Mysterious Valleys Art, Arrests, and Unveiled Secrets

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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!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
When I first told my dad that I wanted to
be an artist, he paused and then told me, hope
you liked buttered noodles. It was kind of prophetic in
a way, because I did end up liking buttered noodles.
But what he was really trying to tell me was
be prepared to struggle and starve, and boy was he
right about that. After graduating high school, I opted not

(00:37):
to go to college and instead worked a series of
menial jobs until I had enough save to move to
San Francisco. After I moved, I lived in a shared
Hunter's Point apartment for about eighteen months with a bunch
of other starving artists as I attempted to break into
the local arts scene. That was a tough time for me,
and for several reasons. There was a lot of crime,

(00:58):
a lot of drugs, and outside of the few bucks
an hour I got from my part time bag boy job,
I was dead broke. Then, to top it off, I
lived with a revolving door of unreliable, ego centric brat
spawn who were out there pissing away mommy and Daddy's money,
pretending to be artists, but instead purchased way more pot

(01:19):
and pills than they ever did paints or pencils, and
I knew I had to start making some money and
find a better apartment because another year with those bums
and I'd have gone crazy. And that's when I started
job hunting like a son of a bitch, day in
and day out for like a month straight. It was exhausting,
and when it got to the point where I could

(01:40):
feel myself starting to burn out, I began to consider
running back home with my tail between my legs before
starting afresh in New York when I had the cash
saved up again. But then, right when things seemed their darkest,
I met a guy named Gregg. We met outside a
liquor store when he asked me for a light, and

(02:01):
he looked like he was having the worst day of
his life. When I asked him if he was okay
as I lit a cigarette, told me he was about
to be fired from his marketing job for missing a deadline.
He had a project that was ninety five percent completed,
but after an agreement with a graphic designer fell through,
he was lacking a collection of potential logos for some
financial firm his company had as a client, and well,

(02:24):
long story short, I got him his logos after working
all night and for a heavily discounted rate compared to
what he'd promised those deadbeat designers who'd left him high
and dry. And that was the start of a very
fruitful working relationship between me and dear old Gregory. And
off the back of it, I finally got to move
out of that pig stye I called an apartment and

(02:46):
start living like a human being. Once I started making
some serious money, I started looking for nicer single person
apartments surround Frisco, and I went to view a couple
of sweet places, each with her own individual pros and cons,
and I was somewhat undecided until I went to check
out a place in Mill Valley. All it said in

(03:07):
the ad was that it was a one bedroom, one
bathroom apartment on a shared property, and that's all there
was to it. But when I went to see the thing,
I realized just how understated the ad had been. The
single bedroom, single bathroom apartment turned out to be a
guest house built on the grounds of one of those
Mediterranean revival villas they got out in that neighborhood, you know,

(03:31):
the kind, all earthy colors with tiles and archways and
columns and what not. I met up with a homeowner,
an older guy in his fifties or sixties, who gave
me a quick tour of the guest house before the
subject of rent came up. When he told me they
wanted just six fifty a month for the place. I
couldn't believe it, because at the time that was a

(03:51):
very reasonable rate for an apartment of that quality. Not
suspiciously reasonable by any stretch, but low enough for me
to offer a deposit in the first month's rent there.
And then the guy definitely seemed a little wary of me,
I guess, because I seemed so desperate to move in.
So he told me he'd think about it and then
let me know. And that's when I told him my story,

(04:13):
or part of it anyway. I told him I had
this one big shot at living my dream, and I
couldn't have the gang of nocturnal drug aditt to losers
that I'd lived with currently messing up for me. I
offered him seven hundred a month, then seven fifty, which
cut even deeper into my earnings, but he said he
wasn't interested in more money. He said he needed someone

(04:36):
quiet who minded their own business and who paid in
cash and on time. I swore on all the saints
in Heaven that'd be me, that I'd be too busy
working to give a damn what was going on in
the big house, and that I'd be damned if I'd
be throwing any parties in what I'd considered a work space.
If he gave me the apartment, he wouldn't even know

(04:57):
that I was there. The only way that he'd know
that I was still alive as getting that envelope full
of cash on the first of every month, and aside
from that, i'd be a ghost when I was done.
He stood there for a moment and thought about it,
and then told me to come collect the keys on
the first of the month. I could have danced down
that guy's driveway. Dude. I was elated. I only had

(05:20):
to stay one more week in that pig stye in
Hunter's Point, and then on the first of the month,
my old pow Gregg let me borrow his car to
move my stuff and I was out of there. Now.
Moving my stuff into that guests house felt like a
victory parade. I had steady work, a really nice apartment,
and in greg I'd made a good friend who was

(05:40):
in a complete dead beat. Things really seemed like they
were looking up for me. But in the words of
some old dead philosopher whose name I can't quite remember
right now, sometimes the way up and the way down
are one and the same, which I've always considered to
mean that sometimes the things that you think going to
improve your life actually make it way way worse. And

(06:05):
so the first few weeks of living that guest house
were like a dream. I didn't bother the owners, they
didn't bother me. I had space to work, and I
had a nice quiet place to lay my head each night.
I saw my landlord maybe two or three times in
those first few weeks, but I never ever saw his wife.
I mean to the point that I thought maybe that
they were separated and she lives someplace else. Then one

(06:27):
day he comes knocking on my door and tells me
that he's going away on a fishing trip over the weekend.
He's leaving on Friday evening and then coming back late
on Sunday night. I tell him, okay, thanks for letting
me know. But then before he leaves, he tells me
something like my wife is feeling a little under the weather.
So if she starts acting strangely, don't be alarmed. She's

(06:50):
just not feeling like herself lately. I was a little
surprised that she was even living there, because, like I said,
I'd been there around three weeks and had even seen
her once. But still I thanked him for let me know,
and I told him that I'd help out if or
when I was needed. That was midweek sometime, and then

(07:11):
come Friday, I saw him packing up his truck with
a bunch of coolers and stuff, and then wished him
a good weekend as I walked toward the guest house.
That night was quiet as usual right up until about
two in the morning, and I finished up work with
the intention of going to bed. I went to the
bathroom to take a whiz, and it's Frisco in the
late summer, so I got the bathroom window way open

(07:34):
so the place doesn't become a giant condensation trap. And
then as I'm taking a leak, I started hearing something
outside which caught my attention. It was only very faint
at first, but something about it really grabbed my attention.
Then as I listened, I realized why. It was the
sound of someone crying and from what I could tell,

(07:56):
it was a woman. I finished up my leak and
then walk down to the step outside my front door,
trying to work out where the sound was coming from.
I stood there, cupping my hands behind my ears like
a dumb red headed radar tower. It was a trick
my dad had taught me as a kid, and just
like back then, it worked like a charm. And I

(08:17):
quickly figured out that the person crying was around the
back of the main house, and that meant that it
could only be one person, my landlord's sick wife. Now,
I know my landlord had talked about needing his privacy,
and I know he'd already told me about his wife
feeling under the weather, but I couldn't just hear someone
sobbing like that and not at least go check on them. Then,

(08:41):
once I was a hundred percent sure that it was
someone crying around the corner where the big house's swimming
pool was located, I leaned my head around the brickwork
and saw a woman sat on a piece of patio furniture.
I didn't want to scare her or anything, because she
had her head in her hands and hadn't seen me
lean around the corner, so I made sure to keep
my voice as soft as possible, and then asked her

(09:04):
if she was okay. I was ready for her to
jump up, startled, before maybe running back inside the house,
but she didn't. She just sat there, her head still
in her hands as she continued to sob. Assuming that
she hadn't heard me, I repeated myself, asking something like, ma'am,
are you okay? Do you need any help? Only then

(09:28):
did she stop crying, But instead of actually acknowledging my presence,
the lady turned her head to look at me and
just stared. She looked out at me through the few
strands of hair hanging over her eyes, but she didn't
say a word. It got so awkward that I spoke
for a third time, telling her I was the guy

(09:50):
who had moved into the guest house and that she
could call on me any time she liked if she
needed any help or anything. I figured, at the very
least what I said warranted murmur of her response, but
again the lady just stared at me kind of blankly,
almost like she wasn't looking at me at all, but
rather looking through me. I asked her again if she

(10:11):
needed anything, but instead of answering me, she looked off
into the distance like in another dimension that acted like
I hadn't said anything at all to her. I just
kind of waited, just in case she was building up
to say something. And then when she got off of
the patio furniture, I expected her to speak, but once again,
she didn't say a word. She just got up, turned around,

(10:35):
and walked back inside the main house before closing the
back door behind her. The whole exchange left me just
standing there like what just happened, but also very concern
for the lady's well being. This was also way before
cell phones were in everyone's pockets, so there was no
contact in my new landlord to let him know what

(10:55):
I'd seen. But then I'd be perfectly honest. Even if
I did have a cell phone, I'm not sure that
i'd have been all that quick at reaching out to him.
He told me on multiple occasions how they needed their privacy,
how I wasn't to approach the main house and listen
was an emergency, And so unless it was just that
an emergency, I figured my best option was to keep

(11:17):
my mouth shut because I had already run the risk
of the landlord's wife telling him that new tenant just
came creeping up to me in the middle of the night.
I mean, that's not what I did. I only wanted
to see if she was okay. But who's her husband
going to believe me or the woman he's been married
to for years? And besides, she was back in the

(11:37):
house now, safe as any place really, So I just
went back to the guest house and got some sleep.
The next day was a Saturday, so instead of working
all day and most of the night like I usually would,
I decided to head over to some of the bars
that I used to frequent in Hunter's Point before I
moved out. I met up with Greg. We had a

(11:57):
few beers and talk baseball, and then hearted ways. Around midnight,
I got a cab home. Then as I'm walking up
the driveway towards the guest house, I spot someone standing
on the second floor balcony of the main house, someone
I was pretty sure was the landlord's wife. I could
only see the outline of her because she is standing

(12:18):
in the dark, with the light of her bedroom shining
on some curtains behind her. But on the other hand,
I'm lit up like a Christmas tree because I'm walking
up the driveway and activating all the security lights attached
to the main and guesthouses. And I knew she could
see me or I mean, if she was paying even
the smallest amount of attention to her surroundings, she'd have
been able to see me. So just as I'm about

(12:41):
to split off toward the guest house, I gave her
a little wave, just to say hi. I don't know
what I was expecting after the night before, but just
like then, she didn't move a muscle at first. She
just stayed perfectly still. Now this is going to sound harsh,
but I remember thinking Jesus, how creepy is broad. And

(13:01):
I also wasn't about to stand there like an idiot
like I had the previous night, so I just walked
off towards the guest house. When the guy said his
wife was sick, I figured that he meant that she
had a cold or something. But by that point I
was starting to think that she was dealing with something
more psychological than physical, and that came with a whole
set of other concerns on my part. Say, she freaked

(13:25):
out and it was up to me to do something.
I had no idea how to deal with something like
that outside of calling nine to one one, and even
then do I ask for the cops? Do I ask
for e MS? I wouldn't know what the hell to
have done with myself. But then in the end it
was her who ended up calling the cops on me.

(13:45):
On the Sunday morning, same day, my landlord is due
to come back from his fishing trip. I left my
apartment to go get some creamer from the store nearby.
When I saw the landlord's wife standing on the front lawn.
I figured that I was about to get more or
of that silent treatment because she had her back to
me when I saw her, But then once I got

(14:05):
level with her as I was walking up the driveway,
she heard my footsteps, then turned around startled. I wasn't
even going to bother saying hi at this point, not
after the previous two attempts, so I just kind of
gave her a nod as she looked at me and
then kept on walking. But then instead of ignoring me again,
she starts yelling, hey, hey, you, what the hell do

(14:28):
you think you're doing on my property. I was kind
of shocked that she even spoke to me, and I
had to bite my tongue so I didn't come out
with a oh, so now you're talking to me instead,
and bearing in mind I figured that she might be
losing her mind or something, I kept it together and
told her very politely that I was the tenant who

(14:48):
had been renting her guest house for the past three weeks.
The lady then told me she had no idea who
I was talking about, and that if I didn't get
off her property, she was going to call the cops.
I told her, please don't do that, and explained it
had all ended up being a huge misunderstanding. I even
showed her the key that I used to unlock the

(15:10):
door and offer to demonstrate me using it, so she
knew that I wasn't some very casual home invader. And
again I kept my voice down and tried my best
to remain very non threatening, but she marched off after
announcing that she was going to dial nine one one.
I remember just shaking my head and telling myself, at
least this beats Hunter's point. And then I went to

(15:32):
the store and bought my creamer. But then when I
got back, I look up to see a cop car
parked outside the house, and when I rounded that corner
to walk down the driveway, I see the landlord's wife
angrily gesticulating to very bored looking officers, when landlord's wife
looks past them and sees me and is suddenly saying

(15:52):
something like, there he is, that's him right there, like
she's expecting the two cops to rush over and just
tackle me, when instead one of them walks over to
talk to me while his partner stays with the lady
to keep her calm. I started telling the cop my
story and then showed him how I could unlock the
door to the guest house with the key in my pocket,
and after that, I showed him things like my wallet,

(16:15):
which I had left on the table after taking a
few bucks out of it, and a few other things
confirming that I had been the person who lived there.
I also mentioned how the landlord's wife had been acting
very weird and that I don't go anywhere near the
house usually, so I barely see her, and that's where
the confusion is all stemming from. The cop then tells
me that the lady seemed to be intoxicated, didn't seem

(16:37):
to know where her husband was, and was even confused
as to what day of the week it was. In
light of that, and considering all my stuff seemed to
be in the guest house, the two officers gave me
the benefit of the doubt and then escorted my landlord's
wife back inside her house. I then filled the cops
in on where my landlord was and how since he
was returning home that day, his wife wouldn't be alone

(17:00):
for much longer, and that seemed to satisfy the two officers,
who told me to call them if anything else happened
before departing. A few hours later, my landlord arrives back
from his fishing trip, and I caught him in the
driveway to tell him what had happened with his wife.
I didn't tell him that I approached the house, but
I did say that i'd heard her crying, and then

(17:21):
all the stuff about her calling the cops on me.
He didn't seem to react until him mention the cops
like he acted as if it was only some minor concern,
until I mentioned the two officers showing up and how
they took a look around the guest house. Then and
only then did he act like this was a priority,
and he promised me that it wouldn't happen again before

(17:42):
he stormed off, presumably to confront his wife. Now, don't
get me wrong, I was glad that he seemed to
be on my side in this whole situation, because awkward
encounters with his wife for one thing. For her trying
to get me arrested was something else. But then, having
said that, there was something that really bugged me about
the way that he reacted when I told him about

(18:02):
the cops showing up. He seemed to act like his
wife's behavior was a regular occurrence, as in, he seemed
only mildly disappointed, But then when I mentioned the police,
his ears pricked up and his expression changed completely. I
get that he'd probably just gotten used to his wife
having outbursts or whatever, and that the cops being called

(18:23):
represented what you might call an unnecessary escalation, But to me,
it seemed kind of fishy that he seemed so uptight
about the cops taking a look around his property, even
if it was the one that I was renting and
not his actual house. And needless to say, things didn't
end there. I've been staying in the guest house apartment

(18:44):
for around three months. When Greg came by to pick
me up from the apartment, we had tickets to a
Giant's game, and I was psyched to be going because
I'd loved sports since pretty much forever. And so there's
me jumping into Greg's passenger seat, like, hey, buddy, how's
it going? But Greg, he looks like he'd just seen
a ghost. And I say something like, the hell's gotten

(19:07):
into you? But he replied to a question with a question,
saying something like you live in that place. He was
talking about the guest house and main house together, the grounds,
I mean, So I told him sure that living in
the guesthouse was pretty sweet deal. Greg then asked me
if I knew the folks who lived there were more importantly,

(19:29):
what happened to the folks who lived there? I told
him no, and Greg sighed, and then we drove off
toward Candlestick Park and he told me the story on
the way. About five years before I had moved to
San Francisco, there had been a high profile missing person's
case involving the daughter of a wealthy pharma rep. One day,

(19:51):
she told her parents that she was going to walk
down to the local park and then never came home again.
They called the cops the day afterwards. After calling around
to all their friends' houses, but they couldn't find any
witnesses whatsoever that had seen her anywhere near the park
that day. It was like she disappeared in the thin air.
The girl's heartbroken parents held a bunch of press conferences

(20:13):
outside their home for the benefit of local news, and
each one they begged people to come forward with any
information they might have, saying that someone must know where
their daughter is and what happened to her on the
day she vanished. Gregg, being a local, had seen some
of the many news reports, and with him being a
high school senior at the time, it had a profound

(20:34):
effect on him and his friends at school because the
missing girl had been the exact same age group as them,
a high school senior. So when he pulled outside the
house that afternoon and looked out of his window at it,
he knew he recognized it from somewhere, he just couldn't
think where. Then by the time I'd climb into the
passenger seat, he remembered where he'd seen it before. It

(20:55):
had been in those press conferences. The missing high school
girl was my Landlord Worts daughter. As you can imagine,
learning all that meant our baseball game had something of
a dark cloud hanging over it, and we spent almost
the entire game talking about the missing girl and landlady's
wife and how it all made horrible and sudden sense

(21:16):
to me. The wife wasn't nuts. I mean, she might
have been going nuts, but all the crying and the
standing on the balcony staring into the night, she was
just broken by grief, and from the way that she
was acting, was probably stuck at the bottom of a bottle,
be it booze or pills or whatever she was using.
Gregg told me the girl had never been found, but

(21:38):
after five long years, not a single clue as to
where she went. Pretty much everyone assumed that she'd been
murdered by a suspect who was later given the name
the Golden State Killer. Everyone hoped that she'd just run
away from home and she'd show up one day for
some delayed but happy ending, But deep down everyone suspected

(21:58):
otherwise something terrible would happened to that girl and she
was never coming home. I felt terrible for the landlord
and his wife, and I wish i'd known earlier, so
I didn't treat the wife like she was just some
crazy old coot. But looks, as they say, can be
very deceiving. A few weeks after I found out all
that stuff about their missing daughter, I noticed my shower

(22:20):
was on low pressure, and since it happened to be
the same day my rent check was due, I figured
i'd walk over to the house, deliver my rent check
and let the landlord know about the water pressure at
the same time. So I grabbed the check and I
walk over there, but then radis am about to press
their door bell. I hear the landlord having an argument

(22:40):
with his wife about something and they are screaming at
each other. I hear the husband yelling something about how
his wife is always feeling sorry for herself, and he
goes off like that for a few seconds before I
hear his wife scream something back like I wouldn't be
like this if it wasn't for what you did. My

(23:01):
landlord then responds with what I did, what I did?
Are you forgetting it was you who got us into
this mess in the first place. And that was the
point where I was like, Okay, I really shouldn't be
listening to this, and I walked back to my apartment
wrote a note about the water pressure on the back
of my rent envelope and then went back to the

(23:22):
door to slide it under it. When I did, there
was no more yelling, so I figured that they were
just done with her fight, and then went back to
my day as usual. Not long after, I mentioned to
Greg that I was thinking about trying to find a
new place. He told me that that didn't surprise him
at all, and that to him, it wouldn't be a
tough decision in the first place. But that was real

(23:44):
easy for him to say because he didn't have to
live with the reality of this situation. I figured that
the only reason my landlord was renting out his guest's
house was because they needed the money, and because most
people in the city were aware of the tragedy they suffered,
they must have had a hell of a time trying
to find the vacancy until my ignorant asked strolled up
to their driveway and just said, Oh, wow, isn't this

(24:06):
a nice place? If I just walked out on them,
god knows what kind of financial difficulties that might leave
them in. I mean, I know it's just a few
hundred bucks a month, but they were older folks, and
sometimes that kind of money makes all the difference in
retirement or if you got a sick wife who needs
taken care of. I knew I'd feel like a bag

(24:27):
of crap just leaving them like that, but at the
same time, I wasn't sure how long I could go
on living with them. It was like there was this
very dark cloud hanging over the house, the same one
that followed me home from the game that afternoon. And then,
if I'm a loud to swap metaphors for a second,
there was the taking time bomb element to it as well.

(24:48):
Whatever that lady was taking to manage her grief, she
was either taking too much or not enough, And the
way that they were fighting with each other made me
think that it was only a matter of time before
something happened. I had no idea what that something might be,
but you knew it was coming, and when it did,
I assure as heck didn't want to be there when
it went down. And so another few weeks go by,

(25:11):
and by this time we're into late October, right around Halloween.
The house had been quiet. I've gone back to never
seeing that wife around, and I'm actually starting to think
that I was a little hasty and looking for someplace
else to live. The place had its flaws, but so
did everywhere else. And I also felt like kind of
an asshole for making things about me when it was

(25:33):
their grief, their cross to bear, so to say, maybe
the best thing for me to do is to stop
thinking about it and remind myself that it wasn't any
of my business. And that worked just fine until it
became my business, and in a way that I could
never have imagined. So it's November third of nineteen eighty nine,

(25:54):
and I remember that because it was a Friday, and
I was about to go step onto the old tiles
there to get a few beers with Greg. I finished
work at around four pm. Took around fifteen minutes to
get ready. Then as I step out of the guest
house and start walking down the driveway, I see a
whole bunch of cops turn onto the driveway and start
walking in the direction of that big house. I couldn't

(26:16):
help myself seeing them come up the driveway and their
uniforms like that, so I blurted out a little late
for trick or treating, isn't it, fellas, why don't you
take off those costumes there? But I didn't get to
finish that last sentence, because when they realized that I
was there standing off to the side of them, they
all pulled out their guns and their holsters, spun around

(26:38):
and started yelling at me to put my hands in
the air. It makes me laugh to think about it nowadays,
but I was so scared that I had this perfect
brain fart of a moment and instead of yelling don't
shoot or something like that, I literally screeched out it
was a joke. It was just a joke. But then
as they're approaching me, telling me to get down on

(27:01):
the ground, it hit me that the goddamn landlord's wife
had called the cops on me for a second time.
I'm lying on my face. They're putting the cuffs on me,
and I'm telling them things like officers, there's probably been
some kind of confusion here, just let me explain. But
unlike the first time around, when the cops were actually

(27:22):
calm and polite and whatnot, one of them yells at
me to shut up, and then I'm being arrested. They're
acting tough like I was the scum of the earth.
But still I'm just calmly telling them that there's been
a misunderstanding and that I rent the guest house on
the property. Again, one of the cops tells me to
shut my mouth, and then as two of them start

(27:42):
walking me back to their paddy wagon, the others walk
off towards the house, talking about securing it stuff like that.
I kept my mouth shut, but I was still acting
kind of smug because I knew that when all was
said and done, I was just going to file a
complaint on each one of those stuck up pricks for
arresting me on the charge of living in my own
goddamned apartment. One time I could understand, but two and

(28:07):
the way they did it, that's just not going to happen,
not in this lifetime now. Anyways, they take me down
to the Old Mill Valley Police precinct, and I'm still
one hundred percent sure that they're arresting me by accident.
But then when we got to this booking process and
they read out the charges, I realized something seriously messed

(28:28):
up was going on. I've been arrested on suspicion of kidnap,
false imprisonment, a bunch of other smaller charges, and then
get this, the cops charged me with quote, practicing medicine
without a license. That was the point where I lost
my cool and I was like, what the hell are
you people talking about? Because kidnap and all that other

(28:50):
scary stuff was one kind of nightmare. But then the
practicing medicine thing hearing that made it feel like I
was trapped in some fever dream. They might as well
have told me that I've been charged with lettuce and bacon,
because what I was hearing made exactly zero percent sense
to me. I knew not to talk to the cops
without a lawyer presence, so I didn't say a word,

(29:11):
and they didn't really ask me anything of substance until
the attorney showed up and we could start in earnest.
But then instead of asking questions about me, they seemed
very interested in my landlord. They asked me where he was,
and I told them fishing trip, but then they acted
like that was some kind of cover story. One of
them yelled, bull crap, we know he's not fishing. Where is.

(29:32):
He then told me all about how if I didn't cooperate,
they were going to make sure that I got a
full wrap on each charge and not just accessory, basically
telling me that I was going to prison for the
rest of my life if I didn't start telling them
the truth. Obviously, I had no clue what they were
talking about, so I told them a second time that,
to my knowledge, I had no idea where my landlord was.

(29:55):
He just told me that he was fishing, and I
have no reason not to believe him. The asked me
a whole bunch of questions about when I moved into
the guest house, what I did for work, things like that.
They also asked me a ton of questions about my
relationship with my landlord, like if I was close with him.
I told him hell no, that he'd actually warned me
to stay the hell away from the house because they

(30:16):
needed their privacy quote unquote, and if he was involved
in something shady that they were trying to pin on
me also, then they were barking up the wrong tree.
I then told them that I'd be happy to help
with any kind of investigation, especially since the charges sounded
so crazy and I wanted to distance myself as much
as I possibly could from them. The cops didn't exactly

(30:37):
warm up to me after that, but they sure as
hell stopped treating me like something they'd found in the
bottom of their shoe. They let me go not long
after taking me back to a cell, but warned me
not to leave town because I could still be re
arrested at any time. They wouldn't tell me exactly what
was going on, only that I might not be seeing
my landlord or his wife for a while, which might

(30:59):
affect my living roons. And that was the last thing
I wanted to hear. And I figured that I was
back to shopping for apartments again. But not only was
I wrong about that, but I was wrong about my
other theory too, which pertained to why cop seems so
interested in finding my landlord. See, the whole kidnapping and
imprisonment thing really rattled around my brain as I caught

(31:21):
a cat back to the apartment. That might sound crazy
to say it, but I thought my landlord might have,
I don't know, found the son of a bitch who
took his daughter all those years ago. But then the
practicing medicine thing, combined with the kidnapping that gave me
chills just thinking about it, Because think about it, what
kind of messed up stuff for you doing to someone

(31:44):
where that becomes a factor. Was he torturing a guy
performing a surgery on him? Just what the hell was
going on. I didn't find out the whole truth until
much later, but like I must have said a dozen
times by now, it was like nothing I ever could
have made. Since I didn't have anyone to pay rent to.
I just stayed in the apartment until the water and

(32:05):
electricity were just shut off, and then ended up staying
on Greg's couch with the guesthouse acting as storage until
I found a new place to live. This all took
place over the course of around two months, with news
about my landlord coming out in steady drip, until finally
all the pieces fit together. But probably the biggest one

(32:26):
came when the cops found my landlord's daughter, not dead,
not alive, but somewhere in between. In a small rented
home up in Los Ranchitos, the cops found my landlord's
missing daughter. She was emaciated, bed bound, on life support,
and appeared to have been in some kind of deep

(32:47):
coma for the last half a decade. My landlord had
been keeping his daughter alive, apparently after she'd received some
kind of serious head trauma, and he'd been doing so
using medical equipment he'd obtained from some mysterious but obviously
well equipped donor, most likely as a result of his
contacts in the medical industry. But then, why not take

(33:10):
her to a hospital to get her the proper medical attention.
Why leave her to slowly rot and some roach infested
apartment up in the hills Because it was my landlord's
wife who inflicted the crippling head wound in the first place.
I guess it all came out once they got arrested
and the daughter's location was uncovered. I don't know who

(33:31):
spilled the beans first, but some one did, and once
the news broke it was a hot story for a
few days, at least until the news cycle switched back
to the more interesting story, which was the aftermath of
the Loma Prieta earthquake and all the various rescue and
rebuilding efforts. Five long years ago, my former landlord's wife

(33:52):
and daughter got into one hell of a fight. I
don't think they ever found out what it was over,
but it was bad enough that the daughter ended up
smacking her mom across the face men landlord's wife and
loses her mind, grabs some heavy ornament off of a sideboard,
and then whack smacks her daughter over the head with it.
I guess she either hit her really goddamn hard or

(34:14):
landed the blow with a sharp edge or something, because
her daughter passed out right away and then just never
woke up again. And then afterwards, instead of doing the
right thing and having the mom sent to prison, they
agreed to cover the whole thing up, keep their daughter alive,
and then hope that they could find a way to
wake her up someday. Obviously, they didn't wake her up,

(34:36):
and after a long multi agency investigation, my landlord was
followed to the Los Franchiedo's apartment, where his bed ridden
daughter was then discovered. I couldn't believe that I had
been sharing a space with people like that, and that
I'd rationalized everything I'd seen and heard to the point
that I actually felt sorry for them. What they'd done

(34:58):
was terrible, an evil thing, but they did it out
of a warped sense of love and family preservation. And
that's the thing that I find most haunting about this
whole messed up situation. I don't think that they were
bad people, but they did a terrible, awful thing, both
of them, and if normal, everyday people were capable of

(35:18):
stuff like that, then to me, it makes the world
seem like a much darker and much scarier kind of place.
Back in the late summer of two thousand and nine,
I was just about to start graduate school and I

(35:40):
had to find myself a new flat for the coming year.
I was new to the area, so I didn't know
the neighborhoods at all, and since I needed something cheap
and cheerful, I ended up browsing vacancies in some of
the city's less affluent areas. Some of the listings were
frankly terrifying, and I'm surprised the landlords had the balls
to even really advertised them. Others, however, were considerably more livable,

(36:04):
or at least they appeared that way thanks to some
carefully chosen angles and a lot of window shots. Over
the course of a week, I'd booked ten different viewings,
and by the end of the third day I was
on the verge of an emotional breakdown. A playful exaggeration
on my part, of course, but honestly it was just
so draining. I had been to six of the ten

(36:26):
viewings that I had lined up, and each and every
one had been a complete letdown. The places were either
riddled with mold, obnoxiously close to a restaurant or bar,
so that they stank of old chip oil and cigarette smoke,
or they were the size of a friggin' shoe box.
And luckily, my next viewing, which was late in the
afternoon the following day, was with a landlady that had

(36:48):
advertised a female's only listing. The pictures of the place
made it seem quite nice, and I was very attracted
to the idea of living in a segregated space because
of the added security bring. I know, maybe to some
of you then might sound a little bit cynical, and
I'm well aware it's not all men who pose a problem,
but in the context of what I'm about to tell you,

(37:11):
I refuse to apologize for my cynicism, or, as other
girls might phrase it, realism. Some guys are just creeps.
It's a fact of life. So the idea of living
with just girls in a shared house was massively appealing,
But then that'd be massively appealing to just about any
girl moving too or living in London. Surely getting a

(37:33):
viewing appointment would be impossible, but then it wasn't. I
got one within a few days, which I thought was
me getting lucky, but really that should have been my
first red flag. I was just way too optimistic to
see it. The next day, as I got the busts
over towards Camden, I remember being this mix of excited

(37:54):
and nervous. I had so much faith in the place,
and I texted with the landlady, a woman named Jay,
and so I was confident that it was going to
be a decent place. But then at the same time,
I've been let down so relentlessly over the past few
days that I had this looming sense of dread as
I got closer and closer to my stop. At the time,

(38:14):
I thought it was just residual trauma from being continually disappointed,
but now I'm starting to think it was more like
a kind of Spidey sense. And so I got off
the bus and immediately texted Jan to let her know
that I was nearby, which she'd asked me to do
because she said that she was really busy and might
need a reminder. She text me back almost right away,

(38:36):
but when I expanded the message notification, I saw it
was a lot more than just a simple okay or
thanks see you soon. It said something like, Hi, I've
been terribly busy, so my brother in law will be
there to let you in and show you around. So
much for female only, right, I thought that was the
whole selling point. But then I understood that Jan was

(38:58):
probably a very busy lady if she owned several properties
all over London. So I wasn't about to throw my
rattle out of my pram over one little thing like that.
And so off I went to meet up with Jan's
brother in law and to view what could potentially be
my brand new home. So I got there and the
flats were in a unit above a line of shops.

(39:21):
I've been instructed to knock on the door, and so
I did, and when the door opened, I saw Jan's
brother in law standing in the threshold. He looked weird,
and that's putting it nicely. And the way he looked
at me in the first moments we made eye contact
made me feel a lot less comfortable than I did before.
I mean it when I said that I'm not some

(39:41):
man hater, but I wasn't at all pleased about having
to deal with a man in the female only flat complex,
especially not since he was giving off these creepy vibes.
If that was any other circumstance, and there's no way
I'd have stepped into an empty room with that guy.
But I'd pinned almost all my flat finding hopes on

(40:02):
this place. So I put on a brave face and
a polite voice, and then stepped inside and followed him
to the flat. As soon as we stepped inside, my
heart sank. It wasn't remotely like it was advertised, not
just because it already looked like there was someone living there,
but like, I'm pretty sure the pictures weren't even the
same place. I asked Jan's brother in law when the

(40:24):
current tenant was due to vacate, and my heart sank
again when he said something like, well, yeah, that's the thing.
The property we're going to show you just it's been
taken off the market and this is the only one
we've got available for you in this area, and it's
a shared unit. And that was all very disappointing to hear,
devastating even, But the thing that mattered most was securing

(40:48):
somewhere to live and making sure it was female only.
Potentially I could cope with a new flatmate so long
as she was a girl. But when I asked the
guy if the current tenant was female, he literally duck
the question. I asked him, plain as day, is it
still an all female occupancy? And he responded with, if

(41:09):
you'd follow me this way, I can show you the
vacant bedroom and attached bathroom. Then he just trotted off
like I hadn't asked him anything and open up the bedroom.
I followed him, thinking I might as well have a
look at the room, and while it wasn't actually all
that bad compared to some of the others I'd seen,
he still hadn't answered my question about the unit being

(41:29):
female only. I had to look around the bedroom and
remained polite as I asked him once again if the
unit was female only or not, and the man sort
of wiggled his head and made a face that said
he wasn't sure, and then said he'd have to contact
Jan to make sure because he didn't know off the
top of his head. I was starting to get really,

(41:50):
really annoyed, but I kept my cool. As he asked
if I wanted to see the attached bathroom. I was
literally on the verge of just saying no when he
stepped forward and opened up the door. Than as he did,
I was hit with this truly revolting smell it was
so bad that I winced, and I know the guy
saw me WinCE from how rank the smell was. So

(42:11):
when I said no, thanks, I think i'd like to
have another look at the kitchen, I'm pretty sure that
he knew that I was lying, unless he really was
as stupid as he looked. Honestly, I just wanted to
get away from the smell, and I didn't care at
all what the kitchen looked like when the bathroom bloody stanks.
So I was actually just going to walk towards the

(42:31):
front door and see myself out after a brief and
very passive, aggressive word of thanks. But then as I walked,
something clicked about all the stuff that was left around
the flat. By that point in my life, i'd lived
with girls, and only girls, even from when I was
a kid. My dad wasn't around and it was just me,
my sister and my mom. Then when I left for UNI,

(42:55):
I only lived with girls there too. And not to
be too crass, but I knew what boys badge look
like too, and that's what clicked in my head. As
I walked through the last flat. It looked like a
man lived there, and of course I knew that it
was a man living there, because the guy wouldn't answer
my bloody question, but it seemed like a certain type
of man lived there. And this is where I made

(43:17):
a huge error of judgment. I put it down to
the continual disappointments and the stress of thinking that it
was going to be forced to pick some absolute crap
house to be miserable in for the next year plus.
But when I realized that it wasn't just any old
man living there, but the one currently showing me around,
it all started falling into place for me. I got

(43:39):
out my phone called Jan's number, and as the guy
followed me out of the bedroom, his phone started to
ring in his pocket. I wasn't supposed to have his number,
was I. He was just supposed to be meeting me there.
So having the phone that Jan was texting from start
ringing in his pocket that confirmed all my worst suspicions

(44:01):
about this man. And he knew it too. He knew
I'd rumbled him. And I wish that I was wearing
a bloody GoPro because the look on his face was
one I wished that I had framed as a picture
hanging in my bathroom. I think that's the other thing
that did it too, how I sort of, I don't know.
He sensed his weakness. I caught some absolute waste man

(44:25):
trying to trick desperate girls into living in a spare room.
It looked like he'd built himself, and with some really
dodgy plumbing too, by the smell of things. Red handed.
That was the phrase that came into my head in
the moment, red bloody handed, and I'd be damned if
I was about to let him live it down. I
remember trying to think of something witty to say, but

(44:47):
all I could think of was to ask him the
exact question in mind, I suppose by way of humiliation,
and so I started asking him, were you trying to
trick young girls into living with you? Yeah? His face
was like a tomato, but he still tried denying it,
and the indignation that I felt from his denial only

(45:08):
spurred me on. I started telling him how pathetic he was,
what a pervert he was, how he was probably on
the sex offenders registry. I gave him both barrels, as
they say, didn't hold back in the slightest, But I
forgot the golden rule when dealing with men, they're bigger
they're stronger, and the mental midgets among them are only

(45:31):
one piece of wounded pride away from using that to
their advantage. I saw the moment I pushed him over
the edge, and it really was like that meam of
and it was in that moment she knew she left up.
He stopped trying to talk, gave up on denying everything,
then started marching towards me with this wild look in

(45:52):
his eyes. I knew he was going to go for me,
and I got a head start on running down the
corridor to the block's entrance, but it was just too fast.
I almost got to the door and just about had
my hand on the latch when I felt something tugging
on my hair. I felt the pressure on my scalp,
and then the next thing, my neck jerked back as

(46:12):
the guy got a handful of my hair and started
trying to drag me backwards. I tried to stay on
my feet, but the force of him pulling my head
back knocked me off my balance, and then as I
fell backwards, I realized that he was actually trying to
drag me back towards the flat using nothing but my hair.
I remember screaming for help and hoping someone would appear

(46:33):
from the other flats, of which there were maybe three
or four on that floor of the block. But if
they were occupied, whoever lived in them must have been
at work or dead, because I screamed so hard that
my nose started to bleed, and no one emerged from
any of the doors. Once I realized that I was
on my own like that and we were just feet

(46:54):
away from him dragging me back into his flat, I
tried to flip myself over so I could at least
stand up up, but ray when I found a bit
of purchase on the carpet underneath, I felt something slam
into my face so hard it made the vision in
my left eye go all white. I brought a hand
up to my face, covering that eye, and with my
free hand, I made a desperately futile attempt to get

(47:17):
his hand off of my hair. But the second my
hand touched his and I tried digging my nails into
the skin of his hand, he tugged violently on my
hair again and sent me crashing down on my knees.
I remember how as I reached the doorway, he tried
to drag me through it, but I made it very
hard on him by blindly kicking and throwing punches, anything

(47:40):
to try and get him in the gonads or scratch
his eyes out. But then after making contact with at
least one of my swings, I have a gap in
my memory, presumably from where the guy hit me so
hard that I fell unconscious for a minute or two,
And my last memory of trying to fight him off
of me was as we reached the door. But then

(48:00):
the next I remember, I was on the bedroom floor
and he was dragging me towards the bathroom that stank
of mold and rotten god knows what. There was this
pain in my neck when I woke up, and I
remember having this deep fear that if I tried to
twist my way up so I could bite him, that
he might tug on my hair hard enough to break
my neck. I was more terrified than I've ever been

(48:24):
in my entire life. I had no idea what was happening,
but the one thing I did know is that if
he managed to get me into that bathroom, it was
all ogre for me. I remember rolling over and how
it made my scalp burn with pain from all the
hair that got ripped out. But it allowed me to
kind of wheel around and grab the guy's wrists. He

(48:47):
obviously thought that I was unconscious still, so when I
suddenly started moving, it took him totally by surprise, and
I was able to sink my teeth in the skin
of his wrist until I saw his fingers open and
felt my hair come from his grip. I tried to run,
but he grabbed me again, only that time I just
remember sort of launching myself at his face. He was

(49:10):
trying to pin my arms by my sides by wrapping
his own around me, but I raised them too early
for him to get them, and just started digging my
finger nails into his eyes. It was so horrible because
I could feel the bare flesh of his eyeballs giving
way under my nails, and it really makes me shudder
to think about now. But at the time, all I

(49:31):
could think about was doing as much damage as possible,
and it worked. He screamed so loud that it hurt
my ears, and then he suddenly shoved me off of
them so hard that I went tumbling to the floor.
I felt so dizzy that I struggled to find my feet,
but it didn't matter, because the man intent on ending
my life, and god knows what else before that was

(49:54):
in such pain for me, scratching his eyes that he
couldn't see. He was covering them with both of his hands,
screaming terrible, terrible, terrible things at me. But I listened
to all of that as I was running towards the
front door, knowing that there was no chance of him
catching up to me. I remember coming out into the
street outside and walking down the metal stairs which led

(50:18):
up to the unit really fast, and then some woman
saw me as she was walking past and was like,
oh my god, are you okay. I had to cut
on my face from where it hit me. I'm guessing
that was the blow that knocked me out too, and
it had been pouring blood down me without me realizing. Then.
When I saw just how much blood there was, I

(50:39):
was terrified that he might have stabbed me or something,
so I unzipped my jacket and started looking for stab
wounds while saying to the woman to call the police.
Called police. More and more people came over because the
way I looked and the way I was shouting was
obviously attracting a lot of attention. I kept pointing to
the door that I went through and came out saying
he's there. He's in there, because I felt my legs

(51:02):
getting weak, and I honestly thought that I was about
to pass out from the bleeding. Then if I passed out,
I didn't know if i'd wake up again. Obviously, that
was all just the terror talking, and despite all the blood,
I didn't even need stitches after being taken to the hospital.
But in the moment, I was the most scared that
I'd ever been in my life, and convinced the guy

(51:24):
had done way more damage to me. The police managed
to track down this man that had attacked me, and
he ended up getting a prison sentence of six years.
I think if the jury were able to see into
his head and got a glimpse of what he had
in store for me, he'd gotten much much longer. But
sadly that's not how the law works here. And as

(51:47):
much as I have my own trauma as a result
of what had happened, my worst fear is that he'll
get his chance to do it again sooner rather than later. Hey, friends,
thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted
of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday

(52:09):
and Thursday at nine p m e s T. And
there are super fun live streams every Sunday and Wednesday nights.
If you get a story, be sure to submit them
over to my email at Let's Read Submissions at gmail
dot com and you might even hear your story featured
on the next video. And if you want to support
me even more, grab early access to all future narrations

(52:29):
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 Littery Podcast
where you can hear all of these stories and big
compilations located anywhere you listen to podcasts. All links in
the description below. Thanks much, friends, and remember don't talk

(52:49):
to the police ever.