Scary Stories For Dark Dreams - Volume 16 | ATRD Podcast
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Four years. That's how long it took Democrats to ruin our economy and plunge our southern border into anarchy. Who helped them hurt us? Ruben Gallego. Washington could have cut taxes for Arizona families, but Ruben blocked the bill. And his fellow Democrats gave a bigger break to the millionaire class in California and New York. They played favorites and cost us billions. And Ruben wasn't done yet.

We'll be right back.

Carrie and the Republicans will secure the border, support our families, and never turn their backs on us. Carrie Lake for Senate. I'm Carrie Lake, candidate for U.S. Senate, and I approve this message. Paid for by Carrie Lake for Senate and the NRSC.

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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've been a trucker for many years now, hauling just about everything from local department store merchandise to dangerous chemicals, and even items for the government that I had to be cleared for.

"'I've been working for the same company for about fifteen years, at the time of this story. "'So I was a senior driver. "'I helped on the training side of things, "'did my share of ride-alongs to make sure the newbies were up to it, "'following the road laws and company rules. "'Because of this, that also meant they trusted me a great deal, too.'

If I did something out of the norm, it was few and far in between, and I always had a damn good reason to do it. This was especially true if I did it without running it by anyone first. I was basically one of the bosses without the title or the paycheck, but I didn't mind. That just meant that I was looked at for help without the responsibilities of others, right?

So, that's why the course of events was so strange for everyone involved. So, around the time of this story, I had been doing what we called "halfway drops", where instead of going to the destination of the drop-off, I would meet another driver halfway and we would swap trailers and head back. We did this more often in the winter, since we were based up north, trying to be nice to our southern folk that aren't used to driving in our harsh winters.

On this occasion, we were nearing the end of the quarter and had to get a few more drops done, and I offered to do a double where I basically just chained them together. Swap one, drop it off, pick up another, and head back. So, of course, there were times where I would stop to sleep for the night.

I got to my first swap and the guy ended up arriving an hour late due to truck issues, which did set me back. Not too big of a deal though. Then I dropped that trailer off and headed out to get my last one. That one was going to be a bit longer of a drive, so I made the decision to go ahead and stop for the night, or maybe just for a few hours at least to get some sleep.

I saw a sign for a rest stop coming up, and I decided that would be my best bet. As I pulled in and parked, I radioed out that I was stopping for the night. I tried calling my wife, but it rang until it went to voicemail. I expected this though, because she worked late nights, so I just figured she was still there. I decided to walk around to stretch my legs and use the restroom.

As I approached the building, it looked like there were supplies in there. I could see packs of water, cigarettes behind the counter, candy. Yet the lights were off except the one emergency light, and the door was locked. Sometimes, I've seen a single person working these and they will close and lock if they go on break or something, so again, no big deal. I walked over to the restroom, and that place had not been kept up with.

The doors were nearly falling off, there were no paper towels, and there was a normal bottle of hand soap sitting next to one sink, like the type you would find in your home, but it was empty. And it looked like it had been empty for a while. So, I left. I walked back over to the shop and it was still closed. There was an old, run-down-looking vending machine next to the icebox outside, which seemed to be off and had nothing in it.

and it seemed to have some stuff in there, but there was a sign saying that it couldn't give change, so it could only take cards. Like hell was I gonna put my card into that thing, though, so I just said forget it. But that's also why I bring little things to snack on, in case of situations like this. So I went back to my truck, had some jerky and trail mix, and then got myself ready to sleep. As I laid there, though...

I felt like something was off. I didn't feel like I was in danger or anything, but more like I was supposed to be somewhere or not be somewhere. Or almost like when you're forgetting something but cannot remember what. Just in case my feeling was off, I made sure the doors were locked and that my trusty baseball bat was nearby. I ended up falling asleep though and woke up on my own. I had an alarm on my phone, but something caused me to be jolted awake.

Again, I looked around. Everything seemed normal, and nothing was disturbed. I used the restroom once more and headed out, not thinking anything of the situation. I called back out, making a joke and said that I was back on the road, and continued on. I was probably about an hour max into the drive...

and when I started getting all kinds of missed calls and text alerts on my phone, and several callouts and pages from the radio, I picked up the radio to ask them what was going on, and my boss started going off, asking me where I'd been, what I was doing, things like that. It started getting out of hand, so I ended up pulling over to find out what the hell was going on. First, I called my boss to see what happened.

I will say that our actual trucks have trackers on them, so they can get our locations, especially since we sometimes transfer government and high targeted supplies. This also helps in situations where we may end up somewhere that we're not supposed to be, to see if someone's doing something wrong, or if we might be in trouble. This is where the troubles started for me. They saw me pick up the new trailer and drive for a while,

and then they said they got a garbled radio message from me, but when they asked me to repeat, they didn't get anything back. They tried reaching out to me again and said that it sounded like someone was just whispering into the radio, and then they got nothing from me. However, they also got notified that my tracker was offline. This has now caused concerns because they didn't know what I said, if I was in trouble, and they had no idea where I was.

So they tried calling my cell phone, and when it went straight to voicemail, they called my wife. She checked her messages, and saw that she had a missed call from me, and when she checked the voicemail, it was just static, and sounded like someone whispering again, but she couldn't make out what was being said. Between my voicemail and my work calling her, she was a bit worried and tried calling me, but got the same thing. She didn't even get a response to her texts.

To everyone else, I had just disappeared, and they had no way to trace me other than having people drive to the location and follow the road back to look for me. And, let's face it, law enforcement had plenty of other more important things to do, so I told them I was fine and that I had been. I explained that I ended up at a rest stop between these mile markers, and explained what it looked like.

I apologized for getting everyone worked up, including my wife, because that was a storm alone, calming her down, and I told them I was en route to the destination as normal. Once I arrived at the drop-off, I reached back out, letting work and the wife know that I was heading back without any plans of stopping, unless it was for gas or food. However, my boss Agatha called me and was asking me about this stop that I went to.

I explained to her again where it was approximately located, and what it looked like, and she said that she couldn't find any rest stops in that area. Agatha's been there for just about as long as I have, so she knew that I wasn't fooling around, but was more so worried about the area, or if there were scramblers or something, as it could put me or other truckers in danger. I teased her, saying that if she didn't believe me...

I could always stop at it again and take pictures to get a better location, but she said not to worry about it, so I headed back out, so I could get home for a few days to my wife and my bed. On my way back though, it really did start to bother me about this location. With everything looking so ancient, no one being at the actual little shop, and just getting an off feeling, I wanted to find this place again.

Like I said, I've been doing this for a while, so I'm used to these roads and directions outside of Google. I saw the exit, and I decided to make a quick stop before finishing my drive. I did call in to the radio and told them I was making a quick stop, and unlike last time, I got a response saying they got the message, basically. However, once I took the exit, the road seemed to go on longer than I remembered.

Thinking to myself, maybe it's just because I'm coming from the other side, and this side is longer? Except there was nothing else but the road. It just stopped. The concrete and all. There was a huge overgrown field on the side, but there was nothing there. No building, no shop, no restroom, no vending machine, not even a sign showing what the place was called. I was at a loss for words and explanation.

I stayed here less than 12 hours ago, and it was all missing. I looked around to see if I was missing something, but there was nothing. I even had a signal, and I had called my wife as I stood in the field, explaining to her what was going on. She told me that she wasn't comfortable with the situation, and asked me to just leave and get back as soon as possible. What she says goes, so I was off.

I snapped a quick photo of the exit ramp and the field as a memory, but that's all I had to give an explanation. Now, I wish I would have used that vending machine after all. Anyways, I got back and explained everything to Agatha, and even showed her the picture of the field. No one knows what to think of this, and we all agree to make sure we get a response back from the radio before we tune out for the night. And since then, I did just that.

And I also started avoiding rest stops that I was unfamiliar with. This one dimension is enough for me.

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Back while I was in college, I always tried to find odd-end jobs to make some extra money to spend. My parents paid for my dorm and basically gave me a small allowance for food and supplies that I needed, but anything extra that I wanted or needed, I had to work for it myself. The college was my parents' choice anyway, so I guess I was lucky not to have to worry about it.

But it still wouldn't have been my first choice. Anyways, I would browse Craigslist for jobs like cleaning, baby/pet/house sitting, running errands, and just things like that. I tended to be successful with my inquiries as well.

As wrong as it may sound, I was a younger female in a local college, just trying to earn some extra money, so they tended to trust me quicker than other applicants, I suppose. So, I found one listed on housekeeping, basically. The description said they just needed someone to come and tidy up, wipe down the cabinets, tables, drawers, dust, mop, and vacuum, things like that.

Usually the homes I did this at, the people either left when I was there, or in a separate room, like an office, or I've had elderly people who couldn't get around and do these types of things anymore. The description also said the person responding had to be female, in a certain age range, which was in my age range, like college student ranges.

I know it may sound stupid now, but like I said, I saw that and again thought they just wanted someone local that was possibly in school. Something like that. Nothing really creepy about it. So I responded to it. I got a response pretty quickly asking when I could start, and I suggested over the weekend since I was in school.

They agreed, and actually said if they liked my work, they wanted to talk about a recurring job, doing this once or twice a week. Again, I thought this was going to be great, as it was going to be steady income. They were going to pay me about $200 for four hours that Saturday, and then we were talking about a weekly gig for around the same amount, for four to eight hours, so...

Again, I was ready and excited to make some easy money. I was not thinking of any negative consequences other than maybe the house was really messy, but that's what I'm getting myself into. Otherwise, I wouldn't have applied. So, Saturday came, I got the address and headed out to the location. It was a fairly small house, like one story.

It may be a basement, but there couldn't be more than two rooms and a bathroom. So even if it was a wreck, at least there shouldn't be too much to do. From the outside, though, the house looked pristine. It had a really pretty foggy glass on the door and teal curtains in the window. But when he answered the door, the first thing I noticed was the smell. It was awful.

It smelled like a bunch of spoiled food was just thrown at me. I knew I had to have made a face when he answered, but it was hard enough choking back the gag. The man, on the other hand, looked completely different. His hair looked clean and greased back. He had on slacks and a wrinkled button-up shirt, but it was open and he didn't have anything underneath it. He just stared at me until I greeted him and told him why I was there,

to which he looked me up and down a few times, smiled, and then welcomed me in. Holy hell. That place looked awful. If you've seen Hoarders, that's pretty much what I stepped into. There were trash bags everywhere with God knows what in them, to-go food containers strewn across the floor, the couch, the bookshelf, some with food still in them, some empty. I'm sure that's partially what I smelled, too.

You could see the roaches immediately scatter when you moved anything. I'm taking all this in and he just looks absolutely fine with this situation, like it's a normal cleaning job. Then, as he continues to talk about what he expects out of me, he does not take his eyes off of me and I'm not talking eye contact. He said he wanted to start by taking out some unwanted things and then reorganizing.

To me, it all looked like garbage. I could barely make out a couch. All this and every time he would address me, it would be, Baby, does that make sense, baby? Can you handle that, baby? Again, I just smiled and nodded. Now, to add to the unsettling house and the creepy vibes that I'm now getting from this guy, he then said,

"'I'm sure after all this work, you'll probably be tired and sweaty, so... "'You're free to use my bathroom and anything in it, baby. "'I won't bother you while you're in there. "'It's the least I can do. "'Yeah, no.' "'I told him thank you and being a little weirded out, "'I asked if I could go ahead and get started, "'to which he handed me a box of trash bags and said, "'You go for it, baby.' "'I tried to press on for the time being,'

thinking I'm not going to be able to do this on my own in one day, so I'll fill a few trash bags, get my money, and just never return. However, instead of ignoring me or leaving the room or anything other people have done, he sat on the couch, facing me, watching me, and just staring every time I bent over to pick something up. Now, I know that I'm bound to get dirty at these things,

so I'd worn some old leggings and a loose t-shirt. Nothing exactly flattering, but I guess he liked something. I, on the other hand, was not comfortable with the looks that I was getting and really started to feel uncomfortable. I asked if I could use the restroom before I went further, and he seemed happy to show me to the bathroom.

I walked in, closing the door behind me and just stood there for a second, trying to think of a reason to just leave without possibly upsetting him, not knowing what he could potentially try to do. That's when I noticed how different the bathroom was compared to the rest of the house. It was damn near spotless. The shower seemed to have rust stains in it, but the tub was white and clean.

The counter and floor was completely clean, and even the toilet was clean. Why was the bathroom kept up with? Then I saw the small plastic three-drawer container sitting next to the sink. I noticed it because of the small piece of cardboard laying on top of it that said free to use. Like these were free toiletries, I guess. Curious, since the rest of the house was a disaster.

I wanted to see what he kept in there. The first drawer had random soaps in it, and when I say random, I mean it. There was a half-used Dove bar, a small travel-sized bottle of shampoo, half-empty, and even hand sanitizer, I think. The next drawer had random cloth in it, I think they were supposed to be hand towels maybe, but I didn't even want to touch them. Then, there was the bottom drawer.

No toiletries, towels, or anything useful for a shower. They were just adult toys. And that's when my uncomfortable level peaked, and I was ready to bounce. So I slowly closed the last drawer, flushed the toilet, and walked out ready to say that I had to leave, when I saw him immediately standing at the door waiting for me to open it. That's when he holds up a maid dress and says...

This is for you, so you can be more, uh, comfortable. Well, cleaning, baby. Ents winks at me. I first told him that I was okay with what I had on, and he became slightly agitated, saying he insisted and that it was part of the job requirement. So, thinking fast, I looked at it, told him it was too small and that it wouldn't fit me, and then before I could say anything else, he started walking off, yelling that he has other sizes-

and that he would get the right one. As he started rambling on about where he got them and asked for my size, I gave him one that doesn't really exist in women's clothing. I think I said something like 34 large, I think, and he said to give him a moment. When I noticed he was now in the back room, out of sight, I darted for the door, noticing he had locked it behind me, and I quickly left.

I got in my car, locked all my doors, and I sat there for a second, gathering my thoughts, when I noticed he was staring at me confused from the window. So, I left. He tried messaging me about it, asking why I left, and that I wasn't going to get paid for the work I did if I didn't come back, to which I told him that, due to the amount of work that I would have to do, the pay would have to be tripled.

I knew there was no way he would agree to it, so that's why I went with that. To which, as expected, he replied by saying that that was an outrage, that I charged too much, and I wasn't even attractive. Oh well, too bad for me, I guess. I don't take jobs from Craigslist anymore, as I do have an actual job, but I did screen them way better after that one.

This happened when I worked at a local fish and seafood restaurant. I was working the evening shift and we had a couple come in, so I greeted them and escorted them to a nearby booth. I asked them for drinks, he got some kind of soda and she got water. I came back with their drinks and took their order. He ordered a full course meal. He got an appetizer, an entree, and even got a side salad and rolls. And when I asked her,

She just looked up at me like a deer in the headlights, and he said, "She doesn't want anything." And he quickly moved the conversation back to him, asking about a cake and then ordering said dessert. I walked away kind of confused, but put the order in. I've seen similar instances where one person didn't order anything, or ordered very little, or took most of it home.

but I've never seen where someone answers for another person saying they didn't want anything. But I thought, I don't get paid enough to investigate it, and it's probably not that deep anyways, so I moved on. But in those situations that I mentioned, the parties are still talking to each other, or maybe even sneaking stuff off their plate, but these two people were doing nothing of the sort.

He was nearly inhaling his food and looking pretty gross about it, chewing with his mouth open, snorting, coughing, making a mess, all of it. And the woman just sat there, sitting straight, hands being held in her lap with her ankles crossed, never taking her eyes off of him, with no conversation to be had. When he finished, he paid leaving a decent cash tip and left.

I figured that would be the last of the weird situation, but then they started coming in weekly. He would order stuff and she would never get anything, but she always seemed to look worse and worse. The first time she was in a nice fitted black dress. It had a shimmer to it, like it was silky, but it also had silver lace along the edges of the sleeves, the bottom hem, and the collar. She was on the thinner side, but it was form-fitting.

I think you know what I mean. But every time they came in, he would wear something different. She was always in the same dress. It looked like the dress was falling apart as she wore it. It seemed to get looser on her, like she was losing weight, or like she had it in multiple different sizes. The lace hem on the bottom was unraveling, and the one around her chest was discolored, like something dark was spilled on it.

After a while, it just seemed unsettling. Was she not eating at all? Was she being starved? And if so, why? I finally got my chance to ask about it when in the middle of his meal he started choking and when he was finally done coughing in her face he threw his napkin down and walked to the restroom. I went over to the table and I asked her if she needed anything.

She again just stared at me, but squinted like she was confused. Then all she said was, ''Pen.'' I gave her my pen, and she immediately stuck it in her hair that appeared to be pinned up, no longer to be seen, and then looked back down at his plate. He started walking back to the table as I was walking away when I heard a loud, ''Hey!'' I turned around to see him standing next to her, and he motioned for me to come over.

When I approached, he said, "What were you doing?" I told him that I had heard him coughing, which was an understatement, and I wanted to make sure he was okay and ask if they needed anything. He asked me if she had talked to me, and I said no. Then, he sat back down smiling and said, "Good," and continued eating. After he finished eating, he paid and left again.

One of the last times that I saw them was a few weeks after that experience. She was not looking good. The lace on the bottom of her dress was completely gone, and her eyes were dark and sunken in. No amount of makeup that she was wearing could cover that. Again, he went to the restroom. I saw over the wall that she was looking down at the table and then looked back up. He came out and they left.

I went to clean the table, and this time there was a napkin folded up in the seat next to her. It had something in a different language written on it. I immediately took it home, not telling anyone what it was, and I started looking it up. It turned out it was Dutch, and it said something like, This is not the American dream I expected. I will make my own. I will overcome. I didn't really know what to do with this information, so...

I kept it to myself and decided that I would try asking about it if I got the chance. They came in once more, but this time, the guy seemed irritated. He was short and curt with me, even when placing his order. He was very rushed throughout the whole thing, and if he needed anything else, he would use that deep voice and yell for me by name.

At one point, I noticed the girl looked like she was slightly swaying, like a sickly sway. So my manager actually came over because of his yelling, warning him that if he didn't stop, he would be kicked out. Then he noticed the girl and leaned down, putting his hand on her shoulder, and he asked if she was okay. The guy immediately got defensive, standing up and yelling, ''She's fine! Take your hands off of her!''

My manager stood up and said, ''How about we let her answer?'' and tried to get her to talk, but she would just stare. I wasn't over there, so this was all what he told me, but he said that she looked scared. She never said anything, but the guy grabbed her by the arm, and they both left in a rush without paying. This was enough for my manager to call the cops, since he ate most of his food anyways, and then skipped on the bill.

So, we explained to them what had happened, and described the weird situation with the girl. I, admittedly, did leave out the note that I got. I didn't know if it would be relevant, or if maybe she was just venting. I had no idea, and I later regretted that decision. It had been a few weeks since that had taken place, and I was watching the news in the little break room at work.

There was a man's body found in his home after police did a welfare check, because he had missed work with no calls. They said that he was found with a pen in his throat, so they were investigating it as a homicide. I thought it was weird, but didn't really think much of it, until I saw another article come up as I was scrolling through Facebook on my phone about the same guy that had been killed.

This time, it had a picture of the guy, and obviously to my surprise, it was the same one that had come in with that girl. So then I went and read into the story, and sure enough, it was him. He'd been stabbed with a pen. They said they had a person of interest, but they hadn't found her yet. All I could think was, what the hell happened between them?

Why did she write what she did in Dutch? Why did she never speak? And why was she seemingly starved? And then, was that my pen that she used? I had a quick fear that my prints could even be on it if so, but then thought, that was weeks prior. Surely it wouldn't be possible, right? I guess that was an accurate assumption too, because I was never contacted. But I did continue following the story.

As far as I could tell, they never found or caught the suspect. It's still something that I think about regularly, but I wouldn't even know where to start to try to find this mysterious woman. This took place a few years ago. I was 12 years old. My cousin, my aunt, my sibling, and I had flown to our home country for the summer holiday. We usually spent a few weeks there whenever we did that.

I lived in my home country for a good portion of my childhood, so I still had some friends there that I saw when I visited. One of those friends was a girl, a year older than me. Her name was Josie. Josie, Angie, my older cousin by one year, and I had been out cycling like we did every day of our vacation. We were cycling down the usual back alleys of the suburban town that we lived in,

We were cycling down to the river to get some relief from the summer heat. Josie was first, she was leading us, and Angie and I were right behind her. Angie was the first one to spot him. The road we were taking was long and had a fenced off field to its right. At the gate to that field stood a man. He was wearing a red t-shirt and dark pants.

He was slouched, his hands outstretched in front of him, like he was begging the Lord to answer his prayers. As we got closer, we noticed that he had a shiny object in his right hand. There was blood running down both of his forearms. The man had slit his wrists with the blade that he was holding. We sped up and passed him, stopping at the end of the road and then looking back at him.

He was stumbling a little, probably from the blood loss. I watched him throw the knife onto the ground. I wasn't sure whether the blade made it to the other side of the metal fence or not. The three of us watched him walk in the opposite direction. We decided to continue on down towards the river. We passed in between the cornfields, left our bikes near the dirt road, and walked through the brush to get down to the mini beach by the river.

We took our shoes off and stepped into the water, playing around as we did almost every day of the summer. An hour or two had passed, and we were on our way back from the river. We cycled our bikes from between the cornfields and onto the same road where we saw the man. The man was back at the gate. He was bent above the grass, swishing his bloody arms through the overgrown grass,

As if searching for something, like the knife. We decided not to stick around to see what happened next. We didn't know if the man was in his right mind. He could have tried to have hurt us. Even though we were on bikes and he was stumbling on his own feet, we were just three little girls who were alone. We didn't take the risk. We didn't see the man again.

My cousins, my aunt, my siblings, and I had flown back to our country of residence. On October 13th of 2016, at around 5.48pm, I received a message. Josie said she had seen the man again. She didn't give me any more details. She told me that she saw him around the same area, but nothing else. Neither one of us have seen or heard of the man since.

I used to browse Craigslist all the time when I wanted to find something cheap, a quick and easy job, or when I was just bored. I got quite a few good interactions out of it, and I even met some new friends in a random get-together for a video game contest. Being a guy, though, a lot of the jobs I got were the dirty ones, or heavy lifting. Heavy duty cleaning, like gutters,

I've had a small local pool cleaner's posting job for assistance, basically grabbing supplies for them and scrubbing out tiles. Just things like that. I don't often get chosen for some of the easier jobs like babysitting or seasonal desk jobs, like helping people set up their printers or Wi-Fi. Easy stuff. As a teen, I wasn't too interested in finding a permanent job at the time.

due to everything else I did outside of school. So, between these little odd jobs and trying to fix and flip electronics, that was my life. So, I was trying again for a babysitting job. The week prior, I was helping my dad basically gut an old commercial building, and my hands were still sore, so I wanted to kick it back a little. I answered a few of them, including one that was the next state over,

I lived pretty much on the state borderline, hoping I would have better luck because that city was barren, and I could imagine there weren't many people asking. Now, the wording was a little weird though, but I thought maybe the person had just never posted something like this before, or were really proud of their kid. The title said something like Babysitter Needed Immediately, Possibly Permanent.

They then mentioned that there would be an in-person screening and, if they liked us, it may become a regular or permanent position. Then, they went on to explain when they needed someone and then described in detail what their daughter looked like that I would be watching. But it wasn't just, 8-year-old girl, long brown hair, likes to play with dolls and watch cartoons. No, no.

It was, "Sally is an adorable eight-year-old girl with dark brown to hazel eyes and tight, curly brown hair that sits right above her shoulders. She loves short, fluffy dresses and showing off her wardrobe. She will want to play house or hide and seek with you. Can send a picture for proof." Maybe some people out there want to know a little about the kid beforehand, but I thought it was a bit too much information.

nor did I feel the need to see her first. Otherwise, it was weird, but I still applied. They responded sometime that same day and asked if I was male or female. I was a little upset at this point, thinking they were going to turn me down, but to my surprise, they wanted me to come out the next week. So I headed over and it took me about half an hour to get there.

There was a man that answered the door that I assumed was the father. The house looked normal to me. Living room with a couch and TV, kitchen looked fine. It was clean and kept up. And then the dad started going on about the rules. He said if she was hungry, she had a designated cabinet she could choose to eat from.

All of her toys and clothes were to stay in her room, and I was welcome to go in and play with her too, but I had to make sure to thoroughly clean up any messes. Okay, weird, I thought. Maybe they were just a neat freak. Then he said he would be home at exactly 11pm, and that she had to be showered and in bed by then, and he left. It was a weird interaction, but I decided to move on.

and that's when I noticed I hadn't even seen the girl yet. So I started walking down the hall and saw a pink door with a sign with her name on it. I knocked on the door, and sure enough, a little girl answered it. For her privacy, I'm calling her Sally. Sally looked exactly like the description, down to the eyes and dress. Her whole room was covered in pink,

She had a shelf full of dolls and stuffed animals, a closet full of dresses and costumes. She asked me if I was her babysitter today, and I confirmed. I told her my name and asked her for hers. She seemed shy at first, but as I started asking her what she wanted to do, she seemed to loosen up more. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she seemed confused that I asked, and then shyly mentioned that we could play house.

I asked her if that's what she wanted to do, and she again quietly said no. So I just asked her again, and said that we could do whatever she wanted, and I didn't even have to play if it would be weird. I was fine just watching TV for the night, to be honest. She looked confused when I said that, though, and asked if it was okay to have dinner then. Easy enough. So I agreed, and we went to the kitchen together.

I started asking her what she wanted, to which she opened a cabinet and pulled out a can of raviolis. That's when I noticed that in the cabinet were tons of cans of that kind of stuff. And also ramen, chips, granola bars, just things like that. At first, I thought that was kind of cool. I was the oldest of three kids, so having our own cabinet and food and snacks would have been awesome.

But then she started talking about how the fridge is daddy's food only. So, what, she's just not allowed any other food? She confirmed this by saying that she gets in trouble if she ever tries to take any. This whole experience had just been weird and way off. The way the dad talked about her and the way she was acting and being treated, it just didn't make me feel good about it. I tried asking if she's had any other babysitters before-

and that's when she started going quiet and being shy again. So, I let her finish eating, and washed her bowl and spoon, and then I asked her what she wanted to do now. That's when she led me back to her room, and asked me if I wanted her to change into a different dress. I was confused, and I asked her if she wanted to, or if she got something on it, and again, she just looked at me funny. And that's kind of when things started to click.

Thinking back at the description, what the dad explained, her reaction, I realized what I was in the middle of. My fears were confirmed when I asked her about playing house, and she mentioned us being mom and dad. I quickly told her I wasn't there for that. I was there to protect her, and for the rest of the night, I sat in the corner of the room freaking out internally, and just watching her play with her dolls and telling me about them.

When 11 came around, I had her shower still and go to bed and to not throw anything off, and I waited in the living room for him to get home. He asked how she did and if she gave me a hard time and I said she was perfect, trying to get out as quickly as possible. He laughed and said he thought that I looked pretty young but was happy that everything was fine. I shook his hand and left as quickly as I could, and when I got to my car, that's when it solidified.

when I realized he didn't even pay me. When I got home, I hardly slept, and then went to a police station with my mom to explain everything that had happened. I told her everything because I didn't know what to do. They of course asked for any kind of proof, so I went home and tried to find the posting, or a new one to ask the guy if he needed another babysitter. To my surprise, he actually responded.

He said he could use a babysitter in a few days, and I tried to be sly in asking for things that were allowed, and again he took the bait. He wanted to text me though instead of through emails, and he confirmed more while still trying to be secretive about it. I gave the police everything that I had, and they said they would look into it further.

I checked the local news and reports, hoping they would move on this quickly before the girl could be put in that situation again, but I never found anything. I can only hope they caught this guy because I stopped seeing posts from him after that. Thankfully, this was the worst and weirdest posting I ever responded to, but it definitely made me more aware and cautious of meeting strangers, no matter what the case may be.

This experience happened to my aunt and mom before I was even thought of. My mom and dad were just starting to date at the time, and I'll tell it as it was told to me many times over the years. My mom and my aunt, you'll see her in a lot of my stories as H, did everything together. They even worked together. On their days off, they would just get in my mom's car and ride around.

We still do this, by the way. It's one of my favorite things. One particular day, they got several calls on the CB radio, this was back in the 60s, from friends or family they would pass asking them who all they're riding around with. Everyone knew that they never took others on their rides. Of course, it was just the two of them,

They didn't understand why people were getting upset and asking why they would lie about something so insignificant as who was in the car. My dad even called on the CB and got really upset because they didn't ask him to go for their ride. It was a sister thing, and yet they seemed to have some other dude with them. He assumed it was H's boyfriend or something.

So, my great-aunt ended up behind them, really small town in the south, and asked, "'Can you all pull over and come back to my car and help me with something?' Kind of confused but willing to help, they said, "'Of course,' and they did so. When they got back to my great-aunt's car, she said, "'Is something going on? Why don't you want anyone to know that you have someone in your car?'

thinking maybe they were being forced or some such, right? My mom was getting upset at this point, and said, for crying out loud, there's no one in the damned car, look, and turned and pointed, only to see some guy in their back seat. She swore that he wasn't in there before, and that he must have sneaked in when they were getting gas or something, but they didn't see him at all.

They figured he must have been down in the floor or something and hiding. So they radio over to get some guys to come and check it out. This whole time, the guy didn't even fidget. Some big, buff guys, friends and family, came over and figured they would give this guy a what-for for sneaking into the car and went up to pull the dude out. When they got to the car, he wasn't there.

They came back to ask where he went, but looking back at the car, he was still right there. One of the guys actually got into the backseat of the car, where you could plainly see this dude, and nobody was in the car. From outside the car, you could still see both of them in the backseat, but on the inside, it was only him.

Now, growing up and hearing this, I started to think that this has to have grown into the retelling, right? That's purely impossible. So, at different times, I contacted each person that I could, who were involved in this, and they each told me the exact story from their point of view. I can't explain it any more than they could. This only ever happened in their cars. It happened in my aunt's car, too.

and only if it was only one or both of them in the car. This was the first time it happened, but it had happened several times after. The dude could never be seen inside the car, only from the outside. There's another story to this, too. I'll add it if anyone is interested. This one's already too long.

Edited to add, I just talked to my aunt and she said that, occasionally, they could see the guy in their rearview mirror, but not every time. Not even a lot of the time. Usually, they couldn't see him at all inside the car, and she said that he wasn't anyone that they recognized. This story happened about a year later. The person in the backseat was still seen quite frequently in my mom's and aunt's cars,

and they became used to it. As I said, occasionally they could see him in their rearview mirror, but usually he could only be seen from outside the cars. On this occasion, Mom and H were taking a bit longer ride and were, as was usual, listening to their radio pretty loudly and singing along. Their ride had taken them past their paternal grandmother's gravesite. Now, you all need a little bit of background here.

Grandmother S, my great-grandmother, was a bad mamma-jamma. Everyone said she was a witch. In this being the South, anyone even remotely different was called a witch, so pay that no mind. However, this woman was into devil-worship.

She wasn't a Satanist, there's a huge difference. No, she was into animal sacrifice, blood rituals, all things ugly. And trust me, she was not a good person. She detested my granny, the lady who married and had children with her son, because granny wouldn't take any of her crap, and other things that I also won't go into. So, on her deathbed, and this was witnessed by several people, including a doctor...

She swore that she would come back through one of Granny's children or grandchildren, and that she would never allow any of my Granny's progeny to live in peace. Although, I'll mention that my papa, her son, wasn't like her, but his sisters and father were. Is this clear as mud? Anyway, on with the story. On this bright, beautiful day,

The road that Mom and H were on was really twisty, and it was a windy, hilly back road. They knew the roads pretty well. They traveled them quite often, and didn't think anything unusual would happen today. They would be wrong. Laughing and singing, all was hunky-dory until they passed the graveyard. They've always gotten chills passing here, but nothing really ever happened to them before. This day, just as they were going past...

They actually felt like something got in the car with them, suddenly. They got cold on a summer day, the radio suddenly cut out, and they said they smelled what they assumed was roadkill, rotting meat, basically. Then, something weighed them down and held them against the seats. Neither one could move at all. They even had trouble taking a deep breath or saying anything, because the weight on their chest was so heavy.

Then, Mom, she was driving, suddenly felt her foot getting heavier and heavier on the gas pedal. The car was going faster and faster down this winding, twisting road. She couldn't take her foot off the gas. She couldn't move even her other foot to the brake. She couldn't move her hands, not even their heads. Only their eyes could move. The car was going so fast that it was starting to shudder and shake.

However, they were kept on the road. They went around the curve safely, and they didn't have an accident. Mom was able to glance into the rearview mirror and saw that their passenger was with them again. Suddenly, after what felt like ages, the weight was lifted from them both, and they had control of both their body and the car. The cold and the smell was gone, and it was like nothing had ever happened.

Of course, they were terribly shaken, and they had to pull over to get out of the car. They have no idea how they were able to come off that road safely, except to assume that their passenger helped them, somehow. Now, obviously some of you guys are going to call BS, and that's okay. I was raised on this story, and I still find it hard to believe. However, I will say that I have heard this story from each of them more times than I can count.

Neither of them have ever had the slightest change in this story, and to this day, neither of them will even tell me where this road is. I know it isn't too far from where I grew up, obviously, but I can't even tell you for sure what county it's in. No one in the family will even speak her name, and even the ones who once knew where she was buried swear they cannot remember when asked. They shut down any questions immediately,

and any and all records that they had were destroyed and, back then, nothing was kept outside the family. When I was about four or five, we stayed with some of our family in an old house. Because it was so many people, I usually slept with either my mom or my sister, mostly my mom. I always felt uneasy whenever I visited this house, especially at night.

This one night, I was sleeping with my mom, and I heard someone calling out my name. At first, I thought it was my sister or one of my cousins. I got out of the bed, left the room, and went into the hallway. It was always dimly lit at night, in case anyone needed to go to the bathroom. I looked down the hall to the rooms that my sister and cousins were in, but their doors were closed.

I didn't see any lights peeking out from underneath the door, so I knew that they hadn't called me. I heard the voice call my name again, and I immediately turned in the direction of the stairs at the other end of the hall. The voice kept calling my name and telling me they needed my help. I slowly walked down the hall and stopped at the top of the stairs. The hallway light illuminated most of the stairs, except for the bottom two.

So, I couldn't see anything beyond that point, just darkness. The voice called my name again, but the tone shifted slightly. It was a little more friendly and inviting. It said again that it needed my help. I asked it why it needed my help, but it said it would have to show me for me to understand. It begged me to come down the stairs so that it could show me.

I took a step down the stairs, but a voice in my head said that it was a trick, so I yelled down to the voice that it was trying to trick me, and I was going to get my mom. The voice started begging me more to help it, and began to make crying sounds as if it were in pain. I immediately felt bad for it and started taking more steps down the stairs, as the voice continued to plead for my help.

I got halfway down the stairs when a voice screamed loudly in my ear, ''Don't take another step. If you do, it'll take you and you won't be able to come back.'' I stopped, immediately frozen where I was. The voice at the bottom of the steps asked me why I had stopped. It told me to keep coming. I yelled no and told it that I knew it was trying to take me away. As I turned to run up the steps, the voice let out a growl of frustration.

I was only able to go up one step before hands materialized coming up from the steps that I was on and grabbed my ankles and tried to pull me into the solid wooden stairs. I started screaming to be let go and beating the hands with my little fists, but it only pulled me harder. I felt as if it was starting to pull me into the stairs. I started screaming for my mom and begging it to not take me.

All of a sudden, I felt hands around my waist and a force pulling me up and away from the hands. I looked up and I saw a being was with me. It materialized from a somewhat smoky state until it became as solid as me. It was levitating in the air as it reached down and had its arms around me, attempting to pull me up and away from the stairs. I clung to the being as if my life depended on it because...

I knew instinctively that it did. I'm not sure how long this tug of war went on. I just remember that the voice at the bottom of the stairs was growling and it was getting louder with frustration, and I was crying and begging the being not to let it take me. Eventually, the being was able to pull me free from the hands. It lifted me up, but I soon realized it was taking me too far up, like it was going to take me through the ceiling.

I freaked out and started squirming in its arms, begging it to take me to my mom. It started descending and then set me down in the upstairs hallway, outside the room that my mom was in. I bust through the door. I ran to the bed and started shaking my mom awake. I was hysterical. My mom woke up and asked me what was wrong. I tried to explain it to her, but I was crying so hard and shaking that she couldn't understand me.

She told me it must have been a bad dream and tried to comfort me, and she held me until I eventually fell asleep. The next morning, I tried to tell my mom what happened, but she again dismissed it as a bad dream. Maybe it was. The funny thing is that other members of my family mentioned that morning, that in the night-

They either heard what sounded like yelling in the hallway, or they asked if there was a dog in the house because they thought they heard growling downstairs. I've been a trucker for most of my adult life. It's a fulfilling career if you like to be out on the open road, and I chose it for that exact reason. I wanted to see the country. I wanted to drive out in the middle of nowhere and just kind of be by myself.

It can be lonely work, sure, but I think that's why I like it. I've never really been much of a people person. I could probably talk for hours about the psychology of why I like being alone, probably some trauma in my childhood or something, but really, I think I'd rather just tell you about the one time I almost quit being a trucker.

This happened back in the early 2000s. Somewhere around 2003 or 2004, I was in my mid-30s at the time, and I'd been driving a semi for a mid-sized shipping company for around five or so years. Back then, and even now, I was always super careful with how I managed myself when I was working.

I never went over my hours while driving. I always slept when I was supposed to, and I made sure that I was in a good way before I got on the road. I'd seen a few truckers make some major mistakes when they were tired, and I wasn't going to end up one of them. I was also good about my caffeine intake, limiting myself to the mornings so I didn't become too reliant on it.

I never drank or took any substances, and I was always super careful when out on the road. I kept my distance from other cars and just followed the laws. That all said, for some reason, there are people out there that just do not seem to understand that my giant motor vehicle takes a significant amount more distance to stop than your average car.

I'll never understand why people decide they want to cut us off on the highway with almost literally no space or distance between us, or drive in what is obviously a blind spot for our truck. Apologies for rambling a bit in this story, I just want to put it out there that us truckers do our best to control our vehicles, but we do need everyone else to pay a bit more attention and be a bit more cautious when passing or driving around us.

So, this specific event is one that really messed me up, for reasons that will be obvious here pretty soon, but it was also one that made no sense to me. It was early spring here in the US, and I was driving through part of the Midwest which had been particularly dry that winter. When we have dry winters here, the first rains of the spring can be particularly dangerous.

as all the dried oil and grime on the road starts to seep upwards toward the surface. This causes major slick spots, almost like black ice. It had rained that morning before I got on the road, so I knew that I needed to be extra cautious when driving on parts of the highway that only have two lanes. I saddled up, got out onto the road, and I was driving at a good pace.

when I saw a vehicle in my side view with a driver that looked... agitated? I think that's the best way to put it. I saw him only for a moment when I glanced at the mirror. I noted the look on his face and braced myself for the potential of him doing something stupid. Side note, you can tell a lot by the look someone has on their face, and this includes whether or not they're going to be aggressive on the road. It's something I picked up along the way.

So I knew this car was going to be trouble, and my first instinct was to just let him pass me, so I let off the gas a little bit, and I slowed down so he would have enough room to get ahead. I looked over at him as he drove by me, and much to my surprise, this guy is flipping me off and screaming something that I obviously cannot hear. I shake my head and look forward, thinking it's best to just ignore him and move on.

I watch him get slightly ahead of me, but still at a point where the rear end of his van is adjacent to my truck. I thought he was going to pass way too close, but lo and behold, he tries to swerve over into me. As in, he tried to hit me with the back end of his vehicle. I see it in time, and I pull slightly onto the shoulder, thinking, my god, what is this guy's problem? At this point, on this stretch of road...

There really aren't any other vehicles around, it's just me and this guy, so I pull to the right, slow down a bit to let him get ahead of me a few feet, and then pull back onto the road within a few seconds. At this point, he's ahead of me by a couple of car lengths, so I assume he's going to move on and just be an idiot elsewhere. I wish that that was what he did, because instead, he started hitting his brakes and slowing down.

I started doing the same. There was a bit of back and forth between him and I, speeding up and slowing down, to the point where I was actually getting annoyed. Then, that annoyance turned into immediate panic and terror. Instead of just slightly slowing his car down to annoy me, he actually slammed on the brakes of his car.

At this point, I was already back up to a decent speed because I didn't think much was going to happen beyond his little slow down and speed up. I slammed my brakes as best I could, and I attempted to roll to the right to minimize this collision, because that's what was going to happen. It was going to be a collision no matter what I did. As I mentioned earlier though, the road was somewhat slick.

and slamming my brakes, shifting to the side, I ended up clipping his van at an angle that caused it to flip and drag in front of me. I just did everything I could to try to control the situation, and I tried to cause minimal damage. The unfortunate truth was, there was no way for me to minimize the damage. With how we had connected, with the road conditions, and with the fact that I later learned he wasn't wearing a seatbelt...

When the van flipped, he was actually thrown around to the passenger side of the vehicle and then eventually thrown out through the broken windshield of his van. When all was said and done, I was calling the situation in and I thought I was going to black out. I felt like throwing up and crying all at the same time. Part of me had this awful feeling like this crash was fatal. After the police got there and the medics, I talked them through what had happened.

I had a very clunky dash camera that recorded footage for something like 20 minutes at a time. I made sure to stop it so I had the footage. I gave it to the police and my supervisor for their internal investigation, and I was clear to fault for the accident, but I knew deep down in my heart that this was partially my doing. This man had some sort of manic episode or something, because he was acting irrational and crazy.

and this unfortunate situation of timing left him in front of me at that exact moment. I have no idea why he was acting the way he was. I have no idea what was going through his mind when he thought it was a good idea to slam his brakes in front of me like this, but I do know that his death has weighed on my conscience since that day. I've had nightmares reliving the situation. I've lost sleep over the fact that I couldn't prevent it.

And I've been actually seeing a therapist to try to get past it, because it's coming up on the 20th anniversary next year and it still eats at me. I want to end this story with a word of caution to people that drive carelessly out there. Please stop. When you get behind the wheel of your two-ton death machine and drive like an idiot, you're putting everyone around you at risk. And I highly recommend you drop the antics when you're driving around semis.

Because you may feel invincible out on the road, but I can guarantee you that you're not. I used to sell a lot of stuff on Craigslist. It was really the only place to go to sell stuff at the time, other than things like yard sales. I suppose after some time I got too comfortable with it, and I let my guard down some as well. To back it up just a little bit...

I'm a female, weighing about 180 pounds, and I was about 5'5 at the time. So, not small, but not out of shape, and I'd like to think that I could handle myself if I was in danger. I guess that adds to me letting my guard down, though. When I do sell stuff, I always do it in a public place.

Typically in a store, like a coffee shop or bank's parking lot, because there's typically a lot of security there, or really anywhere with a large group of people nearby. Now, my ex had been living with me for a good part of a year before we split up. I told him he had a week to get all of his crap out while I was on vacation.

I had a guy friend that was going to be going over there to feed my cat while I was gone, so I was confident he wouldn't do anything stupid or take any of my stuff. It wasn't an easy breakup. He cheated on me, and we tried to make it work afterwards, but it wasn't the same. So he wasn't disrespectful or anything, thankfully, but I guess you just never really know a person.

Obviously, right? After I got back, I noticed that there were still some random things he left there, like his toothbrush, some of his clothes that he left in the dryer, and his crappy old Xbox that didn't work anymore. He kept saying he was going to fix it, even though he didn't know squats about electronics. Conveniently, though, he took all the games and controllers for it,

and literally just left the unit and the giant power cable. So, I text him asking if he wanted the stuff that he'd left, giving him one last chance to get it. He didn't respond, so I tried two more times and I got an unpleasant response from his new girl, as she claimed and decided then it was my stuff to do as I wanted with. So, I thought I would try to get a little bit of money out of it.

He had a couple sports jerseys he left, a nice pair of shoes that went pretty fast, and then that Xbox. I did specify that it was only the console itself, and that it didn't work so people didn't think I was getting away with some scam. I thought maybe someone out there could actually fix it, or just use it for the parts.

I didn't know a thing about the stuff either, so I just listed it for 50 bucks. It didn't take long for me to get responses for it. Some people, of course, tried to get me to give it to them for free since it didn't work. Others were more concerned about finding out if I was female and asking personal things about me. I did have one guy that didn't come off as weird and seemed pretty straightforward with his questions. He asked if I knew what was wrong with it.

why I wanted to sell it instead of fixing it, just things like that. He even asked me to try to do something with it and tell him what lights came on, so I obliged. After all of this, he then asked me where we could meet up, what day and what time. We were going to meet up at a park next to this church that was about 20 minutes from my home, but pretty close to my work.

The next day, I texted the guy to confirm he was still interested, and he confirmed. I then headed to the park, found a bench, and sat on it with a console in a bag next to me, waiting for the guy to show up. While I'm watching a couple of kids playing on the swings, I see a guy pull up, get out with no kids or dogs with him, and come look around the park like he was looking for something.

I asked if he was Scott, and he smiled and confirmed that he was. I then told him who I was, and motioned to the bag. He was in like a mechanics jumpsuit, and trying to wipe his hands off to shake mine. I wasn't bothered by it, and I mentioned that as well. I pulled out the console and explained that it was just that, and the power cable, and he reached into his wallet and pulled out cash.

He started sorting out the bills and waved a 20 at me, asking if I had change. I will say one thing about cash sales like this. If you agree on a price with someone, make sure you bring the right amount and have the ability to break it yourself because so many times I've had people do this to me, hoping I would just take the lesser amount and that they would get a discount. And honestly, it's quite rude. In my opinion.

I will take my item back home and try with someone else instead of getting ripped off. Anyways, I told him I didn't and he gave me 60 instead, saying it was his fault after all. After asking several times if he was sure, he confirmed and I said thank you and started putting it in my pocket. That's when things started getting weird. He asked me if I was here alone and I confirmed this, but...

As I was trying to make a comment about being in a public place, he chuckled a bit and shook his head. I got a little annoyed by this and just kind of stared at him. He said I should be careful meeting up with strangers because you never know what their intentions are, and said since I was so pretty, I could easily be targeted. I made some kind of comment about how he just completely flipped this experience off,

and that I can take care of myself. I started to get up to leave when he grabbed me by my wrist and said, "See, I could already have you subdued and in my car." He had such an evil smile on his face and right before I was going to shake my arm free, he let go of me. I called him a name, loudly enough that a few parents turned around and looked at us, and I left.

I watched in my mirror as he slowly got up from the bench and waved at me, smiling. Why the hell would you say something like that? It's not helpful, and I don't see how anyone would have found it to be. Thankfully, I never saw him again, but it didn't stop him from texting me a few times, asking if I wanted to meet up for some coffee or lunch. I politely told him to shove off in the nicest way possible,

and blocked his number. So I guess that's just to say, be careful out there who you do business with. Not everyone has the best intentions in mind. We moved into my current house over nine years ago. Right beside our yard is a very old convenience store, coal mining shop. I'm not sure how old it was, but it was built sometime in the 1950s.

The building had burned down before we had even moved in. Now, I've had most of these experiences inside the house. I've seen several shadowy figures in my room. Specifically, the one I've seen the most is a child who looks around the age of five. I've looked into the history of my house and found nothing. However, I've seen and felt multiple things.

I've felt something tap on my shoulder or pull on the bottom of my shirt when I'm home alone. Something has called out my name several times, but one thing that stands out and terrifies me the most is a big black figure with red eyes that I always find in the corner of my room between my bed and desk, and it's always staring at me. To this day, I've only had it say two things to me.

The truth isn't what you think, and don't go into the woods alone. It still doesn't make any sense to me, and it's been about three months since that happened. That didn't stop me from going on the hiking trail that used to be a mining trail that leads to an abandoned mining area behind my house with my sister, who was fourteen.

However, my sister went into the woods alone one day on the hiking trail, and she was gone longer than usual, so I started texting her a bit, worried. After a bit, I decided to go look for her, texting my dad telling him I was joining her on the hiking trail, not to alarm him, thinking that she was just chilling out by her sitting spot.

As I was walking down the trail past the small wooden bridge, I noticed at the other end of the road, beside the trail, was that same black figure that stood next to my bed. I then hear my sister yelling for me from behind. I turned to her and then turned back, but the figure was gone. She asked why I was out at the bridge, and I answered with, ''I was looking for you. You weren't answering your phone, so I got worried.''

She looked at me and said, ''I was going to head to my usual spot, but once I got across the bridge to the deer hunting trail, I saw some guy walking down it. I couldn't recognize him, though. I looked at her in shock and explained what I had just seen. We both decided to head back home for the day, still spooked. It's been a while since that encounter, but I have no doubt that what we saw that day was not normal.''

When I was a teenager, I used to work at a locally owned sandwich shop that was pretty well known by the local people, but is now dead and gone thanks to the owner basically just abandoning it. I actually worked there when they decided to give up on the shop, and this was a nightmare in and of itself, but the event that I wanted to submit doesn't have anything to do with that.

The story that I wanted to send to you is actually one that took place about a year and a half after I started working there. The sandwich shop that I worked at was small, and there weren't a lot of employees. I think that there was just the four of us and the two managers. The shop had a bad habit of following behind other, larger sandwich chains. When Subway started doing salads, they decided that we needed to do salads too.

When other sandwich chains started doing toasted sandwiches, they bought a small conveyor oven for us to use to toast sandwiches if the customers wanted it. They actually spent a lot of money redoing the menu and options and buying new hardware for the store every single time there was a new thing that the other places were doing. It was honestly the most annoying thing that I've ever dealt with in a job.

Anyways, there was one night that I was working the line with another person, and it was just the two of us until closing time when the general manager would be coming in to count down the register. The two of us that were working there were both pretty young. I was a 17-year-old guy and my coworker was a 19-year-old girl, so we weren't exactly the most threatening employees there.

While we were working, making the food for the customers and cleaning up where we could, I noticed that there was a guy that was pacing around in the parking lot and looking at people's cars. I mentioned this to my coworker, but she basically said that he hadn't really done anything illegal, so we should just ignore him and he would probably go away. I shrugged and just kept on sweeping, assuming that she was right.

and that I should just do what she told me since she was my senior. About ten minutes or so later, I looked up from sweeping and noticed that the man was now staring into the restaurant, with his hands cupped around his eyes and his face against the glass. I kind of just waved at him like, "Uh, hi," and went back to sweeping. Then, I heard the doorbell going off and noticed that he had walked into the store.

I hadn't paid a whole lot of attention to him until this point, and I noticed that he was pretty messy. I don't mean like he was just dirty. I mean he looked literally messy. His hair was tangled and all over the place. His beard looked like it had something in it. His face was dark with dirt or something. He just looked messy. My assumption was that he may have been homeless,

and I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I leaned the broom over and hopped back behind the counter, and then asked him how I could help him. He just kind of stared at me with the look like he was crazy. Bulging eyes, nose flared, mouth in a frown, just seriously crazy. After a few moments, I asked him if he was okay, and if I could help him with something, and he responds with, "...what do you have?"

I start going over the menu, telling him the option for the meats, the bread, the cheese, basically just throwing all the information that I could at him about the menu. He just stares at me as I'm listing all the options, and then he tells me to stop talking because I was being too loud. I stopped and just kind of looked around like, okay. After a few moments, he leans in and asks me if I'm alone.

For some dumb reason, I responded with, "No, my manager's in the back. Would you like me to get her?" And he just kind of laughed. And then he started walking towards the door. Or at least I thought he was walking towards the door. He stepped toward the exit and kind of glanced in both directions, and then turned back towards me. He pulled out this big-ass hunting knife from his pocket and started back behind the counter.

He then starts shouting at me, but I couldn't tell you what the hell he was saying. He wasn't screaming about wanting money. He wasn't telling me to do anything. He was just incoherently screaming as loud as he could while waving the knife in my direction. I put my hands up and told him that he could have whatever it was that he wanted, that I was not going to stop him.

I stood back against the wall and just motioned for the station, and then looked back and saw my manager standing in the back watching this play out. I didn't expect her to do anything more, honestly. She was smaller than I was, even though she was two years older, and I wasn't expecting her to risk her life. To my surprise, this guy literally starts making a sandwich after screeching at me.

He grabs the bread from the cabinet and rips it open, then he starts piling as much into it as he could. He then shoves it on the metal plate and then shoves that into the toaster, and he walks around to the other side and just stares at it as it's going through. When I say he was staring, he was fixated on this sandwich as it was going through the oven.

It took around 2 or 3 minutes to get through, and his face was up to the exit just watching it go. This whole time, the two of us are just standing there staring at him make his own food. I think we were both trying to figure out what the hell was going on in this situation. After a few minutes of him watching it toast, he literally reaches his hand into the oven and grabs his sandwich. What was terrifying about that was

He didn't even flinch. That thing was something like 200 degrees Fahrenheit, so there's no way he did not burn his hand. He literally grabbed his sandwich, pulled it from the oven, and started shoving it into his mouth right then and there. He was eating the scorching hot sandwich, and then he just turned and left.

Obviously, we called the cops to report the event, and we had to give them the security footage, and then we called the manager and owner to come up so we could close the store. Honestly, it was weird as hell, and I have no idea why this guy went about things this way. If he had told me that he didn't have the money to buy anything, I would have probably just made him a sandwich for free, but he decided that he wanted to go about it the crazy way.

I don't know if the cops ever caught the guy or if he got away, but I never saw him again. While it was a scary situation, part of me does hope that he didn't burn his hands or mouth too bad with that sandwich, mostly because I know that that must have hurt. This was honestly the most messed up situation that we ever dealt with, though not the only creepy one. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Because I know that, had he not just been hungry, this all could have gone much, much worse. I'm not sure if this event involved aliens, or ghosts, or something else entirely, but I still remember this event quite vividly, and I'm not sure how to explain it. I'm a skeptic, but open-minded to consider possibilities outside the realms of science to explain this.

since I can't think of any scientific explanation myself. This event happened roughly 8 years ago. I was approximately 7 or 8 at the time. My parents had been fighting and my dad was kicked out of the house. I'd been sent to bed. I slept in my parents' room facing the window which had a gap between the set of blinds.

The blinds were white, and any insect or bug that climbed up the window outside would have its silhouette reflected on the blinds. There was a tapping coming from the window, and my dad appeared from the neck up through the gap in the blinds outside said window. I could see a small bit of the shirt he'd been wearing earlier, though. Problem with this is, the bedroom window was on the second story.

The only thing below it was plants from the garden. There were no footholds or trees or anything like that. It could have enabled my dad to climb up to that spot. He started talking to me, making gestures to go along with his words. Think speaking to a small child and doing actions to go along with your words so they understand better. He told me not to let my mom know he was there and that he was going to sleep in the garage. Problem with this is...

My dad wasn't speaking aloud. It was more like his voice was talking very clearly in my mind. I'm also mostly deaf, 35% hearing, so there's no way I would have heard him so clearly, especially not through a window with cars driving down the street. The last thing I remember of him speaking to me was him making an action of going to sleep and telling me to close my eyes.

I closed my eyes only partially, leaving them open enough to witness my dad scuttle onto the rooftop with just his arms, like some strange animal. I vividly remember that his body ended at the torso, watching his silhouette behind the blinds as he moved. My dad certainly had legs, and certainly didn't move like whatever this thing was.

I immediately rushed to the living room and told my mom that my dad had been outside my window and climbed onto the roof. She went outside with the flashlight to check and found no evidence of anybody there. No footprints, no disturbances of the dirt or plants in the garden, and no marks on the window and nothing in the garage.

My dad came back to the house the next morning and seemed utterly confused when I asked him why he was outside my window the night before. He showed me and my mom proof that he'd been at a hotel all night. I believe the proof was a calling card with the name and phone number of the hotel. I don't recall exactly, but it was definitely something to do with the hotel. I still insisted that there had been someone outside the window, so...

My mom and dad both went to check that morning and still found nothing, and told me to stop making up stories. I've thought about this a few times over the years, and I still can't find a plausible conclusion for what I encountered. The one thing I know for sure is that I was not asleep nor hallucinating. I've never experienced hallucinations or dreams like this in my life. It was far too real for me to have been sleeping.

Anybody able to shed any light on how to explain this? I did not have the greatest life in my twenties and part of my thirties. After high school, my parents forced me into going into college. The problem with that though was I had no interest in college, nor did I have even the slightest clue of what I wanted to major in or what interested me. Their solution was to force me into what my dad did.

which was electrical engineering. Needless to say, I couldn't grasp it. I struggled through it, and since I wasn't getting the grades they wanted, they threatened to stop paying for it, and shortly after, they followed through. I was hardly making enough money to pay rent because, of course, I couldn't live with them, so there's no way I could afford tuition, so I dropped out. Things only got worse from there.

I lost my job, couldn't find another, and I couldn't pay for rent anymore, so I started couch hopping between the few friends that I had. It was not the place to be. I hated it, and it caused severe depression. Not having money to do things yourself, not being able to support yourself, and being a third wheel really dug at me, so I had to make a change.

One of my friends that I stayed with was becoming, and even then became, a diesel mechanic, so he got me a job with him. I wasn't a mechanic, but I was basically their assistant. I would get the tools, fluids, sweep things, just stuff like that. However, over time, I found myself interested in the rigs, so I watched the mechanics, I got to know the drivers, and even went on a few rides with them.

It was honestly great. It was the most fun that I'd had in a long time. This caused me to get my license for driving, and eventually, I became a trucker myself, and I love it. Sorry for the long intro here, but I wanted to explain my background some to better understand the reason for my decisions. Because of this, I've become a very forgiving and giving person. I hate saying people down on their luck, because I've been there.

So, I always try to help where I can, and that includes picking up people that need a ride, helping people on the side of the road, things like that. It has definitely gotten me in trouble before, but I have a few here that I will always remember. I was about midway to my destination when I stopped at a little diner to eat. I noticed there was a younger looking girl in one of the booths near the back. She looked...rough.

Her hair was a mess, like it hadn't been brushed, she was wearing an old hoodie that looked dirty and had holes in it, and the hood looked like it was almost torn off. The only thing she had in front of her was a glass of water and lemons, and had asked the waitress about sides she could get instead of a whole meal. That is the kind of thing that just hurts me to see. She'd obviously been through something, and I felt the need to reach out.

I noticed that she had a sight of grits, so I asked the waitress to order a stew for her. When she brought it to her, she pointed to me and the girl started crying. She grabbed her meal, and she came and sat with me to finish it, and she thanked me. We talked for a while, and I learned that she was trying to start her life over. She reminded me of myself back then, which made me want to help more.

I asked her where she was heading and she wanted to go further west, because she had friends there that could help her. That happened to be where I was heading, so I offered to take her as far as I could. This seemed to cheer her up, so after finishing our meals, we headed back to my truck, where I gave her an extra bottle of water, some protein bars, and an extra coat I had, just in case. We got settled in and we headed out. The ride started out fine.

We had some small talk about what we liked, I told her a bit about my past, and I told her that I understood her thought process, and I thought that she did the right thing, if it made her happier of course. She looked at me squinting like she was confused or suspicious at first, and said, "Why would you say that?" I was confused, but I just mentioned what she had told me earlier, and said that she deserved to be happy.

She then seemed to question me and asked if I knew her or her parents, or if I was sent by them. I tried explaining to her that I had no idea who she was past what she's told me, and that I definitely did not know her family. She then got quiet, and when I looked over at her, she looked like she was about to cry. Something was definitely wrong here, but I didn't know what to do or say.

After a few seconds of silence, I tried apologizing, saying that I didn't mean to worry her or upset her, just that I was happy that she was finding happiness too. That's when she started bawling. I let her get it out as I drove in silence, and then she seemed to start having a conversation with herself, and the talking seemed to be in slightly different tones, like one was calming while the other seemed angry.

This is what I remember, but it's probably not verbatim since it's been a few years. He's just being nice. He gave you stuff without asking for anything in return. But wait till he gets there and demands repayment. He wouldn't do that. He's different. I can tell. Oh, bullshit. That's what you said about Bob. The minute he arrives, he'll ask you for a favor or turn your ass in in a heartbeat. No, he wouldn't. He doesn't know what happened. Oh, yes, he does. I can tell.

Now, I first thought that she was talking to me, but when she didn't respond to me saying, sorry, and just continued on, I didn't know what else to do but let it play out. So I did. After this went on for a few, she cupped her ears and yelled, stop, scaring me. So I pulled over and asked if she was okay, and if she needed to go to the hospital or something, and she said no.

I tried comforting her to say that I was just doing this to be nice. I didn't want anything in return, and I put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her, without being too hands-on. What I didn't notice was that this girl had a knife on her, and it was now being pointed at me. I put my hands up again, trying to calm her down as she continued to talk at me, I suppose.

She started saying things like, "I told you not to mess with me anymore, didn't I? This is your fault. You deserved what you got. If you would have just let me leave, we would both still be here." So now, I was a bit worried for my safety. If it came down to it, I could probably have subdued her, but there was definitely something wrong here, and I feel like that wouldn't have helped the situation. I just sat quiet until she leaned back on her side of the seat,

and I watched as she put the knife back in her pocket. I told her again that, really, I didn't want anything from her, and said that I just wanted to keep us both safe, and that I would take her anywhere she needed to go. She then told me to just drive, so that's what I did. I headed back onto the road and turned on some music to try and ease the tension and silence. After a while, she asked me if I knew the nearest hospital.

I told her I could find one, and started making my way towards one. I am glad to help people, but I was so relieved when we found a hospital, and she asked me to go there. As I was pulling in, I just started saying my farewells, and I was glad to help, when she interrupted me and said, He's dead. I didn't know how else to respond, but I think I just said, Oh? Or what?

She then explained, It's okay though. He can't hurt us anymore. Then she smiled, grabbed her backpack, and shook my hand as she walked into the hospital. I didn't even get her name. I don't know what she meant by that, who was dead, and any more of her story. I don't even know where she came from, so I couldn't really look up anything on her, but if what she said holds any truth...

I hope that she got the help she needed, and I'm glad that she at least trusted someone to help her out. Another event that I found myself in was thankfully avoided before it could have been much worse. I drive through a lot of highways, especially late at night or early mornings when it's pretty empty, so when I see stranded people on the sides with their cars broken down, I'll try to help where I can.

This time, I had one of those half-sized trailers, so it was a lot smaller than usual and easier to stop. I don't remember what state I was in, but I do remember that it was southern, and it was hot. Ungodly hot. I saw a car that was on the side of the road with a guy walking back and forth behind it. I saw him far enough away to slow down and pull over in front of him.

That's when he ran up to my side and said that the car seemed to be overheating, and he asked if I had any water they could use in sub of antifreeze until they got back to town. I hadn't seen another car in quite some time, so I was probably lucky to catch them, and I agreed to help. I got out of my truck and started walking over when I noticed a woman in the front seat holding a small baby.

Again, really getting into my feelings since my wife had just had our first kid that year, I wanted to help. I looked under the hood and noticed that the engine was still extremely hot. He said he'd been there for a while waiting for someone to come help, but said that they were a few hours out. I figured it should have been cooled off by now, but I chalked it up to maybe it being because they were still in the sun.

I started opening the reservoir to put the water in when I noticed it was full. You could see the liquid in there. At this point, the guy was over on the side by the woman, talking to her very quietly, almost in a whisper. Me, being naive though, I just told them it looked like their reservoir was full and mentioned that it might have been another problem, and I asked if any of their lights came on. He then took a minute to respond.

and told me the keys were in the ignition if I wanted to check. I thought it was awkward at first when the lady was still sitting in the car with the baby, but I went around and I got in. As I tried to start it, I noticed it actually wasn't turning over, something completely different from an antifreeze issue. I looked over at him and I noticed that, while he had a very serious look on his face, she looked nervous.

I told them my thoughts and headed back to the hood to see if I could test my theory. That's when I noticed movement in my peripheral vision. Next to the shoulder was the railing, but then it went straight up to a grassy hill with trees. At first, I thought I was seeing the trees swaying, but trees don't have arms and carry weapons. I figured out what was going on here. I told them I knew what the problem was and was going to grab something from my truck.

I started quickly walking back when I noticed another guy walking out from the trees, carrying a damn machete towards my truck. I quickly locked my doors and started my truck as the guy started banging on my window, demanding that I get out. I took off as quickly as I could and watched as two other guys came out from behind the trees. I later learned that this is actually a common tactic on the highway.

They get someone to stop, rob them for everything they have, and then leave, thankfully. I noticed before it was too late, but I'm still mad at myself for even falling for it. I do still try to help people where I can, but now with a wife and two kids at home, I'm a lot more cautious about how close I get to people. So just remember, not all truckers are these weird tough guys.

Some of us just want to help and then get home safe, but also don't be as gullible and open as I was, and just be careful out there. I have a short but kind of creepy story that happened to me a while back when I worked as a waitress at a bar and grill. It's probably not the scariest thing, but it was definitely creepy to me, and I'm glad that it ended how it did, so...

Like I mentioned, I was a waitress for a restaurant that most people are aware of, and have probably been to. I don't know if I should say the name of it, so I won't say it by the name. I've worked there for several years at this point, and I even worked through COVID, so I've seen my share of weird stuff, but this specific situation was one that genuinely freaked me out.

This happened around the time when restaurants started opening back up after the pandemic, so business was pretty slow, with the exception of to-go orders. I'd been assigned a few tables and was one of two people that were working as waitstaff that day. Most of the day I was just cleaning up the store and helping out the to-go section. I was in the middle of bagging an order when the greeter came over to me and mentioned that I had a seat that I needed to take care of.

I thanked her, and walked over to the table, only to be surprised by who it was. It was actually one of my high school math teachers. I happily said hi to him and asked him how he was, and he seemed to be just as happy and excited to see me. I thought it was kind of neat seeing a teacher after having been out of high school for like seven years, so I was getting pretty friendly with my conversation with him.

Telling him how I've been doing, how I've managed for the past few years, and all that. He then asked me if I was still with James, who was my boyfriend through the entirety of high school. I told him that I wasn't, that he had moved away from the state for school, and that we just decided to go our separate directions. He frowned and said, "'Aw, that's sad. But it's good to know you're doing okay. Are you single, or are you seeing anyone?'

Which, to me, was a bit odd, but at the same time, he had just asked about my ex, so it also made sense as to why he would ask. I told him that I was single at the moment, and just enjoying my time to myself. He laughed and followed that up with, "'You'll find someone. You know, I always thought you were pretty attractive while you were in my class. I'm surprised that you didn't have the guys all over you, to be honest.'

which was not something I expected to hear from him, especially considering the fact that, while I was in his class, I was a minor. I just kind of smiled and said thanks, thinking maybe I misinterpreted what he meant, and then shifted the attention to asking what I could get for him. He asked for a glass of water and then mentioned that he was going to need a bit to decide what he wanted. I said okay, and then went off to get him his water.

I put it on the table and then told him that I would be right back in a few moments to get his order or to answer any questions. As I walked away from the table, I realized that I needed to use the restroom really quick. I went in and got in the stall to do my business. While I was there, I heard someone else walk into the restroom and walk past my stall and into the stall on the end. I then finished what I was doing and I went to wash my hands.

and as soon as I exited the stall, I heard the door open. It was my general manager. She stood in the doorway and told me that she needed to see me in her office for a moment. I told her that I would be right there as soon as I washed my hands, and she told me that I could just wash my hands in the back, and that it was urgent that I came with her right then. Obviously, I was a bit taken aback, honestly thinking I was about to get fired, so...

I told her okay and just immediately went right with her. As soon as we got back to the kitchen area, the manager asked me if I hadn't noticed what was going on. I told her that I didn't know what she was talking about, and then I asked if I did something wrong. She then tells me that, a few moments after I walked into the restroom, she watched the customer that I had been chatting with walk back and go straight into the women's restroom.

She said that she was a bit concerned, so she wanted to check on me, and then when she opened the door, she saw his feet under the back stall door. Like, he was just standing there at the door of the stall and waiting, which is why she was telling me to just come with her. Obviously, I was a bit freaked out. What the hell was he doing following me into the restroom? And worse, what were his intentions?

After talking through it, she said that she would go ask him to leave so that I didn't have to, and we both went to where the back met the front, and sure enough, he was already gone. She went to check the restroom, and he wasn't there either. We both assumed that he realized he was caught and then left out the side door in a panic. This whole situation really scared me.

His statement was a bit creepy, but I would have never expected him to follow me into the restroom, nor would I have ever expected him to be such a creep. I'm beyond thankful that my manager was paying attention and saw him follow me, because had she not, I can only imagine what he could, or would, have done to me.

I have a creepy story that took place on my 20th birthday back in 2017. Back then, I was a bit down on my luck, so on my birthday, my cousin, Sasha, called me and told me that she was going to take me out to eat a nice lunch for my birthday, and I was not going to turn that down. Sasha was my best friend growing up, so I loved spending time with her.

and since she and I had grown apart, I was more than happy to go with her. She had offered to take me to a really nice Italian place, but I'm also the kind of person who doesn't want people to spend too much money on me, so I suggested a smaller Mexican food place that I had been to once or twice. We got there, and they weren't super busy.

In fact, it was the middle of the day on a Tuesday, so the restaurant was pretty much empty, with only a few tables being occupied. We got seated, and we sat there for a while before someone came over and asked us if we had been served yet. The person looked like a manager based on how they were dressed, and we mentioned to him that no one had come over to take our order or anything like that, and said that he would take our drink orders right then.

He also said that someone else would be right with us to take care of us right away. We told him what we wanted to drink, and he walked away toward the back of the restaurant. After about three or so more minutes, a second man walked out from the back with two glasses of tea and slammed them down on the table in front of us.

He literally slammed them down onto the table, to the point that mine spilled over and made a small mess on the table. I jumped and made a bit of a shocked sound, like, oh, and he just stared at me for a moment, and then walked away back to the back of the restaurant. I sat there for a few moments, kind of like, what the hell is his problem? But I shrugged it off and cleaned up the mess with my napkin.

We just sat there drinking our tea for a few more minutes, talking about nothing in particular. We got through our drinks and then just kind of sat there confused for around 20 more minutes. At this point, I actually apologized to Sasha for recommending this place, as the service was obviously terrible today. She asked me if I had ever had any of these issues here, and I told her no.

that both times i had been here it was a great place by the time we hit a half hour since we had gotten our tea i decided to wave down another person that worked there and i asked them for the manager they said they would get him and walked to the back while we were there waiting for him zasha said that if i wanted we could still go to the italian place and i said that that sounded like a good idea

When the manager got to our table, he asked if we were still having issues, and I mentioned that, by that point, we'd been sitting there for over 40 minutes, and I would appreciate it if we could just get the check for the drinks and go.

The manager apologized to us several times, he said there would be no charge for the tease, and then asked if he could make it up to us with a gift card or something, because this was obviously not the type of service he wanted us to have. I said that was fine, and he went through with getting me the gift card, and then told us to have a nice day. He then immediately walked back to the back, and his face looked angry as hell, to be honest."

Like, he walked to the back with a purpose. We went to leave, and within a few moments of us getting out the front door, I heard the door to the restaurant slam open loudly, and somebody shouting. I turned to look at what was going on, and I saw the man that had dropped our drinks on the table, walking toward us aggressively and flinging his arms as he screamed at us. To put it PG lightly...

He was shouting, "You stupid bees got me fired! What the F is wrong with you, you stupid stuck-up-" Yeah, I was pretty pissed off already about this whole thing, so I just turned around and said that it was his fault that he decided to not do his job. As soon as I said this, the man pulled a kitchen knife from out of his apron and started sprinting at us.

I told Sasha to run, and we made a mad dash to the car and jumped in, and shut and locked the doors immediately. After a few seconds, he got to the car and was slamming his hand on my window, screaming that he was going to kill us for ruining his life. I'm sitting there watching this guy slam his fist against the glass and screaming, while holding this large knife in his other hand.

After banging on the window and trying to pull the door open, he started looking down and reaching towards the tire with the knife, and I told Sasha to gun it. His safety be damned. She did. She threw it in reverse and slammed on the pedal, knocking this guy to the ground, and then drove out of the parking lot as quickly as she could. After getting a few blocks away, she pulled over and asked me what we should do.

If we should call the cops, go back, talk to the manager, go make sure that she didn't kill the guy with her car or something. I told her to call the cops and tell them what happened, and I said that I would call the restaurant to see if they needed us to come make a statement. She called 911, and I called the restaurant and talked with the manager. He said that he had already called the cops and that they were actually getting there now.

He asked if we were okay, and I told him that, other than being scared out of our minds, we were fine. Sasha then looked over at me and told me that the police wanted us to come back so we could give them their statement. So, we turned around and headed back to the restaurant. When we pulled up, the guy was already in handcuffs, and the manager met us alongside the police. We talked to the cops about what happened, and the manager corroborated the whole thing.

telling the officers that he had fired the waiter because of the service, and that he then ran out of the kitchen with a knife and said he was going to make us regret it. From what I can tell, it seems like he was just in a bad mood and snapped, though I don't know if that really justifies the situation. I've had bad days and I didn't want to deal with people, but I've never grabbed a knife and decided to chase them saying I was going to kill them.

Thankfully, nothing more happened, and he was hauled off by the cops. I never went back to that restaurant, and I think I actually still have that gift card in my wallet, though I don't think it'll ever get spent. These events happened in the winter of 1998. They're my first and only experience of this kind. We were driving, returning from a thousand kilometer, six hundred miles, trip.

Our plan was to stop halfway, have dinner, and find a place to stay. We left rather late, and it being winter, it was getting dark and cold. There wasn't much visibility as it was foggy. We decided to stop at this small town with no more than a thousand inhabitants. The few motels were booked out, and we had to keep driving.

However, just out of town was this mid-19th century two-story Victorian-style house. It converted to a B&B, and it had a vacancy sign outside. We parked in the driveway and made some inquiries. We were greeted by a short man in his mid-forties, wearing reading glasses and what seemed like a wig. I imagined he would be the owner.

"'How can I help you?' "'Please, come in as it's getting cold. We have the fireplace on,' he said. "'We're after a room for the night, and some dinner. Do you have any rooms available, and how much for a night? The house has five rooms, all vacant tonight, and each costs $200 a night, including breakfast.' I looked at my girlfriend. Our budget was $40 for a motel room, and $200 was just way too much.'

"'even though it was probably worth it, "'since the decoration and furniture were done to the period, "'and the house did have a romantic feeling. "'Sorry, this is above our budget. "'We'll have to find somewhere else,' I replied. "'I understand. "'Just for you to consider, "'we do have a small three-bedroom cottage next door. "'It used to be the caretaker's, and it's empty tonight. "'You can have it all to yourselves, and we can make it $90.'

We accepted his offer since driving any further could be dangerous. We were shown this weatherboard cottage which had a small veranda at the front. Upon entering, there was a large corridor with the main bedroom on your left and the other bedrooms on the right, a small lounge room in the middle of the house, followed by a kitchen and a large bathroom at the back. The man lit the fireplace, showed around, and said goodnight.

For dinner, we ate some leftover sandwiches and fruit that we had and went to bed. We couldn't find any blankets, which was odd given the temperature outside was below freezing. At night, I woke up and decided to go to the toilet. As I opened this door, I saw this 5 foot woman, early 50s, wearing an old style long black dress, dark haired, pulled up, staring right at me.

I was weary and I somehow knew that it was a ghost. I jumped, went back to the bedroom, closed the door and woke up my girlfriend and told her that I saw a ghost. We both covered ourselves and our heads under the duna and interestingly went back to sleep right away. Around 6.30am, we woke up, had a shower, packed up our things and went to the main house. The man greeted us.

"'Are you ready for breakfast?' "'But before, if you're interested, I can give you a tour of the house.' Since he was almost blocking the way to the dining room and his arms were showing the stairs, we ended up seeing the whole house. It was creepy. After breakfast, we paid and then left. "'Geez, that man was strange. Didn't you find him strange?' I said to my girlfriend. "'Which man are you talking about?' She replied. "'The owner. Who else?'

I never saw any man, and the owner was a woman. She described the woman, and she had nothing to say about the man. It was better to forget this whole episode, we concluded, to never mention this to any of our friends as they would just think we were crazy, and we then laughed it off. Around 2016, I remembered the story and did a Google search, and I found the B&B.

To my surprise, in the "About Us" section, there was a picture of the original owners, a middle-aged couple, and the woman was the owner, wearing the same dress and with the same hairdo, exactly like I saw her. It gave me goosebumps. This is a true story. I know many people say that, but this is from my own personal experience, and everything I'm about to say is true.

My mom, grandma, and I moved into this house when I was in fourth grade. It's not a nice house in a nice area. The outside brick is green in places, the base of the house is crumbling away and rotten, inside there was mold, and the roof leaked in places. The thing that I didn't like the most was how I felt when I was standing outside, like I was being watched.

What happened next is a long list of events that I will never forget as long as I live. It was during the day. I was sitting in bed after school pretending to do homework as I watched cartoons on the TV. I remember I was watching Cyberchase. At this time, I had a small flat screen. How my room was set up, my bed was under my large window...

and my TV was across from my bed, facing my window. Suddenly, my TV started flickering weird broken visuals, and then shut off completely, and as I was going to stand up to investigate what had happened, I noticed a reflection in the now blank screen. It was a shape, behind me in the window.

My home is a one-story, so I immediately froze, fearing someone was watching me in my backyard. The figure wasn't very tall. It only stood at about half of my window. I couldn't make out any features. My thin curtain was hiding them away from me, but I knew from where they were standing that they could see me very clearly.

I was mid-standing, so my body was at a weird angle as I stood frozen, staring at the shape in my window, unmoving. I don't know how long I stood there, but it was enough time to make my legs start to ache. Finally, the figure turned to their side and walked away. I felt like I'd lost all the blood in my face.

I still stood there for a few more minutes before getting the courage to crawl on my bed and look out the window. Thankfully, I didn't see anything back there, but ever since that day, I got paranoid, obsessing over wondering if I'll see the shape in my window again. Then, that fear seeped into my dreams. It wasn't every night, but at least once a month, I would have a dream about lying in my bed at night,

and when I looked out my window, I would see a shadowy shape in my window. The first time I had that dream, I froze. I couldn't move or do anything out of fear, but eventually, when I had that dream, I would get up on my knees on the bed, and the shape outside would follow me so that it was facing me at eye level from through my thin curtain. Then, I got brave enough to quickly open the curtain, but nothing would be there.

Suddenly, it would be daytime in my dream, and everything was okay. Then I would wake up the next morning exhausted. Then, things started happening when I was awake again. When I was about 13, the tapping started. Three slow and steady taps at my window, and then three more taps. I tried to shrug it off as some branch tapping on my window in the wind, but it didn't work.

A few days after it started, when I was jumping on my trampoline in the backyard, I stared at my window. I was wondering if what I experienced so far was real, or if I was just crazy. Then, I realized that there was no bush or trees near my window. There was absolutely nothing that could have been tapping on my window. I felt fear take me over, feeling like I was suddenly being watched.

I hopped off my trampoline and ran inside. That night, the tapping came back. This time, rather than nails tapping on the window, it sounded like someone's knuckle rapping on the glass. At this point, I had kind of gotten used to it. Whether the being on the other side of the window was real or imaginary, this time, like in my dream, I got up on my knees on my bed facing the window.

unsure if the being outside had moved with me to be eye-level from outside like in my dream. I slowly pulled the curtain to the side. I gazed out into the black void of the night. The nightlight that I had illuminating me in my room prevented me from seeing anything beyond the window. I have no idea if there was someone staring back at me, and my heart started pounding.

but I didn't want to show that I was afraid, so I stayed there, staring. The tapping had stopped as I stared out the window, and eventually I decided I had stared enough and closed my curtain back and then laid down in bed, somehow finding the will to fall asleep. The tapping would continue for years, but I had learned to just ignore it since that night. Then, something new started. One night during the tapping...

I swear that I heard the click of a camera. I tried to shrug it off, but nearly every day I would start to hear the camera go off just beyond the wall. It started to scare me. Had the being started to take pictures? Was there even anything there? And then, I saw a flash as I was looking out the window, the fear apparent on my face, and then at the same time I heard the click of that camera.

I tried to act calm as I got out of bed, walking out of the room and closing the door. It was early enough that my mom was still awake, and she didn't question when I came into her room wanting to hang out. I still hadn't ever spoken about this to anyone. After that, it was another couple of years before anything else happened, but I started noticing a buzzing sound. It started happening at the same time every day. Around 3 p.m.,

It was a loud buzzing. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from for the life of me. My uncle was living with us at this time, and he liked to take his phone calls out in the backyard for privacy reasons. One day, he busts into the house after taking a call outside and told me and my mom that he saw a drone hovering outside my window. My heart dropped.

That proved that something was real, a tangible... Someone else had seen something. And that made the past year's memories feel validated. The visitor had upped their game. My mom did nothing about it, and neither did I. What could we do? The police wouldn't do anything because no crime had technically been committed. That could be proven. So I just continued to hear the buzzing outside of my window...

One day it stopped though, and again, for a while, I was without another peep. But of course this thing doesn't want to give up. I finally decided to get a desk, needing one for college work, so I got a tall one that had a lot of storage. I had moved my bed out from under my window, now placing it against an adjoining wall, and placing my desk in front of the window.

One day, I came home to everything in its place, except for two things. I searched for my favorite shirt for a while, but I couldn't find it. Figuring it was just somehow somewhere that I couldn't find, I went to grab socks out of my sock bucket, which was just a plastic bin of socks haphazardly thrown in, but what I found wasn't just crumpled socks.

On top of my socks was a single sock neatly placed over mine. It was a black sock with grey toes and heel, and all of my socks were short and only black. I grabbed it. I asked my mom and grandma if it was theirs, but I knew they both only wore white socks. It was scary imagining that someone came into my room to not only steal my clothing, but then leave something behind, like a creepy gift.

I decided to just throw it away. The way my desk is sat, a sliver of the window peeks out at the right side, directly looking over my bed. My window opens right to left, and sadly has no lock on it. So, as I laid in bed, I would stare at that sliver, just waiting for something to happen. But it never did. At least not when I was looking. One day, after I'd calmed down and stopped staring at my window...

I looked over and noticed that my curtain was open. For some reason, I wasn't scared. It was during the day, so I could see that there was nothing there, but I knew that someone had opened my curtain from outside. The corner of my room was hard to get to. You'd have to climb over my bed to get to it, and I know it wasn't my mom or my grandma, and it definitely wasn't me, but I left it open for a couple of months, wondering if anything would happen.

but never did. I could still feel eyes on me at night, and then one day I looked over, and my curtain was closed. And since then, nothing has happened. But I still wait for the tapping some nights. To this day, I have no idea who the figure was outside my window, or if they'll return. I used to work at an old restaurant way back in the 90s that was definitely in a really old building.

Though it was pretty well kept up. That said, I will 100% say that the building was incredibly haunted by a spirit of some sort. Closing was always the worst, because we would always clean and clear out the front of the store first, and then we would be finishing up in the back. When the front was clean and good to go, we would shut off the lights and lock the doors, and all move to the back to clean up the kitchen and the back room.

There were an uncountable number of times that people would ask if we had finished out the front, because the lights would kick back on. We would all be in the back, someone would go to the midsection of the restaurant and the lights would be turned back on, and no one would know how. On top of that, we would frequently hear voices coming from the dining room. I heard people talking all the time, but the creepiest time was when we were all in the back and wrapping up,

and I heard someone in the front yell, ''Where the F is everyone?'' At first I freaked out, thinking that we had left the front door unlocked, and maybe someone had made their way into the building, thinking we were still open, despite the lights being off. I walked out to the front to tell the gentleman that we were closed, and to apologize that we couldn't serve him, but there was no one there.

I walked out from behind the counter and looked into the dining room, I checked the restrooms, and then I went and checked the door. It was completely locked. I asked the manager to check the cameras and see if there was someone in the building because we had heard a person shouting, but there was no one on the camera, at all, until I walked out from the back. This was pretty common. We would hear people talking, check the front, but there was never anything on the cameras.

and there was never anyone in the building. One night, I was the closing manager, and I had to spend a lot of my night in the back, keeping numbers looking good and helping prep for the next day as well. I was finishing up counting and filling out the nightly paperwork, and everyone was finishing up the front end cleaning when I heard a really loud thud and the sound of water splashing. I sighed, thinking that someone had spilled something or whatever while cleaning up the front end,

and when I walked out to the front, I noticed that the two people that were cleaning were standing there and staring at the mop bucket tipped on its side, and the mop was halfway across the dining room. I asked them what had happened, and one of them mentioned that the mop and the bucket literally just flung themselves. I asked what they meant,

and they explained that they had stopped mopping for a moment to do something behind the bar, and as soon as they did, the mop bucket was flung onto its side, and the mop was practically thrown across the room. I brought them both to the back, and we went to check the camera, and sure enough, the mop bucket and mop fell on their own. It wasn't like they had just tipped over and fell, it was like someone had put their foot on it, and kicked it as hard as possible to knock it over.

but there was no one there. It was seriously crazy, but I basically told him that we just have to move on and mop up the water. One of the other things that I recall happening was actually an apparition. There was one night where we had closed and were finishing the nightly books and all that. When I looked up at the camera, I saw what looked like a person standing by the doorway and staring out the window.

She looked like she was dressed in clothes from the early 1900s, like the 1920s or 30s. She just kind of stood there and stared out, and then slowly turned to look up at the camera, and basically faded away. It was the creepiest thing, and even though it was only a few seconds of footage, the entire time I watched her, I felt my veins running cold. Of course, I was the only one that saw it,

and I only saw her the one time, but it was probably the freakiest thing to happen there. So those were three of the strangest events I remember about our restaurant. We had a few other small events that happened here and there, but really these were the ones that were worth mentioning. I don't work there anymore, but I still go up to have dinner there and to talk to the owner, and they've mentioned that they've seen similar apparitions in the cameras randomly.

Honestly, it really is crazy to me how a restaurant that is so busy all the time could get so creepy at night. Nothing ever happened while the restaurant was full, or during the day. The ghosts always waited until after we closed to become active. Either way, it was a creepy place to be after dark, and I'm actually kind of glad that I don't work there anymore.