured it wouldn't hurt if we just went in, looked around, and didn't touch anything. So long as we didn't disturb the structure itself, it wasn't likely to fall or anything like that, right? We walked in the front door, which did unfortunately require us to kind of pull it from its hinges.

which went immediately against our statement of let's not damage the building, but we had to do it to get in. We entered, and immediately were hit with the stench of something being dead, which I guess wasn't surprising, since it was an old barn that hadn't been touched in a long time, but it was still absolutely disgusting, and it did not help me feel any better about it. Despite the smell being strong,

We didn't see anything in the immediate vicinity that looked like a corpse at all. We pushed further in and it was pretty clear that someone had been, at some time, living here. It was a barn, but someone had attempted to separate it into different rooms. What looked like a bedroom, a main room or living room, and then a room full of trash. The living room area was pretty much just old furniture and a bunch of kids toys.

which was seriously creepy, though there was no other indication of there ever having been a kid there. While that was weird, it actually got legitimately creepy when we got into the area where the bed was. On the bed, square in the center, was a Ouija board, and it was an old one because it looked like it was solid wood and scratched to hell. It was covered in dust and looked really well used, but...

Beyond that, it was in better condition than most of the things in the bar. I'm not one to believe in the supernatural myself, and I really don't see the appeal with Ouija boards, but it was still pretty freaky. The creepiness was amplified when I looked around at the walls and on the floor. There were papers with words written all over them. A few of the pages had what looked like drawings of the Ouija board with the words written underneath them.

On the walls, there were various words scratched into the wood. While I can't recall most of them, I do remember the words "I can't leave" scratched deep into the wood above the bed. I think that was enough for me. My husband wanted to keep exploring it as he was interested in it all, but I was feeling worse and worse with every step that I took, and I told him that I needed to get out of there before I got sick.

He agreed with me, and we went ahead and left. Thankfully, that was pretty much it. There wasn't anyone living there in the barn at the time that we were there. There wasn't anything more freaky than that. Just the words on the wall, the Ouija board, the toys, and the drawings. And while that may not sound like much, it was still creepy as hell to me, and was something I never wanted to go back to. I wish I could tell you the exact location or the coordinates, but...

I honestly don't know the exact spot. If anyone is ever exploring the southwest emptiness of Kansas, they may find it. That is, if it's still there. I'm a female. When I was 16, I lived in the Valley area of Los Angeles. This was many years ago. As I explained in an earlier story,

At this time, the best part of my week was Saturday nights, when I would meet my friends at our beloved under-21 nightclub to dance the night away. The vast majority of the time, I'd have to get a ride there and back. I didn't have my own car until a couple of years later, when I was in college. But occasionally, a family friend would lend me his car, and on one of these Saturday nights, he did.

I felt so independent and free to be able to take myself to the club, and to be able to leave when I wanted. On the night of this story, I drove to the club and had a typical great time, dancing with my groups of friends to music like Prince, Earth, Wind, and Fire. At the end of the night, I got into my borrowed car and headed toward home.

In case you don't know, the San Fernando Valley is made up of many suburban towns. None are really small, and some are very nice. And as you'd expect, some are less nice with higher crime. I lived with my family in a medium town in the northern part of the valley. It was neither very nice nor very bad, with medium homes on mostly respectful if not professionally manicured lawns.

And, being the greater Los Angeles area, there were many differing routes I could take to get home, whether freeway, highway, or city street. It was after midnight at this time, but most routes that I could take would still be bustling on Saturday nights. I'd had my fill of loud music, laughter, and chattering voices, so I opted for a quieter route home.

I took some busy streets and then veered into some quiet neighborhoods that would take me home. If I drove through some quiet house-lined streets, I would get home a little faster, and I was tired. GPS hadn't been invented at this time, nor even cell phones, so I had to rely on maps or just knowing the chosen route. I'd heard bad things about a town called Pacoima,

but I'd only been through it during the day, maybe once. Still, I knew how to get through to shave a few minutes off my time, and besides, being someone used to walking or taking buses, I felt blissfully perfectly safe now in a well-running car with gas in the tank. I was safer at this moment than almost any other time, at least that's what I believed. Still,

I was a teenage girl alone after midnight, in an area that I was unfamiliar with and naive enough to think nothing bad could happen to me in a locked car. I entered a residential street in Pacoima and only had to go a couple of blocks to get to the next town, then to my own. As I slowly drove down a dark, quiet avenue of modest homes, there were streetlights illuminating the unknown.

This also helped with my feeling of invincibility. As I smiled to myself at this, I started to notice a few people walking down the street toward me. At first, I didn't give it much notice. My left turn out of Pacoima was coming up just ahead anyways. But as they got closer, I very quickly realized it wasn't just a few people. It was a gang of approximately 12 to 15 men, and they weren't casually walking down the sidewalk.

They were aggressively running down the middle of the street, and right toward me. I suddenly had to slow to almost a stop so as to not hit anyone, and this is when they all got a really good look at me. Looks which turned instantly more excited and animated, as they all realized I was just a young girl alone. Many exchanged smiling glances between them, and others were whooping, whistling, and calling out things to me.

smoothly, effortlessly, as if they had rehearsed ahead of time, several of them stopped me completely by standing right in front of my car and even putting their hands on the hood, as others walked around to my driver and passenger doors and pulled at the handles to open the doors. I didn't always lock the doors when I drove, and cars didn't really have auto locks back then,

but I was thanking God that I'd had the foresight to do it on this night. Of course, it all happened very fast, but in my shock and terror, it felt like slow motion. So, quickly adjusting my mind from carefree to possibly being abducted or worse by this large group of men, they had me trapped. I couldn't drive forward nor reverse out of there because, at this time, the car was completely surrounded by men.

and as a couple of guys picked up sticks or other objects to try to bust in my windows, I knew that I had to think clearly and act fast. I did the only thing I could think of. I started driving forward. Having blocked my car completely, I could see the surprise on some of their faces as they knew they had to move out of my way or risk being run over. I had immediately decided that if they didn't move, I would run them over.

All the men standing in front of my car quickly jumped out of the way, and I sped up as I took the left turn out of Pacoima. I did make it home safely, but my heart did not stop beating out of my chest for the rest of the night. Of course, I thought about it for a long time after as well. I felt proud of the way that I handled the situation, but kept running through possibilities of what I could have done differently. What if they didn't get out of the way?

and I actually hit a couple people with the car. How would I have lived with myself? Should I have just sat in place and honked the horn to hopefully wake up people in their homes around me? What if one of the men had pointed a gun at me? I'm very happy that it turned out the way that it did, but it could have turned out so much worse. So, I hope we'll all keep in mind that we're not quite invincible inside a car,

No matter how cozy even heated leather seats may make us feel, dark, quiet shortcuts are not a good idea, especially late at night. And always drive with your doors locked. So, Pacoima gang that tried to grab and do who knows what to a teenage girl driving alone one late Saturday night, it's been a long time since then, and I'm very glad that I didn't meet any of you ever again.

The story does come with a content warning, as it does involve sexual assault. If you do not want to listen to a story that contains that, go down to the timestamps below and skip to the next story. I will give a few moments of silence here, just so anyone who wants to do so can.

I've been a long time lurker on a number of true scary story groups and platforms, and after reading all the horrifying things that everyone else went through, I thought I should go ahead and share what happened to me my senior year of high school. Well, I guess it didn't happen to me, it happened to my friend whom we're going to call Lily for the sake of privacy. But it was a terrible situation, and I was definitely a part of it.

It also involved an instructor at our high school, who we're just going to refer to as Mr. Smith. To set the stage a bit, Mr. Smith was a new teacher at our school. Our senior year was his first year teaching at our school. He wasn't the youngest teacher, he looked to be in his mid to late thirties, but he was charismatic and quickly became popular because he seemed to relate to us kids.

He was one of those teachers that was in the know about pop culture and things that the students liked, and a lot of us students really adored him and his class. He was an English teacher, and he actually made the class engaging and entertaining. My friend Lily and I were in the same hour with Mr. Smith, and from the beginning I couldn't help but notice that Mr. Smith did seem to pay her an unusual amount of attention.

At first, I thought it was just him trying to help her out a bit extra in class, making sure that she was understanding things and not struggling, which I've seen before. However, there was one day that completely solidified all of the suspicions that I'd had, and made me see that the attention that Mr. Smith was giving to Lily was not innocent or professional.

One day, at the end of the school day, I realized that I had accidentally forgotten to turn in an assignment for Mr. Smith's class, and I made a beeline for the room so that I could get it turned in. When I opened the door, I saw Mr. Smith and Lily in the room, and while they weren't doing anything obvious, the feeling of the room was definitely inappropriate. They were both clothed, obviously.

but it was pretty clear to me that something was going on or being talked about that shouldn't be talked about in a classroom setting. I timidly entered the room and handed my assignment to Mr. Smith, and as I did, he thanked me and said something like, "'Anyways, Lily, if you need more help, we can set aside a time here in the near future to figure things out.' She said okay, and she actually walked out of the room with me. Obviously, I asked her what that was all about."

and she just shrugged it off, saying that he was helping her with homework. That was obviously a lie, but I also didn't want to just jump to conclusions. Maybe it was innocent. Maybe nothing had happened and I was just looking at it wrong. Yeah, those justifications were completely wiped from my mind as the next few days went on. After having walked in on whatever that was...

I started noticing everything that pushed me into believing that it wasn't innocent. I noticed how close he would get to her, how much extra attention and extra help he would give her in class, which would require him to be, like, right against her. How he would randomly say things like, "'Oh, you look nice today, Lily.' Things that would sound guiltless, just small compliments and the like. But these virtuous compliments to me were anything but."

Then, it came to a head. About a month after I walked in on their situation, Lily came to me in tears after school. I was at my locker getting my stuff together, and she tapped me on the shoulder. When I turned around, she was a mess. Her makeup was running, and she looked absolutely miserable. She asked me if I could give her a ride home, which was surprising to me. We'd always been friends, sure, but we weren't that close.

I told her that I could, and we made our way out to my car. The way that she changed from in tears to sobbing uncontrollably the second the doors closed was horrible. She exploded into telling me about what was going on between herself and Mr. Smith, basically what I anticipated. She said that it wasn't anything serious, that he'd flirted with her and she had reciprocated, but they hadn't gone any further than that.

until that day. That day, she had gone to his room to ask about an assignment, to actually ask about schoolwork, and without going too far into the disturbing details, he pushed himself onto her, and he had definitely gotten handsy.

She said that she tried to push him away, but struggled with him and he said something like, "You know you want this as much as I do." She said that she reached up, slapped him, and that's when he finally let her go. She then ran away from the room and found me. Of course, my first thought was that we needed to report him. She agreed initially, but then mentioned that she didn't think anyone would believe her.

She said there was no one else in the room, there were obviously no cameras in the classroom, and she was worried that she would be labeled a liar, or that people would claim that she was just trying to ruin him. We spoke about it a bit, and the conversation ended with her asking me to let her consider things for a couple of days before we did. For those few days, I genuinely tried to respect her wishes.

but seeing how he was still making comments towards Lily, and how he was still trying to get close to her during class, even when she was no longer showing interest in him, my conscience wouldn't let me stay silent. I couldn't help but shake this thought that he would go further, and assault her again if they met in private, because it sounded like he was more than willing to escalate. So, I made a very difficult decision.

and I went to the administrators and reported Mr. Smith. I told them everything that Lily had told me, and I told them about when I walked in on them meeting. The administrator that I talked to took my statements very seriously. She asked me how certain I was of these allegations, stating that it was a very serious situation. I told her that I knew how serious it was."

I told her that Lily had asked me to wait because she was scared that no one would believe her, but that I felt like I needed to tell them. The investigation was actually a lot quicker than I expected. It turns out that Lily wasn't the only girl that Mr. Smith had targeted. During their short investigation, after talking with a few other students, there were actually three other girls that were willing to tell them about comments that Mr. Smith had made.

One of them even told them that he tried to go further with them a few months prior. As the evidence mounted, the school actually got the police involved, and one day after school, Mr. Smith was arrested for what he had done, and was eventually charged with multiple counts of sexual misconduct with a minor. The whole school was definitely in shock as the news got around, and a lot of people felt really betrayed by this guy.

My friendship with Lily, however, was pretty much over. She was angry that I had gone behind her back and felt like I had taken away her control over the situation. I tried to explain that I did it to protect her and others, but she couldn't see it that way. We drifted apart, and by the time we graduated, we were no longer friends. It's been a few years since then, and I still think about Lily often.

I wonder if I made the right choice, if I could have handled it differently, or if there was something more that I could have done to help her. But ultimately, I have to believe that getting a predator like Mr. Smith out of our school was worth the cost. You know when you reach that age where everyone and their mother won't shut up about their credit scores, yet it seems like no one really understands what's so special about those three random numbers?

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This happened when I was about 15, and I believe that would be around 2005. Forgive me for missing pieces in this story, as I'm trying to remember everything. It was a pretty scary moment for me that I don't bring up on a regular basis, so some things have been lost over time.

My friend Hannah had just turned 16, and instead of having a huge party, her mom agreed to let her go to the mall with a few friends alone. So, she invited me and our mutual friend Michelle. Hannah's parents were going to be running errands around the city. Michelle and I were in track together, so she stayed at my house after the meet the night before, and my parents dropped us off at the mall the next day.

Both Hannah and my parents told us to call them when we were done, and they would come and pick us up. However, my parents also said that if I didn't call earlier, they would be back around 6pm to pick us up. I had one of those little Nokia phones, prepaid, so it was only for emergencies. I usually just sent a quick text instead of calling, so it worked fine.

and I felt cool having a cell phone at that age anyways. I'm not sure what Hannah's parents' rules were at the time though, or if there were any, other than call when we were done. My parents, however, told us that we were not allowed to leave the mall. There was plenty to do there, food courts, restrooms, rest areas, and we had spending money so there was no reason for us to leave anyways.

My parents also trusted me to go there without adults. I'd been there many times before with my younger sister, and was always responsible, so they had no issues with the idea. Michelle's parents also trusted her with me, as they thought that I was smart and mature. I'm still close friends with Michelle, and her parents told my parents this. Anyways, just trying to lay out the rules that we had and what we had on us.

So it was three of us, two of us with cell phones. Michelle's phone had broken prior to this event and she hadn't been able to replace it yet. We were dropped off at around noon and were left to be the young adults with a sense of independence for a few hours. Since it was Hannah's birthday, we let her lead the way.

We went to a few of our favorite stores, and after goofing around at the small shops in the walking areas, we made our way to the little ice cream stand. You know the one with the frozen bald ice cream? While we enjoyed our ice cream, we noticed two boys carrying skateboards and going into Spencer's.

We all agreed that they looked about our age, and that they were cute, so... We decided to walk back towards the store to see if we could get their attention. At this time, we were all excited to do this. If not maybe a bit shy at the time, though. We looked in the store and noticed that they were standing near the front, seemingly looking at a wall of t-shirts. Hannah made a loud noise, like a weird laugh, which got them to look over.

cue the random giggling and faking to quiet each other down. It succeeded in getting their attention though, and we started walking quickly past the store. This was close to the end of the mall, so we took the elevator down. At this time, we heard someone shouting from above, and when we looked up, it was the same two boys. They mentioned for us to wait for them, so we stopped at the bottom.

They introduced themselves, but I'm not sure what their names were now, so I'll call them Alex and Brett. They said that they were 16. They were taller than us, but we just thought it was because they were guys. They're gonna be taller than us, right? I had a brother that was two years younger than me and was almost the same height, so I didn't have any reason to think otherwise. We started talking and shared what school we went to.

They said they lived in another county, so we didn't recognize the school that they mentioned. We continued walking together towards the other side. One of the guys, Brett, seemed to pay attention to me, which I didn't expect. I didn't often get flirted with, so I was a bit shy, and I didn't know how to respond to it.

We continued walking until we got to another store that we walked around in, and then stopped in one of the side halls that had restrooms. The boys pulled out their skateboards and were trying to do tricks and show off. Someone came by and told us that we needed to stop and move along, so we continued walking. Alex then suggested that we go to the skate park that was nearby.

He said that Brett had a permit, so they took his car here and we would all fit in it. Hannah was immediately all for the idea. Michelle seemed eager to go, but also looked to me for permission, in a way. I initially wanted to, thinking it'd be fun, but I also knew that I wasn't supposed to leave the mall. I was at that age where I didn't want to look lame and hold my friends back, so...

I agreed that I would go with them, but I wanted to at least call my parents and tell them where we were going. Hannah told me not to worry about it, saying we could just have them bring us back here before 6, and it would be like we never left. Michelle then begged me not to call, because then she would have to ask her parents since she knew that they would tell her no. That's when Alex said that if I didn't want to go, I could always stay behind and wait for them to get back.

The way he said it almost seemed mocking in a way, like I was too scared or uptight, and like he didn't want me to go anyways. This of course upset me, and between Brett seeming to be into me and me not wanting to disappoint my friends, I decided to go. As we started walking towards the exit, I started to get the weird sense of dread like something bad was going to happen.

I didn't know if it was going to be something at the park, or maybe it was just potential trouble that I was about to get in. So, I thought I would give one more try of at least telling my parents. I pulled out my phone as we were walking to send a quick text when I was caught off guard by Brett coming up next to me and grabbing my phone. I was surprised, and I tried to be cool about it and ask for it back.

But then, as he walked backwards so he could face me, he put my phone down the front of his pants and winked at me. Again, I hadn't really been given attention like this, not to mention we were only fifteen, so I quickly quieted down as he teased me about turning red. I walked in silence with Brett now walking next to me until we got to the entrance.

I was still feeling on edge about the situation, so I was desperately trying to find some way to stop us or delay us. I asked them before we left if I could use the restroom. My friend seemed fine with it, but Alex appeared to be annoyed. Brett offered to walk me to the restrooms, but they were pretty close to the doors, so I declined his offer. I quickly walked off and waited in there trying to figure something out.

I thought maybe that I could stop someone that came in there for their phone, or maybe get Hannah's attention and talk her into letting me use her phone. However, after several minutes of no one coming in, I decided to walk out. Unfortunately, my friends were nowhere to be found. I walked around the entrance, then outside, and they were seemingly gone. I was scared, upset, and offended. I assumed they left me when I went to the restroom,

I started crying a bit when a woman noticed me and asked me if I was okay or if I was lost. I vaguely explained that I had lost my friends and I asked to use her phone as I didn't have mine. I remember calling expecting to be in a lot of trouble but instead my mom just sounded worried and said that she would be right there. The lady waited for me until she showed up and explained what she had witnessed to my mom as well.

Then I explained everything to her that happened. She was immediately worried about the other girls, but also agreed that I did the right thing by not going. Things moved pretty fast at this point. I know my mom tried to call my cell phone, and it would just ring until it went to voicemail. She called the cops and had people looking around the mall and doing pages for them in case they just ran off somewhere. She also called Michelle and Hannah's moms to tell them what had happened.

They showed up at the mall too, and after we all drove around the mall and even the skate park that they had mentioned. They weren't there either. I had to give a description of what the two boys looked like, and the rest of that evening was nerve-wracking. We went home, and I continued to try calling both my phone and Hannah's, and they both started going straight to voicemail, which frightened me even more.

I didn't want to sleep that night, as I was worried that something had happened to them, and I couldn't help but feel like I should have done something more to stop it. My parents kept assuring me that I did the right thing, as I was at least able to provide descriptions. It wasn't until the next day that we finally got an update. This was information that I got both from my parents and Michelle and Hannah after I was able to see them again.

When they got to his car, they learned it was some old beat-up van, soccer mom style. However, when they got in the sliding door, Alex jumped in the back with them and immediately demanded them not to scream, and he pulled out a knife and tied their wrists and legs together, threatening if one of them tried something, they would kill the other one. Then they took off, driving around, and they began fighting over where to go.

During this, Brett apparently lost control of the vehicle, flipping it over a small embankment. Alex was actually killed after being ejected from the van, and somehow my friends made it out with minor injuries. The boys had both phones and had turned them off, which is why we weren't able to get a hold of them. Brett had been knocked unconscious, so they all just had to lay there praying that someone would show up.

Thankfully, someone was driving by later that night and saw them and called for help. When Brett finally came to, he explained to the police pretty quickly what had happened. They wanted to try to kidnap someone, so they brought some rope and duct tape from their home, and that was about as far as they had planned. They didn't know what they wanted to do from there or even where to take them, so that's when their plans started to deteriorate.

I don't remember the charges that Brett ended up getting, but I do remember that he was tried as an adult, because he was actually 18, not 16 like they claimed. Michelle was not allowed to go anywhere unless there were adults with us, and she wasn't allowed to hang out with Hannah anymore. My parents still allowed me to go shopping without adults, and even with Hannah, as they did trust me, but...

They said that if she ever tried that again, I was supposed to make a scene and do whatever I needed to do to get out of it, and to stop her too. Hannah continued being quite the risk taker, so my parents were a bit cautious of her. Her parents weren't even that worried about the situation, which I know speaks a lot too. Anyways, overall this situation was scary, and I'm very glad that I trusted my gut to

You just can't always trust someone's true intentions, no matter how normal it seems. Oh, and I also did get my old Nokia phone back, and it actually wasn't damaged at all. When I was in seventh grade, my family decided to move. My father found a house to rent for cheaper than it should have been, and a six-month vacancy. I'm not sure why we still moved in after learning about some of what had happened there.

Once we moved in, it seemed like my parents were different people. My mother became more withdrawn and began to drown herself in religion, while my father began to become aggressive and threatening worse than he had ever been. Even my baby sister began to exhibit strange behaviors. She began to sleepwalk often times, stopping to stand at the door leading to the basement. I felt like I was going crazy in that house.

No one seemed to notice the worsening behavior of my family, or perhaps they didn't care. The room I stayed in in this house was at the top of the stairs. I could look out my door and down the hall towards my parents' room. My closet door was small enough that I had to crouch to get through, and near impossible to open due to an excess of paint on it. I ended up putting an armoire against it so that I could stop worrying about it opening on its own.

My parents' room resided opposite mine, at the far end of the hallway. When they had been setting up their room, they'd found knives. And not just a couple of them, no. The knives lined the wall around the floorboard. Some were stabbed in, but most were just laying there. The closet was not spared from an overabundance of kitchen utensils, all reflecting the eerie yellowed light. Stranger still were the scratches in the paint.

They were messy and looked to have been done by a person. Most of them were on the sloped ceiling of the closet. Arguably, my sister had the most normal room. The only strange thing was the crawlspace entrance above her bed. It would creak open on occasion, but was dismissed as a raccoon even after she claimed to have seen a face. The rest of the house was terrible.

It was yellowed from cigarette smoke, a patch of carpet was cut out due to a stabbing incident by the tenants before us, and there seemed to be an ever-present chill in the air. No areas were worse than the basement and the garage. As per my bad luck, it seemed we had a spider infestation in the basement. Along with that, for some reason our shower was located down there. The basement was unfinished.

It was always dusty and smelled of mold. The garage had a lofted area that always felt like it hosted something more than a couple of stray cats or some birds. It always seemed to slightly smell of rot. I hated it. I couldn't sleep when in that house, which was nothing short of a blessing half the time, as it seemed the worst happened come evening.

One night, my father wandered down the stairs to the living room where my mother and I were sat reading. He looked dazed, not all there. His eyes seemed distant and unfocused, until he spotted my mother and I, and then he seemed to be overtaken by rage. He had rushed over and tried to attack my mother, and when that didn't work, he grabbed a vase and yelled at the two of us.

He asked which one wanted to die first, because he was going to kill us and take my sister with him. I was scared. I panicked, and in a state of blind fear, I punched him. He had luckily dropped the vase, and he seemed to go back to the dazed state, no longer filled with anger. He turned from my mother and I, said something that neither of us could make out, and began to go back upstairs.

I decided to follow him up and make sure that my sister was safe, and all he did was walk to his room. His behavior became more extreme over the time that he remained there. I noted a distinct lack of the smell of alcohol that was on him, rather a smell similar to both what was in the basement and garage seemed to follow him, a mix of dust and sweet rot.

My mother kicked him out a few weeks later, seeming to come to her senses after he had swung at me in front of her. It seemed that after he left, the house became angry. My sister seemed to become a target. She was more violent than any three-year-old should have been. A couple of weeks after we returned to the house, this time lulled into a sense of false security by the absence of my father, on one of the nights that I was unable to sleep-

I had heard footsteps on the stairs. I sat silent in my bed, hoping that it was just my sister sleepwalking. I then heard the door slam, followed by my sister screaming. I rushed downstairs, followed closely by my mother. The basement door was patched shut with a sliding lock, but on the other side was my sister screaming and crying in panic. I was accused of locking her down there.

My mother never did believe me when I said I had seen a head peeking through the gap of the stairs, just watching. Due to this event, I was not allowed to do anything. My mother upped the chores that I was to do, but it seemed that most of these were in the basement. She demanded that I scrub the shower, wash the laundry, sweep the seemingly never-ending dirt that settled down there.

even clear off the old cobwebs and spiders that resided in the rafters. She would scream at me when I would leave the basement before I was finished. I hated being down there. I felt like I was being constantly watched. Sometimes things would move, boxes would tip and spill. Things would hit me even when I was the only one down there. One of the more extreme events that I remember happened when I was doing laundry.

I was transferring the wash into the dryer, when suddenly the room seemed to hold more of a chill than it had before. Something rolled into my ankle, and I jumped. When I turned around to grab my basket, I noticed a dark shape just… standing there. I blinked, thinking perhaps it was my eyes playing a trick on me, but it seemed to come closer, motioning forward.

As stupid and cliche as it is, the room seemed to grow colder as it moved forward, and a sickly sweet smell of mildew seemed to become overwhelming. I let whatever it was get entirely too close. I was desperate to know what it was. I couldn't make out much. It was human-shaped, tall, and shadow-like. Once I realized how close it was, I sprinted up the stairs only to find the door locked.

I panicked and slammed myself into the door. I could hear something akin to scraping. I lunged to the door that led to the outside of the house, tripping on the small lip of the door. The alarm that we had went off, and as I went to slam the door, I saw that same head sticking out from underneath the stairs again. We moved out not long after this, thank goodness. I haven't really told anyone about this as no one seems to believe me.

I've attempted to ask my parents about what happened there. My father claims he doesn't remember much about living there, and what he does remember is foggy at best, and my mother has just claimed that it was normal for strange things to happen in old houses. I don't think what happened was normal, and I know that it was real. Sorry for this being long and just kind of everywhere, I just really needed to tell someone about this.

as it's been eating at me ever since it happened. As a kid, I was always sensitive to paranormal stuff, and was never really freaked out. So, it threw me for a loop to be suddenly living in fear. This happened to me about 10 years ago, when I was 14. It was a warm summer night in 2012, 14 female at the time. I was walking around the city with my friends R, 16 male,

and his older cousin Jay, 24, male. We had all been neighbors for about four years now, and our families knew each other, so it was quite normal for us to all be hanging out together despite the age gaps. During our walk, we decided to take a shortcut through the cemetery.

It was after hours, and I'm pretty sure it was illegal for us to be in there at the time, but we weren't doing anything other than cutting through, which we would often do during the day as well. As we were walking down the path, we saw headlights turning into the cemetery, and the boys, of course, darted way ahead of me into the tree line. Since the boys ran ahead of me off the path and away from the lights, it was pitch black.

There was residual light twinkling through the branches as I made my way down into the trees, but it dropped down to a slight hill and the light was lost. I was walking along, trying to be as quiet as possible, almost blind due to my eyes not adjusting yet, and that's when the feeling of dread set in. I had no idea where the boys were. I couldn't see, and I didn't want to be caught by the police by myself.

But there was something else. Almost a chill in the air on this warm night in July. I tried to brush off this uneasy feeling, thinking it was just my nerves or being scared because the boys took off without me, but alarms were going off in my head, like something was very, very wrong, and that's apart from the legal reasons that I shouldn't be there.

I make out a shape to the left of me as I'm walking, I take a couple steps towards it and say, "Guys is that you?" Nothing, no response. I take a few more steps forward, and I swear to god just like the movies, a freaking twig snaps under my foot. Now the reason I had thought it was the boys is because this shape was crouched down next to a pile of brush and was big enough to look like two people hunching over.

I thought that they'd been hiding there, but when the twigs snapped, I stopped in my tracks as this thing stood up and towered over me. I was about five foot tall at the time, and this thing was easily two of me stacked right on top of each other. Whatever this thing was, it was only 15 feet or so away from me, and I was frozen with horror.

It was facing away from me at first, then its neck/head almost swiveled around like an owl, and I was met with an oval-shaped grey face with no nose or mouth, only two pitch black hollow eye sockets. The rest of this thing was pitch black against the dark trees, the light from the path was no longer streaming through the branches.

It was just me, and this thing that seemed like the personification of darkness itself. This thing and I stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. The woods around me through the corners of my eyes were getting darker, and my heart was pounding so hard that I could feel it through my entire body. Every tiny hair on my body was prickling. I was cold. The only thing I can remember thinking was, this is it.

I'm never going to see my family again. The body of this thing had followed its head and swiveled, so now I could see its long, curved arms held right up to what would be its chest. Its legs were similarly curved, almost like it wasn't standing at full height, but still slightly crouching down. Its body was almost translucent, and it looked like it was wearing some kind of hooded cloak that was see-through as well.

The only thing that was 100% solid was its face, and its void-like eyes that made me feel like I was staring right into the depths of hell. Neither of us moved. We were locked in the most terrifying staring contest for what felt like an eternity until a strange feeling came over me. I felt like I could move again, and I had the energy to run a 5k marathon without breaking a sweat.

Then, I heard a very calm but stern voice say, "Go. Now. Run." It's kind of hard to explain where the voice was coming from exactly. It was sort of in my head, but all around me at the same time. I'm getting chills as I write this. I know the voice did not come from whatever this thing was in front of me, because when I heard the voice speak, it looked as if this horrid creature recoiled at the sound of it.

like it took a step or two backwards and kind of ducked its head down. I saw this as my chance, and I turned away from this thing, and I start bolting down further into the tree line, no longer caring about being quiet, and crashing through the bush like an animal being chased by some predator. I could almost feel this thing right on my tail, but after running about 200-ish feet, I run directly into the boys.

literally crashing into them. I'm obviously scared and pissed, so I ask why the hell they left me like that, and they apologized. Apparently, I'd been missing for almost half an hour, and they had already searched in the direction that I ran from. They heard weird whispering voices all around the woods while I was gone, like the voices were coming from everywhere around them. They said right before I crashed into them, the whispering stopped,

I told them about what I saw, and all they said was that we should get out of there. We left the cemetery very quickly, and as soon as we walked out of the gates, it was like we all let out this sigh of relief. We never talked about that night again, and even during the day, none of us ever took that shortcut through the cemetery. I still live in the same city, and to this day, I avoid it like the plague. I won't even drive by it.

This isn't my only story, but it's definitely one of the more terrifying ones that still haunts me to this day. Back in the 90s, my friend Brent and I would go exploring old buildings that were abandoned or condemned for fun. We didn't have cell phones at the time, and the most we had was his car, so trespassing and sneaking out alcohol was the most excitement we could really have.

We lived in Topeka, Kansas at the time, and if you're from there, you know there's a small area to have fun in, and then another that's just boring. Or maybe that was just us, since we lived on the boring side. Either way, this was our idea of fun. With empty houses or buildings to explore, we had plenty of new places to choose from. One place in particular that we had been wanting to check out was the Topeka State Hospital.

It had been closed for a while, and with all the rumors of previous patients haunting the place, we desperately wanted to check it out. We also had never explored in a place so big, so we had to try to figure out the best way to get in and when to do it. We drove by it a couple of times to see if there was any type of security around it, and to see if there was anything immediate that would hinder us.

When we were convinced it was going to be an easy in, all we had to do was find the time to do it. So, to not have our parents ask questions about what we were doing, we told them we would be staying at each other's house, and then would have the night without any suspicion. Friday night, Brent said he was leaving to come over to my place, and I told my parents he was coming to pick me up, and we were off.

We each had a backpack with what our parents thought were our clothes, toothbrush and deodorant, when in reality it had our flashlights, a few supplies that we brought like a pocket knife just in case, and a few snacks to eat while we waited. We learned over time, the fewer things we brought the better, especially if we needed to get out quickly and ditch our bags.

We parked several feet up from the building to try to make it not look so suspicious, and we sat in the car and ate. We thought we would kind of scope out the place, to see if anyone came by and to get any last minute jitters out of us. After about half an hour, we decided it was time to go then, before we chickened out. We approached the building, and not to our surprise, the front door was completely locked and boarded up.

so we walked around the side to see if there were any other ways in when Brent noticed a window that had been broken out and half-assedly boarded up with a no trespassing sign attached to it. The boards weren't the best, so it was pretty easy to pry off with just our hands and the little hammer that we had with us. Brent went in first and helped me in and that was the start of a very long night.

Once in, we turned on our flashlight, put on our backpacks, and started looking around. Immediately, the smell hit me. It was very musty, like what a damp old room would smell like. The paint or wallpaper was eerily peeling off the walls, but the honest part for me was how still the air was. I motioned to Brent to stop for a second just to try to listen,

and the only thing you could hear was our slight breathing. You couldn't even hear the sounds of the bugs outside. It was just one of those moments that was hard to explain. However, we didn't want to waste a lot of time and we started moving on. We looked through the rooms where the doors were already open and saw much of what you would expect. Bare shelves, broken bed frames and chairs, the restroom stalls were all broken and some of the toilets were just busted.

There was a lot of graffiti everywhere too, so we obviously weren't the only ones that had been here. As we looked around and just took in what all we were seeing, we heard what sounded like someone walking slowly above us. A little scared, but also not quite ready to leave yet, we decided to go up to the second floor to check it out. The stairs were not something that I would want to walk on more than once,

but the railing seemed sturdy enough. We made our way up there to see more of the same. Creepy, dark hallways, spray-painted doors and walls, and those yellow file folders scattered all over the ground. While here, we again heard more footsteps, but nothing else with it. We were just about to head up to the third floor when Brent turned around to look down the hall again that we were just at. Nothing there again.

We got this far without anyone showing up, so we wanted to get all the way to the top. We climbed the stairs to the third floor, where we were then greeted by a door slamming. I think Brent was a little fed up at this point. With us both not really being phased by ghost stories, or at least not willing to admit it, he shouted, "'We're not here to harm anyone or anything!' After wincing at hearing him unexpectedly calling out,

We waited in silence, but heard nothing, not even the footsteps. We both let out a quiet laugh and continued on. Looking around the room, I saw some really old clothes that looked like they had been disintegrating over time, just sitting in the corner of a room. In this same room, I started smelling sulfur. It was almost like there were fireworks going off right in front of me.

I walked out of the room quickly and across to where Brent was, who claimed he didn't smell anything at first. I brought him over to the other room where he could then smell it. As we started leaving the room, though, the door to the room that he was in slowly started to shut. As I mentioned earlier, there was no airflow in the place. It was dead still, so there was no way that a draft had blown the door shut. We stared at the door for several minutes, but...

I was done.

I took off down the stairs, Brent following right behind me, and when I got to the bottom I leapt out the window that we came through, and waited as Brent crouched down to do the same. As he was doing this, it sounded like someone was running towards us. I yelled at Brent to hurry up when he nearly dived out the window to get out. We quickly took off to his car, not caring if anyone saw us at that point, and then we just sat there.

staring at this place for several more minutes to calm down. After a while, we both asked the other if we had heard the voice and that's why we both started running, so at least I knew that I wasn't the only one. As mentioned, I didn't really believe in the paranormal, but after that experience and reading more about what took place there, I can definitely believe former patients are sadly trapped in there.

Brent and I still remember this, but we really haven't told a single person about it. We've kept this as a personal experience that we will never forget. I used to live by a pretty popular and big mall in the Midwest. I'm a stay-at-home mom with, at the time of this event, a 7-year-old and an 18-month-old. It was early December, and we actually got a lot of snow.

Ellie was getting a bit stir-crazy being outside for so long, but I didn't want the baby, Ian, to be out in the cold for too long. We lived in an apartment complex, so we didn't have our own yard, so I wasn't comfortable with her playing outside alone. I decided to take us all to the mall for a few hours while my husband was working.

We could go through the stores and do some holiday shopping, as well as let Ellie play around and burn through some of her energy. I had a two-seater stroller in case she got tired, and I loaded everything up and we started walking around. We went to a few stores before Ellie demanded that we get lunch. When we were eating, I did as I normally do and paid attention to our surroundings and what was going on.

I noticed a guy sitting at a table diagonally from us. He had a small container of fries that looked like he just got it, as it was full, and he was writing in a notebook. I noticed some other people nearby too, but then I turned my attention back to Ellie. After we finished eating, I got us all cleaned up, and as we were walking away, I noticed the guy was still sitting there, seemingly spacing out.

but then he would start writing again. He also hadn't touched his fries. Again, just something I noticed, and we decided to carry on. On the bottom floor, there was a small play area, with soft, cushioned squares, some tunnels to crawl through, and even a big slide. I agreed to stop so Ellie could play for a little bit, knowing we probably wouldn't be here too much longer before she started to get tired.

I got to a bench, and since Ian was asleep, I went through my bag to try and condense them some. I also managed to sneak in a few things I got for Ellie, and I wanted to hide them better. This whole time, I could see her from any part of the play area, even when she was in the tunnel, as there were slots and little windows all along it. She was going down the slide on the opposite end, when I noticed that same guy from the food court.

I knew that it was him, as I saw the same green covered notebook that he had folded and put into his pocket. This is when I became a little suspicious. This was a play area for small kids. The store on one side was Build-A-Bear, and the other side was Eclair's, which was more of a girly jewelry accessory store. He was alone in the food court, and I never saw him with anyone, so...

I found it kind of odd that he was hanging around this area. So while I was watching my daughter, I was also watching him to see if a kid or someone else approached him. Unfortunately, no one ever did. I just watched him pace back and forth along the wall, looking into stores like he was looking for someone, and then looking over at the playground. And when he did look over at it, he seemed to fixate, and would freeze in place watching it.

At one point, we finally made eye contact and when he noticed that I noticed him, he seemed to walk away and into a different nearby store. My first thought was, if you weren't up to anything weird, why would you walk away so quickly when you were noticed?

So, I called Ellie over, and while asking how she was doing, I brought up what I had talked to her in the past about, about stranger danger and what to do. She's a very smart girl for her age, so she catches on to things pretty quickly. There's no hiding things from her. When I mentioned this, she actually asked me what was wrong, and when I tried to tell her nothing, she told me how she thought the one guy was weird and said she didn't like him.

I had a feeling that I knew who she was talking about, so I decided it was time for us to go ahead and report him. I put Ellie in her seat, much to her pleading, and just went the opposite way of the man. We went into a children's clothing store, and I asked one of the girls working there if they could call for security to potentially report an incident. She obliged, and they showed up pretty quickly.

I told them what had happened, gave a description of the guy, and the store that he went into the last time that we saw him. They said they would look around for him, but of course, unless something actually happened, or he acted on anything, they couldn't do much. My thought was that if he'd scurried away just by making eye contact with me, that maybe security would spook him enough to leave.

There was nothing good coming out of him being around kids. At least that's how I felt. I gave them my information and we went back to shopping. I was ready to leave at that point, but Ellie wanted to look around the store because they had dress-up stuff, and I swear that girl collected every Disney princess dress there was. While we were looking, I actually ran into a friend of mine, so we started talking for a little bit.

When we finally finished up, we started walking to the front when I noticed one of the girls running to the front and one closing the gate, basically locking us in. This scared Ellie a bit, so I had to try to calm her down while also trying to figure out what was going on. I found the girl that I originally talked to about security to find out what was going on.

She again asked me for a description of the guy, and said they had received a code for a missing child. When that happens, all the doors are locked and the stores are locked down to try to prevent anyone from taking said child. That was terrifying. I thought our intuitions were right, and it had to be this guy. I was thankful that I had both of my kids with me, but...

I felt horrible that there was someone out there that may not have noticed him, and is worried sick that their baby is missing in a huge mall. I called my husband to tell him what was going on, as we were locked in there for maybe half an hour, and he was going to be off work soon. He said he was going to meet us at the mall to make sure that we got out safely. I believe that we were locked down for close to an hour before they finally opened back up.

However, I wasn't allowed to leave yet as security and cops asked me to identify the guy. They took me into the security room. They had me peek in and, sure enough, it was the same guy. I found out that they had heard a little girl screaming and crying in a bathroom alone. It was the missing girl.

She described the same guy that I saw, and they wanted to confirm that it was in fact the same person to get a better idea of the time frame. That was about another hour before I was finally able to leave. I got outside to my husband at the entrance, and he hugged me and Ellie so tightly. It truly was a scary moment, being a parent, and it made me realize how quickly your life can change.

So, teach your kids what to do around strangers, and to never be afraid to scream, kick, and fight. And always be sure to keep your eyes peeled. You could save your own life, or someone else's in the process. So, I live in Maryland. I don't live far from the Pocomoke State Forest. It's supposed to be notoriously haunted.

My sister and I have always been into the paranormal. I've seen a few things in my life, but never anything that terrified me as much as what we saw in the forest that night. This happened three months ago, and still scares me when I think about it. So, my sister and I were actually riding around, bored, trying to come up with something to do. I came up with the great idea of going to the forest, since it's only 20 minutes away.

So, as we're driving there, we get about 5 or 6 minutes from the forest, and I start to hear this strange sound coming from inside my car. It gave me the chills, but my sister didn't hear it at first, so I checked everything in the car, making sure the radio was off completely. Even the heat was off, and I made sure all the vents were closed so there was no air coming through them that could be possibly making this noise. Right at that very moment,

It grew louder, like it was clear as day, and at this point I knew my sister was hearing it by the look on her face. It literally sounded like some kind of Native American tribal music, maybe? I still don't know, but that's the best I can describe it. The first thought I had was that it sounded like someone was playing a flute inside of my car. I have a Honda Accord, so the front seats can only fit two people.

and yet this music was clearly coming from right in between us, as if someone was sitting in the back seat, and they were leaning forward and playing this music right in between both of us. This went on for a good four to five minutes, and stopped when we arrived at the forest. Although it freaked us out, we were more excited than anything for some reason. So the forest has trails everywhere. You can ride your car or walk,

They have campgrounds and parks for children. It's a really beautiful place. So the second that we arrived, I immediately had this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and my heart was just pounding. I told my sister that I felt it was safer for us to just ride through in the car. I mean, it was like 12am at this point, and super dark. So when we first entered, we drove through where the campgrounds were and everything,

and we drove a little deeper in and came to this one part. For some reason, we both decided to just get out and sit on the front of my car to see if anything happened. The first thing that I noticed was how eerily quiet it was out there, and so very dark. I could hardly see much, so I turned on the car headlights. At first, it was really quite amazing. Stuff was happening, but I wasn't afraid. Like I said...

At first, it was so quiet that I could hear my own heart pounding, and the air was somewhat thick. It almost seemed like it was slightly harder to breathe. I do remember telling my sister, "This is wild. I don't hear anything. Literally nothing. Not even an animal walking through the forest. Just absolutely nothing." About maybe 10 minutes in, I'm starting to hear shouting off in the distance, but not super far away.

I know for sure it was the sound of men shouting. Then, I start hearing heavy gunshots everywhere. It sounded like we were in the middle of war as the sounds grew closer and louder. I wasn't afraid though, it was actually pretty cool. So that went on for maybe a few minutes and then stopped. My sister and I stayed for maybe another 25 to 30 minutes with nothing else happening.

and we decided to drive to another part of the forest. As soon as I got into the driver's seat, this feeling of just complete terror came over me. It made me feel so sick to my stomach that I almost vomited. My ears and face were also burning up, like I had the worst fever I could ever imagine. My ears were just so hot. I told my sister several times that my ears were on fire,

My stomach was upside down, and that we needed to go because something's not right. We debated for a couple of minutes. She wanted to stay longer, because she said she also had a feeling of some kind of presence being there. Not even two minutes later, I hear my sister say, What the hell is that? as I was looking down at my phone. I look out the passenger window at the tree line where she was staring, and at first I saw nothing. Then...

Out of nowhere, it was like the darkness lifted just a little, to where I could clearly see something peering out at us from behind a tree. My feeling of dread grew so much worse at that moment, but not wanting to scare my sister even more, I said, ''It's just a deer. We should probably go, though. We could see its eyes glowing, just staring right at us.'' But it was something about the eyes. I just knew it wasn't right.''

and that it wasn't a deer. So, as we're about to pull off, this thing stood up like a human would, except it was much larger. I wanted to leave that second but couldn't help but to see what it was doing, and it just out of nowhere jumped off the ground, literally to the top of the trees. I lost it from there. It's worth mentioning that the trees at the Pokimoke State Forest are super tall, so whatever this thing was, it wasn't right.

That's the best way I can explain it. It just wasn't natural. Although it did look like an animal, it didn't at the same time. Without hesitation, I peeled the hell out of there, afraid of what this thing might do. The park was already closed, so as I got to the entrance, the gate was closed. I rolled down my window, screaming, Someone open this gate now, or I swear I will run through it. So they opened it.

and I dipped so fast and never looked back. I've never been to that forest since, but I have had a few strange things happen since then. That very same night after I dropped off my sister at her house, I heard that music again in my car for about maybe a minute, and it scared the hell out of me, but oddly also gave me this calm feeling that came over me, and I wasn't scared anymore.

Then it went away, just like that. And I've never heard it since. Thank you for reading, and I apologize that this was so long. I just didn't want to leave out any details. This is actually my first time telling this story. I have no idea what that thing was, and was curious if anyone had similar experiences or knew what that thing might have been. No matter how hard I try to forget,

It's like I just can't unsee what I saw that night. I have a story that may not be scary or creepy, but it's one that should be heard and used as a cautionary tale to anyone out there that may be in a similar position, or could be going down the wrong path. This story honestly could have happened anywhere, but at the time I lived in the Kansas City area on the Kansas side.

At the time, I was in my mid-twenties and was with a man that was not mentally stable and was probably not in the best place myself, honestly. I had dropped out of college to be with this guy because he had given me the ultimatum. We'd got an apartment together and I felt like I had to do what he wanted. Because of this, I was depressed and hitting a point where I didn't know what to do with my life.

And this isn't me trying to net any pity from anyone, this is just me telling you all that I was on a downward trajectory and that things were rough. At the time of this whole event, I was working at a big box store that you had to have a membership to get into. Let's call it Steve's Club. At the time, Steve's Club was known for paying decent wages in the area and not requiring much in ways of education or training.

They preferred that you have a high school diploma, but that was it. So, a lot of people that were my age and down on their luck would try to get into the job. My then-boyfriend worked there as an overnight stock associate, and I worked there as a front-end, basically ringing people up and then checking receipts if I was needed at the door. If anyone has ever worked retail, especially at one of these kinds of stores, you'll know that it's very stressful and high-demand.

It may just be a retail job, sure, but you have to be fast, and you have to take the brunt of the angry customers all day. Because of the levels of stress, it is nice when you befriend someone that is a co-worker and can relate to them on a personal level. Sure, like I said, my boyfriend did work there, but he was overnight and I was dazed, so we never saw each other at work.

That said, I was beyond excited when they hired a new daytime manager, and it happened to be an old guy friend that I knew from high school, and hadn't spoken to for a long time. For the sake of the story, I'm going to call him Jeff. Having him as my direct report was actually kind of neat, because like I said, he and I used to be good friends. We fell out a few years prior, and here he was back in my life.

Not only did I have a friend that was a coworker and could talk to, I had a friend that was my direct manager. Honestly, I thought this was going to be nice, to have someone I liked in a position above me, and I thought that I could potentially confide in him with any grievances I had about the job, and I had a friend that I could spend time with, and we did. After he got started and got comfortable with the position,

and we started talking a lot more during our shifts and then started getting lunch together and we grew a lot closer now like i said earlier this is a job with a lot of stress and the closer we got i actually learned about how jeff was coping with said stress and the easiest way to put it is that he was abusing substances well unfortunately the more i spent time with him

the more open he was about what he was doing and that's where things started to really hit a low i'm not going to really get into all of it i don't want to spill all the details and tell everyone exactly what we were doing but i ended up falling into the same spiral that he was falling into i started joining him after work and doing the various things that he was doing i was going to lunch with him and abusing things

and then going back to work and trying to keep my composure while the various chemicals messed with my brain and made me feel like I was just floating through my shift. I hated it. I know that sounds counterproductive, but I genuinely hated what I was doing. I was destroying myself just to feel a bit less stressed. What was worse, I just could not seem to pull myself away from the situation.

I kept going to lunch with Jeff, I kept spending time with him after work, before I went home, and I kept on using. Then there was one day after our shifts were over where things changed, and I realized we were at rock bottom. Jeff asked if I would join him outside after I clocked off, and I of course agreed. We went out to his car, and I was expecting him to hand me something else that we had done before,

but then he pulled out a small piece of rubber hose that he had in his pocket. At first, I didn't get what he was doing. Then he told me to help him tie off his arm, and then it hit me. Of course, I had no idea what to do in this situation, so I just did what he asked. I helped him tie it off. He then pulled a small case that looked like it would be for insulin or something from his center console, and well, you can guess the rest. After he injected it,

I watched as his face went from his normal smiling self to basically looking dead. His eyes rolled back, he stopped talking and his mouth just kind of fell open. That was the moment that it clicked how far down we had ended up. It almost felt like I was watching a movie. Like what was happening in front of me was fake and I was just part of an audience to it. I just sat there and stared at him.

thinking that he didn't just shoot up, that he was joking or something, and he would jump up at any second and say "gotcha", but he didn't. He kinda just slumped over and again looked dead. I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do here. If I was supposed to follow suit and do what he had just done? If I was just there to make sure that he didn't die? Why did he put me in this situation? All I could think to do was just start crying, and then call an ambulance.

I ran back into the store and told someone up front that I needed them to dial 911 immediately, and I told them that Jeff was passed out in his car, and that they needed to get an ambulance to the store, and then I ran back out to wait for the medics. Every second that ticked by, as I watched him just not moving, it was hitting me harder and harder that I was partially responsible for this. I was giving him affirmations for his addiction.

Sure, he had dragged me into this world, but I was sticking around for it. I was joining him. I was adding a bit of positivity to the horrible things that he was doing. This event is actually what got me sober and away from that world. After this happened, I looked into support groups. I got away from drug use and I cleaned up my life, which also included leaving my then boyfriend and moving back in with my parents for a bit.

Jeff did survive, he didn't overdose or anything. He ended up being put into treatment as well. And he could have faced charges for what they found in his car, but... Since he went in to get clean, he was able to avoid the consequences. I don't talk to him anymore. But he's still a friend on Facebook. So I know that he's doing better. I'm doing better as well. Happily married, working in an office environment...

We still live in Kansas, and we're actually expecting our second child, and our first one is already four. So, yeah. While this story may not have been creepy to most people, I hope it does something for someone. I hope that I can help anyone out there in a similar situation to what I was. Help them get out of said situation, and see that they deserve better than what they're going through. Don't ruin your life for that temporary high.

Don't destroy what you could have for what equates to a couple of minutes of relief. This story did not happen directly to me, but to my mom back in the late 70s when she was in her early 20s. She and her friend Connie were taking a road trip through a few different states and were currently driving through Arizona.

On this night, it was around 10 or 11pm when they were both starting to feel too tired to keep driving. So, they decided to pull over and spend the night at a hotel or motel at the next exit. After a few miles, they came across an exit off the highway that showed signs for a gas station and a motel. They pulled off the exit and found a small motel that had a near empty parking lot, but

At first, my mom and Connie weren't sure if this place was even operating due to how run down and empty it looked. But there was a tall lit up sign on the tall motel sign indicating that they had vacancy. My mom said that she particularly remembers a cold shudder running down her back as they pulled into the parking lot. She looked around and noticed that there was only one other car parked in the entire lot.

They got out of the car and walked into the main lobby. They had to ring one of the service bells a couple of times before an older looking man, probably in his late 60s, entered from the back room. My mom said that he approached them with an eerie look, and they said that they would like one room for the night. The motel clerk didn't say anything, but handed them the registration forms. My mom recalls noticing as Connie was filling out the paperwork,

The clerk was eyeing both of them in a very suspicious way. After they paid, he handed them a key and told them they'd be in the room they would be in. They left the lobby and returned to their car to retrieve their luggage and headed towards their room. My mom said the room was located on the farthest end of the motel lot, right by the creepy deserted road that they had turned off of.

This made her feel very uneasy, but she tried to shrug it off and hoped they would just be able to turn in and get back on the road after a few hours of sleep. So, they let themselves into the room, clicked on the light, which only barely lit up the room, and got settled in. The room had two beds and a dresser in between the two, as well as a bathroom towards the center back end of the room.

As my mom set her suitcase onto one of the beds, she noticed on the headboard and the wall right above it, there were hundreds of hand-carved crosses all over it. She took a step back and observed the entire area. It was covered in crucifixes on every inch of the headboard. She was just about to notify Connie of the creepy observation when she suddenly noticed the scratching sounds.

Across the room, there was a closed door and from that area she heard what sounded like an animal on the other side of it, scratching at the door. My mom took a few cautious steps towards the door and heard the sounds of a very impatient dog scratching and whimpering. She guessed that there was an adjoining room that this door led to, but still didn't want to open it and find out in the case this dog could be hostile.

Connie was equally weirded out, and decided to call the lobby to notify the desk clerk of this. As Connie was on the phone, my mom took some more time to check out the rest of the room that was giving her more and more creepy and unnerving vibes. She noticed something on the dresser between the two beds, and saw that it was a small printed out receipt. She picked it up,

and saw that it was a receipt for the exact same date and same room for this very motel. It had a time printed on it, showing for 9pm. My mom was immediately weirded out by this. Someone had just checked this room out but was not in this room. As Connie was reporting the strange dog next door, my mom turned to her and held up the receipt card to show her.

My mom asked for the phone and told the desk clerk that she had found a receipt for their room for this very same day that was apparently printed out just an hour or two ago. She demanded to know what this was all about. The desk clerk just replied in a monotone voice, ''The dog was abandoned by the last person who stayed in your room. He checked in around nine but checked out shortly after. We have no idea where he went but his dog was left here. We'll call the local animal control in the morning.''

and with that he hung up. My mom just stared blankly at the receiver before hanging up. She turned to Connie and relayed what she was just told. Connie agreed that this place was giving her nothing but creepy and bad vibes too. I mean, why was the last person who was here just there to leave their dog? And why would the motel give them the exact same room that someone else had checked into not just two hours ago?

Of all the other apparent vacant rooms, why give them this one? Maybe they were being paranoid over nothing, or maybe something was wrong that was happening at this hotel. All my mom and Connie knew was that they did not want to spend one more minute in that place. So, they quickly gathered up their belongings, ran out to their car, and sped off.

Fortunately, they were able to find a larger and more populated hotel about 20 miles later and checked in there. Now, I know this story doesn't really have a scary or terrifying outcome, but to my mom's experience, this was one of the creepiest moments of her life. Sure, there could have been a lot of explanations for the strange dog on the other adjoining room, but...

or the strange carvings in the wall and the headboard, or even for the last guest checking into the same room an hour or two before them. But both my mom and her friend were listening to their intuition, and that was telling them to get the hell out of that place, as neither of them felt safe. "Hello all, I have a story and a problem to tell that I'm hoping you guys might be able to help me with. I'm sorry if this is a little on the long side."

About 12 to 13 years ago, I was around 15, and my family and I had moved in with my grandparents for a few months in a new city while we looked for our own house. Turns out, my parents picked a place about 8 houses down from my grandparents. Once they told us, me and my younger brother by 5 years wanted to check it out, so we walked down the street to take a look.

In front of the house, there's a giant window that looks directly into the family room, to the dining room, and then out of another giant window in the backyard. So, from the front yard you could see all the way through to the backyard. When my brother and I had gotten down the street to the new house, we went through the gate in the front yard. When we got to the front window, we both stopped. We looked through into the backyard and we saw...

I have trouble describing it because it didn't really have a shape. It was human-like, but completely dark and seemed to be made of something not quite solid, almost like a black smoke. I can't tell you why, but it felt like a man. We both instantly got this overwhelming bad feeling. My brother and I looked at each other, realized we both saw it,

and knew that we had to leave, then booked it back to my grandparents. When we got back, I asked if he saw it, which he confirmed he did. After that, we didn't talk about it much. We ended up moving into the house a few weeks later, and nothing much happened while we lived there for about two years. I remember a long hallway with a ceiling-height mirror that was pretty creepy, but...

That's about it. After a while, I summed it all up to us being young boys with wild imaginations. A few years later, though, I saw it again. Again, through a window, the same smoky black shape. This was at my college. Nothing happened again, just a feeling of dread, and I walked the other way. Up until now, I've seen him in total around six times.

So it's not often, but often enough to know it's not me just making things up. It is always through a window, and I always get that awful feeling of needing to leave. The most recent time was a couple of weeks ago, which is why I finally decided to post this here. My hope is that someone has some idea what this could be, as well as how I can get rid of it.

Or am I just stuck with this visitor every couple years? I was 15 years old. I was coming home from a party with a couple of friends around midnight. We'd been out drinking and having a good time, and the party was pretty far away, so we were taking the bus home. The two friends that I was bussing home with were going to have a sleepover at one of their houses, but I was tired and felt like sleeping in my own bed for that night.

My friend tried to convince me to come with them because it was late, and they didn't want me getting home alone. I assured them that it would be fine. We were the only ones on the bus at this time. However, about five minutes before we got off, a man got on. He appeared to be in his early twenties, and I could have sworn that I'd seen him before. Not from social functions or anything, but just from around the neighborhood.

When he got on the bus, he sat fairly close to us, especially considering we were the only ones on the bus and that there were other seats that he could have chosen. I noticed that he kept looking at us, and it seemed like he was closely listening in on our conversations, but I didn't think much of it, especially since he seemed close to our age. About five minutes later, it was my stop to get off.

My friends stayed on the bus because they had a couple more stops to go. Oddly, the man on the bus got off at my stop too, despite only having just gotten on the bus. To be completely honest, I didn't really think anything of it at the time. If anything, I actually felt safer that someone was walking in the same direction as me, as it was dark and late. My house was about a 15 minute walk from that bus stop.

The walk home was through a dark path through a park and then through what I considered to be a sketchy neighborhood. The guy was walking behind me, not too closely, but also not far away. At this point, I didn't feel uneasy at all. I was thinking about the night that I'd had with my friends and the best way to sneak into my house while my parents were asleep. About five minutes had passed and he was still behind me.

I wanted to let him pass because I don't really like people walking behind me in general, so I started walking a lot slower, but the distance between us didn't change. After that, I started walking faster and the distance between us was still the same. Close, but not too close. I found it very odd how consistent the distance between us was and how attentive he seemed. He wasn't listening to music or distracted by his phone.

At this point, I started to feel nervous, and I felt like I was being followed. By now, there were a lot of paths that he could have turned down, but he was still walking the same route as me. I thought of an idea to test this theory. This way, I would know for sure if he was following me, and honestly, I was kind of scared to find out. The path we were walking on was about to diverge into two paths going in separate directions.

The way home was on the left, but I started walking down the right path first. He followed on the right path as well. Then, at the last second, I cut over through the grass to the left path. And I swear, when I turned around and saw that he also cut over to the left path in that instance, I have never been more terrified in my entire life. I turned around and faced him, and I started screaming at him that I was calling the cops.

I have a story that I've been wanting to share with the world for a while.

A story that really taught me a lesson about trusting people and made me realize how things can go really bad, really fast. I am going to add a bit of a trigger warning here, as this story does end in a horrifying way. This happened a while back, when my high school ex-boyfriend, a guy we're going to call Christian, came back into my life after close to a decade of being out of touch.

Back in high school, Christian and I were really close. He was probably the most connected relationship I've ever had, if that makes any sense. He was actually the first guy that I got with, in multiple meanings of the word, and I thought that he and I had this really bright future planned out. In my head, we were going to get married, we were going to have kids, and we were going to grow old together.

In reality, Christian didn't want anything more than a high school fling, and he planned on cutting away from me the minute that he graduated. He ended up telling me as much only a quarter away from graduation. We were talking about the future, and when I asked if we were going to stay in state, he said that after May, there was no we. Needless to say, we broke up that day, and it crushed me.

Fast forward around 8 or 9 years later, I'm single, living my best life and just doing whatever life brings, when, out of the blue, I get a friend request on Facebook from a face that I hadn't thought about in ages. "Christian." Being the nostalgic idiot that I am, I immediately went to accept it, but then hesitated when I thought about how our relationship ended.

I sat on it for a couple of hours, but eventually decided that we were both young, we both made mistakes, and it wasn't anything more than a friend request on Facebook. If he had grown up enough to seek me out, and to reconnect, then I could grow up enough to accept it. What I didn't expect was that clicking that button was going to be the opening of my own personal Pandora's Box.

At first, everything was chill. We messaged back and forth, and it seemed like he really had his life together. After high school, he went out of state for college, and he'd actually gotten married and had a son. I congratulated him for all that, saying that it was great to hear that he was doing well,

and then he told me that he and his wife had gotten a divorce, and she had done everything she could to keep his son from him, so he was actually moving back in with his mom for a bit to get back on his feet. I apologized, and I told him that that was awful, and after a bit of talking more, he told me that he was actually in town, and we agreed to meet up for lunch the next day just to catch up.

Now, nowhere in this conversation and nowhere in my mind was there any intention of making this anything beyond just being friends. I didn't want anything beyond that. I just wanted a friend, and I just wanted to meet up to catch up with him. When we met at the restaurant, I went in for a friendly hug, and when he hugged me, his hand wandered way too far down my back.

I immediately pushed away and looked at him like, "Bro, what the hell?" He quickly apologized and said that he just got absorbed in the moment and he didn't mean anything by it. I told him that this was his one warning and that if he tried anything else this meeting was over, which I think caught him off guard. I think he expected me to be a bit more submissive, mostly because when I was young I was way more willing to go along with things.

In the years since then, I've become a lot more self-sufficient and mentally sound, and I'm not the kind of person to take that crap. I told him as much, and he nodded, saying alright and continuing to apologize. The rest of the lunch went pretty normal. Nothing else happened, and I figured that he knew his place. Of course, that was the wrong thing to believe.

About two days later, I got a message from Christian on Facebook that said, "...thinking of you, with a picture of something that I genuinely did not expect, nor want, to see." The situation was very disappointing, for multiple reasons, and I told him that that was the end of it. I replied, saying, "...I told you that if you did anything like this again, that would be the end of it."

He immediately said, "Oh my god, I am so sorry, that was for someone else, I swear!" I messaged back saying that it was nice to see that he was doing well, but that that was the end of our conversations, and immediately blocked him. I'm not stupid. I knew what he was doing, and I wasn't going to be this rebound fling for him. Plus, he's not exactly the kind of person that I'm into anymore.

After that, the situation with Christian went off the rails and did so pretty quickly. One night, about two weeks later, I was out with some friends at a local bar just trying to have a good time, and lo and behold, Christian showed up. He walked in and came straight over to us, acting like he was my best friend. The entire feel of the night changed immediately.

My three friends all glanced over at me like, "Who's this guy?" and Christian stood over me and smiled like everything was fine. I hit my limit the second he put his hands on my shoulders and said, "How you doing, babe?" I shoved my seat backwards to make sure that it made contact with him, stood up, turned around and told him that I wasn't his "babe" and that he needed to leave me the hell alone. He laughed and asked why I was being like this.

and I went off on him. I told him that I had given him a chance to be my friend and nothing more, and he decided that he wanted to be a creep instead. I told him again to shove off and to get the hell back out of my life. After a few moments, he backed off and looked like he was about to cry, and just walked away. I kind of assumed that was going to be the end of it, that he would understand, that I wanted nothing to do with him.

Either that, or the next encounter was going to end violently. Unfortunately for me, knowing him, it was more likely to be the latter. After Christian left, the whole night was ruined, and we all decided to head home. I had driven my friend Michelle out that night, and she'd planned on drinking a bit more, and I don't drink, so I was her driver.

When we left, she asked me who Christian was, and when I explained everything to her, she told me that he sounded like a creep, and then asked me if I wanted her to come over to my place and stay just in case. At first, I didn't think it was necessary, but after a bit of contemplation, I told her that it sounded like a good idea and that I would appreciate the company.

I'm going to add a bit of a brief pause right here for the sake of anyone reading or listening to this. The next part of the story is the part that deserves the content warning. When we got to my apartment, I unlocked and opened the door, and both myself and Michelle were surprised to see Christian sitting on my couch. Now, I know that a lot of these stories end with the ex standing there with a knife and attacking the person, but...

That's not actually how my story ended. Christian was sitting on my couch. He did have a knife, but he wasn't going to attack anybody. He pretty clearly ended his own life right there. I was shocked. Horrified. I felt like I was about to throw up. Right there on my couch was my high school ex. A guy that I had just sort of reconnected with...

and had to push back out of my life because he was being a creep, and he had ended his own life in my apartment. I cannot overstate how traumatizing this was for me at that moment, and every day since. Obviously we called the police, and when they and the medics showed up, they confirmed that he was beyond saving.

I couldn't stay there after that. They had to treat it basically as a crime scene with what had happened, and I didn't want to stay there anyways. This was enough to get me out of my lease, thankfully, and I ended up moving in with Michelle in her apartment. I got rid of pretty much all of my furniture, as I couldn't bring myself to look at it and think about Christian.

I've had nightmares about him since. About that moment. Opening my door and to say that this whole thing has haunted me is an understatement. I'm not looking for pity, and I feel terrible for the fact that Christian felt that ending his own life was the best course of action. I'm just not really sure what else to say about all of it. Through all of this, coming to terms with the situation, and moving my few things out that I did keep...

I ended up finding a note from Christian in my bedroom. He'd actually placed it in the drawer of my nightstand. It was a simple note that just said, "Every mistake in my life has led me to this moment, and all that I can say is that I'm sorry. Not exactly closure, and not exactly something that helped me move on from it. And to be honest, I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to get through it."

This happened to me about a decade ago, when I was in college. I got a pretty good scholarship from K-State, and since my parents were born and raised right outside Manhattan, Kansas, they insisted that I take it, and we made an agreement that if I did, they would help pay for an apartment, and if I decided to stay when I graduated, then I could start paying it.

We found a small one bedroom apartment, which was perfect for me, and it was about 30-40 minutes from campus. The closer you got the more expensive they were, so we got one a little further away, but nothing too bad. We drove up there with my parents following in their car, and got my place set up. School was fine for the most part. I had some pretty chill teachers, and a few that I could have done without, but overall

It was an average time. The school and classes weren't the problem though. The problem that brought me here was Megan. Megan was in one of my general education classes. I think it was one of the creative writing ones. She was going into a nursing field whereas I was going into business management. So it made sense that we didn't have a lot of classes together. In one project,

We were in groups of three and we had to pick from a list of topics that were drawn at random and create a case for or against it. There wasn't anything too sensitive, I suppose, like politics or religious things like that. It was more tame, like is in-person or online schooling better or worse? Should books be banned from schools? Does living on or off campus make a difference?

I suppose work and school save topics. Megan and I were paired up with one other person. We actually took the topic about dorm rooms, since we all had different living situations. I had my own place, Megan lived in the local dorms, and the other guy in our group still lived with his parents. We all started making lists as a group of things we liked about our humble abode, and what we disliked about it.

Megan said she didn't like the dorms because there were a lot of distractions. The other guy, I'll call him Jim, said he liked living at home because he didn't have to pay for anything, but there was a lack of privacy and still plenty of distractions. Mine felt a little cheated, because I wasn't paying my rent but otherwise enjoyed the privacy and had no distractions. That was the option we went with, but we did have stipulations in it.

Depending on whether you have to pay for rent, other bills, and possibly tuition, it would have been the preferable option. As many group projects go, you always have the one person that's hardly ever there. Until the day of the presentation, that is. After the first two meetings, Jim could never be there. We'd split up different things to research, and while Megan and I brainstormed, reviewed, and edited the work, he wasn't present.

We didn't even have his work to add it into our own. One of the meetups he did show up, gave us some reason why he hadn't been able to do his part yet, and said that he would have it by the end of the week. If he did, that would give me the weekend to edit it, type it up, and add it in, which was definitely a time crunch, but was doable. He didn't stay long after that, and we already had our parts done.

Instead of going home, Megan suggested that she and I should go have dinner instead. I would have just gone home and eaten my leftovers, so I agreed. Now, Megan was a very attractive girl. She had long, straight, auburn hair with bangs that went to the side. That was always my weakness, too. She was also very straightforward, and if she wanted something, I would learn that she would go for it. Which I also liked.

I don't like being the person that had to choose and decide everything, so when she suggested dinner and where we should go, I was impressed. After the dinner was over, she made a joke asking if it was a date, so I said it was, and that just kind of set things off. Jim did show up and gave us the bare bones of his work, but Megan agreed to help type it up if I edited it first, and I agreed.

As she did so, she suggested that we just go to my place so we didn't have to worry about distractions. So much for that idea, though. The project was completed, and that following week, we had to present. When we got there, Jim was nowhere to be found, so we just had to start without him. About halfway through, he finally came in, and Megan blew a gasket. She made sure to call him out on not participating, and said that we didn't need him up there.

It took a few minutes for the instructor and I to calm her down, and agreed to discuss it afterwards so we could continue. Honestly, I felt bad for the guy. Not only did he have to get called out like that in front of everyone, he was already at risk of getting a low grade. I didn't know what his home life was like, so maybe it wasn't a situation of he didn't want to do the work, but maybe he had things holding him back as well. So, we finished our project.

And when we all had to turn in our cards with our opinions on the other projects, I added a note in mine to give Jim credit for his part. Even if he was just not willing to do the work, he got a partial free grade, I guess, and I feel better about it. After classes, Megan and I went back to my place after picking up dinner, and I noticed that she was still looking like she was angry, but wasn't saying much to me.

Once we were finished, I asked her what was wrong, and that was when she exploded. She started going off about how she hated people like Jim who just tried to ride on the waves of other success and not do any of the work. I shared her frustration, but, trying to be optimistic, said that at least he did do some of it, and that it was done, over, so we didn't have to worry about it anymore.

She seemed satisfied with it, but you could still tell that she was upset. I figured I would just let her stew a bit, and then maybe she would be fine, so I put on a show that we liked to watch and sat there silently. The show was similar to Wipeout, where people had to go through these weird obstacles, but some were a bit more dangerous. So maybe more like Wipeout and Fear Factor combined, but I can't remember the name of it anymore.

Anyways, the reason I bring that up was because on one of the courses, the guy was walking in a dark room and there were these paddle things with fists attached to them and he had to dodge them. He ended up missing and fell to the floor and of course, being dramatized, he laid there for a few moments and was acting like he was passed out until someone came and started dragging him by his arms.

Megan spoke up at this point and had said, "'I wish I could do that.' So I chuckled and asked, "'What, the show? I bet you could with your attention to detail and whatnot.' And then she interrupted me and said, "'No. Knock someone unconscious.' I thought she was joking, and I let out a chuckle again, and she darted her eyes at me like she was serious about it."

So I tried to ask her more like, surely she meant she wanted to be stronger or take self-defense classes. Nope. She said that she just wanted to be able to knock someone out when they pissed her off, saying it would make her feel so much better. It was a little bit awkward, but I kind of just let it go. However, maybe she just needed a way to relieve her stress. So I suggested that we got a punching bag.

We went out and bought one that stood on the floor and kept it at my place, and I showed her how to throw a punch. She seemed to enjoy it, and would be going at it for the longest time. Well, I took a shower, made dinner, did my homework, just anytime she could really. She told me that she really enjoyed the aggression, and being able to do it without anyone telling her to stop. I left it alone, since it's not like she was hurting anything, right?

and it was also a way for us to work out, so it was a win-win. But then, the aggression and hostility would get worse. It would start as her just punching me in the arm, or biting me, and it was fine for the most part, but her punches started to sting over time. She was fairly thin and had small hands, so her knuckles could really dig in. I never hit her back, but we played around.

pretending like we would box, but sometimes she would follow through. She would apologize afterwards, but then would get really affectionate. Sometimes it would get heavier than that, but again, I didn't really think anything of it, until she actually did something in the heat of the moment. She clocked me hard, in my chin, making me bite my tongue. I jumped out of bed at that point, confused and angry as to why she did it.

Her reason was that she was just getting into the moment and thought that I would like it. It turned into a bit of an argument, saying that I was not into that kind of thing, and she instead wanted me to try to do the same thing to her. I said absolutely not, and suggested that maybe the punching bag was not a good idea. That seemed to enrage her even more. I basically told her that maybe she needed to look into some kind of therapy as this was not healthy.

I get like what you like, but what she was going for was way too extreme. Thankfully, she did settle down and apologized. She also agreed that she would work on her anger and aggression issues, so we moved forward. But it never did seem to get better. At times, it even seemed worse. She would do things like smack or punch me and say that she was having fun, but again, I told her I didn't like that kind of thing.

Apparently that didn't mean much to her because the things she would do became more and more aggressive and alarming. I had a few friends over from class, along with her, for a small cookout, and I had bought those glass bottles of root beer. They're one of my favorite things to drink, and I don't know why, but it's still my go-to. Anyways, she had one and she started acting like she was drunk. My friends just laughed it off, but it was a bit awkward for me.

Then, while we were all on my back patio talking, she interrupted as she stared at the bottle and asked, I wonder if this could knock someone out. My friends kind of laughed, and then she looked up at them with that serious look again. One of my friends egged her on, basically by saying that it probably could, if you hit them in the right spot and hard enough. Then she started questioning him on where she should do it.

If he could teach her, and she was excited. He was still joking and laughing about it, thankfully, but I was trying to drop hints to make her shut up. After a few, she went inside and we continued to chat out back, and then we heard a loud crash. I ran inside to see what it was, to find Megan standing in my kitchen with a broken bottle and her hair and face a bloody mess. She had smacked herself with the bottle.

I asked her what the hell she was doing, and of course, she said she wanted to test it on herself first. I rushed her to the bathroom to help her clean up, and then ran out back and told my friends that I would be a few moments. As I got her cleaned up, I noticed that she had a pretty big gash on her head, and I wanted to take her to see if she needed stitches. So, cutting the party short...

I drove her to the ER, where I waited in the room with her holding a bandage to her head until the doctor showed up. While we waited, I asked her what the hell she was thinking, and told her that she could have done much worse damage. And her response was, "You're so cute when you're scared." And then she went on to explain how it was such a turn on when I'm scared of her. That was probably my final red flag.

I stayed with her there, and I took her home, fearing how she might react if I ended it that night. The next day, I went to check on her and give her the bad news. I said that we needed to call it off for good, unless she changed, for both of our safety. She did not take it very well, and since I did this outside of her dorm, I think it added to her anger.

No one was around, but there was a part of me saying not to do it behind closed doors, just in case. Then she swung at me, pretty forcefully, but I dodged, so she just got me on my shoulder a bit. I know we weren't together for very long, but I did care for her, so I was hopeful that maybe this would put a fire under her. If she really wanted to be with me, she would make things right. Then we could try again.

What I got instead was her not showing up to class for a few days. None of her friends had seen her in their classes either, and she wasn't responding to my texts or calls. About a week or so, I decided to swing by her place to see if she was okay. To my surprise, her roommate answered, saying that she moved out maybe the day or two prior. I was worried about her, but there wasn't much I could do. All I had was her phone number.

I didn't even know her parents' names or anywhere that she could have gone, so I just left voicemails for her every day to every other day, hoping that she might get fed up and answer, but she never did. It was probably two or three weeks, I think, since this all took place, and I was sitting at home, wanting to do something, so I decided to go for a late night walk. I grabbed my earbuds and headed out the door.

There was a decent path that I could walk along the outside of the apartment complex, so I decided to stick there. I didn't want to be out too late anyways, and then to my surprise, while walking, I got a text from Megan asking what I was doing. I told her something like, oh, not much, or nothing, as I thought it wasn't important, and then asked how she was feeling slash doing. I didn't get a response for a few minutes, but when I finally did...

It was just her saying, "Are you sure you're not out walking?" I started responding that I was when I realized the situation and started looking around. I couldn't immediately see anyone, so I tried calling her. She answered, but didn't say anything. I was starting to feel a bit panicked at this point, not knowing what her intentions were, so I just asked on the phone if she could just come out so we could talk, trying to make the best of the situation.

but I still got no response. Then, I saw two people come out and walk towards a car, so when I saw the lights turn on, I thought it was theirs and continued waiting on Megan. However, that car belonged to Megan, and I finally figured that out when it started speeding towards me.

She actually swerved to avoid the other two people, gunned it at me, and if I hadn't run to the side where the dumpsters were, she probably would have hit me. Instead, she slammed into the back of the complex that I was standing at. She got out seemingly unfazed by what just happened, laughing and saying that that was the hottest thing she's ever experienced. I was in shock. I didn't know what to do or how to react.

So I just stood there as she laughed until I passed out. I later learned that the two people that had walked out and were almost hit called the cops, and when they showed up, she was still laughing but was lying next to me. She was arrested, and had to go through some kind of therapy or something. I was unharmed, other than my ego, I suppose. I never saw her again after that either.

I finished the school year and decided to move back to Texas when I graduated. I think I just wanted to forget all about the situation and be as far as possible from it. So that's my ex story, and my streak since then has not topped that one, thankfully. Also, I will say that I learned through mutuals that she was arrested again for some kind of assault as she knocked out her then-boyfriend,

And she supposedly also tried to start a cult, so there's that. So, Megan, hopefully you and I don't ever meet up again, and I can tell you that in order to stay as far away from you as possible, I will not be visiting Kansas anytime soon. Back when I was in middle school and high school, I liked to go to the mall with some of my friends to hang out. My mom wasn't big on letting me, a young boy, go alone, but...

When I was around 16, she started to get more comfortable with it, or at least letting me walk around with my friends while she was shopping on her own. I was the oldest of three kids, so I think she was just protective, and nowadays, I can't say that I blame her. My friends and I never really did anything obnoxious or illegal.

We never stole anything or caused problems for other people. We were young, and typically walked around as a group of two to six depending on who all could show up. I won't lie and say that we never got loud, but I don't feel like we were disruptive, as we were never told we had to leave. I'm just trying to lay this out a bit, as it made the situation that I was in even weirder.

It was in November, because my mom wanted to go Christmas shopping, but since it was the weekend, I was home. My dad worked on the weekends too, but she didn't want me to have to stay home with my younger brother and sister, nor did I really want to. I didn't really have a problem with them, but I wanted to go do something as well. She agreed that we could go to the mall, and I could walk around by myself since she would be there for me as well.

My siblings were young enough that they didn't quite understand what the gifts were for, and my mom was sly enough to try to hide them as well. So, I called a few of my friends who also got permission to go as well, and we all met them up there. Once we got there, my mom gave me her normal list of rules. Told me to call her if anything happened, make sure to answer her if she called as well, and agree on a meeting spot at a certain time.

Then I was finally released to hang out with my three friends that had showed up, Charlotte, Macy, and Quinn. My mom had given me about 25 bucks to spend or to get lunch for myself and my friends, so we all just walked around to decide on what we wanted to buy. We went into a few stores, more so just browsing until we made our way to the little arcade that they had in there.

One of the girls was given some money as well, so we all split our cash evenly so we had five apiece to spend, and had a little left over to get something to eat. While we were there, we noticed a guy walking around in a nice button-up shirt and pants. Every time I noticed him, he was looking over at us and almost staring at us like he was concentrating.

Like he recognized us, maybe? And he was just trying to remember who we were? He was also carrying around one of those standing dust pans and broom, and he was just randomly sweeping in places. I asked the others if they recognized him, and they all said no too. We just thought it was some grumpy old man mad at us for having a good time. Maybe we were being a bit too loud for him or something? We got tired of being watched and we decided to leave early.

We walked around to a few other stores, but out of my peripheral, I saw the same broom guy walking around us. Then, after about the third or fourth time, I no longer felt it was a coincidence, and that this guy was following us. I also wasn't the only one to notice, as Macy said something quite loud, like, "'Why do I feel like we're being followed?' as she looked right over at this guy."

He made eye contact with us, and started walking away. I made the suggestion that we go find my mom to let her know in case this guy tried to do something, or thought that we were trying to do something. I called her, and she told us to meet her at the place that we had agreed upon.

"'It was on the bottom floor, so as we walked over towards the escalators at the end of the hallway, "'there was a small walled-off area that had restrooms, a drinking fountain, an empty store as well as an elevator. "'It wasn't used very often, so it was kind of hidden off to the side, "'but it was for those who weren't able to take the escalator typically. "'The girls said that they needed to use the restroom, so we stopped over there first.'

While I was leaning against the wall talking to Quinn, the elevator doors opened and, lucky us, it was the broom guy. I pushed myself off the wall and was about to walk to the opposite side where Quinn was when this guy grabbed me by the arm and started shouting at me. Quinn was yelling at me to let me go and he just kept saying that I was going to be in a lot of trouble and he shoved me into the elevator with him.

While we were in there, he was gripping my arm so tight that it was hurting. He kept saying things like, I know what you did. I was watching you the whole time. You kids have no respect for others, for the value of money, and I swear you will pay. You will own up. I seriously had no idea what he was talking about. We hadn't done anything but walk around and play games, which was when I first noticed him.

He took me to this small room back up on the second floor that looked like it used to be some kind of old office. It had a cheap desk in it, two chairs, a filing cabinet, and an old TV. I tried telling him my mom was here and that she would vouch for me, basically, that I had done nothing wrong. Then, he started telling me to take off my clothes. When I refused, he said to give back what I had stolen.

We just kept going round and round like this for a while, before someone started banging on the door, and I heard my mom's voice. I called back for her, and the guy then approached the door and opened it, as he had locked it. My mom and a guy in a security-style uniform were standing there. I ran past them to my mom, and the guy started asking what was going on. The broom guy was angrily explaining that he knew I was up to no good, and that I and my friends had stolen something.

Man, I have never seen my mom so angry at that point. She tore into this guy, yelling at him that I wouldn't do something like that. Basically, what ended up happening after that, the security guy made the broom guy sit in that room until the actual police arrived. The broom guy didn't even work there. He just thought he was helping by patrolling the area and stopping troublesome kids, I guess.

My friends ran and told my mom, and someone else reported seeing the guy dragging me away and making a scene, and didn't think that it was right. And again, none of us had taken anything. My mom gave a huge speech to all of us, making sure that none of us had taken anything, but I knew that they didn't take anything either. I don't know if that was his whole intention, to just protect the mall, or if there was something more sinister he planned.

but he even went to the trouble of finding a room he could lock us in, which was pretty creepy. Not to mention that he was adamant that I undress. Whatever it was, it ruined my chances of going to the mall alone anymore, but at least that guy was stopped, and I really hope that we never meet again. I was 21 and in college in a relatively small town in western Colorado.

I lived in an apartment building on campus, and our doors opened up to the outside. I was out smoking a cigarette, and it was around 10pm. I had class the next day, pretty early, so I was planning on going to bed right after I was done. Even though the town was small, there was a significant homeless population.

There were a few shelters that would put up homeless people in hotels for a few nights, but they would have to go and request one during the shelter's normal business hours. As I was sitting there, planning out my next day, a disheveled homeless man walked up to me. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He asked if he could bum a smoke, so I obliged. Normally, the homeless population would stay off campus because there were no shelters around the college.

I have no idea why this man was there. I expected him to just walk away after obtaining his cigarette, but instead he sat down and started talking to me. Being the nice person that I am, I asked him about why he was there. He told me that he was just trying to find a warm place to sleep for the night. Since it was late fall and the weather was turning cold.

I told him that there were a few shelters about two miles from where we were. He told me that they wouldn't let him stay because he'd been drinking that night. I then offered to get him some Gatorade from my room because he told me that he was really thirsty. I grabbed the Gatorade and he asked if I had any food. I told him no because I got all my food from the cafeteria, and he then begged me to let him stay on my couch for the night.

I told him that I wished I could, but my roommates wouldn't appreciate waking up to a random person in our apartment, and also it was against the apartment rules. What I did next was, admittedly, very stupid. I offered to walk him to the student center, about a five minute walk from my apartment, and see what they could do for him. When we got there, I asked the desk attendant if they could help him in any way.

They told me no because he wasn't a student. At this point, I was getting some weird vibes from this guy. I tried to tell him that I needed to get back to my place because I had class early the next morning, and he insisted that I needed to help him find a warm place to sleep for the night. Me, trying to be as nice as I could, proceeded to walk him all across campus, trying to find a good place for him to sleep for the night. He had a small sleeping bag.

I told him the parking garage might be a good bet, but he said he had done that before and security had banned him from campus. At this point, alarm bells were going off in my head. I couldn't just leave him, though, because I was in too deep. We walked together to the soccer field nearby to see if any of the bathrooms were open for him to sleep in. They were all locked, so we tried the baseball field directly across the street.

It had been around an hour since I met this stranger, and I needed to get out of this dangerous situation. There were no other people around since it was getting pretty late, and he begged me again to stay on my couch. And, again, I refused. What I did next wasn't my proudest moment, by any means. I told him to try the bathrooms around the back of the baseball field, even though I had no idea if any were actually back there.

As he turned to go check, I ran as fast as I could out of there and kept running for ten minutes back to my apartment. I got in, and I looked out the window for a long time since the room was right next to the door. The man did know where I lived since I'd met him right in front of my building, but I saw absolutely no sign of him. The moral of the story? No matter how nice of a person you are,

Please don't try to help random homeless people that you meet late at night. So it's 2:14 the time that I'm beginning to write this, and the encounter started around 12:00 AM. I was lying in bed with one of my two cats, watching TV, Red Dwarf specifically. Something I've seen a million times and is pretty much a comfort show, so I know what I heard wasn't the TV.

Suddenly, I heard a faint and rather androgynous voice coming from outside. It was a little high-pitched and whiny. It's hard to recall because I only heard it once, and all it said was, ''Hello,'' with an upward inflection. I didn't really know how to react. I thought it had to have been my other cat, but now I'm thoroughly convinced that it wasn't. Because a few minutes later...

There were three knocks at my front door in rapid succession. I threw on some clothes really quick and went to see if there was someone at the door. About a sixth of it is window, and I couldn't see anyone or anything from inside through the window. So I just assumed it had to have been the damn cat screwing around. So I went to bed, but was really freaked out. Ten minutes later, and there's a knocking on my door again.

Freaked out to hell, I jump up and grab the machete that's near my bed, and I carefully look out the window again before going outside to have a look around. There's no one around again. I go back in and I grab my pellet gun, and I go back to my bedroom because it just feels safer in there. Ten minutes later, again, it's the same freaking knocking at my door. It takes me a few seconds to get there because, at this point...

I'm terrified and texting my wife about it. I get outside and there was nothing. No one. Again. My wife tells me to call the cops and I do. While waiting for them, I was pacing around the house and ended up walking into the bathroom. While in there, I heard a deep and muffled voice from outside the window very quietly. I basically screamed like a bitch and went back to the bedroom until the cops showed up. They looked around and found nothing, of course.

I live in far northern California, if that helps. Does anyone have any ideas what could be going on? This story may be offensive in places, but it's being told exactly how it has to be. My home state is called Tasmania, an island state of Australia. Some say it isn't a big state, but are often surprised by how big it actually is.

There's wilderness, opens, mountains, and a cranking capital city called Hobart. I don't care what people say about it. I love it. I'm from Launceston, the cesspit, I call it, so I moved to Hobart at about 26 to 7 years old for university. And, of course, I needed a job. I was in the prized location, one off Sandy Bay right near the ocean,

All the food shops imaginable and a supermarket, but most importantly, the university. I found a job pretty quick, waitressing at a steakhouse. And that's where I met... I'll call her Elle for privacy reasons. Elle and I became besties pretty quickly, as we soon learned that we were studying the same subjects at university. After a while, she was needing somewhere to stay as she had broken up with her partner...

and was finding it hard to get a job and keep it. Her boss has always sleazed on her, and she didn't get why. I said aside from the fact that you're very pretty, quite a few men here have a preconceived idea of what an Asian girl will do for money. She's petite, gorgeous, intelligent young woman, and I opened the paper to the escorts for hire section, and showed her pages of Asian escort ads.

"'This is why you have trouble,' I said. "'At the time, flip phones were still a thing, but cameras had only really just begun. "'Why does this matter?' you ask. "'Well, I took my friend in to live, and we went shopping one summer day. "'She wheeled the trolley, and I grabbed the stuff. "'I'm the tall one, so...' "'She was leaning slightly on the trolley as she waited. "'She had on a cute summery dress with some wedge sandals for height.'

She was still short. And she looked about 13, maybe 15. We were in the makeup aisle at the time that it happened. Someone caught my eye, just past my friend. It was a man with a basket and a phone. A flip phone. A new one. I got a glance at his basket as he grabbed two makeup cases, a blue and a pink one, without really paying attention to what he got.

I don't remember anything else that was in the basket now, but back then, you could assume gender without any guilt as such, and so you did. In other words, he didn't look like a man who would normally be in a makeup aisle, and he moved like the wind when he saw me looking at him. I didn't say a word because all I had was instinct, but I knew. I got my friend to come to an open area of the supermarket to test him. We faced the wall.

and I made her decide on what to get. Which, I don't know what it was now, but it was just a distraction. Sure enough, he pulled out his phone, bobbed down, and went to take a photo. I yelled at the top of my lungs, scaring my friend as much as everyone else. He made a run for it as I chased him through to the counter where he almost threw the basket at me to get out. He bolted and no one did anything.

So, just putting a warning out there now that phones are more prevalent, you don't really know how a perv may strike. When I was a kid, probably around six years old, I had a summer experience that still sends shivers down my spine. It was one of those events that happened quickly and could have been much worse, but it taught me one hell of a lesson by the end of it. I remember that it was a really hot day.

the kind where the air does that fun shimmering stuff off the asphalt and i was home with my mom she was a teacher at my school and we were both on break we were spending some time in the backyard my mom was inflating and then filling the little pool that my dad had bought the weekend before and i was just excitedly running around waiting to jump in the water my mom told me to go inside and get us a couple of popsicles and i excitedly did what she requested

I was there digging in the freezer for a specific flavor, blue raspberry of course, and enjoying the cold air blasting me in the face when I heard it. A light knock at the door. We didn't really get a lot of visitors where we lived, usually just my grandparents or our neighbor Miss Shelley, whom I absolutely adored, thinking it was probably Grandma or Miss Shelley.

I went over and swung the door open, expecting to be greeted by a warm smile and some cookies. Instead, there was a man standing there, a stranger, with a creepy yellow grin that seemed to be way too big for his face. I may have been six years old, but I cannot forget that face. The smell hit me next, a sour stench that made my nose scrunch up.

I didn't know it then, but as an adult, I now realized that it was probably the stink of some kind of booze. I bluntly asked this guy who he was, and he laughed and responded that he was a friend, and that he was there to see me. I was a pretty social kid, so I just assumed that he was a friend of my parents that I hadn't met yet. When I asked him how he knew me, he leaned down, laughed, and said...

"I've known you for a long time. I was there when you were born." It was a weird thing to say, but at that age, I didn't really question it. He then followed this up with, "Hey, why don't you come outside? I brought lunch for us. You like pizza, right?" I did, in fact, like pizza. In fact, I loved pizza. And with the word pizza mentioned, I then really wanted pizza.

I started to step outside, but just as I did, my mom appeared at the front door and put a hand on my shoulder. She asked this man who he was and what he wanted. I remember him flashing that ugly yellow smile at her and asking for someone named Melissa. My mom, clearly not convinced, told him, "'No one named Melissa lives here. I think you need to leave.' He then responded with an, "'Oh, of course. My mistake.'

still holding that creepy smile, and turned to walk off. Without saying another word, he walked out our front gate, got into an old minivan, and drove off. My mom immediately pulled me back into the house, and that's when I got my first lesson about stranger danger. She explained that we should never trust people that we don't know like that, especially if they're asking us to go somewhere with them. I mentioned that he said he was a friend, and that he was there when I was born,

She told me that none of that was true, and that sometimes, people will lie to get us to trust them. Now, looking back as an adult, I realize how close I came to a potentially dangerous situation. If my mom hadn't come inside to check on me when she did, well, I really don't like to think about what could have happened. It's a really chilling reminder of how important it is to teach kids about the dangers of trusting strangers.

and it's a lesson that I've held closely ever since. I used this story to actually explain to my own son about Stranger Danger. I never saw that guy again, thankfully, and I hope that I never do. Back when I was 16, I started working at a department store in our local mall. I worked there for a few years after high school just because I enjoyed the job and the pay was decent.

I started as a cashier and actually became a floor associate. It wasn't a commissioned job, thankfully, but I did enjoy being able to walk around, help people, as well as clean and organize the shelves. As expected, since it was a retail store, we had to take those computer trainings on what to do in emergency situations, the ones that you glaze over and never expect to have to follow through on.

This took place after I had graduated though. It was actually a Sunday, so we were closing early. I was in the women's section folding up the shirts that were displaced on the shelf. This was also close to the front of the store, making me also close to the register. The cashier had just gone to break and I agreed to go over to that section to watch the register until she got back.

At this point, since we were closing in about two hours, it was just me, another floor associate, Marco, the cashier, Sam, and the store manager, Will. I assumed that Marco was closer to the back of the store because I couldn't see or hear him. I had one customer that I rang up, and another one that I remember seeing come in, but they hadn't left yet. So, while I was folding, I heard a loud bang making me jump.

It came from outside of our store, and all I could think of was that it sounded like something large and heavy crashing onto the floor, like maybe a trash can. I just remember that I stood there for a moment, and noticed that after the loud sound, it was eerily quiet, other than the very soft music playing over the intercoms.

Usually you hear people walking and talking, but it was unsettling. Then I heard the sound a second time, which was followed by screaming. I started to walk over towards the door when I saw a guy running from the left, and he looked terrified. Something told me to get away from the door, so I started to swiftly walk towards the back when I heard the sound again. That's when I finally realized I was hearing shooting.

The fear finally hit me, and I fell to the floor, crawling when I saw Will come out of the back. He was motioning for me to get behind the counter, and I didn't hesitate. I looked around the side to see him running, trying to pull the barred gate down, when I saw someone run up to the door and start yelling. I immediately dropped down and held my knees to my chest. I heard them yelling about getting back up, hands up.

and Will was trying to tell them to calm down and not go through with this. He continued yelling, so he walked over to the cash register and began unlocking it. As he was emptying it, the other guy asked where the girl was at the cash register. He said they already took off through the back when we first heard the shot. The mall was only one story, so each store had a back emergency door, so it was definitely possible, and for their sake I hope that they did.

After he finished, I assumed the guy didn't leave because Will stood there and started to say something like, I swear it's empty, when I heard another shot and Will fell to the floor. It made me scream, but I heard the guy run out of the store too. Everything was a blur after that. I remember trying to help Will. Marco came out from the back and helped as well, and it just kind of spiraled from there. Lots of talking and people coming and going,

My parents showed up, freaking out, understandably, as I still lived with them, too. I didn't work for a few days after that. In fact, everyone that worked that night was off. To my surprise, the place did actually pay for therapy for any of us that wanted it. The suspect didn't get far, though. Thankfully, when others heard the first and second shots, they called for help immediately. So the cops were at the door when they tried to escape.

Will was always a great manager, and after hearing that he was going to be okay, and was actually going to return to work, it made me feel like I could go back too, even though I thought about quitting. I continued to work there for a few more years before I got a job in my field. I took every single one of those safety training classes absolutely serious from that moment on, though.

A few years ago, I used to live in an apartment complex that was attached to a really nice public park. One that was surrounded entirely with a walking path that broke away on one part to go into a wooded area. I've walked this park hundreds of times. Like, literally hundreds of times. I used to walk that park every single day after work for a couple of years.

It was one of the safest places that I'd ever walked, and honestly, I never expected anything to happen to me while I walked it. But the day that this happened, my illusion of how safe it was was definitely shattered. I was about halfway through my usual route, which included about half of the branch path that took me out into the forest. I didn't like to do the whole thing because it went too far out for me.

but I would go until I reached the benches, which would be the halfway mark, and then turn around and head home. I was minding my own business when I started to get this weird feeling, like something was watching or following me. You know, that creepy crawly sensation that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. I tried to shake it off, thinking that I was just a bit anxious, or that maybe there was a person there, but they were just walking.

After a few more minutes, I started to feel a bit worse, and was thinking that I was just being paranoid, until I turned around and saw that there was a guy that was standing on the side of the path, looking around like he lost something. But then, every few moments, he would glance up in my direction. He was a bit overweight, wearing a white and green tracksuit. I slowed down as I walked and half-turned to look at the guy to make sure that he knew that I saw him.

As soon as I did, this guy stopped looking at the ground and stood straight up, gave a small wave and said, ''Oh, hey.'' I didn't reply. I just stood where I was and gave a small wave back. As soon as I did, he nodded and laughed and then started stepping toward me at an escalated pace. My instincts kicked in, and I took off down the path starting at a medium run,

But when I looked back and saw that this guy was now chasing me as fast as he could, I took off into a full sprint. For a few moments, this guy was running at me, and I was running away. Thankfully, I was definitely faster than he was, as I was able to get back to the part of the path that branched off. I ducked down into some of the thicker bushes, hiding and seeing that this guy was going to follow me this far.

After a couple more seconds, he actually did run down to the split, and he slowed down to a walk as he caught his breath and looked around. I just sat there, ducked down into these bushes feeling my heart pound so hard that I might throw up, watching this guy look around the paths. Then, I heard something that completely confirmed my fear. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, pressed a button on the screen, and started talking.

I couldn't make out the full conversation, but I heard enough to know that the situation was as terrifying as I thought. Hey. Yeah. I lost her. His voice was frustrated and angry, and I knew for a fact that had I not gotten away from this guy, bad things would have happened. After a few more words, he hung up and yelled a few expletives out into the woods, and then slowly walked back the way that he came.

I stayed hidden in those bushes for a while, until it clicked in my mind that I should probably call 911. I pulled out my phone and dialed it and explained to them that there was a guy on the walking path that had been chasing me, and explained what he had said on the phone. The woman said that they would send some police out to the park and to meet them there if possible. I got out of the hiding spot, and when I was certain that he was in fact gone, I walked back toward my building.

I waited in the parking lot at the property for a while, and in an incredibly disappointing twist, the police never showed up. My guess? They probably got a call that was more important than "weird man followed me in the park", but I would have at least liked a call back or something. But of course, it didn't happen. The whole thing really messed me up, and I never walked back to that park.

I ended up taking my walks around the parking lot of the apartment complex because I couldn't bring myself to go back into those woods just in case. It's scary to think about what might have happened had he gotten a hold of me, but thankfully that didn't happen. I have no idea what happened, and honestly, I hope that no one ever ended up in that situation that I did, and I hope that I never run into him ever again. And to everyone else...

Be careful and stay aware because you never know who might be watching. I thought that I would share another one of my encounters. This happened in a timeshare apartment in the Lake District. We got the apartment really cheap off of a friend who owns timeshares. The apartment was on the ground floor of a really old hotel.

It had a huge lounge with a bedroom off one side. On the wall you faced, there were three steps up to the kitchen. The kitchen was weird, as it had a big picture window that looked onto a passageway that led to the front door, into the hotel. Also, the passage had a dog-leg staircase down to a bathroom with a jacuzzi bath.

The passageway also had a blocked up doorway, it was lit by passive lights, that came on when you walked out. On the first night, we were tired, so we went to bed about 10. I woke up at 11.15pm and could smell a really sweet perfume, strong, like someone was waving it under my nose. I reminded myself the next day to look for the offending plug-in,

as I thought one was somewhere in the room and I fell asleep. On our first full day we went out walking so we didn't spend much time in the apartment. When we got back, I made us a sandwich and while I was busy the passive light in the passage kept coming on by itself. Very strange. We had our sandwich and then I decided a glass of wine in the jacuzzi would be lovely.

After I had finished and tried to leave, the door to the bathroom became stuck. I tugged like mad to no avail. I shouted for my husband. Nothing. I kept trying the door, and after a good ten minutes, it just opened. No problems. I turned the light off in the bathroom, started up the stairs into the pitch black, and waited for the passive to light my way, but it didn't.

I waved my arms about like a demented bat, but nothing. So I felt my way up the stairs. As I got around the corner, I expected the second passive to pick me up. It didn't. I flew into the lounge and light, just glad to be back. We just laughed it off. During the night, I awoke at 2.15 and there was the strong smell of perfume in the bedroom again.

The next morning, we set about looking for the source of the perfume smell. We looked all over the bedroom, even under the bed, and once again we found nothing. We went out for a few hours. On our return, we put a film on and settled down into the lounge. We had a meal and a couple of drinks. The light in the passageway kept flashing on and off again. We asked reception if a bulb or something needed fixing.

They had a look and said that it was working fine. We put some music on and after a couple of hours, decided to go to bed. The switch to turn the light off was at the furthest point from the bedroom door and my husband had gone to bed already. I turned the light off and started to cross the room in the dark and all of a sudden, three bright blue lights crossed the lounge in front of me. Each one had a long tail and they didn't move fast.

They went into the kitchen and disappeared out of sight. I ran the rest of the way into the bedroom, and I told my husband about what had happened. He said he had a weird feeling about the place, and he said he didn't like being in the lounge alone. I noticed that he always went to bed first, and left me to turn the light off. I felt unnerved and checked the door twice just to make sure it was shut properly. Later that night, something woke me up.

It was that perfume smell. Sickly sweet. I could hear footsteps in the lounge. I started to poke my husband in the ribs, but he wouldn't wake up. I could feel my heart thudding in my chest. All of a sudden, the bedroom door clicked open. I was petrified and put my head under the sheet. I must have stayed like that for over an hour until eventually I must have fallen asleep.

I know that if I'd had the guts to look out from under the sheet, there would have been something there. I'm such a coward. The next day, we packed up and we went home.