September 25, 2025 • 46 mins
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Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!
Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
My mom and I moved around a lot when I
was a kid. I was born in upstate New York,
lived in Connecticut for a while, then after my parents
got divorced, my mother and I moved to San Diego
to live with her boyfriend before we eventually moved up
to Portland, Oregon, to live with my maternal uncle when
I was twelve. We stayed there till I was eighteen,
(00:34):
and aside from one or two cons, there were a
lot of pros to growing up in Portland. But when
I first moved there, i'd say for the year or so,
I hated it, and it was mostly down to one man.
A couple of days after we moved, I was riding
my bike up and down the street when I saw
this kid around my age walking up the street. He
(00:55):
had a plastic grocery bag in his hand and it
looked like it was full, but whatever was in it
was moving, and as I drew level with him, I
stopped my bike and asked what he had in the bag,
and he smiled, walked up to me, then opened up
the bag to show me a bunch of fish that
he'd caught that afternoon. I'd always lived in the city
but up in Portland. We were out on the edge
(01:16):
of town, where it was a lot greener than the
other places I'd lived. I'd never been around much fishing
or hunting, so I thought it was wild that this
kid was just walking up the street with a bag
of fish that he just pulled out of a pond.
But to him, it was like the most normal thing
in the world. And what blew my mind evermore is
when I asked what he was going to do with them,
(01:37):
and he replied, probably eat em. I thought he was
the single coolest kid I'd ever met in my life,
and it turned out that he'd lived down the street.
So I asked if he'd teach me how to fish.
He said sure. Then a few days later we were
on our way down to the old fishing hole that
he used to frequent. Brett, my new buddy, used to
(01:59):
make his fish rods out of nothing but sticks, along
with whatever hooks and lines he could steal from his dad.
I thought it was the most badass thing ever, a
kid of fourteen years old catching his own fish with
homemade rods, And from then on I was obsessed, and
that whole summer, Brett and I would go fishing just
about any chance we got, and we'd take any fish
(02:20):
that we caught home to his mom, who would just
fry them up and then serve them up with some
hushpuppies and coleslaw. And we had some great times at
that old fishing hall. But after a while, Brett said
that he'd found an even better place to fish. It
was a longer walk than our first fishing spot, but
Brett said that it was a much larger pond, which
(02:41):
meant much larger fish. So off we went one Friday
afternoon to check it out for the first time. Brett
was right about it being a much better pond. The
only problem was we didn't know that we were intruding
on any one's spot. People can get real grouchy if
you're too close to their preferred fishing spot, and downright
(03:01):
angry if you try and supplant them all together, so
we were actually aware that someone might come along and
take issue with us being there, and then lo and behold,
it took just hours before someone did. We were sitting
on the edge of the pond when we suddenly heard
someone yelling, Hey, what the hell do you boys think
you're doing? And our heads spin around, and Brett and
(03:25):
I both see this fifty something guy with a bald
patch and a pot belly, wearing a black T shirt
and khaki shorts. We told him we were just fishing,
and he started asking if we had permission, if our
parents knew what we were doing, basically all this stuff
to try and get us to leave. Brett starts talking
back to the guy, asking if our new spot was
on his land, and he said no, but that it
(03:48):
must have been someone's land and he'd call the cops
on us if we didn't make ourselves scarce. I was
about to suggest that we just leave and come back
later something when we heard another voice from the opposite
side of us, asking what the problem was. Breton I
once again turned around to see a second guy walking
towards us from the opposite direction. He looked to be
(04:08):
about the same age as the guy trying to chase
us off, but was taller, skinnier, and had well combed
hair and wore a cart again, kind of like mister Rogers,
if mister Rogers wore glasses. The angry guy started explaining
that we had no right to be fishing there, especially
without a license, but then the guy with glasses said
it was his land that we were fishing on and
(04:30):
that we had his permission to be there. I remember
how he said, you can call the police if you like,
but I don't think they'll appreciate you wasting their time,
do you? And the pot bellied killjoy guy looked all
flustered for a second and then walked off, grumbling to
himself about how kid's got no respect these days. And
once the guy was out of earshot, we thanked the
(04:52):
mister Rogers look alike for having our backs and also
for giving us permission to fish on his land, and
he just chuckled and said, this isn't my land. But
that guy was a jerk off, and he told us
his land boundary was about a half mile back, but
that he liked walking out that way because of all
the wildlife and stuff. Seeing as we were on public land,
(05:14):
we'd have to relocate if the cops did show up,
But mister Michaels, as he called himself, had bought us
a little time before anyone else came along who found
reason to bother us. Obviously, we thought mister Michaels was awesome,
and he seemed very impressed by Brett's improvised rods, and
then after a brief exchange, he carried on with his
nature walk and we just carried on fishing. With it
(05:37):
being our regular fishing spot, we visited that larger pond
as often as we could that summer, and every so
often we'd spot mister Michaels out in one of his walks.
At first, all he'd do was come talk to us
a little, ask how the fish were biting, stuff like that.
But then after a while he'd see us say hi,
and then come back around twenty to thirty minutes later
(05:59):
with some of his wife's baking or some cold cans
of soda, whatever you could spare missus. Michaels must have
been an incredible baker, because whatever he brought us was
guaranteed to be good, and sometimes he'd stop and eat
with us, enjoying the scenery and asking us questions. Most
of the time we talk about nothing in particular, either
fishing or baseball or school. But then one day mister
(06:23):
Michaels asked us if either of us had girl friends.
Now I was twelve and Brett was almost a whole
year older at thirteen, and though we'd experienced very innocent
crushes here and there. We didn't have girlfriends or anything
like that. Mister Michaels asked if there were any girls
at school we liked, and having already discussed the topic,
(06:44):
both me and Brett were like, no, not really. Mister
Michaels laughed and told us, well, don't force it. The
world's going to tell you how you should want all
sorts of different things, but the only thing you should
be paying attention to is what your heart tells you.
Pretty wholesome, right, We thought so too, and when we
(07:04):
thought mister Michaels was just about the coolest person either
of us had ever met, and having grown up without
a stable father figure in my life, I definitely appreciated
having someone like that around, especially when Brett had to
go visit some relatives out of state and I was
left on my own if I wanted to go fishing,
I had my own home made fishing ride by that point,
(07:25):
so it wasn't like I had to ask Brett to
borrow his. I used to walk down to the fishing
hole whenever I wanted dig up a few worms and
then get to luring the biggest fish possible out into
the shallows. Fishing was just as much fun as it
was with Brett, but I used to worry about being alone.
I was always short for my age, and with my
(07:45):
slight stutter. People who didn't know me all that while
tended to think that I was either much younger or
much dumber than I was, which naturally made me a
very ripe target for bullies. I didn't think that I
had to worry about that out near the good old
fishing spot, as I tended to just see mister Michaels
on his walks or stopping by to deliver some muffins.
(08:07):
But then one day mister Michaels stopped by while I
was fishing and started acting a little weird. He used
to ask us questions from time to time, just about
our lives and such, and that day mister Michaels started
asking me about my family. I told him everything were
at least almost everything, that I had moved around a lot,
(08:28):
and that I had a dad and then a step dad,
and then no dad at all. He then asked if
I liked living with my uncle, and I said it
was whatever, and that my mom would probably move us
again soon. Mister Michaels usually had some piece of worldly
advice to offer something that would cheer us up or
help us look on the bright side of things. But
(08:49):
when I said that thing about probably moving soon, he
didn't say anything at all. He just got up walked
off without even saying goodbye. That wasn't like mister Michaels
at all. But at the time, I wondered if something
I'd said hit a little too close for comfort. I
might have been twelve, but I wasn't dumb. I knew
(09:10):
grown ups got upset over weird things or not weird,
but things they either couldn't or wouldn't explain to me.
I figured it was either something like that, or that
he felt guilty for bringing up a sensitive subject. I
noticed a lot of adults seemed to show sympathy for
me whenever the subject of family came up. It was
something I'd been dealing with ever since my parents divorce,
(09:32):
back when I was like six or seven. So maybe
mister Michaels just felt bad all of a sudden and
walked off because he was kind of choked up. I
say all this because I thought about it a lot,
and I did so because I had time to think
about it a lot. Because all I did after he
walked off was sit there fishing for another few hours
(09:54):
before finally calling it a day and walking back home
with my meager catch. The next day, I had a
back down to the fishing hole after lunch, and after
in about an hour of sitting there, mister Michaels showed
up again. He greeted me warmly as he approached, so
I figured all of yesterday's awkwardness had been forgotten. He
didn't bring it up at first. He just acted like
(10:14):
it never happened, which was honestly fine by me because
I didn't want to talk about it either. He just
walked up, sat down next to me and asked how
the fishing was going. We made small talk for a
few minutes about the fishing, the weather and stuff like that,
and then he said something like I want to apologize
for just walking off like that yesterday. I told him
(10:36):
it was fine, and he went on to explain that
he too had grown up in an unstable family. My
situation reminded him a little too much of his own, which,
as I said, was one of my initial suspicions. Mister
Michaels then said that family wasn't always a matter of blood,
and that the best part about growing up was that,
at least to a degree, you got to choose your
(10:59):
own family. I figured that was probably the poignant, life
affirming thing that he wished that he'd said the day before,
and I appreciated it all the same. And I also
appreciated it when he said that if I wanted to,
I could consider him a member of that chosen family,
but only if I really wanted to. I told him
(11:20):
sure and thanked him, but I knew it was kind
of a platitude. He just felt bad hearing a kid
talk about the same kind of childhood he went through,
and all he wanted to do was make me feel
better about it. But like I said, I'd been experiencing
the same thing almost all my life, so well, I
knew to just be polite and thank people for whatever
(11:40):
it was they'd said. It wasn't like it was some
Hollywood moment where I burst into tears, like, well, gee,
we is mister Michaels, Does that mean you're going to
be my new dad? Instead, I asked mister Michaels if
he had kids of his own, and he said yes,
he had two girls, but they had all grown up
and moved out into the city and one to college.
(12:02):
I thought I'd figured out another reason why he liked
me and Brett so much. We were like the two
young sons that he never got to have. The next
time that I went down to the fishing hole, it
was Saturday. Brett was due back from his relatives on
that Monday, so it was my last solo fishing session
for the foreseeable future, and I was pretty sure that
(12:22):
i'd see mister Michaels at some point, with it being
a week end. I was there for maybe an hour
or so before he showed up, and when he did,
we did our usual thing of making small talk and
watching the world go by, until he turned and asked
me a question. He asked if I thought about what
he'd said about a chosen family, and I said sure
(12:45):
a little. He then asked if I liked the idea
of him being a kind of father figure to me,
and while I said sure, I guess it wasn't entirely
out of courtesy. I liked mister Michaels and so did Brett,
and although the whole chosen family thing seemed kind of
cheesy to me, I thought it was coming from a
good place, so I figured I'd just go along with it.
(13:08):
But then mister Michael started acting strangely again. He told
me that the bond of family came with a certain
kind of love, and I just sat there wondering where
he was going with that, and then he went on
to say that over the previous few weeks he'd come
to develop feelings of familial love and that he'd been
(13:29):
wondering if those feelings were reciprocated. He spoke real fancy
like that at first, and I guess because he was
beating around the bush. But I think that he must
have saw the look on my face and figured it
was there because I didn't understand him, because in the
next moment, he just straight up asked me if I
loved him. There was a brief pause before he clarified
(13:53):
that it was that familial love that he was talking about,
and I remembered giving him a very reluctant sure, I
guess so, but he wasn't done. This is the point
where I think mister Michaels was another one of those
adults who thought that I was a little slow because
of the way he was talking to me. It was
like he was talking to a much younger kid, or
(14:15):
maybe one with a learning disorder or something. Twelve isn't eighteen.
But I was still like, why is he talking to
me like this? I knew something wasn't right. I just
couldn't see exactly what was happening, not until mister Michaels
began to talk again. He told me that people who
love each other sometimes touch one another as a way
(14:36):
of expressing that love. And that's the point where I
started to feel truly uncomfortable. Mister Michaels saddled up to
me a little, and I remember feeling my body tense
up as he did. I realized where he was going
and what he was trying to do, and it made
my skin feel like it was going to crawl off
my bones. Mister Michaels then asked, in this sort of
(14:59):
shaky voice voice, if he could touch me as a
way of expressing his love, and the moment he finished
his sentence, I got up and walked off without saying
a word, just like he did the day before. I
remember walking back to my uncle's house, and at the
risk of sounding overly dramatic, it was almost like that
(15:20):
part from the opening of Saving Private Ryan. If you
know that movie, do you remember the part where Tom
Hanks has just kind of sat there on the beach
and he's having some kind of episode where his ears
are ringing and everything seems like it's really far away.
That's honestly what it felt like walking back to my
uncle's place. I just felt kind of numb, like I
(15:41):
was so trapped in my own thoughts that everything else
seemed far away or like sort of background noise. And
I walked into the kitchen via the back door, which
was kept unlocked during the day so I could get
in and out at will. And I walked straight past
my mom and up to the guest bedroom without so
much as even looking at her. It gave her a
clue that there was something wrong, so she followed me
(16:03):
up and asked me a few questions, and then it
all came spilling out of me, along with many many tears.
I think one of the worst things about it was
I was old enough to actually understand what was happening.
It's a terrible thought, but I guess some kids get
touched so young that it becomes sort of a repressed memory.
(16:25):
I'm not a psychologist, but I know that's a thing,
but that obviously wasn't the case with me. And the
second mister Michaels mentioned touching after asking if I loved him,
my first thought was basically, oh, my Jesus, titty slapping christ.
Mister Michaels is a predator. I wasn't confused on what
(16:46):
his intentions were, even if he was trying to put
such an innocent mask on such an ugly thing, And honestly,
it absolutely destroyed me. It was the idea that someone's
so nice, so seemingly nice anyway, could have such vile intentions,
and that he could be so cunning about it. I mean,
(17:07):
he'd been slowly, steadily and patiently grooming us for almost
two whole months. He'd been working to earn our trust,
waiting for the right moment, and then when he'd heard
that my mom and I had moved around a lot,
and possibly coupled with an assumption that I was a
little slow, mister Michaels figured that I was the perfect target.
He was wrong, of course, and I got away before
(17:29):
he could do anything, but simply the fact that he
considered me a target was something I found incredibly disturbing
and upsetting. Now this was back in the late seventies,
and honestly, I'm not sure what kind of reaction it'd
get now. But after I told my mother, she told
my uncle, and when my uncle told the local sheriff,
they did something. I don't know what it was, because
(17:52):
I don't think they ever officially arrested mister Michaels. All
I know is that one day I was told that
I didn't have to worry about him anymore, and that
he he'd moved someplace far, far away. We were told
it was safe to go down to the good fishing
hole again without any fear of seeing old mister Michaels
walking up in his cart again and with the basket
(18:12):
of his wife's baking. But that didn't have the desired effect,
because I wasn't relieved to hear we'd never see him again.
I was actually heartbroken. Brett was just as shocked as
I was to find out mister Michaels was what he was,
but his reaction mirrored my own in many respects. We
(18:32):
were devastated to think that we wouldn't see him again,
but not because we truly missed this guy, but because
we realized mister Michaels never really existed in the first place,
at least not in the way that he presented himself.
It's kind of hard to articulate, I guess, but we
knew we'd miss the mister Michaels who had our backs,
(18:52):
who brought us food, and who gave us life advice.
Only the brutal truth was that the version of mister
Mike we'd come to know was a lie, a person
dreamed up by an incredibly dangerous predator whose goal was
to lawless into a false sense of trust and security.
And when the truth became clear, it changed the way
(19:12):
I thought about adults for a long time. I guess
you could call it our loss of innocence. The summer,
me and Brett realized that the world was much darker
than it seemed. Many years later, when I was all
grown up, I heard some radio evangelists talking about the devil,
how he lies, how he deceives, how he tricks you
(19:33):
into thinking he's your best friend before he turns and
shows his real face. If that's the case, then I
think I met him, and his name is mister Michaels.
(19:54):
I've been playing country music for almost forty years now,
and bars and Honky Tonks from shrieve Port, Kalamazoo. Music
has always been my first love, but my secondest people,
and part of the fun of playing music is getting
to meet some of the folks who appreciate it so much.
After all, their heart earned dollars keep gas in our tanks,
food in our bellies, and strings on our guitars. So
(20:17):
I figured the least I can do is except a
beer or two when they offered a buy, and let
them tell me all about their favorite Hank song. And
every so often you meet a truly great American, and
there's some folks out there I'll remember for the rest
of my life. But then sometimes you meet someone who
makes you glad to be leaving town. The next morning,
(20:38):
we were in a college town called Brookings Up in
South Dakota. Nice place and for the most part, nice
people too. We played for three and a half hours
at a joint called the Wild Hair. They had a
good bar and a good crowd and served alcohol until
two in the morning. So after the show we pulled
up a stool, ordered some bar food, and then nursed
(20:58):
a few beers with a local until closing time, selling
CDs and shirts and whatever else we could talk to him,
but it wasn't just about making a few extra bucks.
You shake a guy's hand after playing his favorite song,
and he's twice as likely to come back and see
the next time you're in town. Anyway, about one thirty
in the morning, most of the bar's patrons were steadily
(21:19):
making their departure, and even some of the band had
called it a night and headed back to the bus.
In the end, it was just me sat in a
bar stool and our drummer Larry, trying to convince people
to play around a pool with him. I was getting
ready to head out when some old timers slumps down
in the stool next to me and starts telling me
how we played a damn good show. I told him
(21:41):
I appreciate it, and then we got to talking about
music and what it's like Tory in the country and
living on the road. I remember how after ordering us
the last couple of beers, the stranger asked me if
we ever broke down like out in the middle of nowhere.
I told him shore once or twice, but that's sleeping
at a truck stick could sometimes be way scarier than
(22:02):
sleeping on some dirt road outside of Nowheresville, USA. He
then asked if we carried any protection on the bus
with us, and by protection, I don't mean the kind
you keep in your wallet. I told him our driver,
who doubled his security on an informal basis, was usually
packing a pistol of some kind, and that sure there
was occasionally a gun or two on the bus, depending
(22:23):
on where we were and who was touring with us.
I made a joke about how I hoped he wasn't
an ATF agent, and the guy laughed before swearing on
his mama that he wasn't no fed. He then asked
if our driver had ever had to use his pistol.
I told him we'd been in some sticky situations and
had some real close calls, but that, by the grace
(22:45):
of God, I'd never seen anyone shot. He then started
telling me how not only had he once been forced
to defend his life and property, but he'd taken the
lives of three men who tried to kill him. I
asked if he was a veteran, because he about the
age to have served in Korea or maybe World War Two,
but he shook his head. Never served a day in
(23:06):
his life. It had been a home invasion and according
to him, it was the most significant event of his
entire life. The old Timer said that he lived in
a big house that he'd bought many years before to
house his wife and five children, but after a car
accident claimed her and their two daughters, and his sons
grew up and moved elsewhere, he was left all alone.
(23:30):
That kind of lifestyle suited the old Timer for a while,
but then Crystal Meth got a hold of a lot
of the folks around that county and everything changed. Theft
and violent crime went through the roof, and once all
the gas stations, liquor stores, and credit unions had been hit,
the tweakers started targeting people in their homes. The first
time the old Timer was robbed, the tweakers took one
(23:52):
of his air conditioning units while he was at work.
They must have figured that it was just him living
there alone, because they start targeting the guy's house at
least once, sometimes twice a week. He takes the staying
up on his porch with a pot of coffee and
a shotgun, just waiting for them to show up, depriving
himself of sleep like that. Damn near made him sick.
(24:13):
But one night he sees lights at the end of
his driveway. Minutes later, two tweakers are sneaking of the path.
Then just as they come close enough, he fires off
a warning shot over their heads. But then instead of
just taking off like scared jack rabbits, the tweakers start
shooting back. As they run off, the old timer ducks
(24:35):
recover as bullets come flying at him. Then the last
thing he hears before the tweakers drive off is we'll
be back, you dumb son of a bitch, and when
we do, we're gonna kill you. And the old Timer
goes to talk to the town sheriff, who tells him
that while he'd every right to use lethal force to
defend himself against deadly threats, it might not be such
(24:56):
a good idea if he was out numbered and outgunned
by a bunch of jacked up to and under any
other circumstances, the sheriff might have placed two of his
boys on the nearby highway to act as a kind
of quick reaction force, but given the recent meth Field
crime wave, he didn't have the bodies to spare, and
the old Timer said the sheriff told him how on
(25:17):
this occasion it might be best that he made himself
scarce for a few days. Once he made sure that
he was up to date on his home insurance payments.
He was entitled to stand his ground and put up
a fight, but he had to ask himself, was that old,
empty house worth dying for? And that old timers said that.
He told the sheriff that he was right, and that
(25:38):
he had out of town for a few days before
returning home, picking through whatever was left and spiking a
for sale sign in the front yard. He even stopped
by the sheriff's department to let him know that he
was heading out, but not before making a few arrangements
intending to a few pieces of unfinished business. A few
days later, this guy rolls back in the town to
(26:00):
find bullet holes all over the rear doors of a
moving truck that he'd rented before heading out of town.
The house was fine, everything was in its place, but
someone appeared to have shot up the moving truck. This
guy's checking things out and sees no one's tried to
break into the cab, but after opening up the back
of the truck, he finds three dead bodies. A short
(26:25):
while after, the sheriff arrives and this guy said everyone
was almost gagging from how bad the smell was inside
the truck, but he also said that it didn't take
long the figure out why the inside smelled so bad.
Before shooting and stabbing the hell out of each other,
three local tweakers had decided to use the rear storage
of the truck as a bathroom. Then at first glance,
(26:47):
after relieving themselves, the tweakers closed the truck's door, then
proceeded to cut each other up and blow each other away.
The sheriff said that he'd never seen anything like it,
but then again, all kinds of weird things have been
happening since met took over the narcotic scene. The old
timer said that once the scene was all cleaned up,
the sheriff told him that those tweakers had accidentally locked
(27:10):
themselves in the back of the moving truck because by
the looks of things, the lock had malfunctioned and couldn't
be opened from the inside. According to the sheriff, if
it wasn't for the triple murder, the truck company might
be liable for damages, but then the company might well
have proof of maintenance, as they often do, meaning they
could prove the malfunction was down to a consumer fault,
(27:33):
and the old Timer said the sheriff and asked him
real plain if he had anything to do with that
lock not working, and he said no. So that was
just about the end of it. Only that wasn't strictly
true about the old timer not doing any lock tinkering,
And not only had he heavily tampered with the truck's lock,
but he'd never even left town in the first place.
(27:55):
The old Timer told me that he'd rented the most
secure hauling truck possible, one that was almost impossible to
break into from either inside or outside. He then tinkered
with the interior lock, tested it out on an unwitting
friend of his to make sure it wasn't functional from
the inside, then got busy with the next stage of
his plan, making the back of that truck look like
(28:16):
it was loaded up with electronics. He used all the
old TV, radio and VHS boxes that he kept up
in the attic, stuffed them full of junk to make
them feel fuller, then left the rear doors the truck
wide open like it was bait. And the next night
those tweakers show up, just like they'd promised. Three of
them all armed to the teeth, and they showed up
(28:39):
to get revenge for that old timer having fired that
warning shot, which I'm guessing they thought was just a
misshot and not a warning. But upon seeing that big,
old moving truck with what looked like thousands of dollars
worth of appliances in it, well, they just couldn't resist.
All three climbed inside, looked through all the boxes and
hollering like they just won the state lottery. Then how
(29:01):
comes you know who from his hiding place to slam
the truck's rear doors shut, locking them inside. First, the
tweakers were spooked, what with the doors just slamming closed
on them like they did. Then they got frustrated when
the interior door handle wouldn't function, each of them saying
something like here, let me try, and then cussing the
thing out when it wouldn't budge. It took him a
(29:24):
while to realize that they were trapped in the back
of that old moving truck, but once they did, they
started to panic. The old timers said they tried shooting
the lock out, and when that didn't work, they tried
shooting holes in the doors and then hoped their boots
might be able to do the rest. He said. They
spent hours trying everything they could think of to get
themselves out of that truck, but it was no good.
(29:46):
There was no way out. The old Timer and his
buddy had tested out just about everything, with the buddy
being none the wiser, of course, until the old Timer
was happy that the truck was inescapable, at least without
any serious industrial equipment. And unless they just up and
stole it, no meth heads are out there driving with
industrial strength cutting equipment. It took those fools hours and
(30:10):
hours before they figured out that they were trapped, and
when they did, they started calling for help. And then
and only then did the old Timer call out to
them and tell them exactly what had happened to them.
He said they were furious and tried firing shots in
his direction through the side of the truck, but as
his presence there before me that night confirmed, those shots
(30:31):
flew wildly astray. And he told those foolish sons of
bitches exactly how he tricked them into walking into their
own tomb. And he says it was only when he
used that word tomb that had really dawned on them.
What was happening. He said. They begged and pleaded, swearing
they wouldn't hurt him if he'd only let him out.
The whole thing had been a big old misunderstanding. They said.
(30:54):
Some people were not to be messed with. They just
didn't know that he was one of them. They went
from prompt must not to hurt him to promising him hundreds,
then thousands, then tens of thousands of dollars as a reward.
An old timer said that he knew it was all
bull crap. They'd have said just about anything to get
out of that truck, and unfortunately for them, it was
(31:15):
way beyond forgiveness. See, most people would have trapped those
tweakers in that truck, called the sheriff, and then laughed
their asses off while the deputies dragged them out of
the back and cuffs. But that's not what the old
timer had in mind. He let those tweakers sweat it
out in that truck with no food or water for
three whole days, and by then they were drinking their
(31:36):
own pea and eating the cardboard from the TV in
boxes to stave off the hunger. After that, he didn't
think it'd be much longer before they turned on each other,
and when they did, they went off like the Fourth
of July in there. I'm not saying that those boys
didn't get what they deserved. There sure is something poetic
about them getting stuck in a kind of man sized
(31:57):
rat trap. But what really sent to you through me
was how proud that old timer was of himself, and
how he laughed until he wheezed thinking about them begging
for help. He said that they were praying, crying for
their mammas, and he was grinning like a madman telling
me the things that he'd say to them. He used
to talk about them eating each other, wondering who was
(32:19):
going to draw the short straw. He did his best
and make sure that they went slowly crazy without any
food or water, until they finally just snapped. As I
mentioned already, I'm not saying those tweakers didn't get what
was coming to them. But it was the way that
old timer was describing the whole thing, how he was
proud as a peacock for what he did. That's what
(32:40):
I found so chilling. If he wanted to deal with
him to a permanent end, he could have shot the
truck full of holes or set it on fire or
driven the thing into a goddamn lake. But he let
those boys starve and dehydrate and slowly lose their goddamn
minds until the thought of eating each other drove them
over the edge. At first, that old timer had seemed
(33:02):
like a good man, and I guess he was in
so many ways. But to think that he had that
kind of cruelty in him, that kind of darkness, I'm
not ashamed to say that, it terrified me. I also
know that if those tweakers had gotten their hands on
that guy, they would have done equally terrible things to him.
But you expect that kind of behavior out of those
(33:24):
kinds of folks. I didn't expect that guy to have
ever done something like that, and certainly not to find
it all so hilarious neither. I mean, he laughed himself
into a coughing fit after he mimicked one of the tweakers, wailing, mamma, mamma,
I'm so sorry, and I shuddered just imagining it again.
I'm not saying that that guy didn't do the right thing.
(33:45):
I'm just saying I think he went about it in
a completely wrong way and lost a piece of his soul.
In the process. I was a university lecturer for the
(34:05):
better part of twenty years, and in that time I've
met some great students and some not so great students.
One lad and an international student from a country that
will remain unnamed, was probably the most difficult student I'd
ever come across, and his country of origin shall remain unnamed,
because frankly, he was the only problematic student from that
(34:26):
nation that I'd ever had the displeasure of dealing with.
Every other international student from this particular country was respectful, considerate,
and exceptionally hard working, but this one was not the
first thing he told me, after realizing that my first
initial stood for Maria and not something like Matthew, was
that no one in his country would take a female
(34:48):
professor seriously. I simply replied, if he wanted to pass
in grade, he could take the attitude of when in Rome.
He seemed to find that amusing, and while he claimed
that he'd show me all the respect I deserved, he
did so with a deeply patronizing tone that suggests that
he would never have done the same if we were
in his nation of birth. And when it dawned on
(35:09):
him that he'd actually have to work to get a
passing grade. The student in question became incredibly ill tempered
and his performance dropped off completely. He became more and
more problematic as the weeks went by, until one day
he simply stopped attending lectures. Initially, I had absolutely no
issue with us whatsoever, because it had gotten to the
(35:29):
point where he could be rather disruptive from time to time.
But after a while I started to wonder what was
happening with him. I ended up asking a colleague if
she'd heard anything about him, and I'll never forget the
look on her face as she asked me, you haven't heard.
As it turns out, the surly student that I had
(35:49):
had problems with had been arrested by the Cambridgeshire Police
on charges of kidnap, false imprisonment and grievous bodily harm.
It took a while for the whole story to come out,
because at first no one knew anything other than the
crimes he'd been charged with, But it didn't take long
(36:10):
for people to piece things together and link it to
another worrying on campus incident. About a week before the
problematic students stopped attending lectures, someone had filed a missing
person's report with the police. This person claimed a friend
or housemate of theirs, a female Taiwanese student, had gone
(36:30):
out for a drink state with a fellow student and
then failed to return home. Students staying over at each
other's flats or dorms as a very common occurrence, so
for the first twenty four hours or so, no one
batted an eyelid, But then after another twenty four hours
without any communication from her, the girl's friends became concerned.
(36:51):
They contacted the police and gave them the name of
their friend's date, and officers were dispatched to the date's home,
and the date turned out to be the same student
I'd had problems with, but he claimed to have no
idea where she was. The police then tracked the girl's
mobile phone and discovered it was within just fifty meters
of the guy's flat, so back they went to ask
(37:13):
him a second round of questions, but not before acquiring
a search and seizure order from a local judge. This
allowed them into the student's flat, whereupon entry they found
their missing Taiwanese girl. After accompanying the male student for drinks.
The student had followed the mail back to his flat.
He'd been perfectly nice and charming through the course of
(37:34):
their evening, but upon arriving back at his flat, his
demeanor must have changed completely. When she expressed a desire
to leave, the student became violent, and when things became physical,
he restrained her, tied her wrists and ankles, and then
proceeded to beat and torture her with a cigarette lighter.
The victim was told that it was her education on
(37:57):
why she shouldn't leave him, and the sooner she accepted
that she was his property, the sooner her ordeal would end.
From what I understand, the whole thing caused something of
an international incident at the university, and the girl's family
wanted to see their daughter's abuser prosecuted to the full
extent of the law, and he was. It's just the
punishment wasn't anywhere near in line with the crime. Instead
(38:20):
of being sent to prison, the student agreed to pay
the victim a hefty sum in compensation before being deported
from the UK and given a lifetime ban from returning.
I know that it's at least something, but hearing that
he'd basically gotten away with it was just as shocking
as hearing about what he'd done in the first place.
There must have been an awful lot of diplomatic wrangling
(38:41):
going on behind the scenes, and although I've only a
cursory knowledge of it, I know the word of international
relations can be a murky one. Indeed, it just makes
me sick to think of that poor girl, of everything
she went through, and know that the person who did
it was simply able to buy their way out of
a prison sentence, because for men like that, prison is
(39:03):
the only place for them. I used to live on
Parkfield Road, near Lark Lane in Liverpool when local supermarket
was the Tesco on Agberth Road, so every time I
needed to buy food, I'd walk all the way down
(39:24):
Parkfield from my flat, which was in a house at
the very top of the road near Prince's Park. Most
of the houses on Parkfield are basically old Georgian mansions.
I'm talking beautiful old buildings with long drives and grand
entrance ways that I'm guessing used to be occupied by
the city's elite, but nowadays most have been converted into
(39:46):
apartments which have five to seven flats in them. Some
of them boast some truly exquisite architecture, but while they're
nice to glance at, it's generally not good form to
stop and stare at some one's house or place of work.
So I just minded my own business and kept on
walking past. But ness known as to say that I
didn't notice that one or two of the old mansions
(40:07):
had been converted into stuff that wasn't apartments. I knew
one had been converted into a nursery and another was
like a vets or something, but I was never curious
to find out anything more about them. So one morning,
I leave for work at seven a m. So I'm
walking down Parkfield, still half asleep, earbuds in, podcast on
(40:28):
and some coffee in hand, and I was about half
way down the road, headed for Saint Michael's train station,
when I saw a guy standing still in the pavement
in front of me. It looked like he was waiting
for someone, maybe a taxi or a car shared a
work or something. But other than very briefly regarding him,
I didn't pay much attention to him at all. And
(40:49):
that all changed though, when I walked past him and
he said something that I couldn't make out over the
noise of my podcast. I was almost certain that it
was directed at me, so I stopped and hold out
my earbuds and then asked who he was talking to.
He was looking right at me as I turned, so
clearly he was talking to me, but he didn't answer
my question or anything. He just kept on talking, even
(41:11):
though I hadn't heard the first thing he'd said. I
remember exactly what he said because it was one of
the weirdest things anyone's ever said to me in my
entire life. He goes, they're all burning in one big pile,
and every day there's more and more. It probably took
my half a sleep brain a micro second longer than
(41:33):
it normally would. But as soon as I realized the
fellow was just chatting nonsense, I said, yep, okay, and
like I sort of please don't kill me, crazy person
kind of way, and then carried on walking towards the
train station. I suppose if you live in any city
on the planet, you're just bound to encounter a few
head cases from time to time. I just didn't expect
(41:54):
to encounter one that early in the morning. It didn't
scare me or anything. I just thought, what a weird blow.
And then by the time I got to the office
and saw the massive stack of invoices that I had
to work through. It was basically forgotten about for the
next eight hours until it came time to commute home again.
The fellow wasn't there that time, nor was he there
(42:14):
any other time I walked down Parkfield Road for the
next two months. But then one morning, bright and early,
there he was again, in the exact same spot i'd
seen him the first time, and he wasn't alone. The
fellow was standing with two women, both in their fifties
or sixties, who both appeared to be reading. Since there
was three of them on the pavement, I decided to
(42:36):
cross over on to the other side so i'd have
more room to pass. But as I did, I couldn't
help but peek over at the three of them. The
fellow caught me looking, and although he didn't say anything,
we locked eyes and smiled before I quickly turned my
head away. But before I did, I noticed the two women,
who looked like they were reading from little books, appeared
(42:57):
to be whispering something too, like they were reading aloud.
Now this is the point where a lot of your
American listeners are going to stop and think, hang on,
this sounds familiar and to be fair, if you're thinking
what I think you're thinking, then you're thinking the right things.
But the issue in question isn't such a massive deal
over here as it is over on your side of
(43:17):
the pond. I'm not trying to turn it into a
dunk on you or anything. We just have different issues
over here, que the overwhelming and unflattering agreement, and that's
why I could walk past them a second time and
not piece together what they were doing with where they
were choosing to do it. I blame it on the
sleepy brain. Personally. Both times I saw the weird fella,
(43:39):
I had only been awake thirty minutes, and since I
was on my way to work, I didn't exactly have
time to stop and chat. It was literally days later
when I realized that we were standing outside of the vet,
facing the place from across the streets. So I decided
to employ a bit of the old Google food try
and work out what was going on. It was called
(43:59):
something like the Daffodil Clinic, not its actual name, of course,
but something equally unassuming. It then took me mere minutes
to figure out what its purpose was. There was a
lot of flowery language around the subject, they just didn't
come out and say it on one page. But after
just the teeniest bit of clicking around and discovered what
the clinic was for, it wasn't of that. It was
(44:22):
an abortion clinic, and that's why the people were praying
outside of it. I've since come to learn that protesting
abortion clinics is quite a big thing in the States,
and a lot of the time the protests get pretty vicious.
I guess now, before the comments section erupts, I'd like
to make it clear that I'm not trying to cast
dispersions on anyone. In a free country, people should be
(44:43):
free to pray wherever they want, right And I don't
live there, so I don't really know exactly what's going on.
But that's not what I found so creepy about that man,
the one who said that initially unintelligible thing to me
about them all burning down there in one big pile
to talking about the aborted babies, and he was talking
about them burning in hell. I think you'd have to
(45:05):
be exceptionally sturdy of a person for that mental image
not to send a shudder through you. It certainly did
with me. Once I realized what that guy was referring
to some time after that, I heard about the fella
getting arrested. I'm guessing someone reported him to the police
and that he was in the habit of saying things
to people as they walked past. I don't know what
law that's breaking, but that's just not on. Is it
(45:29):
saying things about babies burning in hell? The people going
through a horrible period in their lives? Now? I know
this can be a controversial topic, but I don't know.
If you're gonna pray, do it quietly across the street
like those two women. Don't make a big thing out
of it, and certainly don't go telling passing strangers things
about piles of babies burning in hell. Hey, friends, thanks
(45:55):
for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of
all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday and
Thursday at seven p m eu s T, and there
are super fun live streams every Sunday and Wednesday night. Now,
if you get a story, be sure to submit them
to my email at Let's Read Submissions at gmail dot
com and you might even hear your story featured on
(46:16):
the next video. And if you want to support me
even more, grab early access to all future narrations and
bonus content over on Patreon, or click that big join
button to hear about the extra perks offered from members
of the channel, and check out the Lettertere podcast where
you can hear all of these stories and big compilations
located anywhere you listen to podcasts. All links in the
(46:38):
description below. Thanks much, friends, and remember go to your
nearest dollar tree and TOWRK to day
My mom and I moved around a lot when I
was a kid. I was born in upstate New York,
lived in Connecticut for a while, then after my parents
got divorced, my mother and I moved to San Diego
to live with her boyfriend before we eventually moved up
to Portland, Oregon, to live with my maternal uncle when
I was twelve. We stayed there till I was eighteen,
(00:34):
and aside from one or two cons, there were a
lot of pros to growing up in Portland. But when
I first moved there, i'd say for the year or so,
I hated it, and it was mostly down to one man.
A couple of days after we moved, I was riding
my bike up and down the street when I saw
this kid around my age walking up the street. He
(00:55):
had a plastic grocery bag in his hand and it
looked like it was full, but whatever was in it
was moving, and as I drew level with him, I
stopped my bike and asked what he had in the bag,
and he smiled, walked up to me, then opened up
the bag to show me a bunch of fish that
he'd caught that afternoon. I'd always lived in the city
but up in Portland. We were out on the edge
(01:16):
of town, where it was a lot greener than the
other places I'd lived. I'd never been around much fishing
or hunting, so I thought it was wild that this
kid was just walking up the street with a bag
of fish that he just pulled out of a pond.
But to him, it was like the most normal thing
in the world. And what blew my mind evermore is
when I asked what he was going to do with them,
(01:37):
and he replied, probably eat em. I thought he was
the single coolest kid I'd ever met in my life,
and it turned out that he'd lived down the street.
So I asked if he'd teach me how to fish.
He said sure. Then a few days later we were
on our way down to the old fishing hole that
he used to frequent. Brett, my new buddy, used to
(01:59):
make his fish rods out of nothing but sticks, along
with whatever hooks and lines he could steal from his dad.
I thought it was the most badass thing ever, a
kid of fourteen years old catching his own fish with
homemade rods, And from then on I was obsessed, and
that whole summer, Brett and I would go fishing just
about any chance we got, and we'd take any fish
(02:20):
that we caught home to his mom, who would just
fry them up and then serve them up with some
hushpuppies and coleslaw. And we had some great times at
that old fishing hall. But after a while, Brett said
that he'd found an even better place to fish. It
was a longer walk than our first fishing spot, but
Brett said that it was a much larger pond, which
(02:41):
meant much larger fish. So off we went one Friday
afternoon to check it out for the first time. Brett
was right about it being a much better pond. The
only problem was we didn't know that we were intruding
on any one's spot. People can get real grouchy if
you're too close to their preferred fishing spot, and downright
(03:01):
angry if you try and supplant them all together, so
we were actually aware that someone might come along and
take issue with us being there, and then lo and behold,
it took just hours before someone did. We were sitting
on the edge of the pond when we suddenly heard
someone yelling, Hey, what the hell do you boys think
you're doing? And our heads spin around, and Brett and
(03:25):
I both see this fifty something guy with a bald
patch and a pot belly, wearing a black T shirt
and khaki shorts. We told him we were just fishing,
and he started asking if we had permission, if our
parents knew what we were doing, basically all this stuff
to try and get us to leave. Brett starts talking
back to the guy, asking if our new spot was
on his land, and he said no, but that it
(03:48):
must have been someone's land and he'd call the cops
on us if we didn't make ourselves scarce. I was
about to suggest that we just leave and come back
later something when we heard another voice from the opposite
side of us, asking what the problem was. Breton I
once again turned around to see a second guy walking
towards us from the opposite direction. He looked to be
(04:08):
about the same age as the guy trying to chase
us off, but was taller, skinnier, and had well combed
hair and wore a cart again, kind of like mister Rogers,
if mister Rogers wore glasses. The angry guy started explaining
that we had no right to be fishing there, especially
without a license, but then the guy with glasses said
it was his land that we were fishing on and
(04:30):
that we had his permission to be there. I remember
how he said, you can call the police if you like,
but I don't think they'll appreciate you wasting their time,
do you? And the pot bellied killjoy guy looked all
flustered for a second and then walked off, grumbling to
himself about how kid's got no respect these days. And
once the guy was out of earshot, we thanked the
(04:52):
mister Rogers look alike for having our backs and also
for giving us permission to fish on his land, and
he just chuckled and said, this isn't my land. But
that guy was a jerk off, and he told us
his land boundary was about a half mile back, but
that he liked walking out that way because of all
the wildlife and stuff. Seeing as we were on public land,
(05:14):
we'd have to relocate if the cops did show up,
But mister Michaels, as he called himself, had bought us
a little time before anyone else came along who found
reason to bother us. Obviously, we thought mister Michaels was awesome,
and he seemed very impressed by Brett's improvised rods, and
then after a brief exchange, he carried on with his
nature walk and we just carried on fishing. With it
(05:37):
being our regular fishing spot, we visited that larger pond
as often as we could that summer, and every so
often we'd spot mister Michaels out in one of his walks.
At first, all he'd do was come talk to us
a little, ask how the fish were biting, stuff like that.
But then after a while he'd see us say hi,
and then come back around twenty to thirty minutes later
(05:59):
with some of his wife's baking or some cold cans
of soda, whatever you could spare missus. Michaels must have
been an incredible baker, because whatever he brought us was
guaranteed to be good, and sometimes he'd stop and eat
with us, enjoying the scenery and asking us questions. Most
of the time we talk about nothing in particular, either
fishing or baseball or school. But then one day mister
(06:23):
Michaels asked us if either of us had girl friends.
Now I was twelve and Brett was almost a whole
year older at thirteen, and though we'd experienced very innocent
crushes here and there. We didn't have girlfriends or anything
like that. Mister Michaels asked if there were any girls
at school we liked, and having already discussed the topic,
(06:44):
both me and Brett were like, no, not really. Mister
Michaels laughed and told us, well, don't force it. The
world's going to tell you how you should want all
sorts of different things, but the only thing you should
be paying attention to is what your heart tells you.
Pretty wholesome, right, We thought so too, and when we
(07:04):
thought mister Michaels was just about the coolest person either
of us had ever met, and having grown up without
a stable father figure in my life, I definitely appreciated
having someone like that around, especially when Brett had to
go visit some relatives out of state and I was
left on my own if I wanted to go fishing,
I had my own home made fishing ride by that point,
(07:25):
so it wasn't like I had to ask Brett to
borrow his. I used to walk down to the fishing
hole whenever I wanted dig up a few worms and
then get to luring the biggest fish possible out into
the shallows. Fishing was just as much fun as it
was with Brett, but I used to worry about being alone.
I was always short for my age, and with my
(07:45):
slight stutter. People who didn't know me all that while
tended to think that I was either much younger or
much dumber than I was, which naturally made me a
very ripe target for bullies. I didn't think that I
had to worry about that out near the good old
fishing spot, as I tended to just see mister Michaels
on his walks or stopping by to deliver some muffins.
(08:07):
But then one day mister Michaels stopped by while I
was fishing and started acting a little weird. He used
to ask us questions from time to time, just about
our lives and such, and that day mister Michaels started
asking me about my family. I told him everything were
at least almost everything, that I had moved around a lot,
(08:28):
and that I had a dad and then a step dad,
and then no dad at all. He then asked if
I liked living with my uncle, and I said it
was whatever, and that my mom would probably move us
again soon. Mister Michaels usually had some piece of worldly
advice to offer something that would cheer us up or
help us look on the bright side of things. But
(08:49):
when I said that thing about probably moving soon, he
didn't say anything at all. He just got up walked
off without even saying goodbye. That wasn't like mister Michaels
at all. But at the time, I wondered if something
I'd said hit a little too close for comfort. I
might have been twelve, but I wasn't dumb. I knew
(09:10):
grown ups got upset over weird things or not weird,
but things they either couldn't or wouldn't explain to me.
I figured it was either something like that, or that
he felt guilty for bringing up a sensitive subject. I
noticed a lot of adults seemed to show sympathy for
me whenever the subject of family came up. It was
something I'd been dealing with ever since my parents divorce,
(09:32):
back when I was like six or seven. So maybe
mister Michaels just felt bad all of a sudden and
walked off because he was kind of choked up. I
say all this because I thought about it a lot,
and I did so because I had time to think
about it a lot. Because all I did after he
walked off was sit there fishing for another few hours
(09:54):
before finally calling it a day and walking back home
with my meager catch. The next day, I had a
back down to the fishing hole after lunch, and after
in about an hour of sitting there, mister Michaels showed
up again. He greeted me warmly as he approached, so
I figured all of yesterday's awkwardness had been forgotten. He
didn't bring it up at first. He just acted like
(10:14):
it never happened, which was honestly fine by me because
I didn't want to talk about it either. He just
walked up, sat down next to me and asked how
the fishing was going. We made small talk for a
few minutes about the fishing, the weather and stuff like that,
and then he said something like I want to apologize
for just walking off like that yesterday. I told him
(10:36):
it was fine, and he went on to explain that
he too had grown up in an unstable family. My
situation reminded him a little too much of his own, which,
as I said, was one of my initial suspicions. Mister
Michaels then said that family wasn't always a matter of blood,
and that the best part about growing up was that,
at least to a degree, you got to choose your
(10:59):
own family. I figured that was probably the poignant, life
affirming thing that he wished that he'd said the day before,
and I appreciated it all the same. And I also
appreciated it when he said that if I wanted to,
I could consider him a member of that chosen family,
but only if I really wanted to. I told him
(11:20):
sure and thanked him, but I knew it was kind
of a platitude. He just felt bad hearing a kid
talk about the same kind of childhood he went through,
and all he wanted to do was make me feel
better about it. But like I said, I'd been experiencing
the same thing almost all my life, so well, I
knew to just be polite and thank people for whatever
(11:40):
it was they'd said. It wasn't like it was some
Hollywood moment where I burst into tears, like, well, gee,
we is mister Michaels, Does that mean you're going to
be my new dad? Instead, I asked mister Michaels if
he had kids of his own, and he said yes,
he had two girls, but they had all grown up
and moved out into the city and one to college.
(12:02):
I thought I'd figured out another reason why he liked
me and Brett so much. We were like the two
young sons that he never got to have. The next
time that I went down to the fishing hole, it
was Saturday. Brett was due back from his relatives on
that Monday, so it was my last solo fishing session
for the foreseeable future, and I was pretty sure that
(12:22):
i'd see mister Michaels at some point, with it being
a week end. I was there for maybe an hour
or so before he showed up, and when he did,
we did our usual thing of making small talk and
watching the world go by, until he turned and asked
me a question. He asked if I thought about what
he'd said about a chosen family, and I said sure
(12:45):
a little. He then asked if I liked the idea
of him being a kind of father figure to me,
and while I said sure, I guess it wasn't entirely
out of courtesy. I liked mister Michaels and so did Brett,
and although the whole chosen family thing seemed kind of
cheesy to me, I thought it was coming from a
good place, so I figured I'd just go along with it.
(13:08):
But then mister Michael started acting strangely again. He told
me that the bond of family came with a certain
kind of love, and I just sat there wondering where
he was going with that, and then he went on
to say that over the previous few weeks he'd come
to develop feelings of familial love and that he'd been
(13:29):
wondering if those feelings were reciprocated. He spoke real fancy
like that at first, and I guess because he was
beating around the bush. But I think that he must
have saw the look on my face and figured it
was there because I didn't understand him, because in the
next moment, he just straight up asked me if I
loved him. There was a brief pause before he clarified
(13:53):
that it was that familial love that he was talking about,
and I remembered giving him a very reluctant sure, I
guess so, but he wasn't done. This is the point
where I think mister Michaels was another one of those
adults who thought that I was a little slow because
of the way he was talking to me. It was
like he was talking to a much younger kid, or
(14:15):
maybe one with a learning disorder or something. Twelve isn't eighteen.
But I was still like, why is he talking to
me like this? I knew something wasn't right. I just
couldn't see exactly what was happening, not until mister Michaels
began to talk again. He told me that people who
love each other sometimes touch one another as a way
(14:36):
of expressing that love. And that's the point where I
started to feel truly uncomfortable. Mister Michaels saddled up to
me a little, and I remember feeling my body tense
up as he did. I realized where he was going
and what he was trying to do, and it made
my skin feel like it was going to crawl off
my bones. Mister Michaels then asked, in this sort of
(14:59):
shaky voice voice, if he could touch me as a
way of expressing his love, and the moment he finished
his sentence, I got up and walked off without saying
a word, just like he did the day before. I
remember walking back to my uncle's house, and at the
risk of sounding overly dramatic, it was almost like that
(15:20):
part from the opening of Saving Private Ryan. If you
know that movie, do you remember the part where Tom
Hanks has just kind of sat there on the beach
and he's having some kind of episode where his ears
are ringing and everything seems like it's really far away.
That's honestly what it felt like walking back to my
uncle's place. I just felt kind of numb, like I
(15:41):
was so trapped in my own thoughts that everything else
seemed far away or like sort of background noise. And
I walked into the kitchen via the back door, which
was kept unlocked during the day so I could get
in and out at will. And I walked straight past
my mom and up to the guest bedroom without so
much as even looking at her. It gave her a
clue that there was something wrong, so she followed me
(16:03):
up and asked me a few questions, and then it
all came spilling out of me, along with many many tears.
I think one of the worst things about it was
I was old enough to actually understand what was happening.
It's a terrible thought, but I guess some kids get
touched so young that it becomes sort of a repressed memory.
(16:25):
I'm not a psychologist, but I know that's a thing,
but that obviously wasn't the case with me. And the
second mister Michaels mentioned touching after asking if I loved him,
my first thought was basically, oh, my Jesus, titty slapping christ.
Mister Michaels is a predator. I wasn't confused on what
(16:46):
his intentions were, even if he was trying to put
such an innocent mask on such an ugly thing, And honestly,
it absolutely destroyed me. It was the idea that someone's
so nice, so seemingly nice anyway, could have such vile intentions,
and that he could be so cunning about it. I mean,
(17:07):
he'd been slowly, steadily and patiently grooming us for almost
two whole months. He'd been working to earn our trust,
waiting for the right moment, and then when he'd heard
that my mom and I had moved around a lot,
and possibly coupled with an assumption that I was a
little slow, mister Michaels figured that I was the perfect target.
He was wrong, of course, and I got away before
(17:29):
he could do anything, but simply the fact that he
considered me a target was something I found incredibly disturbing
and upsetting. Now this was back in the late seventies,
and honestly, I'm not sure what kind of reaction it'd
get now. But after I told my mother, she told
my uncle, and when my uncle told the local sheriff,
they did something. I don't know what it was, because
(17:52):
I don't think they ever officially arrested mister Michaels. All
I know is that one day I was told that
I didn't have to worry about him anymore, and that
he he'd moved someplace far, far away. We were told
it was safe to go down to the good fishing
hole again without any fear of seeing old mister Michaels
walking up in his cart again and with the basket
(18:12):
of his wife's baking. But that didn't have the desired effect,
because I wasn't relieved to hear we'd never see him again.
I was actually heartbroken. Brett was just as shocked as
I was to find out mister Michaels was what he was,
but his reaction mirrored my own in many respects. We
(18:32):
were devastated to think that we wouldn't see him again,
but not because we truly missed this guy, but because
we realized mister Michaels never really existed in the first place,
at least not in the way that he presented himself.
It's kind of hard to articulate, I guess, but we
knew we'd miss the mister Michaels who had our backs,
(18:52):
who brought us food, and who gave us life advice.
Only the brutal truth was that the version of mister
Mike we'd come to know was a lie, a person
dreamed up by an incredibly dangerous predator whose goal was
to lawless into a false sense of trust and security.
And when the truth became clear, it changed the way
(19:12):
I thought about adults for a long time. I guess
you could call it our loss of innocence. The summer,
me and Brett realized that the world was much darker
than it seemed. Many years later, when I was all
grown up, I heard some radio evangelists talking about the devil,
how he lies, how he deceives, how he tricks you
(19:33):
into thinking he's your best friend before he turns and
shows his real face. If that's the case, then I
think I met him, and his name is mister Michaels.
(19:54):
I've been playing country music for almost forty years now,
and bars and Honky Tonks from shrieve Port, Kalamazoo. Music
has always been my first love, but my secondest people,
and part of the fun of playing music is getting
to meet some of the folks who appreciate it so much.
After all, their heart earned dollars keep gas in our tanks,
food in our bellies, and strings on our guitars. So
(20:17):
I figured the least I can do is except a
beer or two when they offered a buy, and let
them tell me all about their favorite Hank song. And
every so often you meet a truly great American, and
there's some folks out there I'll remember for the rest
of my life. But then sometimes you meet someone who
makes you glad to be leaving town. The next morning,
(20:38):
we were in a college town called Brookings Up in
South Dakota. Nice place and for the most part, nice
people too. We played for three and a half hours
at a joint called the Wild Hair. They had a
good bar and a good crowd and served alcohol until
two in the morning. So after the show we pulled
up a stool, ordered some bar food, and then nursed
(20:58):
a few beers with a local until closing time, selling
CDs and shirts and whatever else we could talk to him,
but it wasn't just about making a few extra bucks.
You shake a guy's hand after playing his favorite song,
and he's twice as likely to come back and see
the next time you're in town. Anyway, about one thirty
in the morning, most of the bar's patrons were steadily
(21:19):
making their departure, and even some of the band had
called it a night and headed back to the bus.
In the end, it was just me sat in a
bar stool and our drummer Larry, trying to convince people
to play around a pool with him. I was getting
ready to head out when some old timers slumps down
in the stool next to me and starts telling me
how we played a damn good show. I told him
(21:41):
I appreciate it, and then we got to talking about
music and what it's like Tory in the country and
living on the road. I remember how after ordering us
the last couple of beers, the stranger asked me if
we ever broke down like out in the middle of nowhere.
I told him shore once or twice, but that's sleeping
at a truck stick could sometimes be way scarier than
(22:02):
sleeping on some dirt road outside of Nowheresville, USA. He
then asked if we carried any protection on the bus
with us, and by protection, I don't mean the kind
you keep in your wallet. I told him our driver,
who doubled his security on an informal basis, was usually
packing a pistol of some kind, and that sure there
was occasionally a gun or two on the bus, depending
(22:23):
on where we were and who was touring with us.
I made a joke about how I hoped he wasn't
an ATF agent, and the guy laughed before swearing on
his mama that he wasn't no fed. He then asked
if our driver had ever had to use his pistol.
I told him we'd been in some sticky situations and
had some real close calls, but that, by the grace
(22:45):
of God, I'd never seen anyone shot. He then started
telling me how not only had he once been forced
to defend his life and property, but he'd taken the
lives of three men who tried to kill him. I
asked if he was a veteran, because he about the
age to have served in Korea or maybe World War Two,
but he shook his head. Never served a day in
(23:06):
his life. It had been a home invasion and according
to him, it was the most significant event of his
entire life. The old Timer said that he lived in
a big house that he'd bought many years before to
house his wife and five children, but after a car
accident claimed her and their two daughters, and his sons
grew up and moved elsewhere, he was left all alone.
(23:30):
That kind of lifestyle suited the old Timer for a while,
but then Crystal Meth got a hold of a lot
of the folks around that county and everything changed. Theft
and violent crime went through the roof, and once all
the gas stations, liquor stores, and credit unions had been hit,
the tweakers started targeting people in their homes. The first
time the old Timer was robbed, the tweakers took one
(23:52):
of his air conditioning units while he was at work.
They must have figured that it was just him living
there alone, because they start targeting the guy's house at
least once, sometimes twice a week. He takes the staying
up on his porch with a pot of coffee and
a shotgun, just waiting for them to show up, depriving
himself of sleep like that. Damn near made him sick.
(24:13):
But one night he sees lights at the end of
his driveway. Minutes later, two tweakers are sneaking of the path.
Then just as they come close enough, he fires off
a warning shot over their heads. But then instead of
just taking off like scared jack rabbits, the tweakers start
shooting back. As they run off, the old timer ducks
(24:35):
recover as bullets come flying at him. Then the last
thing he hears before the tweakers drive off is we'll
be back, you dumb son of a bitch, and when
we do, we're gonna kill you. And the old Timer
goes to talk to the town sheriff, who tells him
that while he'd every right to use lethal force to
defend himself against deadly threats, it might not be such
(24:56):
a good idea if he was out numbered and outgunned
by a bunch of jacked up to and under any
other circumstances, the sheriff might have placed two of his
boys on the nearby highway to act as a kind
of quick reaction force, but given the recent meth Field
crime wave, he didn't have the bodies to spare, and
the old Timer said the sheriff told him how on
(25:17):
this occasion it might be best that he made himself
scarce for a few days. Once he made sure that
he was up to date on his home insurance payments.
He was entitled to stand his ground and put up
a fight, but he had to ask himself, was that old,
empty house worth dying for? And that old timers said that.
He told the sheriff that he was right, and that
(25:38):
he had out of town for a few days before
returning home, picking through whatever was left and spiking a
for sale sign in the front yard. He even stopped
by the sheriff's department to let him know that he
was heading out, but not before making a few arrangements
intending to a few pieces of unfinished business. A few
days later, this guy rolls back in the town to
(26:00):
find bullet holes all over the rear doors of a
moving truck that he'd rented before heading out of town.
The house was fine, everything was in its place, but
someone appeared to have shot up the moving truck. This
guy's checking things out and sees no one's tried to
break into the cab, but after opening up the back
of the truck, he finds three dead bodies. A short
(26:25):
while after, the sheriff arrives and this guy said everyone
was almost gagging from how bad the smell was inside
the truck, but he also said that it didn't take
long the figure out why the inside smelled so bad.
Before shooting and stabbing the hell out of each other,
three local tweakers had decided to use the rear storage
of the truck as a bathroom. Then at first glance,
(26:47):
after relieving themselves, the tweakers closed the truck's door, then
proceeded to cut each other up and blow each other away.
The sheriff said that he'd never seen anything like it,
but then again, all kinds of weird things have been
happening since met took over the narcotic scene. The old
timer said that once the scene was all cleaned up,
the sheriff told him that those tweakers had accidentally locked
(27:10):
themselves in the back of the moving truck because by
the looks of things, the lock had malfunctioned and couldn't
be opened from the inside. According to the sheriff, if
it wasn't for the triple murder, the truck company might
be liable for damages, but then the company might well
have proof of maintenance, as they often do, meaning they
could prove the malfunction was down to a consumer fault,
(27:33):
and the old Timer said the sheriff and asked him
real plain if he had anything to do with that
lock not working, and he said no. So that was
just about the end of it. Only that wasn't strictly
true about the old timer not doing any lock tinkering,
And not only had he heavily tampered with the truck's lock,
but he'd never even left town in the first place.
(27:55):
The old Timer told me that he'd rented the most
secure hauling truck possible, one that was almost impossible to
break into from either inside or outside. He then tinkered
with the interior lock, tested it out on an unwitting
friend of his to make sure it wasn't functional from
the inside, then got busy with the next stage of
his plan, making the back of that truck look like
(28:16):
it was loaded up with electronics. He used all the
old TV, radio and VHS boxes that he kept up
in the attic, stuffed them full of junk to make
them feel fuller, then left the rear doors the truck
wide open like it was bait. And the next night
those tweakers show up, just like they'd promised. Three of
them all armed to the teeth, and they showed up
(28:39):
to get revenge for that old timer having fired that
warning shot, which I'm guessing they thought was just a
misshot and not a warning. But upon seeing that big,
old moving truck with what looked like thousands of dollars
worth of appliances in it, well, they just couldn't resist.
All three climbed inside, looked through all the boxes and
hollering like they just won the state lottery. Then how
(29:01):
comes you know who from his hiding place to slam
the truck's rear doors shut, locking them inside. First, the
tweakers were spooked, what with the doors just slamming closed
on them like they did. Then they got frustrated when
the interior door handle wouldn't function, each of them saying
something like here, let me try, and then cussing the
thing out when it wouldn't budge. It took him a
(29:24):
while to realize that they were trapped in the back
of that old moving truck, but once they did, they
started to panic. The old timers said they tried shooting
the lock out, and when that didn't work, they tried
shooting holes in the doors and then hoped their boots
might be able to do the rest. He said. They
spent hours trying everything they could think of to get
themselves out of that truck, but it was no good.
(29:46):
There was no way out. The old Timer and his
buddy had tested out just about everything, with the buddy
being none the wiser, of course, until the old Timer
was happy that the truck was inescapable, at least without
any serious industrial equipment. And unless they just up and
stole it, no meth heads are out there driving with
industrial strength cutting equipment. It took those fools hours and
(30:10):
hours before they figured out that they were trapped, and
when they did, they started calling for help. And then
and only then did the old Timer call out to
them and tell them exactly what had happened to them.
He said they were furious and tried firing shots in
his direction through the side of the truck, but as
his presence there before me that night confirmed, those shots
(30:31):
flew wildly astray. And he told those foolish sons of
bitches exactly how he tricked them into walking into their
own tomb. And he says it was only when he
used that word tomb that had really dawned on them.
What was happening. He said. They begged and pleaded, swearing
they wouldn't hurt him if he'd only let him out.
The whole thing had been a big old misunderstanding. They said.
(30:54):
Some people were not to be messed with. They just
didn't know that he was one of them. They went
from prompt must not to hurt him to promising him hundreds,
then thousands, then tens of thousands of dollars as a reward.
An old timer said that he knew it was all
bull crap. They'd have said just about anything to get
out of that truck, and unfortunately for them, it was
(31:15):
way beyond forgiveness. See, most people would have trapped those
tweakers in that truck, called the sheriff, and then laughed
their asses off while the deputies dragged them out of
the back and cuffs. But that's not what the old
timer had in mind. He let those tweakers sweat it
out in that truck with no food or water for
three whole days, and by then they were drinking their
(31:36):
own pea and eating the cardboard from the TV in
boxes to stave off the hunger. After that, he didn't
think it'd be much longer before they turned on each other,
and when they did, they went off like the Fourth
of July in there. I'm not saying that those boys
didn't get what they deserved. There sure is something poetic
about them getting stuck in a kind of man sized
(31:57):
rat trap. But what really sent to you through me
was how proud that old timer was of himself, and
how he laughed until he wheezed thinking about them begging
for help. He said that they were praying, crying for
their mammas, and he was grinning like a madman telling
me the things that he'd say to them. He used
to talk about them eating each other, wondering who was
(32:19):
going to draw the short straw. He did his best
and make sure that they went slowly crazy without any
food or water, until they finally just snapped. As I
mentioned already, I'm not saying those tweakers didn't get what
was coming to them. But it was the way that
old timer was describing the whole thing, how he was
proud as a peacock for what he did. That's what
(32:40):
I found so chilling. If he wanted to deal with
him to a permanent end, he could have shot the
truck full of holes or set it on fire or
driven the thing into a goddamn lake. But he let
those boys starve and dehydrate and slowly lose their goddamn
minds until the thought of eating each other drove them
over the edge. At first, that old timer had seemed
(33:02):
like a good man, and I guess he was in
so many ways. But to think that he had that
kind of cruelty in him, that kind of darkness, I'm
not ashamed to say that, it terrified me. I also
know that if those tweakers had gotten their hands on
that guy, they would have done equally terrible things to him.
But you expect that kind of behavior out of those
(33:24):
kinds of folks. I didn't expect that guy to have
ever done something like that, and certainly not to find
it all so hilarious neither. I mean, he laughed himself
into a coughing fit after he mimicked one of the tweakers, wailing, mamma, mamma,
I'm so sorry, and I shuddered just imagining it again.
I'm not saying that that guy didn't do the right thing.
(33:45):
I'm just saying I think he went about it in
a completely wrong way and lost a piece of his soul.
In the process. I was a university lecturer for the
(34:05):
better part of twenty years, and in that time I've
met some great students and some not so great students.
One lad and an international student from a country that
will remain unnamed, was probably the most difficult student I'd
ever come across, and his country of origin shall remain unnamed,
because frankly, he was the only problematic student from that
(34:26):
nation that I'd ever had the displeasure of dealing with.
Every other international student from this particular country was respectful, considerate,
and exceptionally hard working, but this one was not the
first thing he told me, after realizing that my first
initial stood for Maria and not something like Matthew, was
that no one in his country would take a female
(34:48):
professor seriously. I simply replied, if he wanted to pass
in grade, he could take the attitude of when in Rome.
He seemed to find that amusing, and while he claimed
that he'd show me all the respect I deserved, he
did so with a deeply patronizing tone that suggests that
he would never have done the same if we were
in his nation of birth. And when it dawned on
(35:09):
him that he'd actually have to work to get a
passing grade. The student in question became incredibly ill tempered
and his performance dropped off completely. He became more and
more problematic as the weeks went by, until one day
he simply stopped attending lectures. Initially, I had absolutely no
issue with us whatsoever, because it had gotten to the
(35:29):
point where he could be rather disruptive from time to time.
But after a while I started to wonder what was
happening with him. I ended up asking a colleague if
she'd heard anything about him, and I'll never forget the
look on her face as she asked me, you haven't heard.
As it turns out, the surly student that I had
(35:49):
had problems with had been arrested by the Cambridgeshire Police
on charges of kidnap, false imprisonment and grievous bodily harm.
It took a while for the whole story to come out,
because at first no one knew anything other than the
crimes he'd been charged with, But it didn't take long
(36:10):
for people to piece things together and link it to
another worrying on campus incident. About a week before the
problematic students stopped attending lectures, someone had filed a missing
person's report with the police. This person claimed a friend
or housemate of theirs, a female Taiwanese student, had gone
(36:30):
out for a drink state with a fellow student and
then failed to return home. Students staying over at each
other's flats or dorms as a very common occurrence, so
for the first twenty four hours or so, no one
batted an eyelid, But then after another twenty four hours
without any communication from her, the girl's friends became concerned.
(36:51):
They contacted the police and gave them the name of
their friend's date, and officers were dispatched to the date's home,
and the date turned out to be the same student
I'd had problems with, but he claimed to have no
idea where she was. The police then tracked the girl's
mobile phone and discovered it was within just fifty meters
of the guy's flat, so back they went to ask
(37:13):
him a second round of questions, but not before acquiring
a search and seizure order from a local judge. This
allowed them into the student's flat, whereupon entry they found
their missing Taiwanese girl. After accompanying the male student for drinks.
The student had followed the mail back to his flat.
He'd been perfectly nice and charming through the course of
(37:34):
their evening, but upon arriving back at his flat, his
demeanor must have changed completely. When she expressed a desire
to leave, the student became violent, and when things became physical,
he restrained her, tied her wrists and ankles, and then
proceeded to beat and torture her with a cigarette lighter.
The victim was told that it was her education on
(37:57):
why she shouldn't leave him, and the sooner she accepted
that she was his property, the sooner her ordeal would end.
From what I understand, the whole thing caused something of
an international incident at the university, and the girl's family
wanted to see their daughter's abuser prosecuted to the full
extent of the law, and he was. It's just the
punishment wasn't anywhere near in line with the crime. Instead
(38:20):
of being sent to prison, the student agreed to pay
the victim a hefty sum in compensation before being deported
from the UK and given a lifetime ban from returning.
I know that it's at least something, but hearing that
he'd basically gotten away with it was just as shocking
as hearing about what he'd done in the first place.
There must have been an awful lot of diplomatic wrangling
(38:41):
going on behind the scenes, and although I've only a
cursory knowledge of it, I know the word of international
relations can be a murky one. Indeed, it just makes
me sick to think of that poor girl, of everything
she went through, and know that the person who did
it was simply able to buy their way out of
a prison sentence, because for men like that, prison is
(39:03):
the only place for them. I used to live on
Parkfield Road, near Lark Lane in Liverpool when local supermarket
was the Tesco on Agberth Road, so every time I
needed to buy food, I'd walk all the way down
(39:24):
Parkfield from my flat, which was in a house at
the very top of the road near Prince's Park. Most
of the houses on Parkfield are basically old Georgian mansions.
I'm talking beautiful old buildings with long drives and grand
entrance ways that I'm guessing used to be occupied by
the city's elite, but nowadays most have been converted into
(39:46):
apartments which have five to seven flats in them. Some
of them boast some truly exquisite architecture, but while they're
nice to glance at, it's generally not good form to
stop and stare at some one's house or place of work.
So I just minded my own business and kept on
walking past. But ness known as to say that I
didn't notice that one or two of the old mansions
(40:07):
had been converted into stuff that wasn't apartments. I knew
one had been converted into a nursery and another was
like a vets or something, but I was never curious
to find out anything more about them. So one morning,
I leave for work at seven a m. So I'm
walking down Parkfield, still half asleep, earbuds in, podcast on
(40:28):
and some coffee in hand, and I was about half
way down the road, headed for Saint Michael's train station,
when I saw a guy standing still in the pavement
in front of me. It looked like he was waiting
for someone, maybe a taxi or a car shared a
work or something. But other than very briefly regarding him,
I didn't pay much attention to him at all. And
(40:49):
that all changed though, when I walked past him and
he said something that I couldn't make out over the
noise of my podcast. I was almost certain that it
was directed at me, so I stopped and hold out
my earbuds and then asked who he was talking to.
He was looking right at me as I turned, so
clearly he was talking to me, but he didn't answer
my question or anything. He just kept on talking, even
(41:11):
though I hadn't heard the first thing he'd said. I
remember exactly what he said because it was one of
the weirdest things anyone's ever said to me in my
entire life. He goes, they're all burning in one big pile,
and every day there's more and more. It probably took
my half a sleep brain a micro second longer than
(41:33):
it normally would. But as soon as I realized the
fellow was just chatting nonsense, I said, yep, okay, and
like I sort of please don't kill me, crazy person
kind of way, and then carried on walking towards the
train station. I suppose if you live in any city
on the planet, you're just bound to encounter a few
head cases from time to time. I just didn't expect
(41:54):
to encounter one that early in the morning. It didn't
scare me or anything. I just thought, what a weird blow.
And then by the time I got to the office
and saw the massive stack of invoices that I had
to work through. It was basically forgotten about for the
next eight hours until it came time to commute home again.
The fellow wasn't there that time, nor was he there
(42:14):
any other time I walked down Parkfield Road for the
next two months. But then one morning, bright and early,
there he was again, in the exact same spot i'd
seen him the first time, and he wasn't alone. The
fellow was standing with two women, both in their fifties
or sixties, who both appeared to be reading. Since there
was three of them on the pavement, I decided to
(42:36):
cross over on to the other side so i'd have
more room to pass. But as I did, I couldn't
help but peek over at the three of them. The
fellow caught me looking, and although he didn't say anything,
we locked eyes and smiled before I quickly turned my
head away. But before I did, I noticed the two women,
who looked like they were reading from little books, appeared
(42:57):
to be whispering something too, like they were reading aloud.
Now this is the point where a lot of your
American listeners are going to stop and think, hang on,
this sounds familiar and to be fair, if you're thinking
what I think you're thinking, then you're thinking the right things.
But the issue in question isn't such a massive deal
over here as it is over on your side of
(43:17):
the pond. I'm not trying to turn it into a
dunk on you or anything. We just have different issues
over here, que the overwhelming and unflattering agreement, and that's
why I could walk past them a second time and
not piece together what they were doing with where they
were choosing to do it. I blame it on the
sleepy brain. Personally. Both times I saw the weird fella,
(43:39):
I had only been awake thirty minutes, and since I
was on my way to work, I didn't exactly have
time to stop and chat. It was literally days later
when I realized that we were standing outside of the vet,
facing the place from across the streets. So I decided
to employ a bit of the old Google food try
and work out what was going on. It was called
(43:59):
something like the Daffodil Clinic, not its actual name, of course,
but something equally unassuming. It then took me mere minutes
to figure out what its purpose was. There was a
lot of flowery language around the subject, they just didn't
come out and say it on one page. But after
just the teeniest bit of clicking around and discovered what
the clinic was for, it wasn't of that. It was
(44:22):
an abortion clinic, and that's why the people were praying
outside of it. I've since come to learn that protesting
abortion clinics is quite a big thing in the States,
and a lot of the time the protests get pretty vicious.
I guess now, before the comments section erupts, I'd like
to make it clear that I'm not trying to cast
dispersions on anyone. In a free country, people should be
(44:43):
free to pray wherever they want, right And I don't
live there, so I don't really know exactly what's going on.
But that's not what I found so creepy about that man,
the one who said that initially unintelligible thing to me
about them all burning down there in one big pile
to talking about the aborted babies, and he was talking
about them burning in hell. I think you'd have to
(45:05):
be exceptionally sturdy of a person for that mental image
not to send a shudder through you. It certainly did
with me. Once I realized what that guy was referring
to some time after that, I heard about the fella
getting arrested. I'm guessing someone reported him to the police
and that he was in the habit of saying things
to people as they walked past. I don't know what
law that's breaking, but that's just not on. Is it
(45:29):
saying things about babies burning in hell? The people going
through a horrible period in their lives? Now? I know
this can be a controversial topic, but I don't know.
If you're gonna pray, do it quietly across the street
like those two women. Don't make a big thing out
of it, and certainly don't go telling passing strangers things
about piles of babies burning in hell. Hey, friends, thanks
(45:55):
for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of
all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday and
Thursday at seven p m eu s T, and there
are super fun live streams every Sunday and Wednesday night. Now,
if you get a story, be sure to submit them
to my email at Let's Read Submissions at gmail dot
com and you might even hear your story featured on
(46:16):
the next video. And if you want to support me
even more, grab early access to all future narrations and
bonus content over on Patreon, or click that big join
button to hear about the extra perks offered from members
of the channel, and check out the Lettertere podcast where
you can hear all of these stories and big compilations
located anywhere you listen to podcasts. All links in the
(46:38):
description below. Thanks much, friends, and remember go to your
nearest dollar tree and TOWRK to day
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