Scary Stories For Dark Dreams - Volume 20 | 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. I first met Hannah online. I think it was on Facebook through a mutual friend that we shared.

She commented something on one of my friend's posts, and I responded to her with a joke about something, and she then sent me a friend request, and that was kind of it. For a while, at least. At the time, I was seeing someone, she was seeing someone, so there was no intention beyond, we share a mutual friend and have the same sense of humor."

A few years later at a get together for that same friend, and wouldn't you know it, we were both single and we hit it off. She was a dream come true for me. Beautiful, smart, funny. She had a laugh that lit up the room and I fell for her pretty much right away. Before I knew it, we'd been dating for about six months. It honestly felt like that. We met at the party and then we were together for half a year.

Everything seemed perfect with her until then, when she sprung something on me way out of left field. Out of nowhere, she told me that she had a kid. Which is something that should not have been a surprise, right? Those six months that we were together, she never mentioned having a daughter. There were no pictures of her with her daughter on her Facebook. In the time we'd been together, her daughter had literally never been mentioned. At all.

So, when she came out and said, I have court for custody of my daughter this week, I was kind of like, I'm sorry, you have court for what of who? Worse yet, she kind of played it off like, Oh, my daughter, Courtney, you've met her, I've mentioned her, etc. Apparently this whole time Courtney had been living with her ex, Ryan, her father, and I genuinely didn't even know this kid existed.

Of course I wanted to be supportive. I wanted to be there for this woman that I was pretty sure I was in love with, but I was taken aback that she was able to hide something like this for so long. I mean, it's not normal to hide a kid from your boyfriend, right? But she was adamant that she had told me about her, to the point that it actually became an argument, one that got pretty heated and pretty loud.

After a while, I relented and basically agreed that I probably just forgot, just to try to calm her down. After that, I asked her about the situation, what was going on with the custody battle and all of that. She started telling me about how abusive Ryan was, how he was controlling and that he had even gotten physically abusive with her at least once.

I asked her how he ended up with custody of her in the first place, and she broke down crying, just completely sobbing about how nothing in her life is fair. I let it go, but I do want to mention that it wasn't lost on me that she avoided the question. Then came the day of court that she had mentioned, and she asked me to be there as a character witness.

Which, honestly, I wasn't even sure was a thing for custody battles. But I agreed. I suited up and I went with her to the hearing. I just kind of sat there awkwardly, and at one point I was brought up during a conversation. She motioned towards me, and I had to tell them who I was and what I did for a living. And that was all they asked me.

I was basically told that I could remain seated on the bench, and if they had any questions, they would call on me. They didn't. And I just continued to awkwardly sit there watching this whole thing play out. That was until one word came out of Ryan's mouth, one that was echoed by the judge. Abuse. It was brought up that the reason he had full custody of Courtney was because of Hannah's abusive tendencies.

abusive tendencies that were, apparently, well-documented by the legal system. I don't want to get into all of it, but I think the overall theme of the whole conversation was that she had been abusive to Ryan for a long time, and their relationship fell apart when it was found out that she had been abusive to Courtney, too. This was shocking to me. I hadn't seen that side of her at all.

By the end of the day, it was pretty clear that she wasn't going to get custody of Courtney. At least, not full custody like she had wanted, and it was unclear as to whether or not she would even get partial custody. The whole drive home, she was quiet, just staring out the window and crying. I asked if she wanted to come over to my place to talk things out, and she nodded.

So, we went back to my place, which was a decision that I genuinely regret. We got in, and I sat down on the couch thinking this was just going to be her venting, which I would have totally understood. But she immediately started going off on me. She was screaming that this was my fault, that I was the reason she didn't get her daughter back. I was taken aback, asking her how the hell it was my fault.

and she yelled back that I didn't tell the judge that she was a good person, that I should have told them that she had changed and that she was no longer the person she used to be. I retorted with, "'They didn't ask me to say anything. I would have told them all that if they had asked, Hannah.' And then she hit me. She smacked me across the face and yelled that I should have stood up and argued for her like a man when they were talking about how abusive she was."

The irony in the fact that she had physically assaulted me while yelling about how she wasn't abusive was palpable. I had to hold my breath for a moment because I was about to explode. I simply stood up and pointed towards the door, telling her that she needed to leave. She told me that I would regret it, that she was going to make my life a living hell if I left her. I reiterated that I just wanted her to leave and that she needed to get help.

that I could no longer be involved in her life. And then she said something that haunts me to this day: "Whatever I do, it's going to be your fault for pushing me over the edge." And she left. Now this was clearly a threat, but I didn't know what she meant by it. And there was only so much that I could do because they were only words at that moment. In fact, they were only words for about two days.

Until I got a knock on my front door, and when I opened it, I was met with three police officers asking very aggressively if Hannah was in my apartment. I was confused and honestly a bit scared, and I told them that I hadn't seen her, and even gave them permission to come in to verify. Not something I would normally do, but this seemed incredibly serious.

While two of the officers started looking around the apartment and clearing the rooms, the third one asked me to have a seat because he had some questions for me. I asked him what was going on, and he asked me when the last time I had seen Hannah was. I told him that it had been a couple of days. He pressed me harder, asking me for a specific time, things that were said, etc.,

I told him everything about the argument, how she was upset about the custody case, and I told him that she had left after she got physical with me, and that was it. He asked me if he could see my phone to make sure that she hadn't called or messaged. I showed him that the last call was from her that morning that she had court, and that she hadn't texted me since before that, and I told him that I hadn't had any contact with her since then. I then, again,

asked what the hell was going on. The other two officers came back into the living room, and that's when they started explaining things to me. Apparently, I was the last person to see Hannah before she went over to Ryan's house. They gathered from him that she was distraught and asked if she could come in, and he told them that she had said something about me assaulting her, and for some reason he fell for it and let her in.

At some point, she had taken a blunt object and knocked him clean out, and then kidnapped their daughter, and she'd been on the run ever since. They wanted to make sure that I had nothing to do with it. I told them that I was not a part of that, that we had broken up that day because of the argument, and I told them that I had not touched her at all, mentioning that she had hit me, and that's when I told her to get out."

They seemed to believe me, and told me that if I had heard anything from her, I needed to call them immediately. I agreed, and I told them that I would, and after they left, I was lost. How had this woman that I thought I was in love with managed to turn so quickly to someone that would go as far as kidnapping a child? How had I never seen the signs of who she really was?

Was I really that disillusioned, or was she that good at hiding it? This is pretty much where the story ends for me. After the police asked me the questions, I was no longer involved. The next day, Hannah was caught. She was pretty obviously being looked for, and she stayed in town. In fact, she actually went to her mother's house and was hiding out there.

She told her mom that she had won custody of Courtney, but her mom did not believe her, and the police did show up to ask her questions. When they did, Hannah was there, and she was taken into custody. That was that. She's doing time now for her acts, and I can safely say that she will probably never see her daughter again. Is that sad? Absolutely. Courtney doesn't deserve to grow up without her mother,

but at the same time, Hannah doesn't really deserve to be in her life for what she had done. I can end this by saying that I know for a fact that Courtney is actually doing well. I became pretty good friends with Ryan after all this. We ran into each other at a GameStop one day of all places, and were able to finally laugh about the craziness. We've hung out, played COD quite a bit, and I can say that Courtney, who just turned nine...

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Hi. Sorry, did I startle you? When you're used to hearing a certain type of commercial, something like this can, well, take you by surprise. That's kind of how it is with the Lexus RX, a vehicle that has continued to defy expectations for over 25 years. From the first luxury vehicle of its kind, to the first hybrid luxury vehicle, to the only plug-in hybrid worthy of the RX name. We understand you want more than the everyday SUV, and isn't being understood an amazing feeling?

Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. I have a really messed up story from when I was a delivery driver for a pizza place, which would have been back in 2010. I only worked there for a little over a year, and I left because I learned that my city was not as nice of a place as I thought it was.

Well, that and the fact that the store manager really did not care about his employees, and would write people up for literally the most minor of infractions. I know this is a bit off topic, but he would write you up if your shirt wasn't tucked into your pants, or if your pants weren't the right color. Mind you, there was no written policy that stated what color your pants had to be, and

And at the time, corporate basically just said they couldn't be jeans or shorts. But he was adamant that the requirements for working there was to wear black pants. Working at this particular store for this particular management was an absolute nightmare in and of itself. There were two neighborhoods that were actually marked as "no deliveries after 6:00 PM" for very specific reasons.

And, despite this, if they called an order in instead of doing the online order, the manager would say that we had to take it. I will say it again. There were very specifically documented reasons as to why we were not supposed to go into these areas after dark. They were high crime sections of the city.

and walking around with cash in your pocket and a cap that said, Pizza Place, was literally asking to be robbed. Thankfully, we rarely got a call for these areas, but there were a couple of residents that had figured out the workaround, and we would always dread taking them. And while this part of the story isn't mine, this part is where the inevitable happens.

One of the newer delivery drivers, and I mean newer as in only there for like two months or so, got the delivery to go to one of these neighborhoods. When she mentioned that she was nervous about driving into the area, the manager just told her not to put the topper on her car and to not wear her cap so that she didn't stand out. Well, she took the order as was requested, but...

And after about 30 minutes, we got a call to the store, which was her yelling at the manager that she was carjacked. Apparently, the person that ordered the pizza just used a random address on the street, and when she pulled up, he waved her down, saying it was his. She didn't know what to do, so she started to unbag the pizza to give it to him, and he pulled a gun on her, telling her to get out of the car.

She did. And this guy literally drove off with the pizza and her car. She had to walk for about 20 minutes to a gas station so she could call the cops and the store. I was actually at the store when the manager got the call, and I remember him asking if they took the store's money that she had on her.

I could hear her screaming at him, asking how the hell he could be so concerned about the cash, when she was literally held at gunpoint and had her car stolen. After she hung up on him, I recall he mentioned something about how she'd better return to the store to cash out and give him back the money, or else he would call the police and say that she stole the money. That was the first event that made me realize that this place was hell.

Well, the first event that really drove the point home, at least. The fact that he didn't care about her and was worried about, like, $30 and change was really messed up. The event that got me to actually quit the job happened about a month or so after that. To literally no one's surprise, the driver getting carjacked did not stop the manager from taking those deliveries to those two neighborhoods.

and obviously, all of us were on edge when they came in. Unfortunately, the next event that happened was a delivery that I got. It was actually to the other neighborhood, which was a gated community, on the southern end of the delivery square. The community was on the very edge of where we would go as a store, and was actually partially outside of the delivery square, but of course, if they called, we had to take it.

Now, when I say this was a gated community, some people may think that means that it was nice houses, and that it was like that to keep the less desirable people out. It was actually the opposite. The rumor around town was that there were so many people living there on house arrest, and people that had a required legal curfew,

that the local PD had actually requested the property management to put a fence around the area to make it harder for them to leave the zone. Now, I don't know if that's true, but I wouldn't doubt that it wasn't completely fictitious. So, we had a delivery called into the store from this area, and it was of course after 6pm. And I was, of course, the one that got the delivery.

At this point, I was pretty done with this job, so I told my manager that I wanted someone else to come with me if I took it. He very quickly shot me down and just told me to man up and take the damn delivery. I rolled my eyes and decided to just get it over with, grabbed the pizza, and took it out to my car and then headed in that direction. I pulled up to the house that the delivery was for and was actually a bit relieved.

It was at the very end of the property, and was actually just outside the fenced area. To me, that meant that this person was just unfortunate in their home buying decisions. I got out with the pizza and went to the front door and rang the bell a couple of times, as I did, and there was no answer. Then I hit the doorbell once or twice more, and knocked. After waiting for five or so minutes of knocking,

I was pretty done with the whole delivery, and was trying to figure out what exactly I should do. I, for some reason, decided that my best course of action would be to call the store and tell them that no one was answering. Why I thought this was the best idea, I honestly do not know, but it's what I did. The manager answered, and I told him that I was on the delivery to this address, and I informed him that the person was not answering the door.

He then told me that I needed to stay until the pizza was delivered, and that he would call the number on the account to get a hold of the guy. I angrily asked him how long he expected me to stick around for this one delivery, and he basically told me to shut it, and that he would tell me when I could come back. Then, he hung up on me.

I decided to basically just chill out and wait for him to call me back because, at this point, I was already here, so whatever was going to happen was already going to happen. After a few minutes, I heard what sounded like glass breaking and someone shoving furniture around coming from inside the house. I took a bit of initiative and walked around to the side of the house to look into the window, which was where things went from bad to

to worse. When I looked in, I saw a man lying on the floor surrounded in a large pool of blood, and the living room was an absolute mess. Worse yet, there was someone in the room that was rifling through the furniture and throwing things around, clearly looking for something specific. I booked it back to my car and grabbed my phone to call the cops. I drove to the end of the street and then called 911, telling them what I saw.

They asked me if I was able to stay in the area and see if anyone left the house while they headed in that direction. And I told them that I would, though looking back, this was kind of a dumb request and a stupid thing for me to agree to. I stayed on the phone with them until the officer showed up, and then I told him what I saw. This whole delivery turned into a fiasco.

and I was parked a house or so down watching the multiple armed officers kick in the door, and then they shot the guy that was in the house. Around the time they got an ambulance to get the guy out of the house, I actually got a call from my manager. At this point, mind you, it had been around 20 or so minutes. I answered, and I told him that the police were on the scene and that they had shot someone.

I probably told him a lot about the whole thing, but I was definitely shaking and freaking out. He then told me to come back to the store and hung up. I motioned to one of the officers and asked him if I was free to go back to the store. He took my information and told me that it was okay for me to leave, and then mentioned that I should tell my manager to not let us do deliveries at night in this area. I thanked him for the advice and I left.

I got back to the store, and as soon as I walked in, my manager asked me where the pizza was. It was at this point that I realized I left it, along with my delivery bag on the front porch, when I went to look in the side window. I told him that I had left it, to which he responded with, ''That's coming out of your paycheck then.'' I'm pretty sure I just stared at him dumbfounded,

and he said that since I hadn't collected payment and didn't have the pizza, he was going to just assume that I ate it so it was coming out of my check. I'm pretty sure I screamed at him, calling him every name that I could think of, and then told him to shove this job up his ass. I went off. I threw my name tag and hat at him, and I left. I was beyond pissed that he had went that route with it after what had just happened.

I saw someone that had just lost their life. I was there when the police shot someone else and pulled them out to an ambulance. I had given my information to a police officer because I was more or less a witness to all of this, and he was worried about $15 in pizza. I have no idea what happened at that house, and I was only contacted one other time about the whole thing.

but I can tell you that I have personally never ordered from that specific pizza place, and I never will again. I know this experience isn't the craziest, but it was very uncomfortable and scary at points, so enjoy. I'm quite an awkward person, and I could struggle to make friends due to my shyness, so in late 2019 to early 2020...

I decided to join my sixth form's D&D club. I was hooked, and the fact that I had met a very lovely girl there, who I'll refer to as May, made it all the more enjoyable. It was the type of new friendship where all you want to do is spend time with your new bestie. And so, when May asked me to join their D&D party, I was overjoyed. I really did like her. She started off a little awkward, as was I.

but she was really sweet and understanding, and we ended up having a lot more of our nerdy interests in common. The first time we hung out was... a lot more... uncomfortable than I was expecting. Of course, as we had only been friends for a couple of weeks, so... I knew it would be a little awkward, but I was not expecting how terribly unpleasant it turned out to be. We didn't seem to click for some reason.

Everything was fine when we were in a group, but one-on-one, Mei was strange. She would completely ignore me for no reason all of the sudden, make very odd jokes but in a serious manner, leaving the pause a little too long, and would then laugh, as well as other strange mannerisms. This was just before I left sixth form early due to personal reasons.

It wasn't super off-putting. I wanted to get closer to her, believing once she got used to me, maybe she would mellow out a bit. Boy, I was so, so wrong. Once I did officially leave school, Mae became intense. It started out with her asking to meet up every to every other day, keeping in mind that I had started working full-time by this point.

and had very little time to see people, which was fine, because she would understand that I was busy, right? Wrong. She started getting annoyed and upset to an inappropriate level. For example, she would make me send a picture of my calendar to prove I was too busy to see her, and even when she could see it was chock-a-block, she would start to try and manipulate me and make me feel bad for not being able to see her.

Messaging me things like, These conversations would happen around 2-3 times a week, and honestly, I started getting creeped out. By this point, we had only known each other for around 2-3 months.

We'd met up alone around five to six times, and had seen each other almost every day at school before my departure. My creep-o-meter had started to rise, but it wasn't at a point where I wanted to end the friendship. Sure, it was annoying how possessive she was, but it's not like she was stalking me... yet. I distanced myself from her a little, just for my own sanity as her neediness has progressively gotten more intense...

and it had become taxing on my mental health, but I still wanted to be friends with her. Underneath everything, Mae really was lovely, but that was until they came to my house for the first time, back when I was living with my parents. Mae turned up a lot later than we had agreed, which peeved me a little as they knew I had work the next day, but it wasn't a biggie.

And that's when the really uncomfortable comments started. Now, my parents' house is very nice. It's big. They have a gym and a hot tub, a lovely garden, etc. By this point, I was used to friends making a couple of comments like, Wow, your house is so nice, or damn, I love your house. My favorite was probably when my cousin compared the house's size to a horse's... yeah.

Now that's funny, but Mae wouldn't stop. She would drop how large or nice she thought my house was in every other sentence, which later developed to her slating the house and my parents' job constantly, telling me that I was shoving my parents' wealth in her face, or that my parents get their money because they take advantage of vulnerable children.

Please keep in mind that I hadn't spoken about my parents' money or the family home once in this conversation, because talking about private things like that is very uncomfortable for me. Then she started to get even stranger, asking me to cuddle and spoon, and telling me that I couldn't escape, going on about how I was really happy with my boyfriend,

and then making jokes that didn't really feel like jokes at my expense. I was very uneasy, and my parents could see it too, so... After that day, I told Mae that I was way too busy to meet up, so to stop asking me. She didn't. She started making jokes that because I wouldn't see her, she would just show up at my house and catch me off guard.

She even changed her jog route so that she would run past my parents' house every day. And then she started messaging my boyfriend. It was completely out of the blue. I hadn't even given her his social media or name. I hadn't even really discussed my relationship with her at all.

It was very uncomfortable for everyone involved, and my boyfriend was obviously not interested in being her friend, due to how uncomfortable she made me. She told him things like, "You need my permission to date OP because I'm her best friend, and you have to be friends with me and like me because I'm OP's best friend." We were not best friends.

She would spam my phone with messages, and I would reply around twice a month. I was completely smothered. It was so strange, but when I received a screenshot of their conversation from my boyfriend because he was creeped out, I was livid. The screenshot showed them having a very one-sided conversation on her behalf, where all of a sudden, she told him that she loved him.

I didn't know what to say, and neither did he, so I confronted her. May tried to turn it around on me and said, and I quote, "...I was talking to your boyfriend, lol, and he knew about me. Impossible. I figured out you talked about me without my consent, and I'm heartbroken." It was surreal. I told her that I had mentioned that we met up and that she was a friend from school, which was true.

Of course, I had told him that she made me uncomfortable, but she didn't know that, and the conversation ended there. Then she went to uni, and we didn't speak for a while. It was so relaxing. All the anxiety around the situation faded. May had made new friends, and I was free. But when she came home for Christmas, everything started up again, and all that anxiety came back.

I was going through a really tough time, so me and my mom went away for a few days, but when I didn't respond to Mae for three days because I was busy, she went crazy. She spammed me on every social media platform I have daily, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, text messages, and more. The messages started off normally with her asking if we could meet up, and that she was home from uni, but...

They gradually became angry, and I won't lie, it was scary. I believed her when she said she would just show up at my house, and I was terrified that she would ask my friends for my new address under the pretense that I had forgotten to give it to her, as they had threatened to do this in a choking form before. It felt obsessive, and I didn't know what to do.

She wouldn't stop messaging me, and it became a constant stream of creepy messages. So I exploded at her. I told her that this behavior was creepy, that I've never been made to feel this uncomfortable by someone, that she didn't have boundaries, and I was scared about the joke-disguised threats that she had made. I ended it off with the fact that I didn't want to see her again, and could she please stop messaging me?

I could have definitely been nicer about it, but that never seemed to work in our prior conversations when I had to defend why I was busy and couldn't see her. Her response was so strange. She became incredibly apologetic, and then she got angry, then started to try and manipulate me into meeting up, apologizing, putting herself down, and then telling me that she loved me. I was so over all of her nonsense and weird behavior-

I felt bad for her. I had wanted to be her friend so much, but she was obsessive and overbearing. And even though I tried so long to make it work, but she'd ended up pushing me away because of her behavior. I do wish her well, and I hope she gets help for whatever's going on with her, but creepy stalker friend, you are definitely not my cup of tea. Please, stay the heck away from me.

Frankly, I'm not sure if this is even the right place to post such a thing, especially due to the name of the subreddit, which in this case was r slash the truth is here, but this has been on my chest for quite a while now, so I'd appreciate it if you could hear out my vent and give your advice. Honestly, I've been struggling with the question of life and death since the time I was born,

The funny thing is though, I can remember the moment that I popped into existence better than I remember my life. It was like it was literally yesterday. My first ever memory, I believe, was the color grey or white. I think it was a bright flash of light, but I also think it was grey or something. It's sort of the color you get when you look at a petri dish under a microscope. The second was darkness.

I was floating around what I would personally call space, but there weren't any astronomical objects. No lights, no stars, and I distinctly remember my first thoughts. Where am I? What is this? Is this what death is like? What language am I speaking? How am I thinking? What the hell is this? Before I could finish that last question, I tried breathing but couldn't, even though I didn't need to.

So I started panicking as suddenly I started to feel like I was moving with increasing speed outside of my will. I began seeing lights that looked like stars from the night sky pass by me, as if I was moving way faster than the speed of light. After I don't even know how much time, but it felt like seconds or a minute passed, I suddenly just hit earth. It was literally like hitting something in a car crash or a roller coaster.

except that I didn't feel anything. Everything just suddenly became dark. Not the same type of dark as when I popped into existence, but the same kind as the transition when you go to sleep. I remember having a series of weird dreams and popping in during random moments of my life. One of the first dreams I experienced was me sitting on the toilet with all my family surrounding me and some weird little creatures waiting outside the bathroom.

who all looked at me with enthusiasm. I remember looking at my mother and wondering who the hell is that person, and suddenly I just knew that this is my mother. I remember that when I finished doing my business, I looked down the toilet and saw that the toilet was painted the color of my country's flag, to which, when I saw that, everyone erupted in cheers and joy, and then the dream cut off.

I'll spare you the rest of the details, since it was pretty much just random moments of my childhood, such as meeting people or random moments with my family. For example, I can recall seeing two childhood friends for what was, to me, the first time, but to them, and reality, had been many, many meetings, and I thought to myself, ah, these are my friends. That being said, however...

I distinctly remember gaining total control of myself at around my third birthday. Whereas everyone was partying, I pretty much just woke up suddenly and began wondering who the hell these people are on my birthday. I myself didn't even know it was my birthday until it was time for the cake. Ever since then, I've really been pretty much the oddball for everyone.

I didn't really have many friends, and everyone seemed to inherently dislike me for whatever reason. It was mysterious to me, but after 25 years of life, I'd say that my life is pretty good. And I'm at the point where I've met the love of my life, and I would say that I'm the happiest I've ever been. However, now that I'm happy, I simply can't shake the reality of my own mortality.

and it's a topic that has been keeping me up at night for about nearly a month now. That all being said, I would like to share two paranormal experiences that I've personally had, since this is a paranormal subreddit. The first one was about when I was still a kid, around 4 or 5 years old or more, back at my villa that my grandfather built.

I could always hear this, what sounded like a stereotypical witch's laugh. I could hear it as if it was coming from behind the window of the room, or from within the walls of the room that I was in. However, when I check it out, there would be nothing, nor would there be any traces of anything. I still frankly can't explain it, but we sold the villa, and I never bothered thinking about it until I began revising my life for any memories this month.

The second encounter was fairly late, however. I would say around the age of 14 to 15, about a year after my grandfather died. It started at first with some weird activity. I felt like I was always watched. I heard noises from around the house. Once even, my door slammed open, even though it was locked, and there was no physical way that it could have opened, unless someone unlocked it.

I even saw as the handle went down, as if someone had literally hit the handle. Then whispers started as a faint noise, but they quickly grew into ear-ringing whispers. When I first heard it, I panicked, because it just wasn't normal. I went to wake up my parents, and the weirdest realization got me. I could outrun the whispers. It was as if the whispers came from a physical place, even though I couldn't see it.

and even be able to pass through it. It was a tough night for me, as my parents thought I was crazy since they couldn't hear nor see anything, and I just shriveled near the wall and plugged my ears. Interesting fact, I could still hear those whispers as if I hadn't plugged my ears. They threatened to put me in the hospital if this happened again. The next one to two days, I couldn't stop thinking what it was.

repeating in my mind every second of what happened, and I became more curious as to what it was than afraid. Sure enough, one to two days later at the same time at night, I began hearing the whispers. So, I just laid on my bed, turned my head towards the wall, closed my eyes and tried to listen. It was as if thousands of people all tried to whisper into my ears different things in unknown languages.

and as I listened it just suddenly stopped, and it never happened again. The third encounter was in a dream, only a week or two after the whispers. In my dream was my deceased grandfather, who I saw in what appeared to be a dark, dimly lit stage. When I saw him, I simply felt such remorse and sadness from how I missed him, and what I had done during my life, and how we never managed to say goodbye to each other.

that I just dropped to his knees, hugged him, and began profusely apologizing for everything while crying like there was no tomorrow. I've never had such a dream before, or again since. That's pretty much it from me. Let me know what you think about my life story rant, and let me know if you've got any ideas as to what this puzzle is.

I never personally thought that rekindling an old high school flame could lead to such a nightmare, but here I am at the end of a situation that I wish had literally never happened. If anyone can invent a time machine to help me go back a couple months, please let Raven know so he can send me your address. I'll pay you, I promise. Sorry, I cope with humor."

Anyways, I was on Facebook a couple of months ago, and it suggested a face that I hadn't seen in about 10 years. A guy named Alex. Alex was my boyfriend in freshman and sophomore years in high school, but we were both kids and had no idea what the hell we were doing, so we ended up walking away from the relationship, both heartbroken and thinking that it was the end of the world. It wasn't. We both moved on and grew up.

I added him on Facebook and he immediately accepted, saying that he was just thinking about me. I mentioned that Facebook recommended him, so they must be reading his mind, and we just had a really nice conversation reminiscing and talking about life since then. We were both kind of in the same places in our lives. Single, not really looking, no kids, focusing on our careers, etc.,

We even met up for coffee twice just to talk about nothing in particular, and it was kind of nice having him back in my friendship circle, because Alex always was a cool dude, and he and I were pretty good friends both before and after our two-year relationship. Overall, it was nice, and I was happy to have him around again. But then came Alex's most recent fling, Shauna.

I randomly got a friend request from her on Facebook, and when I clicked through her profile, I noticed that she had pictures of her and Alex with hearts all over them. I was a bit confused because Alex was pretty open about the fact that he was single, so I asked him about her. He mentioned that she was an ex of his from about a year prior, and that they hadn't spoken much since then.

I thought that was even weirder since she had pictures like they were a recent thing, but shrugged it off and moved on. I decided why not accept it. Maybe I could get a few secrets about Alex and tease him about them. Jokingly, of course. That was a mistake. She immediately started commenting on all of my posts, liking all of my pictures, even the ones from years ago.

It was a bit flattering at first, but then it got really weird. She then sent me a message about Alex. Specifically about our relationship in high school. I told her that we were just kids, and we thought that it was a serious thing, but that we realized that there was a lot more to life than our silly little relationship. Then she came back asking how far we went.

Which was an incredibly invasive question. I told her that I really didn't feel comfortable talking about it, and she started asking specifics. Like, had I specifically done this to him, and had he specifically done that to me? I was a bit sickened by this. Again, really personal stuff that was not appropriate to talk about, to someone that you just met on Facebook.

I told her that I was done with the conversation, and that if she kept it going, I was going to block her. To which she sent me a picture. A picture that included her and Alex in a very compromising way. I'm not going to detail it, and I immediately blocked her after that. I made it a point to tell Alex what she had done, and said. And he apologized profusely. He said that it was really messed up.

and that he had no idea why she would do that. He mentioned that they broke up amicably, that she wanted kids and he didn't, and it caused a rift that could not be fixed between them, and they really just hadn't spoken since. He also mentioned that he would message her asking her what the hell was wrong with her. I thought that that would be the end of it, but it wasn't, of course.

About a week later, I was sitting at a coffee house having a drink with my bestie, and out of nowhere this woman walks up to us and sits in the chair next to me at the table. I kind of looked at her like, what the hell is this woman's problem? And then it clicked who it was. It was Shauna, but she did look a bit different. Shorter hair, differently colored, but the same face.

I could feel myself go pale as she stared at me with this messed up smile and just said, Hi, Emily! I could tell that my friend was just as uncomfortable as I was. And I just said, Oh, hi, Shauna? She laughed, saying that she was scared that I wouldn't recognize her without Alex on top of her, and then said that we needed to talk.

I told her that we really didn't need to talk and that she should just leave me alone, but she literally laughed and waved me off. She started in telling me that I needed to back off from Alex, because they were soulmates, and that they were going to be together for the rest of their lives, and that there was nothing I could do about it. I literally responded with, okay, and she laughed again.

"'No, it's not okay, Emily. You are in my way. Alex left me because of you. He thinks he's still in love with you and he's not. He's in love with me, and we're going to have a beautiful family.' She moved her arm and grabbed my hand that was sitting on the table as she stared at me. "'If you get in my way, I'm going to kill you.' Then she turned to my friend who was sitting at the table and said, "'I'll kill you too, since you're a witness.'

We both just sat there silently staring at her, probably shocked at how brazen she was about this. She then sort of nodded and said, "'Okay, I think we understand each other. I'm gonna head out for now. Bye!' In a seriously chipper tone, she got up and just walked out of the coffee shop like it was nothing. "'I'm not going to lie. I was terrified of this woman.'

She was clearly insane and she was clearly obsessed with Alex. And she somehow knew where to find me on a random Saturday morning. I have no idea how she found me. I had no idea what she was capable of. I messaged Alex right then and there and told him that she was crazy. I told him that she had just shown up and threatened me and my friend, and then mentioned that we should probably keep our distance for everyone's safety.

He again apologized, saying that he didn't know why she was doing this, that there was no way he was going to get back with her, and that he had no idea why she thought he had feelings for me. He did agree, saying that we should probably not talk for a while, until he could clear it up with her, and that he was going to look into getting a restraining order. And that was pretty much it, to be honest. It's only been a couple of months since that happened, and I don't know if I can

and I'm honestly still horrified that Shauna's going to show up at my door with a gun, because Alex turned her down. I haven't heard from her, and I haven't seen her, but every time I get a Facebook notification, I tense up. This woman was obsessed with this idea of a life that she was never going to get, and I was apparently preventing her from achieving that life by simply existing, I guess.

In the end, I took a very important lesson from this. Sometimes, it's best to just leave the past where it belongs. Behind you. So, this happened to me and my parents many years ago. Some of this is from my own personal memories, but also a lot of it is from my mom that she's told me about over the years. We lived in the UK at the time.

and I was still a young child, about 8 years or so, just about to turn 9. My parents were religious at the time, but never really devoted themselves to a church. I didn't really remember ever going to church, but we did pray over our meals, or when we needed guidance, or when they would read from the Bible to me, which I think is why they were so lured in at the time.

as they didn't have a church they belonged to, so they didn't have anything really holding them back. We had a knock on the door, and I remember answering it with my mom, and there was a little old lady there with a basket of stuff. She started talking to my mom about if they were religious, or if they needed a home and things like that. Then, my dad came over and they were all talking.

I remembered they invited her in, and she gave them pamphlets and gave me a small goodie bag that had a folded up coloring page of a stained glass window with some kind of scripture under it, a few crayons, and a single piece of chocolate. They seemed to talk for a while because I remembered they were actually making dinner when this lady showed up, and I ate alone at the dinner table while they talked. When she finally left,

My parents talked for a while about it, and finally decided that they would try going there that Sunday to see how they liked it. That Sunday, my mom and I wore our best dress, and my dad his fancy blue and silver collared dress shirt and tie, and we headed out. The church actually appeared to be an old apartment complex that was bought out and turned into a live-in church.

There was the main auditorium, or chapel thing, with a few staff rooms on the side, as well as a couple of public bathrooms. Then, and I'm going off our memory here, there was a nursery for infants and toddlers, one for kids ages 4-8, one for 9-12, and anyone 13 and up joined the adults in the main service. There was a reason for this that I'll explain later on, though.

So I was put in what they called the kids' jam while my parents went to the main service. Also, my mom explained that when we first arrived, since we were new, they immediately asked us who they were recommended by. She remembered this because it's normal for churches to get new members from anywhere without being invited. However, and she didn't think about this until later on,

There were no walk-ins. If you were there, it's because you were invited, which should have been a red flag there. Anyways, the kids' room seemed normal to me at the time. It was colorful and had a few toys, but they were labeled boys and girls. The girls' toys consisted of baby dolls and kitchen cooking stuff, whereas the boys' had a workbench, toolkit, and building blocks.

We got to play for a while, but then we all had to gather while the adults read scripture to us. Apparently, my parents were both very happy with the service, and she said everyone was warm and welcoming, which was different from other new churches they had been to, where they were usually looked at funny for being new. So, we ended up returning that next Sunday as well.

My mom said they got several calls throughout the week, but they didn't seem like they were pressuring them, just more so checking in on how they felt about the service, how their week was going, things like that, which also turned them on to the idea of this place. So, when we did return, she said they were greeted by the pastor himself and his wife asking them to join their congregation, which involved moving in there.

Every floor above the first was still apartments for the most part, where other members lived and the rent itself was practically free, as long as they donated to the church, which there wasn't a specific amount disclosed at the time, and they devoted their lives to them. My parents didn't see anything wrong with this, due to them struggling with the home they had at the time being costly, and they thought, how bad could it be?

Living there, rent free, making donations, attending every Sunday and being able to save money, then if they felt like leaving, they could. Once they'd saved enough money so they could start making arrangements to move. Things started moving pretty fast from then on.

I remembered when we got settled in, we had a few people come visit us, and we were told some of the stuff that we brought, we wouldn't be able to keep as it wasn't part of their... vision. Like my mom and I, we weren't allowed to wear pants or shorts, so those all had to be thrown out, only skirts or dresses. Men were allowed pants and shorts, but only on special occasions.

Any toy that was not part of their vision, or part of a woman's life, I was not allowed to have, which included my Barbie car and fake makeup kits. Then, we also had to get rid of most of our movies if they weren't approved by the pastor. We were allowed to keep our TV, because they did have some kind of programming they pushed that were allowed, and I'm still unsure how they managed that.

They also had their own library with approved books and movies too, so it was a huge adjustment. But we were already there and moved in, so my parents didn't feel like they could back out at that point. Then came the job issue. My mother was a bookkeeper at the time for a small local hardware store, and my dad was a car mechanic. The problem was...

A lot of technology and electronics were not allowed. Since my mom worked on a computer all day, they suggested that she find another job, or she could work for the church as a bookkeeper and still get paid a normal wage. And since cars were technically a big computer, my dad was told the same thing. He instead worked for the church as well as a repairman.

While my dad was fine with the changes, being that they no longer had to worry about losing their jobs, their home, or even bills, my mom was seeing things differently from her side. There was more involved than just being a bookkeeper. Since computers weren't allowed, she had to do everything by paper, pen, and a calculator, but she more so just kept track of how much everyone was getting paid that worked there,

and how much everyone was donating back to the church. If the donations were under budget, someone higher up would first question her accuracy. Then, they would want her to figure out who didn't donate enough. Everyone was required to donate so much there, and if they didn't, it was tracked, as people went door to door in the apartments to collect it. Kind of like mail.

My mom then had to report that, and they were held responsible for it. My mother wasn't comfortable with this. She understood that we didn't really have to pay rent, but why were certain amounts required, and if they didn't have expenses other than toiletries and food, why would you need to keep extra money put up?

Then she learned from one of the other girls there that the people that were under would have to pay up with either money, which they typically didn't have, or would claim they didn't have, or you'd have to pay with other collateral, which included property and children. Yeah, it was possible that your kids would be taken away if you were short donating. As for what happened to those kids...

We still have no idea as we never saw them around. Things only got worse over the years. It became blatantly obvious what our lives would entail. My mother was nothing more than a moneymaker for the church. The best they ever had, they said. She had to be subservient to my father, making sure she was home before him with a clean house, dinner made, the works.

All the while, behind closed doors, telling him this isn't a good place, and that she was worried. My father, on the other hand, loved it. The building was in decent condition, and a lot of the men worked on stuff there, so he never worked a full 8 hour day. He got to sit in a back office most days, waiting for someone to put in a request.

If anyone gave him any trouble, he would report it, and they again would be dealt with in a manner that we never knew about. Then, he got to come home and then not lift a damn finger while my mom stressed to make sure everything was right. He tried to call my mom many times, tell her things like it would be okay as long as we followed the vision-

I became distant with my father, as nothing I did seemed to interest him or was worthy of his time. I noticed he actually started favoring a young boy that he was teaching in his job. He talked about him all the time to my mother, about what he did, what was memorable, but when my mom brought up how well I did on a test, it hardly got more than cool. School wasn't the best for me either.

Of course, I was homeschooled in a way. One of the floors became the school. Boys and girls separated, of course. We were taught the minimums, like basic math and English. We read from the bible, and then we had our "role" classes, which involved our gender specific courses, such as cooking and cleaning for the girls.

When I got older, and started attending the 9th through the 12th grades, and Sunday sessions, there were more classes added, such as how to take care of a baby, and clothes making, sewing classes. Some of the girls that I became friends with were great, and I became close to them, but other than that, I started feeling isolated and alone. My father obviously no longer cared.

My mother definitely showed interest, but you could tell something was wrong. She was becoming a shell of herself, so I didn't have anyone to really talk to. Then the classes started to get even more real once I turned 13. I was now to join the adults in main service, and the classes also involved more adult-oriented topics, including choosing a career so I could prepare for the classes that I would need,

As well as the birds and the bees. Since I'd been there at a young age, it wasn't really something that I heard or talked about with anyone, so to hear this the first time in class was awkward for me, not to mention, my parents didn't exactly get a syllabus or a warning beforehand, so when my mom asked me what we learned, she was shocked.

Their teaching was pretty cut and dry and suggestive. They basically explained that we're put here to be the womb for our husband and the earth, and therefore we should be thankful when we are chosen by a man, and so forth. However, my mother would also learn that that did not mean there would be a one and only. While the members were devoted to one man or woman specifically,

The pastor was devoted to any woman he wanted, and the last that she knew of, he had nine wives at the time, and if he chose you, then you would now be devoted to him and your husband gets a chance at another wife. Not only did my mom work with several of his wives, she was also invited to be his tenth. She ended up telling my dad about this, and his only response was pretty much, ''Do as you're told, I can find someone else.''

I know this broke my mom's heart as well, knowing that he didn't even want to fight for her, but she didn't want to become just another number either. At this point, my mother was already trying to find a way out, but it really cemented in her when I joined the first adult service. They always announced the young boys and girls that are joining, but the looks and conversations with me at that point became weird.

I had boys my age up to my dad's age approaching me, congratulating me and telling me how beautiful I was and how much I would make a great wife and great kids. This made both myself and my mom uncomfortable. Sometime around when this happened, my mom talked to one of the wives about all this, about becoming a wife and my future. She said she needed more time to think about it,

and the wife said that that was fine, because we had to have a ceremony anyways for the marriage and the coming of age. So, she was told she had about a week to think it over, but it was also heavily hinted at that she did not have a choice. So my mom asked about the coming of age ceremony.

She explained to her that it basically was for the girls that have turned 13, which was their legal age, the churches, and this meant that they needed to become a submissive wife, and that included having children. Her well-being was one thing, but she didn't want to subject me to any more than what I had already witnessed, so my mom was ready to nope the hell out of there. Thankfully, she was in the right position to do this.

By this time, being selected by the pastor and all, she was very highly regarded and trusted by the pastor and his wives, so she had access to the church's money and was able to leave the premises, unlike most people. With this, she'd been siphoning money as she did the books, making everything look fine and taking some from my dad's wallet and stashing it in a hidden place.

Then, the day before the ceremony, she asked to leave to go and get a few supplies to help make my dress for my ceremony, as well as a few of the pastor's favorite foods, as a thank you gift for choosing her, and she was allowed. Later that evening, after dinner, my father had actually left to go on a date, and my mom and I started putting things into motion.

She was worried that I may say something, so she waited until the last minute to mention it. She had me run to grab my school bag and fill it with anything that I needed or wanted to take, which really was just some clothes and a few items close to me. My mom did the same, and we walked out. It was nerve-wracking at first, as there was a lady at the front that stopped to talk to us.

She told her where we were going, checked the list to make sure we were approved, and we headed out. We walked for a while before we ended up catching a bus, which we were then on for an hour or so. My mom said she was just trying to get distance between us first. Then we made it to a shop and they let us borrow their phone. My mom ended up calling her sister, which she gladly invited us to stay with her, but she was still a few hours away.

With a lot of looking over our shoulders though, we finally made it. There was a lot of hugging and crying, and my mom was trying to explain everything to my aunt, as she hadn't talked to her since we had moved there. We basically planned to hide out there until my mom could figure out what to do next, but unfortunately we ran out of time. My father managed to get a hold of a phone, and called my aunt looking for us.

I remember being scared, and my mom telling me to be quiet, as my aunt was calm and collected the whole time. He asked if we were there, of course, or if she had heard from us, to which she said she hadn't for years, and then she started asking how he was, and if we were okay. He seemed to get more assertive in questioning her, but she didn't let it get to her. However, for her safety as well as ours...

We made the decision to leave. She made it a lot easier for us, though, and actually bought us plane tickets to Canada. We called her from the hotel that we stayed in, and from there we lived free. It definitely wasn't easy, though. To say we were paranoid for a while, well, that's an understatement. We both cut and dyed our hair, and my mom went by her maiden name, and she actually helped me in changing my legal name as well.

"'hoping to at least spot down the process of anyone trying to find us. "'My mom found someone new a few years after moving to Canada. "'He's not religious, too, and he's been super sweet and supportive of both of us. "'They're not legally married, though, as my mom is fearful that if she filed for a divorce, "'of course, my dad may find us and come looking. "'I think we all three agreed that we were okay with that.'

If we never run into anyone from that group, or my father, ever again, it would still be too soon. On Tuesday, the 22nd of February 2022, I had a person come into my job. I work in women's clothing, and it was a customer that I'd helped on three occasions over the last eight months.

They said they were a man with he-him pronouns, but his girlfriend liked it when he dressed up in women's clothing. I didn't find anything wrong with this, because I enjoy helping people feel good about themselves. I asked if this was consensual, and he said yes, that he enjoyed it too. On this particular day, he came in, this time with the wig and dress on, which, again, I found no issue with. In fact, I felt proud of him.

He asked for the fitting room once no one was in the store, and he asked for my opinion on something he was wearing. I agreed. He opened the fitting room door and was standing there with a blouse on, and no pants, but was wearing a pink and white polka-dotted diaper. I was shaken and a bit uncomfortable, but I maintained my composure and said the top was cute and then turned away.

He tried on another outfit, and was fully clothed this time, and asked if we had anything shorter because his girlfriend likes it when he gets a pedicure, and the lady doing his toes can see his diaper. I grew more and more uncomfortable, but being alone, I didn't say anything other than, "Oh, that's interesting." He asked if we had any long shirts that could be used as a dress, and I said yes and went to fetch them.

I came back and one by one, he came out in the tops with his diaper showing and even told me a story about him peeing himself at a sex store and his girlfriend then changing his diaper in front of the employees who were turned on by this. The discomfort grew and grew until I was shaking and texting my coworker to come in early.

He comes out of the fitting room in the dress he came in with, and turned away, and then acted like he was on the phone, but I noticed he was on the calculator instead. I stood there trying to calm down and everything, and when he comes back and says that his girlfriend gave him the task of taking a photo with me in his bra and diaper, I declined, and I said I was not okay with that.

He said that it was okay, but that he was going to get a spanking from her later. He left shortly after, thanking me for my help, but not purchasing anything, which was a first. I brushed the experience off as a weird occurrence, and then went on about my day, thinking that I wouldn't see him for a few more months again.

I went home later that day and my coworker texted me saying he was back and doing the same thing to her, but that he left again without making a purchase. The next day, I asked my coworker to come in early so I wasn't alone, and she did. He came in again, and I went to the back because I was about to have a panic attack. I felt sexually harassed simply just looking at him,

and picturing the look he had when he was staring at me in the diaper. I overheard him asking my coworker for my name and when I would be working again. She didn't give him either, and he left making a purchase on a blouse that he had tried on the day before. My coworker told me that he said he identifies as "She", which threw me off since it contradicted what he had told me the day before. At this point, I filed a report with the police.

I genuinely think this is a ploy to traffic me. An officer came and talked to me, and I told him everything. The next day, I was off work, and I get a call from my coworker saying that he drove by looking into the store, and when my coworker caught him staring, he drove away. I went to the police station since I had to drop off my statement, and I informed them on what happened. The next day, I opened the store and had to go by the bank.

When I was driving by the bank, I noticed his truck outside an auto parts store, and I called the investigator and told him this, and he got a tag number. I noticed he had a sticker for a local campsite that expires Monday. It's February. Who the hell is camping in February by a lake? All in all, I feel good knowing more about him than he knows about me. I know his name, where he works, and that he's got a campsite until Monday.

I didn't see him yesterday or today, and I'm hoping he got the message that he scared the hell out of me. I will keep you updated as this goes on. Edit for some context. I'm 25 and female, and I'm 5'2". The person discussed in this post is about 6'5", 350 pounds, in his late 30s or mid-40s.

Hopefully this will help shed some light on why I was worried to call this person out on their crap while I was alone. Thank you to everyone who's given advice this far. I do appreciate it more than you all know. Update. He came in today while I was working and the cops were called. He's been banned from the store, and if he comes back, he will be arrested. If anything else happens, I'll be sure to post it here. Thank you for reading and giving the words of encouragement."

This happened in 2002.

I was living in a ground floor apartment in the corner of an L-shaped building, with the living room, kitchen, and parents' bedroom on the garden or balcony side, and my sister's bedroom and bathroom on the parking side. I was seven years old at the time of the facts, and all this happened over several weeks. Maybe months, but I hope not. At the beginning of summer 2002,

I was often playing in the common gardens of the building with the other children, when one afternoon my mother called me and my friends to ask us if it was us who, to play, would have taken one of her panties that was drying on the floor of our terrace, and that it was not proper to play with women's underwear, but it wasn't us.

As the weeks went by, several similar cases were reported to us, but always without explanation. Sometime after these events, my father, not being able to sleep one evening, decided to smoke a cigarette at the kitchen window, which is on the garden side, and decided to look around to clear his mind. As he looked closer at our right neighbor's terrace, my father saw a man standing there and not moving,

and looking into their apartment. My father thought it was the neighbor and said, "What are you doing, bud?" The person turned around and looked at my father. That man was touching himself. Then, without saying anything, the intruder ran through the hedge and left through the common gardens. The whole neighborhood was informed, and it was decided that this could not last any longer.

We children were forbidden to play outside in the evenings, and a feeling of fear settled in among the people of the ground floor. During that year, a new neighbor had moved in alone in the apartment, with a garden view above ours. Alerted and a little shocked by the incessant theft of women's underwear in my own building, my neighbor legally, with good reason for her part, bought a dissuasion gun.

which shoots and weighs like a real gun, but shoots blanks, and she kept it in her bedside table. This neighbor loved animals, and had two parakeets, which often made noise, in a birdcage on her balcony, had cats, fish, etc. One evening, this neighbor came back from work, and she put her things down and went about her life normally like any other person coming home from work, but that evening...

She saw on her balcony that, unfortunately, the birdcage had ended up open and her parakeets had disappeared. Thinking it was her own mistake, she was sad, but there was no reason to be scared. After getting through her evening, she went to bed and fell asleep, but something woke her up in the middle of the night. At first, she felt her comforter pull slightly. Thinking it was the cat, she held the comforter tightly, but it still pulled.

Then she felt the bed move and a breath behind her. There was someone with her in her bed. The feeling of fear took hold of her. She jumped out of bed while opening her bedside table and took out her pistol, and fired twice in the direction of the man, who fled by jumping out the bedroom window, which was open. The whole building was awakened by these shots, including my father who saw a man land in front of our terrace and ran into the gardens.

He grabbed what he could and he chased him. The police stopped my father, who was running in his underwear with a golf putter in the common gardens. Of course, he was proved to be the neighbor afterwards. A couple of minutes later, the police informed us of the arrest of a man in the housing estate next to us by a patrol who was watching our neighborhood after his thefts of underwear.

We were surprised when we learned that the pervert was a man of 45 years, married, a father of three children, and in recidivism of several acts of voyeurism and break-ins. He had even entered a lady's house by climbing up the balconies while she was living on the fourth floor. Later, we learned that there was no charges to have been filed against him because... 1. He didn't technically break into my neighbor's house. 2.

Two, he didn't assault, rape, or even touch my neighbor, and they're not even sure that the thefts are necessarily attributed to him. So, here we are, living in a country where a person with serious voyeuristic urges that leads to more other serious things can't be supervised by prison or hospital staff because he technically didn't do anything.

This is a long one, guys, but it's worth the read. It really freaked me out at the time. If anyone has a solid idea of what this was, or if they've had a similar experience, I'd love to hear it. This happened to me a while back, when I decided to go on another camping trip alone. I always liked camping alone. There's something serene and sobering about being isolated in the middle of the wilderness...

and I always found it relaxing. So I planned out what trail I was going to take, packed my camping gear and my rifle for protection, and jumped in my truck. I get to this trail early in the morning and hike about 15-20 miles until I find the right spot, and head off the trail to find a place to put my tent up. I stumble upon this nice sized clearing and decide that it's a nice beautiful spot to settle down.

I'm exhausted at this point, but I set up the tent at the southernmost edge of the clearing, next to the tree line, and I managed to get a fire going. I roast some weenies and start to hear a sound in the distance, underneath all the forest noises. It sounded like an animal, most likely a deer, with a lame leg as it sounded like the animal was making a walking slash dragging noise.

I felt bad for the poor guy, but it was too far away and it was getting dark, so I couldn't really go find it to put it out of its misery. I think nothing of it after that, and go about eating my food. After I eat, I douse the fire and crawl into my tent, and insert myself into my sleeping bag. I decide that, even in my exhausted and relaxed state, I can't go to sleep.

so I pull out a book that I brought with me and start to read by the light of my lamp. Hours go by and I hear that sound again, this time closer, right at the opposite side of the clearing. Surprised, I put my book down and listen to this animal walk drag across the clearing towards my tent. It's really loud at this point, and it now sounds like the hooves are all being heavily planted, with the dragging noise following seconds after.

like the deer is dragging something along. It makes it to about what I assume is the middle of the clearing, and stops, and I hear nothing. No breathing, I mean not a sound from this animal. I unzip the tent and look into the clearing, there's nothing but trees and darkness. What the hell? Unnerved at this point, I zip the tent back up, and I sit there listening for the other noises. Nothing. Just the crickets and the breeze.

I decide that there are a lot of strange noises in the woods, and I try to not let it bother me. Besides, I had my rifle. I start to doze off when I hear men's laughter off in the distance to my right, and then women's laughter and sticks snapping far off to my left. I'm up now, wondering if what I'm hearing is really what I am hearing, or just a product of being half-asleep.

I hear more faint laughing from a couple other different directions, all different, in essence, old men, old women, even children, and I confirm that it's real. The noises are closing in and I grab my rifle, preparing to fire a warning shot off in the air, in case they came too close.

Something about this laughter, how far in I was, the noise earlier, and the time of night told me that this was not just another family strolling through. I was on edge enough already, but when I noticed that the nightlife was dead quiet, not even the wind was making any noise, I decided that enough was enough. I unzipped the tent and fired a shot into the night.

I sat there and surveyed the tree line, but saw nothing. I listened intensely to my surroundings. No laughing and the forest sounds had returned. Relaxing just a bit, and figuring that I had scared off whoever, I sat down and in my exhausted state, I fell asleep. I wake up later in a cold sweat, wracked with anxiety, and it was still dark outside.

I immediately hear two people whispering not too far from my tent. Alert. I grab my rifle and listen to what they're saying. I can't make out much, but I hear something about being lost, so I shout, Hey, who's there? The voices fall silent. I shout again, Are you guys lost? Who's there? Suddenly, a huge burst of flame like a flamethrower erupted from the middle of the clearing, illuminating several silhouettes of people just...

standing around. In shock, I fire my rifle, blowing a hole in the front of my tent, and it goes dark. Without checking my surroundings, I get up and sprint out of my tent, making a hard left back to where the trail was. I hiked until sunrise back to my truck, with my head over my shoulder the entire way. I never heard anyone follow me, never saw anyone or anything the whole way, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched.

After that, my enjoyment of camping alone left me, just like I left all of my gear in the woods that night. I met Karen at a summer barbecue that was hosted by a mutual friend of ours. She was a bit of a wallflower at the party. She didn't seem to want to bring too much attention to herself, but I thought that she was cute.

and after a couple of drinks, I figured, why not go and introduce myself to this rather cute and shy gal? I think she was surprised when I walked up to her and just introduced myself. But we hit it off pretty quick. She made a joke about something that I apparently thought was hilarious in my slightly buzzed stupor. I laughed way too loud and caused a bunch of people to look over at us, which made her blush a bit.

which made me think that she was the cutest thing ever. My point is that we were pretty much bound to get together, and I think that we both saw it. So, we started dating, and for a while things were heavenly. We would go on long drives, have picnic dates in the park, and we even spent a weekend on my couch watching some TV show that she loved.

But as the weeks turned into a couple of months, I did start to notice some unsettling traits in Karen. She had a bit of a temper. I don't mean the, I'm not in a good mood, please don't talk to me kind of temper. I mean the, if I'm in a bad mood and you do anything wrong, there's going to be a new hole in the wall kind of temper. She would get explosively angry over the most trivial things.

Like, if I forgot to buy milk at the store, or if I had spoken to a female coworker for too long. I tried to be understanding. I thought maybe she was going through something and she just wasn't ready to talk about it or something like that. But I'm also an adult, and I'm not going to be controlled or chastised for things that really don't matter in the end. We ended up having a pretty massive fight, one where we both said words that we probably shouldn't have,

and it was at that point that we decided to break it off. We clearly were not as compatible as we thought. She packed up the few things that she'd been keeping at my place, and she left. The apartment honestly felt eerily quiet without her, and something about that silence actually had me feeling pretty depressed. I spent most of the evening lost in thought, replaying parts of our relationship in my head,

and doing what I should not be doing, drowning my sorrows in alcohol. Yes, I know it's wrong to pour your emotions into a glass and then drink them until you don't feel them anymore, but it's what I did. I eventually passed out on the couch, the TV still playing in the background. I woke up rather slowly and groggily the next morning. My head was hurting, and I was hesitant to open my eyes.

I could tell that it was light out because the sunlight was peeking through my eyelids, telling me that it was probably around 6 or so in the morning. When I finally did open my eyes, thinking that I needed to get up and go to the bathroom and start my day, I was surprised by what I saw. Karen was sitting right there in the armchair across the coffee table, holding a rather large kitchen knife in her lap. My heart stopped.

For a moment, I thought that I still had to be dreaming, that this was just some weird drunken nightmare playing out in my head, but the look in her eyes told me that this was all too real. I managed to choke out the words to ask her what the hell she was doing there, and she just stared at me with this blank and emotionless stare. She was completely devoid of all emotions as she sat and watched me struggle to comprehend the situation.

her hand still gripping the knife's handle. "I... I just want you to know that I've been here all night, and... I really considered doing it." She dropped this sentence like she was just trying to tell me something in passing, like it didn't mean anything more than the words that she said. Those words were suffocating, and I cannot overstate the fear that I felt in that moment.

She stood up from the chair, placed the knife on the coffee table with a clattering noise that honestly made me jump, straightened her sundress out, and then walked straight out the front door. I sat there on the couch, feeling paralyzed and really unsure of what to do. Should I call the cops? And tell them what?

That my ex-girlfriend broke into my apartment while I was drunk, sat in my armchair to watch me sleep and contemplated murdering me? I don't think it's illegal to think about murdering someone. And she still had a key, a detail that I hadn't thought about when she left, so I'm not even sure she did anything illegal. She scared the hell out of me, that much is for certain. Instead, I did what I could do.

I asked the office to change the lock on my apartment, informing them that I had an ex-girlfriend that had a key. I had to pay for it, of course, but it was a small price to pay for my safety. I also sent a message to her sister, letting her know that she needed to get help, informing her of our fight and what she had done that morning. I'm pretty sure that she blocked me after that, but oh well, at least someone knew just in case.

It's been about a year since this happened, and I haven't heard from nor seen Karen, but that memory definitely lingers. I absolutely cannot sleep on the couch anymore. I sleep in my bedroom every single night, or any time that I want to take a nap. And I lock both the front door and the bedroom door whenever I do. This is, without a doubt...

the closest I have ever come to dying. And I'm pretty sure that if she had just been pushed just a little more, she would have done it. I have a story about a delivery driver that actually freaked me right the hell out when it happened, and is one of those stories that led to me actually being a bit paranoid whenever I order anything from anywhere.

This happened last year, in 2021, when the world was going absolutely crazy, and I wasn't able to leave my house because I had COVID. The pandemic was pretty well underway at this point, I think it was April or so, and I was about a week out from getting my shot when I had apparently slipped up around some people I knew, and caught it. My fault. I blame myself entirely, and it absolutely sucked.

do not recommend 1 out of 10. That said, I was already pretty well established with the world of grocery delivery, as I had driven for one of the delivery companies a bit back in 2020 when I was laid off from my office job, and had actually relied on them after I was finally brought back into my company as a remote employee.

Thankfully, the time between these two events was only four months, so unemployment, driving for DoorDash and begging my parents for rent money was enough to at least keep me afloat. When I wasn't able to get out to get groceries or food for myself, I would put in orders to have them delivered. If I may say, this service is something that I absolutely love, and still use it to this day,

even though I'm fine and my life has mostly gone back to normal. Most of the time, the drivers are decent at what they do. They will pick up what you ordered, bring it to your house, and will just leave it on your front porch, or just outside your door. I live in an apartment complex, so sometimes they'll contact me and ask me to come out and get it, and sometimes they will come into the building and leave it at the front door.

I live on the bottom level, so it's not like they have to go up or down stairs at all. They just walk in, turn left, and I'm right there. However, if they ask me to come outside to get my order, I will. I get that they're in a rush, and sometimes they just want to get it over with quickly, and, well, I respect that. Unfortunately, as I said, I did end up getting sick.

When it hit me, it hit me like a literal bus. I was barely able to get off the couch, I couldn't really speak, and I was coughing so hard that the room would spin when I stopped. That was just the first three days. After that, it honestly felt like it was getting worse, and I really wasn't sure if I was going to come out of it. Despite feeling like I was at my end, I was also craving Cheetos.

And I had been one of those lucky ones that hadn't lost my sense of taste, so I really, really wanted Cheetos. I figured I could get a delivery of a few things that wouldn't perish, and just kind of let them sit outside my door until I got the strength to get up and get it that afternoon.

I decided that having it delivered at around 3 would give me time to get up at 1, stop myself from falling over for an hour as I walked to the door, and grab it by the time they got there. I put the order into the app and requested the time for delivery, setting my alarm on my phone for 3pm just in case I didn't wake up to it.

I also added a note that I needed them to deliver the groceries to my door, as I was positive and possibly contagious, and I would not be able to meet them in the parking lot to collect the items. I emphasized that I was sick several times in my notes, hoping that the driver would see it and would get the hint to come in and leave the items. I put the order in around 9, and requested the 3pm delivery,

and then went over to the couch and passed out. Unfortunately, I was out, out, and I slept through my alarm. I, however, did not sleep through the sound of my front door opening. At first, I thought that it was just the delivery driver knocking or maybe hitting the door, but as I slowly opened my eyes, I saw some random guy slowly walking into my apartment through the front door.

Now, I will say that I was not fully there. I thought I was hallucinating at first, or dreaming that this was happening. But when I looked over and saw him reaching over to rifle through my jacket's pocket, I realized what he was doing. And it clicked that this was very real. I sat up as quickly as I could and asked what the hell he thought he was doing.

He jumped and turned pale, and then basically threw my groceries into my apartment, and then ran away without as much as a word. I think I sat there for close to 20 minutes just staring at my scattered groceries, trying to piece together what all had just happened. Like, I was completely uncertain as to whether or not what he was doing was normal. Was he just coming in to drop off my stuff? But why was he going through my jacket?

Like I said, I was completely out of it. So I just landed on "it was normal" and moved on to getting up to get my Cheetos. It wasn't until I was sitting there eating my junk food that it really hit me what had just happened. He was taking advantage of the fact that I said I was sick, and he was trying to rob me. That guy came in hoping I would be passed out, and he was looking for my wallet, and I just happened to catch him in the act. Even worse,

He probably could have followed through and just told me he was dropping my food off, and I wouldn't have been coherent enough to really say anything about it. That's how out of my mind I was at that moment. I called the delivery company and I notified them that the driver had come into my apartment, and they really didn't seem to care. Ever since that happened, I've always made sure to lock my door, or at least connect the chain when I order anything for delivery.

But thankfully, there haven't been any more events like that, and I really hope there never are. I came home from work today to receive some very unsettling news from one of my roommates. It started when I went to let the dogs out into the backyard. Our back door is in the kitchen, so on my way to let them out, I passed by the oven, and I noticed that it was on.

It surprised me a bit because my roommate, Mandy, was the only other person home and she had been spending most of her time back in her room due to feeling ill. Even so, I figured that I'd better ask her before turning it off on the off chance that she was actually using the oven. I went to the end of the hallway where her room was, knocked on her door, and asked...

"'Hey, uh, is the oven supposed to be on? Like, are you using it right now?' Confusion and concern was immediately apparent in her voice as she replied. "'What? No, I haven't even been out in the kitchen today.' I shared her confusion and concern upon hearing this, but then pondered the possibility that Carl, her brother and our other roommate, had been the one to leave it on by mistake. I asked her if this could be the case.'

and she told me that Carl was still at work and had been since early that morning. This was when she and I began to piece together that something very strange had to have happened. I told her that I had just gotten home a few minutes prior. It was a little after 3pm at that point, and I had left the house at about 7.30 that morning. She then informed me, with horrific realization, that at around 11am she had heard noises coming from the living room.

including a woman's voice, a chair moving, and the front door opening. She didn't realize at the time that I was at work, so she just assumed it was me and didn't think much of it. She then mentioned that, in hindsight though, the dogs were barking an unusual amount during this time. I asked her how long the noises coming from the living room went on,

and she said that it was hard to tell because she was trying to sleep at the time, but that if she had to guess, they lasted about 20 minutes. Mandy, Carl, and I are the only current residents of this home, and as mentioned before, Carl and I were both at work during that time frame, so Mandy was the only person who reasonably should have been in the house.

I thanked her for informing me of this, and then went back to the front half of the house and did a quick comb of the area to check for anything else that looked out of place or missing. I didn't discover anything else out of the ordinary, and as of the time of this posting, nothing else has come of it. Update. Pretty minor, but still pretty weird. I went to the whole closet to get more toilet paper for my bathroom, and then I went back to the front half of the house and did a quick comb of the area to check for anything else that looked out of place or missing.

and I noticed an empty wrapper/packaging for a new pillow in there. I didn't buy a new pillow recently. I asked both of my roommates if they did, and Mandy said that she bought a new pillow about a month ago, but that she threw the packaging away. This is my first time noticing the packaging in that hall closet, and I last went into the hall closet only a couple of weeks ago, if I remember correctly.

I'll continue to post updates if I notice anything else weird, and if anything major happens in this situation, I'll make a whole new post to update everyone. Thank you so much to everyone for all the concern, support, and advice that you've been offering. In the summer of 2019, my partner and I, both early 20s, decided to take a road trip to Vancouver, Canada, and then stay at the Golden Ears Provincial Park.

We liked camping, had spring break, and we wanted to do something different and make the most out of our vacation. My partner had never been out of the U.S., and it seemed like a crazy new experience. It was a six-day trip with Airbnbs in each state, and the grand finale was a reserved campsite at Golden Ears, and it was close to the water, at Alouette Lake.

We packed terribly, had a giant tent, brought a bunch of fruit and veggies to eat healthily, stored them in a cooler that was too small, and brought a cutting board and a knife to break up the snacks while driving. We started in California, driving in our bright red Ford Fiesta. We drove through Oregon and Washington, and we made it up to Vancouver. We spent a day or two in each state, drank a little too much, and stayed out late.

Canada was the best part. An Alouette Lake felt like walking in a painting. We walked barefoot on the rocks with our toes in the freezing cold lake. We hiked around, saw a beautiful waterfall where we saw a couple taking pics of each other for over an hour, and we started modeling the same poses from far away. Everything was perfect, and the campsite was empty except for the other couple. We went to bed early that night.

It was quiet, and I woke up to crackling outside the tent. My partner was still asleep and snoring. I didn't think much of it because it was pitch black and probably an animal. The crackling continued closer to the tent. I sat up and grabbed my phone, and the brightness came on and I turned it off, almost blinding myself with light. In those two seconds, I could make out a person right outside of our tent. I froze and sat up.

They weren't moving and were close enough to unzip the tent. I started poking my partner because I had no idea what to do. They woke up, and I said, ''There's someone outside the tent.'' Then I heard footsteps. Quiet footsteps. Walking out of our campsite. My partner starts loudly saying, ''What?'' repeatedly in a sleepy haze.

A car or truck is parked right outside of our camping area, and no one is near our campsite. It starts up, and then drives off. They didn't turn their lights on until they turned the corner and we were out of view, so I couldn't make out much, but it looked like a truck. Now I'm shaking, and my partner can't put together what's happening.

I want to leave, but Golden Ears locks the gate until 6 or 7 AM, and it's 1 AM, so we're going to be here. I make us move to the Ford Fiesta and sleep in the tightly packed car. She falls asleep immediately and thinks that I'm paranoid. Could it have been a park ranger? It seemed too weird of behavior for a park ranger, so I sit there wide awake for about two hours. The car's locked, and I want to sleep, but can't.

I'm in the passenger seat, my partner's in the driver's seat asleep, and it's 3am. I'm sitting half awake, and I hear a car slowly driving up the road with their lights off as it rounds the corner. It had to be the same truck, and I was scared, but my adrenaline was pumping. It slowly rounds the corner and pulls up directly in front of our campsite again, in the same spot. I feel like I'm going to throw up.

I had no weapon but the kitchen knife that we brought for the fruit and veggies, so I grabbed the knife and tried to make myself look angry, crazy, and big. I sit straight up in the passenger seat holding the kitchen knife. I keep it straight up at eye level and stare deadpan out at this truck in the pitch black, just like the father from the American Gothic painting. The truck stops and turns off. A light shines directly in my face coming from inside the truck.

and I stare back terrified. In my bright red Ford Fiesta, holding my large kitchen knife, not blinking, the truck starts up and turns on its lights, and they stay on, blinding me. Then the truck pulls out, and turns around and goes back where it came. My heart is pounding, and I wake up my partner and say that we need to get the hell out of there. We pack by just throwing things into our car and sit there awake until 6am,

We drive home and we don't stop. We keep rehashing it and trying to make sense of the situation, and we ultimately decide that we both needed some sleep. I'm new to Reddit, but I figured I would share some of my experience to see if anyone has had anything similar happen to them. I'm a 35 year old male and currently live in Phoenix, Arizona. I'll try to make this brief and go over a few of my experiences.

The first time I can remember anything like this happening to me, I was probably around 15. My family was in the process of moving into a new apartment. Not much was left in our old place besides the essentials. My bed and television. I had decided to stay the night by myself so that I could watch the basketball game. Everything that night seemed the same as it always had. I remember watching the game and opening one of those family-sized Doritos bags.

I set the bag down after I ate a few chips, and a few moments later, the bag flew halfway across my room. I picked the bag up and went back to watching the game. I didn't think much of it that night. Maybe I didn't want to think about it at all. At our new apartment, the only thing strange that I remember seeing would be out of the corner of my eye. My dad had a big bright fish tank,

I would routinely see the light being completely blocked by something walking in front of it. It would happen while I was in the kitchen doing dishes, and also while I was in my bedroom playing Xbox. One other thing happened to me that I can't explain. I got really lightheaded one time, and my dad laid me down on the couch in the living room. All I could see was white, and I heard, ''We are all around you.''

It scared the living crap out of me, and I just remember thinking that I'm too young to die. Fast forward about six years. I had just met my future wife, and after a few months of dating, I had decided to move in with her. We were laying in bed one afternoon, just hanging out. I heard a deep male voice directly in my ear telling me to, "...get out." I looked at her trying to process what I had just experienced.

"Did you just hear that?" I asked. "I heard something, but it wasn't loud enough to make out," she told me. We were less than a foot apart, and it was as if someone was yelling directly into my ear, but she couldn't hear what it had said. A few months later, she was driving me to work around 2:00 AM. What she told me sent chills down my spine. She said that she had woken up earlier in the night, and something was talking to her.

She couldn't understand what it was saying. It was a language that she wasn't familiar with. The thought of something that I couldn't see that close to where I was sleeping was very unsettling. About a year later, we had moved into a new home. I awoke one night to a shadow figure standing above me. I reached out to grab what I perceived to be an intruder, and it took a step back and disappeared. I didn't go back to sleep that night.

On another occasion, I was alone in the house on my tablet one evening. I was laying in bed with my bedroom door open, and I heard footsteps in the hall coming towards my bedroom. There were two problems with that. The first being that I didn't believe anyone else was in the house, and the second was that I should have heard the footsteps long before I did. They started halfway down my hallway.

I watched the door, and a few moments later, a tall shadow figure passed by. I got up again, thinking there was someone in my house that shouldn't be. Both rooms outside of my room had their door closed, and there was nowhere else to go. I opened the bathroom door, and it was empty. I opened the door to the spare bedroom, and it was empty. Six years later, and I find myself in a new house with a new experience.

It was late one night, probably around 11:00 PM. My wife was asleep in our bedroom, and I was sitting on a bed in our spare bedroom with the door open. From where I was sitting, I could see down our hallway. It was dark, but not pitch black. As I sat there scrolling on my phone, something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I looked into the hallway, and it was empty. I went back to whatever I was doing on my phone,

and a few moments later I found myself seeing the same thing. I look and nothing's there. So now I'm back to my phone, but this time I'm trying to focus out of the corner of my eye and figure out what's going on. I then see something crawling in my hallway. It's about 10 feet from where I'm sitting. I look and nothing.

I go back to my phone, still trying to view it from my peripheral, and now I see it stand up. It's a woman wearing a white dress. It's walking in a circle, and I'm trying to process what's happening. It sprints at my door, and just as it gets there, I hit the bedroom light, and it is gone. Now, I'm sitting there wondering if I just imagined it. The hair on the back of my neck is standing up,

and my heart is beating out of my chest. When I was about 15 or 16, I was a real party animal, always in the next town over at my friend's place. Most of the time, I was able to stay at their place overnight and head home the next day, but there were a few occasions where I found myself walking home. This walk was roughly 2-3 hours. If it was a nice night, I didn't mind it at all,

It gave me a chance to sober up before I got home. No, my parents did not know that I was doing this. It was just me being a stupid teenager. At the time, there was a good 40 minute stretch that was pitch black with nothing but fields and forest on either side of the road. It's been since developed into a shopping center and homes. Every now and then, a car would pull over asking if I needed a ride home.

Most times I would say no, thank you, and go on my way without issue. Two times, cabs offered me rides home for a discounted price, and they were both amazing people. They told me about their wives and kids, and how I should really be careful walking alone at night. They would drop me off at my house, and make sure that I got in before driving away. One night, walking home on that stretch of road, minding my own business...

A car pulled over in front of me. Not a big deal, this had happened before. As I was about to walk past the passenger side, the window rolled down. A guy in his mid-thirties asked if I was alright. He was very clean, handsome, and his car looked brand new. He had a smile on his face and a weirdly friendly tone. Every hair on my body stood up. This seemingly normal guy was giving me one of the worst gut feelings ever.

I had ever gotten in my whole life. I backed up from the car as he spoke to me. Being polite, I told him I was alright, not too far away from home, but I thanked him for his concern. The smile never left his face, but it was wrong, like it was being forced. He insisted that he could drive me home and then said, There are some crazy people in this world. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

By this point, my body was screaming that I needed to get away from this person. I faked a smile, thanking him, again saying goodbye and goodnight. I started walking away, pulling out my phone, and I pretended to call a friend. He sat in that spot for a while, before slowly creeping up beside me again, still giving me that weird smile. ''Are you sure I can't drive you home?''

I lied, saying that I was just talking to my friend and that he was on his way, keeping my distance from the car. "'You can wait in the car with me,' he said with a bit of an odd tone in his voice. Yet again, I declined his offer. My skin was crawling, and I'm sure you could hear the nerves in my voice. I continued with my fake phone call loudly, saying, "'Oh, you're a few minutes away? Great, you'll see me.' The driver's face went completely blank."

His smile was gone, not a single emotion in sight. He just looked forward and rolled up his window and started driving away. I waited until he was out of sight before running as far away from that road as I could. I made it home safe that night, although the rest of the walk, I was completely on edge. I was constantly looking over my shoulder and holding my phone up to my ear like I was talking to someone. Obviously, I can't ever really know what his intentions were,

But if my gut was anything to go off of, I truly feel like if I got in that car, I would have never gone home again. Trust your gut, and stay safe out there. And please, don't get into the car with strangers. I'm a nurse at a palliative care unit in an old hospital. If you're a nurse at one of these units like me, or know a nurse, please read until the end, as I could use your help.

Throughout my years working at this hospital, I have seen a lot, especially being in a palliative care unit. You see a lot of things other people wish they wouldn't. For some of us, at some point, we have to just accept things as they are. The unit I work in has nine beds in nine different bedrooms, all spread along a long corridor.

At the start of the corridor is the lift, and coming out of it, you would find the cleaning room on your right, where we keep all the cleaning equipment and products, and the nurse's room on your left, along with the entrance through the stairs. Because of the building and patient safety, and so we can access the other floors easily if in need, the administration forbade us from locking the stairs doors. This isn't ideal.

because some of our patients, in their delusions, can go across our room's door unnoticed and will be a danger to themselves. So, we always keep the doors closed by tying a bed sheet around the door handles to keep them together. This is important so you know why what comes next started out so strange. The nurse's room is where we'll spend most of the night shifts doing all kinds of activities, including resting and actually sleeping.

Usually late at night, my routine would include checking on all of our patients, checking on all the doors and windows to make sure they are all locked properly, checking on the doors to the stairs, and then spend most of the night checking patient files. This night in particular, I had finished with my rounds and was checking on all the cameras. When my nursing auxiliary came into the nurse's room, she asked me if anything else was needed, or if she was okay to sleep for a while.

I told her she was fine to go to sleep, so she took her shoes off, laid down with her back to the room and me, facing the wall, and went to sleep. I was reading a new patient's file who was coming into our unit soon to know what to expect, and how to behave around him, when I started hearing footsteps walking up and down the unit's corridor. At first I ignored them, thinking I was just tired, and that my ears were playing tricks on me.

It wouldn't be the first time. As they persisted, though, I started wondering what was going on. I took another look at the cameras, but each and every one of the bedrooms and corridor feeds seemed completely normal. The steps, though, kept coming all the way to the nurse's room, stopping about two steps away from showing at my door, and then turning around and walking back all the way to the opposite end of the corridor.

I waited to see if anything changed, but when it didn't, I stood up to go check. That's when one of our patients, the one in room number 7, started calling us frantically. The auxiliary nurse was still asleep, so I walked carefully out of the room, peeked out of the room and looked around. There was nothing there, and the footsteps had stopped, so I rushed to the patient's room. When I got there, he was shouting frantically.

huddling against the bed's headboard with what seemed like renewed energy, shouting at me to tell the man in the top hat sitting on the chair in the room to go away and leave him be. Usually with patients like these in a state of distress, we just go along with their delusions to calm them down. If there are nurses watching, which I hope there are, you'll know what I mean. In this case, with him screaming in the room,

I turned towards the chair and started talking to this imaginary man in a top hat, telling him he needed to go, that the visiting hours were done, and that he needed to leave right now, or we would have to call security. After this, the patient calmed down, thanked me effusively for sending the man away, and laid back down to rest. I went back to the nurse's room and back to studying the new patient.

As I walked back in, my heart stopped. All I felt was panic gripping my heart inside of me. As I stood there not knowing what to do and looking at the surveillance cameras, there was a big shadow standing right in the middle of the frame of the camera that was recording the end of the corridor, right in front of the bedroom that I had just been in. I took one step back and leaned backwards to check if I could see anything there, and there was nothing.

I gave the camera another quick glance, and the shadow was still there, standing terrifyingly still in front of this patient's bedroom door. This time, though, when I turned to look directly at the corridor again, this thing was there. For a moment, it felt like everything froze in place, and I just stood there, looking at it like a fool, and then slowly it turned towards me, a pair of strange and dark red eyes showing.

It stood like that for a bit, screeched at me, and then flew into the patient's bedroom, slamming the door behind it. My auxiliary nurse jumped awake at the slam of the door and started frantically asking me what was going on. I was out of breath by now. I told her what I had just seen and what had just happened, and she couldn't believe me. I asked her to come with me to the patient's room, and she agreed, starting to become curious.

We walked slowly through the corridor, passing every door carefully. I was afraid that anything would come flying at us. When we got to the bedroom that this thing had flown into, I pushed the door without going in, to check for any kind of danger, and immediately felt a breath of freezing air hit me in the face. The aircon was on in every room, but it was set to 23 degrees Celsius, so this was not normal.

Nothing came flying at us like I was afraid would happen, but there, right by the patient's bed, there was this shadow. I could tell that it was a man, tall and strong with a top hat over his head. I asked my auxiliary nurse if she could see him, not expecting a no. However, that's what I got. She couldn't see anything standing there, and definitely not as clear as I could.

Slowly, the shadow turned towards me again. This time it didn't scream. This time it just slowly dissipated. Immediately, I calmed down. Not only could I not see it anymore, I also couldn't feel it. This sense of calm came over me and the patient seemed okay, so we left the room and went back to the nurse's room.

My colleague went back to sleep, but I didn't rest until I checked the rest of the units to make sure everyone was safe. After that, I couldn't help but stare at the cameras every minute for the rest of the night. Eventually, our shift was over, and that would become the shift with the most intense experience that I ever had. The next day, when night time came, and I did all of my rounds, I went inside room 7 to check on the patient.

When I came closer to him, I realized he'd passed away. This was my first experience with a shadow man in the top hat, but it wasn't the last, and it's still ongoing. I'm the only one who can see him around the unit, which freaks everyone out. Every single time I see him, it's under the same circumstances. I walk into a patient's room, and there's his shadow at the feet of their bed.

I wait for a little while until he turns to me and dissipates. Around one or two days later, the patient passes away. This is a real story, and it's something that I have to live with almost every day now. I'm not sure if this thing is killing people or announcing their deaths, but if you are a nurse in a similar unit or know someone who is, please share this with them and comment what you know about it.

Hi all.

I've always lurked this subreddit, but it wasn't until today that I remembered something that I could post. Warning, long read ahead. I'll try to keep it straightforward. So I dated a girl when I was 19 and she was 17. I've grown up Christian and she did too, but different denominations. She was Pentecostal. Her parents believed in homeschooling because their pastor at the time pushed it on the congregation.

That was one of many things the pastors pushed that caused more grief in people's lives than they cared to admit. One day, my ex revealed to me that the pastor's son had touched or assaulted many of the kids in the church, and it was of course overlooked and brushed off. She said she believed he did something to her, but...

She couldn't remember for sure and didn't want to play victim if nothing had in fact happened to her. I understood. And she went on to tell me that she never felt safe at the church, and that she hated her parents for blindly following the leadership of that pastor. She described it as a very cult-like church, even though other churches she attended that were part of the organization didn't feel that way.

I always got a bad vibe when she told me stories of her childhood and how messed up it was because of the church organization. So, anyways, that church that she went to when she was little, from birth to about 10, was in her hometown and she had moved to my hometown since.

One Saturday, I was really interested in learning about her hometown, not even thinking of the church. There were just cool points of interest to see, so we drove there for dinner and a little tour of her hometown. Things were going great, and then we were heading home a faster way according to Google Maps, when suddenly she says, Wait, my church is down this way.

I responded asking her if it was okay to take this way, if it made her feel uncomfortable, etc. She said it's okay and actually insisted that we stop by her old church so that I could see it. It was just getting dark out, but by the time we reached her old church, it was dark.

She gave me a little tour from inside the car, showing me places they used to park, or where she'd fell and scraped her knee one time, things like that. She pointed to the back of the church, and said that back there it used to be overgrown, but that they've put in a huge parking lot recently. I thought to myself, I guess they haven't installed any lights yet for it, so I shine my lights toward it, but nothing illuminates.

I then turn on my high beams, and nothing illuminates again. I drive closer. Nothing. It was pitch black, and on each side of the church, there's nothing except for a neighbor's houses. But they're pretty far from the church. I start getting this awful feeling. I guess you could say dread.

My ex was still in a that's weird state of mind. Because of her past history at this place, I didn't want to say anything. But she vibed it off of me and then felt that same dread. She started screaming, and that freaked me out even more. I slammed the car into reverse so fast, turned it around, and I got the hell out of there. For at least 10-15 minutes, there was a feeling like...

Something was in the back of the car. Something horrible. Funny thing is, I still had my high beams on, and they were piercing the dark just fine when we were on the road again. She called her parents, and they told us to get out of there now and that we should not have gone there. That creeped me the hell out. To this day, I remember it vividly.

Since then, her and I have broken up because she started facing some tough times and wasn't receptive to any of the help that I was offering. Her parents divorced, and she then spiraled into drugs. It kind of makes me think if whatever was in the backseat may have attached itself to her. Okay, so, hi. My name's Leia.

And this story is about the store that I've worked at for the past three years. And over time, I've learned a lot of things about the background. Plus, things happening to me and other coworkers. Everyone's name will be kept out of this as well as the store's name for privacy. For starters, the building is about 40 years old. It's been two different stores over that time.

The man that built this building had a son with some mental issues and had passed, but apparently used to stay here as a place to live. Myself and my coworkers in our back room have kind of snooped around, I guess, and we found multiple rooms on top of our meat department that, as far as we know, none of the workers know what they lead to, or what's in them, nor how to get to them.

We also found a room with old meat grinders in it, which, okay, that's normal, but in the top of that room is a crawlspace that leads to a room with a chair, a hole in the wall that, to me, would act as where an AC would go, and old labeled alcohol, but that doesn't explain the other five rooms that we can see across the top. The owner now, plus management, didn't know they were there.

and they refuse to acknowledge nor look at them, which is weird in itself. Basically, what's bringing all this to a head is that here lately, the more we've been finding, the more the store is feeling like we aren't as comfortable as we have been. The past few weeks, we've been getting more and more activity and feelings of anxiety. Of course, we always have the little noises of things settling in the store, but personally, things I've heard cannot be passed as that.

It's always when we close and all get into the office to talk or calm down. I've heard our meat machines give the first startup sound, sounding like cooler doors are closing, bags falling off of shelves, and checking but nothing being there. Coworkers have explained that being in the back room alone, they feel something staring at them from where the unknown rooms are. We all see things out of the corner of our eyes and pass it off.

until sooner or later we share that we've had this feeling or happening. Tonight was a good night the whole time we were open. As soon as we close, one of us had to finish mopping, so we were all waiting around and messing around as well. I love my coworkers personally, so I thought it would be funny to scare the coworker that was mopping. I did the first time pretty good. The others wanted me to try again a different way,

and I made it about halfway to where I was hiding and watching him for a little bit. I watched this poor boy walk to our back room doors, look into the dark window, stare for a little, and jump back. He proceeded mopping away from the doors on the side of our dairy cooler. A box of muffins fell off the complete opposite side of our aisle, and again this poor boy just said, ''What the hell?''

Now, I was going to scare him, but that scared me enough to leave it alone. He gets finished, and one of our other co-workers reminded that we needed to get his drinks from the back room's cooler. He refused to go back there with us. We didn't think anything of it, as he has autism, and we have a very big understanding. He does not like to go to the produce section with the lights off, which is completely understandable."

You have to walk through it to get to our back room. So me and my manager friend for that night went back there to get them for him. We went back there, phone flashlight shining. I get in the cooler and grab his drinks, and we're about to leave, laughing, playing around. Earlier today I found a service bell around in our back room. I didn't think much of it. We have like four of them.

I'd sat at by our meat department, and me and the manager both hear the bell going off. I personally am a very get-out-panic-later person, so all I did was look at her wide eyes and asked if that was for real. She wouldn't speak, but had the same look, so I knew that everything was wrong. We heard the bell a second time, and then right after that, our pallet jack, if you have too much weight on it, makes a popping noise over and over.

That's exactly what we heard, but to me, there was no way that someone could get those back to back, and if they did, they were currently sprinting toward us. So, I panicked and ran out, the manager following on my heels. I genuinely cannot decide if all of this was paranormal, or if some things have actually just been hiding overnight in the store. Everyone but the head manager has admitted to feeling weird or having something happen, but

We just can't figure out why or what is happening, or which realm to blame it on. So if any of you have any ideas of what this could be, or what we should try to feel more comfortable, please let me know. And thank you for reading my story. I love your work so much. Thank you. When I was 18, so back in 2005, my mom was giving me a ride to work.

My car had been impounded for something stupid, and I had to wait 30 days to get it back. In the meantime, my mom was giving me rides to work. On Saturdays, I worked morning shift, so I had to be at work by 5am. That means that we had to leave the house no later than 4.30. It was still dark outside, like pitch black and very cold. The morning as my mom was driving me to work...

From a distance, I could see a figure getting ready to cross the road, basically jaywalk in front of us. As we got closer, I could see that it was a young girl. I thought to myself, damn, caught her doing the walk of shame, huh? She had no shoes, a long white shirt, like she was wearing a man's white tee. It was big on her. It looked like she had no pants on.

but you could barely see that she had these short jean shorts under her large shirt, like the kind that used to be pants, but she cut herself to make into shorts. She wasn't wearing shoes. My mom started talking crap in Spanish, like, what kind of girl walks around the streets at this hour dressed like that? She was now walking in the middle of the street, super slow,

to the point that my mom had to stop like 10 feet away from her because she was now in the street blocking us. When my mom stopped the car, the girl came to a complete stop, but wasn't facing us. She was facing in the direction that she was crossing, crossing from my right to left. As now we were close, I could see that her skin was a real bluish gray, and her hair was black.

It looked wet and tangled, like she had just gotten out of the shower. My mom was about to honk at her when she slowly turned her head to look right at us. Her hair was covering her face, and she looked like the girl from The Ring. The part that I will never forget was that she moved her hair out of the way, and she had no face. Like, nothing. Nothing.

It was just all smooth, like Slenderman. No eyes, no mouth, no nose. It just looked smooth. My mom started to have a panic attack, and I literally felt my heart drop. I now was focused on calming my mom down. The girl looked at us for like two to three seconds, and then just took off running. It didn't move at irregular speeds, but now it was active. I'd never seen anything like that in my life.

And to this day, my mom and I cannot explain what that was. I guess I'm sharing my story in hopes that maybe someone else has seen something similar. Something with no face. There was this time when my cousins, grandma, my siblings, my mom, and I went to the zoo. We were expecting a great day ahead with no worries, just spending the day together. But then, after a while of walking and looking around,

My grandma wanted to rest, so she sat on a bench nearby. Beside her were a group of men in their late twenties. The rest of us just walked around the place, talking to each other, but I also noticed that the group of those guys were looking at us in a very... lustful way. My cousins, siblings, and I were all under fourteen, and I was the oldest.

and this made me very uncomfortable because I had to take responsibility of anything that happens to us. My grandma and mom were in a deep conversation through the whole day, that they didn't notice the fact these men started following us after we decided to continue our walk. About a minute or so later, we stopped to look at a certain animal, I don't clearly remember which, as all I was focused on was the cat calling that we heard behind us.

Then, one of my cousins, who was the second oldest of us, whispered to me that the group of men were staring daggers at our back. I was freaking out so much, and she just laughed it off. I was too scared to even tell my mom about it because I thought she might scold me. I don't know what for, I was 14 at the time, so I just kept quiet throughout.

So later, I decided to take the lead and walk right in front so that my grandma and mom, who were walking super slow while immersed in their conversation, would be the ones between me and those creeps. I tried taking different turns as there were so many paths, and I just wanted them to get lost in the crowd and stop following us. So many turns later, I met a dead end with only one door displaying the exit sign.

so I had to turn back anyway. And when I did, the creeps were standing like a few feet away from us, staring at us with smirks, and no one else was in that path as it was leading to the exit. So it was just us and those men here. As for my grandma and my mom, they still hadn't noticed anything yet, so I boldly turned around and walked past those creeps without making eye contact,

and didn't stop until I've scampered very far from there. My cousins and siblings had to jog to keep up. My mom and grandma were really slow as always, but all I ever had in my mind back then was to get rid of these guys. We ran deep into the crowd, even crossed a bridge to get to the other side of the river, just to make these guys stop following us. And when I turned around to look...

They were still following us, with sinister smiles on their faces. I remember wanting to cry so badly, but I held my tears back. I noticed them suddenly stop at the foot of the bridge on the other side, and that's when they eventually stopped following us. It was then a huge wave of relief hit me, and we continued our strolling in ease. It's been four years, and this still haunts me.

My cousins and I still talk about this from time to time, but the rest of my cousins and siblings don't know anything about this to this day. During the height of COVID in 2021, I had to take a plane somewhere for work. Beforehand, I had to self-isolate in a hotel for two weeks. During that two-week period, I was on Discord video chatting with my wife. Every day. And nothing really happened for the most part. One night, however...

We were talking, watching stuff together just like normal. She went to go and take a shower, but just left the camera on. As I'm sitting there chilling on my phone, not looking at the camera, but still had my headset on, I heard a little girl's voice coming through my headset. I forgot specifically what it said, but I do remember hearing giggling. So, I turned to the computer and thought, ''Oh, she's just playing a prank on me. Haha, very funny.''

but there was no reply. I then heard the voice sing the classic scary movie trope, the Daisy Daisy song, but towards the end of it, the little girl's voice became two voices overlapping with each other, like a man and a girl at the same time, and it became distorted. As this all is happening, I see that the green glow around the border popping up to show the audio is coming from my wife's microphone.

I keep trying to say, Haha, I know you're there, very funny. And the talking stops. I say, Hello? Trying to get her to reply, but then the little girl's voice replies back with, Hello? At this point, I'm freaking out. I ask another question, but I forgot what it was, and it replied back. I remember it being a pretty simple question. After that, I remember the little girl saying, Look behind you.

and then laughing. Obviously, at this point, I'm peeing my pants. I did one of those scary movie reactions where I turn around super fast, but nothing was there. Now my wife comes back from the shower, I see her come out of the only hallway we have in our small apartment, so there's no way that she was at the computer. No way that she used a soundboard, which I don't even think she's even heard of what that is before.

I didn't end up telling her what happened until I got back, otherwise she would have been scared out of her mind by herself. To this day, I get chills thinking about this. I tried searching online to see if people have had their discords hacked or something that make hackers talk through their mics, but I found nothing. If anyone has any input, please tell me, because I haven't found any explanation to this at all.

I've been debating sharing this due to the fact that my memory is very fuzzy about the whole story, and this is my first time posting. When I was about 7 or 8, I'm 25 now, I was at my aunt's house for a family gathering. There was a lot of people inside. My mom is the youngest of 8 kids, so I have a very large family. So I decided to go sit out on the front porch.

My aunt lives in town and four blocks away from the lake. I was sitting by myself on the railing of her porch like most of us kids did when we hung out out there. I had headphones in my ears listening to music when I saw a man walking down the sidewalk towards me. I wasn't alarmed or anything, since I practically grew up in the neighborhood and since a family gathering was going on in the house...

I felt pretty comfortable to be by myself. I figured he was just on a walk like anyone else and would just walk on by. I was wrong. He stopped about six feet away from me and said hello. I took my headphones out and awkwardly said, Hi. Back. Mind you, I'm about a seven to eight year old small petite girl. He was being all friendly and said that he lives around the corner, but...

I'd never seen this man before and knew my aunt's neighbors on the block, and then he was asking if I could tell him where Adams Street is. I gave him a real funny look and said, "Uh, it's right there," and pointed to it. My aunt lived three houses away from it, so it was a really stupid question to ask since it was right there, and it was the street around the corner, so I felt instant red flags.

I ended up getting off the railing and was slowly making my way to my aunt's front door as this man was coming closer to me. He then said, ''Can you show me where it is?'' Every episode of Disappeared that my mom would always watch was running through my head. I felt sick. I responded with, ''My mom will be back any second, and she can show you.'' He said, ''No, I want you to show me.''

and by this time, he was one step off from coming up the porch with his hand out. By the grace of God, my mom pulled in the driveway at that very moment. I didn't know when she would be back because she had run to the store to grab a few things for my aunt. She immediately knew something was wrong because she didn't know the man. I yelled to her, "'Hey, Mom, this man needs help finding Adams Street.'"

As she was about to get out of the car, she had the window down. She gave me a funny look and said, What? And the man said, Never mind. And then took off down the road. I never had an incident like that ever again, and that was the first time. I thank God for my mom pulling into the driveway when she did, because if she hadn't, I don't know what would have happened. Years ago, around a decade back...

My friend and I were part of the same Marine Corps Reserve Unit. The distance to our unit from my place was a good two and a half hours. One particular day, we were required to report early. To save time, we decided that I would stay at his place, situated halfway between my home and the drill center. After a night of barracks cuts and a couple of beers, my friend, looking a bit troubled, confided in me about an unusual problem with the house he was renting.

He believed it was haunted by a ghost. I, being a skeptic, couldn't help but tease him, but his response was not what I expected. He looked me straight into my eyes and uttered, "It's a damn cat." He recounted incidents where he would wake up to see the cat lounging outside his bedroom. Each time he would leap out of bed to catch it, by the time he would reach the doorway, just five to seven feet away, it would vanish.

I laughed it off, attributing it to his imagination, and decided to crash on the living room couch. The stillness of the night was interrupted when I felt something brushing against my hand, which was dangling off the couch. As I peered down, I was met with the sight of a cat affectionately rubbing its head against my hand. Panic set in as I realized I was paralyzed. The dreaded sleep paralysis.

While my body was immobile, my willpower drove me to make tiny movements. In a desperate attempt to prove its existence, I managed to grip the cat's face with my index finger, trying to nick my finger on its sharp tooth. Suddenly, the cat wrenched free and darted straight through their living room wall. The moment its tail disappeared, the paralysis lifted. Frantically, I inspected my finger.

While there was no visible injury, I could faintly feel where the tooth had pressed against it, and there seemed to be a slight discoloration. The next day, still bewildered, I narrated the previous night's events to my friend. I may never know the truth of that night, but part of me is convinced that I held onto a ghostly feline, even if just for a fleeting moment. The most uncanny thing? It behaved just like an ordinary cat.

To this day, this memory remains etched in my mind. This blend of reality and the supernatural challenged my beliefs and perceptions.