The Best TRUE Scary Stories from October | Real Horror That Will Haunt You | Part 2 of 2 - Scary Stories from Bad Vibes

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
So I'm going to start this off by saying that
English is in fact not my first language, so there
might be some mistakes here and there. So this story
happened at work, i'd say about two years ago. I'm
a female and was nineteen at the time. I worked
at my local coffee shop, and I still work there.

(00:27):
I usually worked closing shift, which ends at ten o'clock.
During dead times, we have to close the shop alone,
which I did that day. So about fifteen minutes before
I closed my shop, an unusual client entered the cafe.
I say unusual because most of my clients are regulars.

(00:48):
So this dude, i'd say he's in his mid to
late thirties. He comes in and asks me for an
empty cup, which I gave him. Nothing seemed weird at first.
The guy goes into the corner to pop open a
bottle of champagne. He chugs about half of it and
pours the other half in that same cup I gave him.

(01:11):
I did think it was weird, but I didn't want
to confront him because remember I was working the shift alone.
So after chugging his huge amount of alcohol, he just
started dancing around the corner, which I definitely found weird,
but I really just wanted to finish my shift and
go get wasted with my friends. So it's about five

(01:33):
minutes before closing an hour. I go around the coffee
shop and let the clients know that we're closing. Before leaving,
the dude comes up to the counter and slides the
chocolate bar and just says thank you so much. I
smiled and said, no problem. Then he left the shop.

(01:53):
At first sight, the chocolate bar seemed normal, but after
a further investigation, I noticed that it was cutting half
an inside the package and it seemed to be sealed
back up with a hair straightener or something hot, which
I found concerning to say The least. One thing I
didn't mention at first is that my friends were sitting
at a table inside the coffee shop. But during the

(02:15):
time that he was there, I didn't talk to them
at all since I was trying to finish my task
as fast as I could, so at first sight, they
didn't look like they were my friends. Whatever time goes
by and ten o'clock finally comes around, I locked both
front and back doors. When locked, it's possible to use

(02:35):
the back door to exit the restaurant. But not to enter.
But while I was counting the till, investing around my
three friends, one of them goes to the bathroom. It's
important to note that she used the handicap bathroom, which
shares the same wall with a men's bathroom. Kind Of annoyed,
the same friend comes out and asks who knocked on

(02:56):
the wall while I was pissing. Me and two friends
look at each other, confused because none of us pulled
that prank. Safe to say, we were kind of concerned. Naturally,
we went into a quick check of the men's restroom.
We didn't open the stall that was right against the
handicap bathroom because we were a little too scared, meaning

(03:18):
the man might have been crossed on the toilet. After that,
I finished closing work, I turned off the lights, and
as I'm about to enter the code to exit the building,
I hear the back door open and close. I think
it's pretty obvious that someone was in fact hiding in
the bathroom. All that made me connect some dots. What
if I really was alone that night? What if for

(03:41):
some reason I ate that chocolate he gave me. Would
he have attacked me, raped me, kill me? All that
might seem like a bit of a reach, but you
never really know someone's intention. So many questions still unanswered.
But this situation still keeps me up at night. I
hope we never meet again. This happened twenty some years ago,

(04:11):
but it's still really vivid in my mind. I, a
forty year old female, was working alone in sort of
a CD area in my hometown at a twenty four
hour adult video toy store. I more often than not
ended up working in the overnight shift, which wasn't usually
too bad. Occasionally we get drunk guys from the bar

(04:32):
next door, but mostly the customers were pretty respectful. A
guy came in after midnight. I was never sure of
his age. He seemed like the sort of guy who
was fifty but also possibly twenty five or somewhere in between.
He had the same haircut as Johnny Depp in that
god awful Wonka movie, and he talked in this weird

(04:56):
falsetto Michael Jackson voice. It made my skin fuck crawl.
He asked me to call him a cab, and I
did my nervously told him he could wait in the
front of the store for it, and probably made up
something about paying customers only inside the store, but he
ignored me, slowly making his way further into the store

(05:17):
and making conversation. I kept thinking, this guy was definitely
on something, and he was definitely gonna skin me and
wear me like a people suit. He was standing right
next to the phone on the counter, sort of leaning
against it. I kept telling him that his taxi would
be there any minute, and he ignored me, still asking

(05:38):
me questions. I just remember him asking, do you have
any pussycats?

Speaker 2 (05:45):
No?

Speaker 1 (05:46):
I was led to believe that I could find some
pussy cats in here. If I had a dildo to
brandish as a weapon within reach or spray him with
loop to make makeshift pepper spray, at that point, I
would have used it. Thankfully, this beautiful angel of a
man who decided to rent porn after midnight came in.
I immediately greeted him and said, oh, I need to

(06:09):
talk to you about your special order. When he came
over to the counter to ask what I meant, I whispered,
please stay and sort of jerked my head towards the
creepy guy who was just smiling at us. My guardian
porn runner went along with the ruse and thank you,
baby Jesus. The creep went out to get to his taxi.

(06:31):
The customer asked if I was okay, and I said
I was, so he went to browse. I gave him
a free rental as a thank you. I swear to
God I could still hear the creep's voice when I
think about this so possible serial killer Willy Wonka, let's
not meet again. This was back when I was in

(06:59):
my freshman year of high school at an extreme falling
out with a friend who was manipulative, secretive, and extremely
reluctant for me to know anything about her. A lot
happened when we were friends and had a crush on
her to what she found out about and started acting
differently towards me. She started telling me that she was

(07:20):
selling her body and always urged me to ditch school
and let her show me things. We stopped being friends
for a while and she was expelled, and I was
born by the police and teachers not to approach to
which never explained why she was expelled. One day out
of the blue a year later, when we were both

(07:42):
going to new schools and had our own separate lives,
she found my account and messaged me asking me sexual
questions and making up stories and trying to lure me
to her house to have sex. Despite being autistic and
being easily taken advantage of my whole life, I noticed
something was allf and I blocked her. In that moment,

(08:04):
I thought back to the first and only time we
hung out outside of school, where she had got to
me to hang out with her at the park near
her house. I remember how she started to lead me
away from the car, with two men slowly following us,
creeping right behind us, watching us. I remember her noticing
the two men and begging me to leave and not

(08:26):
come into our house. Back then, I didn't understand why,
but I remember leaving. I found it weird that she
tried to block me from the car, but never understood
or thought anything of it. Recently, the account in her
bio got reported for sexual exploitation, and I wondered what
would have happened today if I hadn't left earlier, or

(08:48):
if I actually accepted her offer to have sex at
her house. I wondered if I would possibly be a
victim of something bigger. Every day, I still pieced together
the puzzles of what happened and how close I could
have been kidnapped by those guys in those cars. Either way,
let's not meet all preface by saying that I was

(09:15):
raised by a killer. My grandfather and grandmother raised me,
and when I was seventeen, my grandfather stalked, kidnapped, and
murdered my grandmother because she wanted a divorce. I also
married my ex husband at twenty two, later to find
out that his dad was a prolific pedophile, raping his

(09:35):
sisters as young as six years old. Both are in
prison for life. But these are men I was extremely
close to. For a while, I was almost attracted to danger,
and the warning signs were easily ignored and considered normal
until I started listening to my intuition. And now I

(09:56):
can spot these predatory type people out They know I
recognize them. It's like an unspoken thing, like when you're
at a party and someone else sees something funny, but
you don't know each other well enough to say it
out loud, so you just kind of look at each
other and kind of laugh teleopathically. It's only happened twice,

(10:17):
as they don't really get out like that, And to
be frank, there aren't a lot of people like this
out there. And if they are out there, I'm not
in neft enough at pointing them all out, but I
could tell almost immediately with this man. My mom's friend
is a truck driver. My mom has been taking my
daughter to play with his daughter on little play dates.

(10:40):
They met at a church group. Come to find out
later that this church group is a weird extremist version
of Christianity, but they all believed all white people are
evil and that they're the chosen ones rather than Jews,
and a whole bunch of other weird shit. It's a cult.
He became uncomfortable with my mom taking my daughter on

(11:02):
these playdates. Once I realized how disturbed the combined beliefs were.
I didn't want to cut off the playdates cold turkey
for the sake of the kids, so I started taking
time off work to join them and told my mom
he wasn't allowed near my daughter without me being there.
When I first met him, he was very charming and sweet, funny,

(11:24):
but annoyingly jolly and clearly trying hard to appear innocent
and sweet. He used a soft voice to make me comfortable,
and increasingly talked about being protective to make himself seem
more manly. He told me weird things like that his
daughter wasn't allowed to wear pants, only dresses. Then he

(11:47):
kept offering me drinks one after another while we were
hanging out with our kids. Not a big deal, but
I'm not a drinker, especially not on playdates, and I
made that very clear to him. While we were sitting
down watching the kids at the beach at this time,
he set up a little blanket area and told me

(12:10):
I could come closer. I didn't know how to react,
other than to say that I needed to sit where
I was sitting to see the kids better. I had
already been sitting on my own blanket. He kept pushing
it and said I could see them from here here,
being basically on his lap on the blanket he had
sat up. He stared at me silently for what seemed

(12:33):
like an hour before I scooted closer to him to
not make things more awkward for everyone around, I sat
on the corner of the blanket and tried to avoid
eye contact and focused on the kids, being sure not
to have him get too close or me get too close.
I got weird vibes, but figured he was obviously weird

(12:53):
because of his culty beliefs and just shrugged off as
him being odd. But my cut was burning for days.
After that first meeting. I also noted that he really
spoke badly about women, especially his kid's mom. I figured
he was just a misogynistic weirdo. He went on a
truck run and when he came back, immediately wanted to

(13:15):
get our kids together again. I told my mom that
I had to be there, so we arranged a date
and time where I wasn't working. We went to a
paint studio for kids, and again, the whole time, he
was offering me drinks at an art studio for kids
where no drinks were served. He even ran to a

(13:36):
bar to get some drinks and then brought them into
a children's art studio. He had a handful of beers
as he was surrounded by kids painting bluey portraits. It
was bizarre. We went from the art studio to a
trampoline park, and as the kids were joking around and
jumping and playing, he repeatedly picked me up and threw

(13:58):
me onto the pham ball pitch, despite my clear discomfort
and telling him I wasn't feeling well and asking him
to stop. He then pulled me down on top of
him while he was laying on the trampoline, to which
I got very upset and stormed off, taking my daughter
with me. At one point before that, I got in

(14:19):
a friction burn on my wrist from sliding down the
trampoline too fast, and he took my wrists and grabbed
it hard, then pressed down on the open sword to
taunt me. I don't know if this man is just
socially awkward or disturbed or what, but my body has
never physically reacted so strongly to a person besides my

(14:40):
ex husband's father, who was a convicted peto. I could
not sleep for days. I started smoking cigars again ten
years after I quit. My thoughts were racing constantly. I
called my brothers and started telling them how odd it was,
but I ended up crying at the end of our
conversation out of pure fear. My stomach was shaking. That

(15:05):
lasted for about two weeks. Obviously, I can't say that
he's a serial killer, but the truck driver occupation, paired
with his obvious devious nature, it's just not something I
want to fuck with. Edit one. I met this dude twice,
and this was like a year ago. I banned him

(15:25):
from our lives and preferably my mom's, but I can't
control her. My kid is barely allowed around my own
mother anymore, as I lost trust in her after this.
Obviously thinking about bad mom, it's up to you. I
don't care about your opinions, as I know how vigilant
I am and my kid's safety. I started a new

(15:46):
job working from home just to be around her, so
my mother doesn't need to be among other security measures
that have been taken to protect her. Two don't know
enough details about this guy to file a report or
go to CPS, and I don't plan on being around
him anymore to get more details. I don't even know

(16:07):
where he lives, and my mom refuses to give me
any more details because she's suspicious of my intentions since
she knows I think he's disgusting. I even tried asking
for their address so I could send a birthday invitation,
and she wouldn't even give me that because they don't
celebrate birthdays in their religion. This is a very odd

(16:28):
and unique situation, and it's not going to be easy
to get police onto this man. This goes back to
around twenty twenty two. I fourteen year old female was
a valerie addict and would play for hours. I wouldn't

(16:51):
normally use a MIC because I had social anxiety and
also valerant gamers are really weird with females. I admit
this guy who was pretty chill. He invited me to
queue up with his friends, one guy, one girl, and
I accepted. His friend was super sweet and funny, and
we got along pretty well. I decided to add to

(17:13):
him as a friend. We started playing some matches from
time to time and exchanged discords. We started talking more
and more, and I did eventually get attached. I could
tell that he was really into me. He would praise
and text me a lot. A few months past. We

(17:34):
then exchanged Instagrams and started dming each other. Throughout all
of this, we hadn't established if we were friends or more.
We would flirt occasionally, but it wouldn't go further than that.
One day he asked me for my Snapchat. I agreed,
even though I thought it was sort of suspicious. Man

(17:55):
on Snapchat. I know where that leads, but I didn't
really mind it since I did kind of like him.
Things did turn sexual after a few days, and he
would send me pictures and videos. I didn't send anything back,
but I would entertain it. Mistake number one. Maybe six

(18:16):
months a year after we initially met, so end of
twenty twenty three, I was fifteen and told him I
didn't want anything serious, no relationships, but we could be
friends with benefits. He enthusiastically agreed, and I ended up
sending in pictures. Mistake number two. I really thought I

(18:37):
was safe because it was on Snapchat. You could see
if the screenshot. A few weeks passed and I realized
I had never seen his face and I knew almost
nothing about him. I started asking more about him, found
out that his name was Joshua and he lives in Florida.
He showed me his face. He has multiple mental illness

(19:00):
and has had trouble with the police before I realized
how deep and shit I was and started texting him
less and less, which infuriated him. At some point, I
decided to officially cut him off, tried to do it
as politely as I could, and blocked him. I thought
that was it. In the beginning of twenty twenty four,

(19:25):
I received a text from my.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Sister, Hey, who's josh I.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
Felt my knees weaken and my stomach drop. I asked
her why, and she told me that she would tell
me when she gets home. When she finally arrived, I
was waiting in the kitchen for her and she just
gave me this look. I started crying and she hugged me.
He sent her my pictures and threatened to leak them.

(19:51):
I had no choice but to talk about it with
my mom, and she told me we should go to
the police. I agreed and went to the police station,
where they told me they would send officers at my
house and they would take my phone and talk to
me and my sister. It kind of dawned on me
that this was really serious, and I got scared. I

(20:11):
blocked out Mistake number three. Maybe a month or two later,
Josh's brother text me asking me to unblock him. We
texted a bit and he told me that Josh would
often sell news to pedos on telegram. I realized how
deep and shit I was, but I was too scared
to speak up. I really should have. Josh texted my

(20:36):
friend's boyfriend no idea how he found him, and started
telling him how I was horrible and asking if he
wanted my nudes. A few months later, he texted my
then boyfriend telling him the same thing, but threatening just
said my nudes. If I wouldn't talk to him, I
un blocked him. Mistake number four. I didn't lead him on.

(20:59):
I told him to back off and leave me alone,
that I go to the cops. He told me, and
I quote.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
That would just show me how much you love me.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
I obviously reblocked him. I since then, every few months
get a Snapchat or Instagram request from him. I would
sometimes accept it and telling him to back off, telling
him I don't love him. I tried to find out
his last name, and I remember his brother that text me.
I texted him asking him for Josh's last name. He

(21:32):
did not known me, and knowing Josh, I sent him
screenshots of our conversation a few months earlier, talking about
me and him, and he ignored me. I'm wondering if
there's anything I can do. I feel like I can't
escape him wherever I go. I've turned most of my
accounts private because of him, and I have trouble trusting

(21:53):
people now. I feel like I'm always just waiting for
him to reappear. I lived in the mannished complex that
has two buildings. The main one with the lobby, mailroom, amenities, etc.

(22:15):
And the second one, which I currently live in. On
Sunday night, I added, DoorDash delivery dropped off. I always
tell them they can drop my orders off at the
secondary entrance in my building so that I don't have
to walk across over to the main building, but I
don't think they ever read my notes. No worries. I

(22:35):
read the notification from door Dash and saw I got
delivered to the lobby in the main building. Around eleven PM.
I made my way over and as the dasher even
left me a note saying there's a suspicious man in
the lobby and that he was worried he might take
my food. I figured he said that because he was

(22:56):
waiting until I got there. When I came down, there
really was a guy sitting there on his phone but
carefully watching my food. He saw me approach and said
you're here, to which I responded, thanks for waiting, Thinking
it must be my doordasher. I pick up my order
and start to turn around, and he also got up,

(23:18):
except he started heading in the direction of the elevators,
not the exit. He starts chatting, I actually live in
this building. My name is Ryan, and I live in
building number three. What's your name? I gave him a
fake name and cut the conversation short. The pieces came
together in my head. This wasn't the doordasher. It was

(23:41):
a suspicious man pretending to be a doordasher who had
even waited for me to come down as though he
made my delivery. You can either use the elevators in
the main building to go to the fourth floor and
transfer to the secondary building, or you can cut across
the garage in the main building to the second building.
I noticed the key fob in his hand and waited

(24:03):
for him to click the elevator and step inside. When
I gathered he was taking the elevator, and I knew
I definitely didn't want to share an elevator with him
because he would know where I lived. I decided that
I would take a shortcut through the garage. It's a
straight line, maybe about a two minute walk to the
other side. After he stepped on the elevator, I walked

(24:25):
through both sts of the doors into the garage. My
senses heightened. Halfway through. I decided to look behind me
to verify I was alone, only to see his body
in the doorway. He hadn't taken the elevator. He was
following me. I booked at heart, racing through the garage doors.
I started jamming the elevator button, hoping it would come quickly,

(24:48):
but I could hear that the elevator was still on
its way down, and the split second I tried to
think if I'd be strong enough to hold down the
door with a weight in my body if he came
pushing through. But that would mean we would be stuck
in the same area in the garage, with probably little
to no cameras, witnesses, or any cell service. I was

(25:10):
running out of time. I eyed the stairwell and carried
my food, booked it into two steps at a time,
up two floors. I was now on the fourth floor,
which is normally the floor you would transfer to get
to the other building. Although I was now in the
secondary building, I was worried that if he indeed was

(25:30):
still following me, he wouldn't know which building I lived in.
I needed to go back to the main building. If
he's still behind me, I would know for sure that
he was following me, because we just made a circle.
From the corner of my eye in the distance, I
could see someone taking their trash out from the reflection
of the door at eleven pm. This was the first

(25:52):
person I had seen, and I needed to be next
to anyone. I cut through the courtyard, through the conservatory,
and into the hallway to the fourth floor in the
main building. Just as I stopped to catch my breath,
he burst through the conservator over door and caught up
with me. Huffing and puffing. He accused me of stealing

(26:13):
his door dash, yelling, got in my face and told
me that I could be evicted and sent to prison.
I couldn't even look at him in his eyes for
longer than three seconds, but he looked bewildered. At this point,
the person that was taking the trash out to the
shoe was nowhere to be seen, and this man kept

(26:33):
coming closer, me backing up him itching closer. I tried
talking loudly, hoping that if anything happened, the residence in
the unions behind me could hear. He continued to raise
his voice, claiming that one nineteen number on the receipt
stapled outside the bag was the real person's apartment number,

(26:54):
and that I had stolen from them. Taking a look,
one nineteen was in fact, the order number, not the
apartment number, but he was convinced it was someone's apartment number.
For a lot of reasons, this logic didn't make sense
even if I was taking someone else's order. He was
going to follow me to my apartment to verify where

(27:14):
I lived, which is scary, and ensure that my apartment
matched the number, which he assumed the apartment number was
one nineteen. He was able to catch up to me
relatively quickly, considering how sprinting and not a breath. This
means he was deliberately following and chasing me down, which

(27:35):
as a man circumstances a side, but especially for stolen food.
I'm not sure why you would ever willingly chase a
woman by yourself at night, knowing how this would look
for him, he had to have studied the order in receipts,
because you had to have close proximity to the receipt
to see the fading ink that read one nineteen. It

(27:56):
was never about the order, because why did he pretend
to go to the elevator in the beginning only to
chase me across two buildings for an order when he
didn't even know which apartment number I was going to
and it definitely dawned on him that up to that point,
we were the only people around. As I was standing there,
him engine near me and poking at the receipt, I

(28:19):
heard someone coming through the hallway in the distance. He
clicked the elevator button, continuing his threats, and I didn't
even finish waiting for him to get on the elevator.
I sprinted through the conservatory, through the courtyard, and back
to my building, taking the elevator up to my floor.
I got to my apartment paralyzed and shaking. I was

(28:40):
so terrified that my breathing got labored and raspby. I
don't even have asthma, but I could barely catch my
breath for minutes, grasping onto anything I could so that
I could feel grounded and not choke from the lack
of air. I'll never forget that moment. I looked back
in that garage and saw his body in the doorframe.

(29:02):
I wrote a long, detailed email to management with screenshots
from the door dash and exact accounts and locations of
where everything happened, so that they could collaborate my accounts
with their camera footage. It's now been four days and
I'm awoken every morning by my heart racing, hot flashes
and paranoia with every drop of a sound. This is

(29:25):
a new kind of anxiety I've never felt before. And
my days are clouded with fear of bumping into him
in the common spaces, and how to plan my days
with the highest likelihood of avoiding him, and how to
strategically order and pick up my mail where I can
know that I won't have to see him. I don't
know if these extreme symptoms are normal after this experience,

(29:48):
considering I know a lot of women who have had
more frightening, finally encounters with strangers that involve more than
what just happened to me that night. But this has
been consuming me for the past few day. I feel
unsafe in my own building at it everything that's happened
since that morning. My management and maintenance two men came

(30:12):
knocking on my door. Of course, I was already frazzled
from the events of that night, and although I opened
the door, they could see that I was visibly shaking.
They came to apologize about the events, saying they had
seen the footage and it was scary. I needed a
file police report immediately. The property manager was kind, saying

(30:34):
he would sit and call the police with me so
I wouldn't have to do it alone. I asked if
they knew the resident and if they were aware. He
said they knew who it was and this wasn't the
first time he's been reported for bothering a resident. My
stomach sank. I quickly got ready and met the property

(30:55):
manager downstairs outside of the building, and we made the
call together. After I gave my account, the property manager
chimed in with his accounts of what happened. I was
the fourth or fifth female that he harassed. He has
harassed women in the complex before, but never followed them

(31:16):
at Nai. The property manager has managed multiple properties before,
but he's never seen a resident following another resident like
this before. He usually finds a woman by herself kind
of hones in on them. He does not approach men,
and he doesn't approach women when they are with men.

(31:38):
The people who live on his floor have complained numerous
times that he harasses them. He's been arrested for harassing women.
He's been sent to the hospital before for his mental
health issues. He was most recently booked and released two
weeks ago, and management wasn't aware that he was back.

(31:58):
The responder on the other noted that this was quite severe,
so they sent an officer to the scene to collect
an official report. By this point, as we were talking,
I learned the resident's full name, birthday, union't number he
lives in. When he moved in. It's been less than
a half year, so assuming he has a twelve month lease,

(32:20):
he still has a ways to go. The officer asked
me if I could remember if he had a tool
or weapon in his hands, but I said I couldn't remember,
and not that I knew of. I said there was
camera footage, so couldn't we checked to see if he did.
But the officer said, even if I couldn't remember, and
it turns out the perpetrator did in fact have a weapon,

(32:43):
I couldn't go back on my word and say that
there was a weapon or I felt threatened. I was stunned,
I told the officer. But there's evidence of him following
me a woman alone, as well as threatening me across
two buildings, one of which he had no business being in.
The officer asked if he used the words I will

(33:04):
kill you or I will shoot you. I said no,
but he was still threatening me. The officer said, unfortunately,
that only qualifies as being a nuisance, but being a
nuisance isn't against the law or grounds for arrest. My
heart dropped. On top of that, my property manager said
he's been trying to evict him, but there isn't enough

(33:25):
evidence and eviction is a long process. There was nothing
we could do. The officer gave me his card with
my case number, informing me I should call him if
he ever approached me again or I felt unsafe. I
went back to my apartment stunned, trying to figure out
my next steps. I decided not to leave my apartment

(33:46):
again out of safety, but ordered additional self defense items,
including an apartment doorbell camera. Because he had been close
enough to my receipt to see the order number, the
receipt also had my name. I was worried he put
two and two together, type my name in the directory
outside our building and figure out my unit number. I

(34:07):
couldn't risk running into him again, so I had to
stay locked up until my camera arrived. Given the information
I had about him now, I decided to do my
own research and find his public records. To my surprise,
I learned that he actually had six court cases since
twenty eighteen, and the most recent court record was from

(34:28):
August twenty twenty four. His cases have been for stalking, harassment,
restraining orders, multiple reissued anti harassment protection orders, domestic violence,
and attempting to get him to surrender his firearms, to
which he refused, so he's still owns his guns. Different

(34:50):
women have attempted to serve and protection orders multiple times
but failed because he either tried to dodge it, never
showed up to court, or he's been hard to get
a hold of. I couldn't believe it. This man was
able to freely move about the common spaces in our complex,
and management has never mentioned anything to the residents nor

(35:10):
regarded our safety. Now I knew this was more than
just an annoying neighbor, or rather someone who could be dangerous.
I was dealing with a man with unresolved mental issues,
who may still be in possession of multiple firearms, who
was angry with me. Given his history of professional stalking,

(35:31):
I was worried if he saw me too soon again,
he would remember our encounter and fixate on me and
possibly escalate it. A few days passed and I hadn't
left my building, but I noted that my camera had arrived,
so I was trying to arrange how I could get
to the mail room, which was in the building he
lives in, and on the floor heson. I asked management

(35:54):
for the footage of our encounter, and after two days
of dragging on the request, they finally sent me clips
of our encounters in different areas. In one of the videos,
you could see he followed me into the garage a
bit after I had already got in, after he supposedly
pretended to take the elevator. In the clip that freaks

(36:14):
me out the most, you could see him enter the
garage elevator lobby, click the elevator button, frantically pace around
back and forth before I realized I'm running out of
time and ran through the stairwell. A few minutes later,
you could see him come in. Look at all the
pressed elevator buttons, then deduced I must have taken the
stairwell before fallowing. We sue if anything, this showed intent.

(36:39):
Oddly enough, the footage when he caught up to me
and poked the receipt on the bag was missing, but
management sent the footage after when I was running back
to my building anyway. A few days later, around six pm,
I was trying to figure out how to pick up
my mail. I have a married friend who lives in
his building three floors above him, and had no idea

(37:02):
about any of this, so I asked if she had
to be comfortable meeting me on the fourth floor. Deep breaths.
I got to the end of the hallway, my friend
on the phone the whole time, and I opened the
door to the courtyard a hyper vigilant I looked across
and saw the man there. I squinted, It couldn't be

(37:24):
It was indeed him, standing in the conservatory. He locked
eyes with me, started mouthing things, smiling, then yelling. I
began shaking uncontrollably, crying and quickly ran back into my building.
Now we knew for sure I lived in the second building.
My friend was in the hallway behind me, so she

(37:46):
witnessed everything as he was yelling directly at me. She
wasn't with her husband either, but he had locked eyes
with me and was angry. Now there were some people
in the hallway frantically asking if I was okay, but
I couldn't speak. My friends, still on the line, told
me to go back to my apartment that she'd meet
me there with her husband. My friend and her husband

(38:10):
came up a few moments later, staying with me as
I frantically packed my bag. We decided it wasn't safe
for me to be alone in my apartment, so I
reached out to another friend who lives somewhere else in
the city, so I could crash out her place. My
friend and her husband escorted me through the hallway, me

(38:30):
physically breaking down as we neared the elevators, but eventually
leading me to my other friend's car. As I write
this edit, I am in the living room of her
apartment for the third day, figuring out my next moves.
On my first day at my friend's house, I wrote
management and email explaining the incident with the resident. Again,

(38:52):
this is my second day with no response from them. Still,
my friend went to management with her husband to report
the incident since she was witnessed to him yelling, so
it could add to their complaints. She said management was
aware of me and my complaints, but they couldn't do
anything because he's protected. Under the Fair Housing Act, management

(39:14):
cannot deny housing to someone due to their disability, which
includes mental illness. For context, Most buildings in the city
have MFTE units, basically reduced rent apartments that were reserved
as part of an affordable housing program in my city.
From what I can understand, people can qualify for MFTE

(39:35):
housing based on their income, and sometimes it's combined with
disability projections, which is likely how he's able to stay here.
So it seems my unit is worried if they evict him,
he might be able to sue them. I don't have
a male partner, which seems to be the only deterrent
from the resident, so my sister and her husband are

(39:57):
trying to figure out when they can fly in and
help me pack up my place so I can get
out of there. I'm devastated because it's a beautiful complex
with incredible amenities, gorgeous interior, and pretty new, but all
that means nothing when my safety is at risk. I
have no plans, but I can't get back to my

(40:17):
place until I have protection at all times in the building.
I haven't told many people this story because it's pretty upsetting.
Bear in mind that I look younger most people said
at the time, ten years younger, and keep in mind

(40:39):
this man is older, probably mid fifties. When I was
twenty four years old, I had a route that I
took every day for work, where a man selling newspapers
for a dollar on the side of the road. One day,
I decided to give him some money because he seemed
in need. I was aware enough to understand and to

(41:00):
be cautious of getting too close or familiar with people,
but it was only a dollar, so in my head
I didn't overthink it. Immediately, this guy hits on me,
telling me I'm so fine and asked me if he
could take me off for lunch. I left it off
and tell him I'm working so I can't, but he

(41:21):
insists and asked when I'm getting off work. I idiotically
said four pm. I don't know why I was so
naive at this age, but I digress. He said he'd
love to take me out for dinner. At that moment,
I drove off because the light changed to green. I
only saw this guy two more times, but he wasn't

(41:42):
able to say anything or stop my car because the
light was always green when I drove up. I didn't
acknowledge him because I realized in hindsight after he hit
on me, I shouldn't have even entertained it. Anyways, I
was walking into a store where he usually sets up
shop next to the light. I didn't see him in
his usual spot, and I just walked into the store

(42:05):
to do some shopping, then came out. About ten minutes later,
he was waiting for me at my car. So now
I'm thoroughly creeped out because I didn't even see him
and he suddenly at my car. He knew my car
from that one encounter. He wouldn't let me pass to

(42:25):
get to the driver's seat. All while he's hitting on
me again, asking if I wanted to go to dinner
this time. I tell him, sorry, but no, I'm not
really trying to date anyone right now because I'm focused
on work. Surprisingly backed off a bit, but said, don't
tell your dad about me. I don't want to get

(42:46):
in trouble and walked off while I was still creeped out.
Nothing bad really happened, and I didn't see him again
in his usual spot for about two weeks, so I
didn't think much of it anymore. Then I see him
on the news. He was arrested for essay of an
underage girl. Then they found out he was also violating

(43:09):
his parole by being within two thousand feet of a school.
He had done this before. The light I drove by
every day was right across from middle school. This freak
assaulted the girl a day after he talked to me
in the parking lot. That's why I didn't see him
for two weeks. He took her to a restaurant for lunch,

(43:30):
then assaulted her in the bathroom there. He was targeting
me because he thought I was underage, that poor, actual
underage girl. I don't understand how he wasn't permanently in
prison and yet it was on parole. I used to

(43:54):
walk a lot at night. I live in a small town,
the kind where most people are asleep by ten peace
and the streets get so quiet it's almost peaceful. I
put in my headphones, listen to a podcast or some
ambient music, and just wander around for a while to
clear my head. This happened in the late October of

(44:15):
last year. It had been raining on and off all day,
and by the time it cleared it was already around
eleven thirty PM. I remember checking the weather and seeing
the rain was supposed to hold off until the morning,
so I figured I'd go for a quick walk before bed.
My usual loop is about thirty minutes a few neighborhood

(44:39):
streets that circle back to my place. But that night,
for whatever reason, I felt like doing something different. There's
a wooded trail near the edge of town. Not super
deep into the woods or anything, just a short footpath
that cuts through a patch of trees, and it connects
two neighborhoods. I'd taken it in a few times during

(44:59):
the day, but never at night. It's not lit or
maintained well, and after a storm it can get muddy. Still,
I don't know. Something about the night felt calm, the
air smelled clean, and I had a strange sense of
nostalgia I can't explain, like the kind you get from

(45:19):
an old song you can't quite place. So I took
the path. It starts at the end of a cul
de sac that dips into a small slope. I stepped
around a few puddles and kept walking, music low in
my ears. I was maybe five minutes in when I

(45:40):
noticed something weird. No wind, no bugs, no distant cars.
It was just so quiet. It was so quiet that
I took my headphones out just to confirm. That's when
I realized how unnaturally silent. Everything was even in the
middle of night. There's usually some sound, leaves moving distant, barking,

(46:03):
a plane overhead, but there was nothing, just my breathing
and the squeaky sound my shoes made. I started walking
a little faster, not because I was scared exactly, just unsettled.
Then I saw someone up ahead, not clothes, maybe thirty

(46:24):
to forty feet away, just standing in the middle of
the trail, no flashlight, no phone, not moving. At first
I thought maybe it was just a sign or a tree,
like my eyes were playing tricks on me. But the
shape was two human shoulders, head, arms by its side,

(46:46):
just still. I froze. I tried to clear my throat
say something like hey or okay, but my voice caught,
and the longer I stared, the more wrong it though,
Like something about the way the figure stood didn't look right,
too stiff, too balanced, almost like it was being held up.

(47:12):
After a few seconds, I took a step back, just one,
and I swear to God. As I did, it tilted
its head, not slowly, not naturally, but like a jerk,
a sudden, mechanical tilt to the side. My legs moved
before I had time to think. I turned around and

(47:34):
started walking fast, not running. I didn't want to make
it chase me, if that makes any sense. But I
was moving quick, watching the ground, trying not to slip.
Then I heard it, splashing sounds, heavy footsteps behind me,
hitting puddles, not running, just walking, but hard getting closer.

(48:00):
I didn't look back. I cut through the trail faster
than I ever had, hit the edge of the cul
a sack on the other side, and booked it down
the street. I turned corner after corner, not stopping until
the main road with street lights and houses. Only then
did I glance behind me. Nothing, no one. The street

(48:22):
was empty. I walked the rest of the way home
in the days. My clothes were soaked, even though it
hadn't rained. I remember locking the door behind me and
just standing in my living room trying to process what
the hell just happened. I'm a twenty two year old male.

(48:50):
It was a regular morning. I had just got off
the bus and was walking five minutes to campus, put
my headphones on. The university was massive, plastered with you
can't miss it. It's an important detail. Still, a dirty
little mini van pulled up beside me. The man inside
looked to be in his forties. His clothes were grimy.

(49:13):
The van was grimy, but nothing strange. It's normal for
these local vans to hauld all kinds of junk. He
asked gently where the UNI was. I pointed, smiled, and
told him it was straight ahead, and declined. His offer
for a lift seemed generous. He drove off. I put

(49:34):
my headphones back in and kept walking. One minute later,
the van was stopped in front of me. Again, get in,
he said, I'll give you a ride. I smiled and
repeated the same no. Thanks. I was a few feet away.
He stared at me for a few seconds, then drove away.

(49:57):
I kept going. My friend called me, told me that
he'd be late and to wait at the cafeteria. As
I talked, the van rolled up beside me for the
third time. He asked again, but this time the tone
had shifted. He looked at me longer, His gaze slid
from my chest to my feet. He wasn't offering me

(50:19):
any help. He looked tense, like someone who expected to
be obeyed. I took the phone away from my ear
and told him, dude, the UNI is literally two steps away,
and I pointed, thanks, but no. He watched me for
a few seconds more and drove off. The road was

(50:40):
nearly empty. Then I realized he wasn't lost. If he
wanted to get to campus, he'd already be there. He
looped the block he was circling me. My first honest
thought was confusion, then anger, why had I been so polite,
and then a sharper feeling concern. I flipped on survival mode,

(51:04):
and even if he wanted to rob me, he had
many chances to do that, as the road was very empty.
One minute later, at the edge of campus, he stopped
me again. Get in, I'll give you a ride. This
time I looked at him dead in the face and said, no,
Now you can go wherever the hell you want to go.

(51:26):
He didn't even look at my face at all this time.
He stared at my hair, then my body for thirty
seconds straight, slow and hungry, like a predator deciding which
move to make. I couldn't read his eyes lust something darker. Honestly,
I didn't want to know. I know something in the

(51:47):
passenger seat a rope. It was a small detail, but
it landed like a weight on my chest. For a second.
I imagine scenes I'll jump him. I'll punch him, I'll
teach him a lesson. I felt that boiling superhero instinct,
the idea that I could handle it because I'm a
guy like him. I wasn't a very strong guy, but

(52:09):
I thought I had a good chance, or because I
can't let the slide because I'm a man. I crossed
the road and slipped through the university gate, leaving the
van behind me. But the van pulled up near the
campus walls and parked. I stopped inside the door, frozen
and shaking with a mess of emotions, shock, confusion, anger.

(52:34):
I even told myself out loud, maybe I should have
gotten in the van. Maybe I should have let him
put his hands on me so I could beat him
when he had his guard down. I wanted him to
meet the wrong person, believe it or not. I turned
around and was heading outside the campus back to him.
Then my friend messaged.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Me, Okay, I just arrived. Let's finish our study.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
He called again, telling me to hurry up so we
can get a good spot in the library. I let
it out of side and walked back inside. Now that
I'm writing this, I know how reckless that impulse to
be a hero was. It was raw motion, not strategy.
I'm calm and gentle by nature, but men sometimes they

(53:19):
think they can handle sexual assault like it's a problem
they can fix with fours. That's not true. It can
go wrong in a second. I'm very lucky it didn't
for me. This happened a few years ago. It was

(53:40):
a short encounter, but definitely lasted. It was New Year's
Eve twenty eighteen. I was nine, my brother was six.
I was at a friend's house watching the fireworks from
her back garden. We left around ten pm and begin
the four minute walk home. It was dark, but we
were comfortable walking home as we had many times, and

(54:03):
could see my house. As we got closer, my brother
stopped talking about the fireworks and asked, who's at our house.
I didn't think much of it, and she said mom why?
He said, well, who's she outside with? I was obviously
confused and looked up to see two men leaning against

(54:24):
our wall. Late thirties. My neighbor at the time often
through parties, so I assumed it was someone from her
house and gave him a simple don't know, took his
hands and continued walking. We got about twenty feet from
my house when they stood up and began walking towards us, barking.

(54:44):
I grabbed my brother and ran with him back down
the street. At the end of the street, there was
a ginnel leading to the back gardens. I crossed over
the street and hid behind the end house with my brother.
I called my mom, Yes, I was with a phone,
she answered, and started having to go at me. She
assumed I was joking and went to the front door,

(55:07):
expecting no one to be there. I heard the door
open and it was silent for a few seconds. Then
I heard her yelling, what the fuck are you doing?
Sat on my walls. I heard frantic apologies coming down
the phone, then her yelling again and why the fuck
are you barking and chasing my children? She later said,
they apologized and ran down the opposite street. My brother

(55:30):
was too scared to move, and whatever adrenaline I had
was gone and I couldn't carry him anymore. We asked
around and no one saw anyone. Our curfew was then
moved to eight pm. She said they didn't seem drunk,
but they didn't stick it round enough for her to
be sure. Shortly after, I was in the same backings

(55:54):
with a friend around seven the area had back gardens, garages,
and a circular road around the garages. We were sat
at an elderly neighbor's garage when a fully tinted van
came in. We ignored it, assuming it was here to
fix something. After ignoring it, we could pulley forgot about

(56:14):
it and began to skip in the road. The van
began driving behind us. It chased us three times behind
the backings. After the third time we had the bright
idea to leave the backings and close the gate behind
us to avoid eating chased. I mentioned it, but brushed
it off, and I never really mentioned it again, but

(56:35):
I imagine it could be connected. And we moved shortly
after after this, and honestly still now. My brother suffers
from severe anxiety when it comes to going anywhere alone.
It's gotten a lot better in the recent years, though. Okay,

(57:00):
this is a pretty weird one and happened to me
when I was about sixteen or seventeen. I can't exactly
recall fully, but when I was around that age, I
often traveled back and forth on foot from my friend's
houses if they weren't that far away. For context, I
live in a small village in the UK, it's often
really quiet besides a few mischievous teenagers, and as a

(57:24):
teen myself, I was flat broke and public transportation didn't
run too late. Bus routes were also ass so I
would often walk. One night, after a few drinks at
my friend's house, it was probably around eleven pm, i'd
begin my usual walk home, listening to some music and
chilling the usual. On my route home, I usually would

(57:47):
take a shortcut through the suburban estate of old people's
homes and bungalows. It's pretty dark, as the street lights
are scattered a bit. As I was walking through, I
saw a scrawny figure in the distance with a large
silhouete of hair, stumbling a little, almost like they were drunk.
As I approached, I could make out an old, wrinkly guy,

(58:09):
probably about five six, with gray, long missy hair, wearing
a long cream mac raincoat, kind of an Einstein esque look.
I tried to swiftly pass him, but before I passed him,
he turned to me and grinned with white eyes, saying,
I like little boys? Do you like little boys? I

(58:32):
rested past him, quite scared and just said no, sorry, mate,
or something to that effect. As I got further away.
I began to run a little and I turned back
to see him slowly following me. I eventually shook him
off and got home. This may not be the most
interesting story, but that night has always stuck with me,

(58:55):
and I think about it often as I usually take
the same shortcut all these years later. For some context,
I'm now fourteen, and I'm a female. I was around
eight or nine years old when this happened. It was

(59:17):
around five or six am. Everyone was going to work
and school. Normally at this time, my brother would drop
off my mom to work. I lived with him, my mom,
some lady, and my mom's boyfriend at the time. I
changed and walked out with my backpack. I'm supposed to
go to school way later, like around eight am. As

(59:40):
I'm walking out, the lady that lived with us looks
at me while she's doing the dishes and just lets
me walk out, knowing that my brother and mom had
already left and that it's unsafe. Oh and for some
more contexts, that lady was my mom's boyfriend's ex. Why
she was living with us, I don't really know. She

(01:00:01):
just gives me a glare and I walk out. I
have no idea that my brother left with my mom
and assumed he had left me. Seeing no car outside,
I began crying and crossing the street, hopelessly calling out
for my mom. I then see these big trees and
two guys. They were really skinny and looked to me

(01:00:23):
about twenty to twenty five. Their clothes weren't the best,
and they had these weird grins on their face. One
of them spots me and tells me, we know where
your mom is, makes a motion with his hand for
me to follow him, and they go back behind a bush.
But I'm forever thankful that I turned back around and

(01:00:43):
went into my house. It was still dark outside. I
am scared to think of what could have happened. This
may not be the most interesting story, but it hurts
me how at such a young age these things can
happen to you. Stay safe and take care of your kids.

(01:01:08):
I don't tell people this story because it sounds made up.
It's not. I don't care if anyone believes me. It happened,
and it still messes with me when I think about it.
Back in twenty eighteen, I was living in a small
apartment on the edge of town. Nothing fancy, just a
one bedroom. The building was old, smelled like flower and wood,

(01:01:32):
but it was cheap and quiet. I was doing contract
work from home, so I would often go on long
walks at night just to clear my head. My route
was always the same, up two blocks, cut over through
a small park, then looped back down towards the grocery
store and home. It took about forty minutes. I usually

(01:01:55):
started around midnight, not for any spooky reason, just because
I kept weird hours and like when the streets were empty.
So one night, late September or early October, I went
out as usual. The air was damp and cool, high humidity.

(01:02:15):
I had headphones in podcasts playing Hoodie on normal night.
Everything felt fine until I turned off the main road
and cut through the park. There's a narrow sidewalk that
runs along the back edge of the park, pass some trees,
and then splits off into two directions. Left takes you

(01:02:37):
towards the residential streets. Right cuts down towards a quieter area,
mostly old industrial buildings, and a dead down the street
that backs up into the woods. I had taken the
right path a few times before, but not in quite
a while. That night I went right. I don't know why.

(01:02:57):
I wasn't thinking about it. It just felt like the
way to go. Almost immediately, it felt wrong, not scary exactly,
just off, like the air fell heavier. My footsteps sounded
louder than usual. In the street lights that usually lined

(01:03:18):
the section, only one of them was fully lit up.
It was maybe fifty feet ahead, and it flickered every
few seconds. I took my headphones out. I couldn't hear anything,
no wind, no cars, not even my own breathing. For
a second, it was like I stepped into a bubble,

(01:03:40):
but the sound just didn't carry right. That's when I
realized something even stranger. I didn't recognize what street EYE
was on. Keep in mind, I've walked these neighborhoods dozens
of times. I knew every turn, every crack in the sidewalk.
But for some reason, the street didn't look familiar at all.

(01:04:00):
It was narrow, darker than it should have been, and
something about the houses on either side looked weird shapes
of houses but little detail, no mailboxes. I didn't see
any cars in any driveway. I like to see what
street I was on, but I couldn't find a street sign.
That's when it hit me. Every street in the neighborhood

(01:04:23):
had a sign, eating alleyways had signs, but this one didn't.
All I could find was a bare metal pole with
nothing on it. I stopped walking. I was confused. Something
in me, something deeper than fear, told me not to
keep going, told me that it made a wrong turn

(01:04:44):
that didn't make sense. I could still see the park
path and a glimpse of the street light, maybe a
two minute walk back. But before I could move, I
saw something up ahead, a person leaning up against one
of the broken light poles, not really moving. I couldn't

(01:05:05):
make out much as it was kind of dark, but
they were tall, maybe six feet, leaning perfectly, still facing me,
not doing anything, just standing there. I always said I
would be the person that chose flight, but I stood frozen,
trying to decide if I should call out or just leave.

(01:05:28):
And then the closest light to me flickered once more
and then went out. It was almost completely dark. I
didn't wait. I turned and started walking fast back towards
the park, slightly running, but more like those fast paced
walking competitions. I told myself I was just being paranoid,

(01:05:49):
that it was probably just someone having a smoke or
waiting for a ride that I just let everything get
to me and I was overthinking things. Then I heard
it footsteps. They were coming from behind me and sounded
like they were matching my pace. I sped up, and
it sounded like the footsteps behind me sped up. I

(01:06:13):
suddenly stopped. They stopped, so I turned around. No one
was there, at least I couldn't see anyone, just the
empty street. I couldn't hear anything either. That's when I
know something even worse. I wasn't standing on pavement anymore.
I was standing on wet dirt. In my confusion, I

(01:06:36):
had walked off to the side next to the park,
but within the trees, and these trees were pretty thick.
I don't know how it happened. I hadn't turned, I
hadn't left the street. I thought I was walking straight
the whole time, And now somehow I was deep enough
in the trees that I couldn't see the light. I

(01:06:58):
panicked panic. I turned around and started running, no idea
if I was going the wrong way, hoping that I
would see something familiar. After about two minutes of running,
I stumbled on the front of the park, the opposite
side of where I was standing before, and now I
was on the street that now looked very familiar. It

(01:07:22):
was a street by my apartment. Somehow I had come
out two blocks from where I went in. The park
was now behind me. I walked back the next day
in the daylight, trying to trace my steps. I found
the path through the park, found the split where I
went right. But I have no idea how I got

(01:07:42):
into that street. I still don't know what street it was.
There's no street sign, and everything looked different in the daylight.
I don't know. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me.
I haven't been back that way since. I've never told

(01:08:06):
the story in full before, not even to my friends.
It's one of those things that people shrug off and
turn into a joke, and honestly, I'd rather keep it buried.
But with Halloween around the corner and everyone sharing true
scary stories, I figured maybe it's time. This happened. When

(01:08:27):
I was sixteen, my parents were out of town for
the weekend, not far, just visiting my aunt about two
hours away. They asked if I wanted to come, but
I had a big test Monday and thought I usually
quiet time to study and maybe enjoy having the house
to myself. We lived in a two story house in

(01:08:48):
a quiet part of town, not completely rural, but far
enough from the city that things got pretty still at night.
Our backyard ran up against a small patch of woods.
Nothing creepy. The first night alone, everything was fine. I
stayed up late, gaming, snacking, and half heartily reviewing notes.

(01:09:10):
Around one point thirty in the morning, I finally shut
things off and crawled into bed. The house was day quiet,
the kind of silence that makes your ears ring a little.
That's when I first heard it, three tapping sounds. It
was soft but deliberate, not like a branch in the wind,

(01:09:30):
but rhythmic close. At first, I thought it might be
our house settling, or maybe a tree brushing against the side.
I pulled my phone off the charger to check the time,
one forty seven am. Then three more taps. This time
I realized it was coming from my window. Now, my

(01:09:52):
room is on the second floor. There's no easy way
to reach my window unless you have a ladder or something.
The idea of someone something tapping from outside my window
made my skin crawl. I froze. Every instinct told me
not to look, but I also couldn't ignore it. I
anched out of bed, slowly walked over and peeled back

(01:10:15):
to my curtains. Just a sliver, nothing, just a moonlit
backyard and the tops of trees swaying slightly. I pressed
my face closer to the glass. Still nothing. I stood
there a bit longer, convincing myself it had to be
a squirrel or a bird, something stupid. Eventually I went

(01:10:37):
back to bed, leaving a small night lay on, even
though I hadn't used that one in years. I finally
fell asleep with a blanket over my head. The next
thing I remember was waking up with the driest mouth
I've ever had. My throat fell like sandpaper. I sat up,
groggy and looked at my phone. Four thirteen am, still dark,

(01:11:00):
still dead, silent. I was about to head downstairs for
some water when something stopped me. It wasn't a sound exactly,
more like a feeling like I wasn't alone in the house.
That's when I heard the floor creak, not from my room,
from downstairs. I froze midstep. Every hard movie I have

(01:11:23):
ever watched started flooding my brain. I didn't want to
believe it, but I couldn't explain it either. My parents
weren't too back until the next evening, nobody else had
a key. And then I heard another sound, a drawer opening,
a low scrape, like wood on wood. It was coming
from my dad's office. Now, my dad's office is tucked

(01:11:46):
in the corner of the first floor behind the kitchen.
It's not locked, but we know not to mess around
in there. He's kind of private about his work. I
grabbed my phone and gently turned off the nightlight. My
heart was pounding so loud. I thought, whoever was downstairs
could hear it. I crept towards the stairs. Honestly, each

(01:12:08):
step felt like it took a year. When I peeked
over the railing, I didn't see anything at first, just
the dim glow of the stove clock and the usual
shadows the light under the office door. It was on,
and it was never on a night. I crouched there,
trying to decide what the hell to do. Called the cops,

(01:12:30):
text my parents, just hide in my room. Before I
could move, the door creaked open and a tall figure
stepped out, not rushed, not sneaky, just casual, like he
belonged there. He was wearing a dark jacket, and jeans,
and he had gloves on. In one hand, he yelled

(01:12:51):
a flashlight and the other something I couldn't make out.
I was still frozen halfway down the stairs, hoping to
God he hadn't seen me. But then he turned and
looked right up at me. We locked eyes on every
frige of his face. He was older, probably mid forties, thin, pale,

(01:13:12):
with a strange smirk, like he had been expecting me.
I bolted. I don't even remember turning. I just ran
back into my room and locked the door behind me.
I shut my dresser against it and crawled into my closet,
clutching my phone. I immediately dialed down on one. The
dispatcher stayed in the line with me as I whispered

(01:13:34):
what was going on. I kept expecting to hear footsteps
on the stairs with the sound of my door being
forced open, but there was nothing, no movement or noise
that I could hear. By the time the cops got there,
which felt like forever but was probably under ten minutes,
the guy was gone. They found the back door unlocked,

(01:13:57):
which I swore I checked earlier. My dad's office had
been rifled through, but nothing obvious was missing. Just a
few doors opened and papers scattered, no fingerprints, no forced entry,
nothing on the front cameras either, because, of course, the
one in the backwarch had been disabled. The police said

(01:14:19):
it was probably a burglar who thought the house was
empty and maybe ran off when you realized someone was home,
and I really wanted to believe that, but I kept
thinking about the tapping on the windows. How do you
know my room was up there unless he had been watching.
After that night, I couldn't probably sleep for weeks. My

(01:14:40):
parents installed better security, floodlights, motion sensors, the works, but
nothing ever came of it. No one was caught, no leads,
just one long, terrifying night and the face I'll never forget.
I just still wonder what would have happened if I
hadn't woken up for water, if I hadn't froze on

(01:15:02):
the stairs. Sometimes I think about that tap tap tap
sound and wonder if he was checking which room was mine,
just to make sure. Early Sunday morning, around five am,
I woke up to this violent banging and shaking on

(01:15:24):
my door. I live alone on the second floor of
an old apartment building downtown in a very small town.
I've been taking banaderyll to sleep for the past few months,
and sometimes I sleep weird, so for a moment, I thought,
did that just really happen? And then I heard whoever

(01:15:45):
it was start doing it again. This time it was
super loud bangs, like they were charging the door. That's
when I realized that both my fan and AC unit
were off, meaning the power was off. It stopped after
the second time, and I heard someone stop down the stairs.

(01:16:06):
I just laid here processing what just happened. It was
dead quiet without the fan, and I heard a guy's
voice outside saying no, we were just walking. I'm still
laying motionless in fear and trying to think of someone
to call. A few months ago, my downstairs neighbor got
a package of mine by mistake and messaged me on

(01:16:27):
Facebook about it after seeing my name. I've seen her
a few times. I know that she has two absolutely
ripped pippoles, so I messaged her, thinking that she wouldn't
see it until she wakes up. Nope, she immediately starts
calling me. She said she saw two guys come out
of the building after trying her door, mine and the

(01:16:49):
person across the hall from me, and then try to
lie and say it wasn't them. She already called the
police at this point and the intruders are gone, so
I go downstairs to meet her, and we find the
breaker box door ripped off and all the switches off,
which sucks because there's a camera outside, but our landlord

(01:17:10):
said he's trying to back up the footage to see
if it caught them. Our other neighbor wakes up, she
had no idea what is happening. Finally, the downstairs neighbor
gets the power turned back on, and the cops showed
up within like twenty minutes to get our statements. Apparently
the downstairs girl was awake the whole time and heard

(01:17:31):
them trying her door. Her dogs were doing the low
growthing instead of barking. She gave the cops to the description,
but the cops haven't updated us on anything yet. Some
of my coworkers said it might be a TikTok trend
where they tried to kick the door in. Thankfully my

(01:17:51):
door opens outward and not inward if that's the case.
But I feel like cutting the power and trying to
open three units seems more like an actual break in.
I barely slipped since it happened, and I'm about to
try now. To the two guys that try to break
in at five am, consider yourself lucky that you aren't

(01:18:13):
being crapped out by a pipol right now, and let's
never ever meet again. For some context, we were just
three college girls trying to get through midterms. Our apartment
was about a ten minute walk from campus in one

(01:18:34):
of those older off campus buildings that's been divided up
into units, a little rundown, kriky floors, paper thin walls,
but it was cheap, and honestly we were lucky to
get it. There was Meek Kayla, a laid back art major,
Jess pre med and one of those kind of people
who color codes everything. And then there was Brook Bold, funny,

(01:18:59):
brutally honest, and always the one to say exactly what
everyone else was thinking. We were close, not just roommates,
but actual friends. We cooked together, pulled all nighters, even
had us shared playlist for cleaning days. That fall semester,
things were chaotic. The weather had just started turning cold,

(01:19:21):
and people were stressed and sleep deprived. So when weird
little things started happening, we brushed it off. The first
thing was small, Brooke's phone charger disappeared. She swore she
left it plugged in on the kitchen counter, but it
was just gone. We teased her about being forgetful. Then

(01:19:43):
just noticed food missing from the fridge, not a lot,
just to yoga. Hear a string cheese there. We figured
maybe one of us had eaten it and forgot again,
no big deal, but then things escalated. Lights we were
sure that we turned off would be on again. The

(01:20:04):
bathroom mirror had conversation on it when no one had showered.
Brooke joked that we had a ghost. One night, around
two am, we heard footsteps above us slow. The problem
was we were on the top floor. We went silent,
listening the footsteps stopped. We didn't call the cops. What

(01:20:27):
would we have said. We were college girls paranoid. Probably
just the wind, old pipes, something normal, But deep down
I think we all felt it, the uneasy shift in
the air when you recognize something might not be right.
Fast forward to the night it happened. I had fallen
asleep on the couch watching Netflix. Jess was studying in

(01:20:50):
her room, and Brooke had gone a bit early. I
think she had laps early. The next day or something
at three twelve am, I was awoken up to screaming,
not just a startled yell fool body, blood curdling screaming.
It was Brooke. I jumped up and ran towards the hallway,

(01:21:10):
just as Brook came flying down the hallway in the panic, eyes,
wild sobbing and screaming. There's someone in the kitchen. He
has a knife. I froze. Then I heard it footsteps, heavy,
moving fast. Brookes shoved past me, grabbed Jests from her room,
and the three of us slammed ourselves into the bathroom,

(01:21:32):
locking the door. We huddled in the tub, trying to
control our shaking, trying to keep quiet. We could still
hear him moving around out there, cabinets opening, something dropped,
maybe a plate, then silence. Jesse was whispering with nine
one one on the phone. I still remember her voice

(01:21:53):
cracked when she gave our address. Please someone broke in.
He has a knife. We're hiding in the bathroom. Please hurry.
The dispatcher told us to stay on the line and
stay quiet. Officers were already on the way. We waited
five minutes ten. I kept expecting the bathroom doorknob to

(01:22:14):
jiggle for the lights to go out. Friends start banging
on the door, but none of that happened. When the
police arrived, we didn't hear them knock. We heard them shout,
this is the police. Come out with your hands up.
But they didn't find anyone in the apartment. But the
back door that we always kept locked was wide open.

(01:22:39):
There's a knife on the kitchen counter, one of ours
from the drawer, and a small pile of half eniing snacks,
trail mix, an apple, a granola bar wrapper, like he
had been there for a while, like he was comfortable.
They found so much footprints near the door, a little
mud from the rain earlier in the week. They said

(01:23:02):
it looked like he came through the back maybe during
the day, maybe earlier that night. No broken locks, though
no signs of force entry. He might have been inside
while we were all home. We didn't sleep at night.
We just sat in the living room, wrapped in blankets,
jumping at every sound. Every creek felt louder. The paranoia

(01:23:25):
was just wild. The apartment never felt the same after that.
We replaced the locks, bought some cheap, affordable security cameras,
slept with knights under a pillow for a while. I
don't know. It's stupid, but it made us feel better.
The cops never caught him, no suspects, no prince, just

(01:23:46):
a fag possible transient theory. Like somehow that made it better.
A few weeks later, just found something in the attic,
a sleeping bag, a pack of crackers, an empty bottle
of water in a flashlight. Now we hadn't been up
there in months, but I'm not crazy. Someone was living

(01:24:07):
up there, watching us, listening to us, moving through our spaces,
like we were part of the furniture. We moved out
around a month later. We broke her lease, paid the fee,
didn't care. None of us wanted to stay there another second.
Sometimes I still think about what would have happened if

(01:24:27):
Brooke hadn't have woken up, if she hadn't gone down
to the kitchen for whatever she went for, if she
had screamed just a few seconds later, would he have left?
When my brother and I were little, this terrifying thing

(01:24:48):
happened to my mom. We were already in bed when
this happened, but we both heard about it from my mom.
It was almost eleven PM. My mom was watching TV
in the living room and my dad was in the
basement on his computer. My parents didn't lock the doors
until they went to bed because it was a safe neighborhood. Suddenly,

(01:25:12):
a man barged into the house. My mom was so
scared that she froze. He didn't say anything. She barely
got out what do you want? When he started walking
towards her. She started yelling my dad's name, and for
the first time, my dad didn't ask what was up

(01:25:32):
or anything. He just came upstairs, and as soon as
the man saw that my mom wasn't alone, he left
very quickly. They called the police, but nothing came of it.
My mom was convinced that my dad immediately came upstairs
because he could tell something was wrong by her voice.
She always thought that the man meant to assault her,

(01:25:54):
and finding out that my dad was there made him leave.
She never saw him again. For context, it was summer
and I was a teenager. Classes were ending soon and
I was going on vacation. My brother had surgery and

(01:26:16):
that would be important later. It started off after a
long day of classes on Monday. I finished earlier than
my parents and my brother, so I was alone at home.
I'm happy about it because it means video games galore.
I go to get the keys as usual, and the

(01:26:37):
garden shed is open. It's not normal, but someone must
have forgot to close the door. So I take the
keys and then go to the door and I open it,
but I can't turn the key. It was already open.
I would like to point out that we always close
and lock the door, and omissions are very rare. I

(01:26:59):
go upstairs settle in, but I'm uncomfortable because I'm focusing
more on the noises in the house and that is
making me anxious. The next day was brief. The only
thing was I didn't sleep at home because my brother
was having surgery. I slept at a friend's house. I
was responsible for closing the door, and I made sure

(01:27:20):
that I closed it properly. The following evening, after soccer practice,
I come home before my parents. As soon as I
get into the house, I had this horrible gut feeling
like something inside was warning me not to go in.
The door was open again. I froze, unable to move.

(01:27:41):
When my parents finally got home from the hospital, I
went in, but the oppress of feeling didn't go away. Later,
when I was making dinner, I noticed the big kitchen
knife was missing. My mom couldn't find it for several days.
That night, I barely slept and I had several anxiety attacks.

(01:28:02):
For the rest of the weeks before the holidays, I
kept a knife with me every evening. The strange thing
was the house always smelled faintly like leather. My mom
swere she locked the door every morning, but I kept
finding it open when I came home. Once we left
for vacation in the South, everything changed. I relaxed completely

(01:28:25):
and had one of the best holidays of my life.
When we came back, I had almost forgotten everything that
had happened until our neighbor told my parents about a
stranger that had been wandering around in our garden. My
parents panicked, and that's when I found the missing kitchen knife.
It was laying on the work bench outside. No one

(01:28:47):
in my family put it there. A few days later,
I heard some running through the garden at night, and
after that, all the strange sensations, the anxiety, the smell
of leather just stopped. To this day, I still don't
know what to think. Was it a squatter or just
my imagination running wild. I moved alone two years ago

(01:29:16):
into an apartment building. Everything was quite normal, but there
was this man on the ground floor who seemed pretty weird.
He never really spoke to me. He seemed to have
some kind of mental issue, but every time I entered
the building, he opens his door and closes it immediately
after I passed by. It was weird, but I brushed

(01:29:38):
it off. Now every time I leave, I see him
looking through his window. I see him looking at me
on the street. The last time I saw him, he's
walking towards the building and he noticed me. He sat
on the bench in front of the door, so I
decided to keep on walking. Not even ten meters after

(01:30:01):
I passed him, I looked back and he's entering the building.
I am creeped out about him, and I'm not sure
what to do. This happened about six months ago, and
I still can't stop thinking about it or trying to

(01:30:21):
make sense of it. I was dog sitting for my
parents while they were on a trip. About an hour
after they left, my boyfriend came over, so it was
just the two of us in the house when a
car parked out fright and a man maybe in his
forties got out and walked up to the door. He
knocked I don't usually answer the door for strangers, especially

(01:30:45):
when it's just me and my boyfriend home, so I ignored
it at first, but he kept knocking. Then a doorbell rang.
I could faintly hear him say something like hello, Hello, Hello,
but the dogs were barking so loud that I couldn't
make it out. Clearly they were losing their minds, barking

(01:31:07):
and jumping at the door, clearly freaking out. My boyfriend
and I started pulling them back to calm them down.
That turned out to be a mistake because the window
was right next to the door. As we moved around,
he must have seen me, and that's when things got
really weird. He started saying my first name, like calling out,

(01:31:29):
is that Amy? Are you Amy? Is this Amy's home?
At this point, it was dark outside, and hearing a
stranger say my name made my stomach drop. I had
no idea who this guy was, or how he knew
my name, and why he wasn't leaving. We took the

(01:31:49):
dogs downstairs, where there's a window that overlooks the front
of the house. I had my boyfriend opened the window
to talk to him, partly because I wanted the guy
to see that there was another man there and that
I wasn't home alone. My boyfriend asked what he wanted.
The man just kept saying that he needed to see
me or talk to me. Then he said he had

(01:32:13):
something of mine, something he needed to give me personally.
When my boyfriend asked what it was, the guy dodged
the question. He kept insisting he needed to give it
to me directly, so my boyfriend said, you can leave
it at the door, but the man pushed back, asking
how will I know if she gets it if I

(01:32:34):
don't see her. My boyfriend asked again how he even
knew me, and the man said I know her. At
that point, the whole thing was just wrong. My boyfriend
told him that we were calling the cops, and that
finally made the guy leave, though he didn't look happy
about it. I know the Internet always jumps to sex

(01:32:56):
trafficking or stalkers and stories like this, but realistic enough
to know that's not how those things usually happen. Still,
I can't figure out how he knew my name. I
checked everything afterward, my ID, my passport, mail packages, nothing missing,
nothing left behind, and I still have a no idea

(01:33:18):
who he was. I'm writing this partly for entertainment, partly
for closure. I've never put this story on paper, and
I'm hoping that doing so might fill in the black

(01:33:39):
hole in my memory. I've never been able to recall
what happened next. After college, I wanted to do something meaningful,
so I became a volunteer at the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Training took place every Saturday for two months, and it
was intense emotionally and mentally, but once I started answering calls,

(01:34:02):
I felt empowered. It was heartbreaking work but rewarding, and
I did my best to show up with compassion for
every single caller. My fellow volunteers were a huge part
of what made it bearable, as they provided support and
encouragement and sometimes ideas on what to say. We were

(01:34:24):
pretty tight knit in my class of volunteers, and I
assumed that anyone else who worked or volunteered there was
as compassionate, loving, and trustworthy as the people I had
trained with. That included Greg, a volunteer who wasn't in
my group, but I started to casually get to know
him through working a lot of the same shifts. He

(01:34:47):
was about fifty something to my mid twenties. I'm a female.
He was somewhat of a legend at Lifeline, as he
had volunteered there steadily for decades and was both the
military veteran and a recovering alcoholic. He was able to
reach and help so many people through his story, or

(01:35:07):
so I always heard so. And Greg asked me to
dog sit for him for a few hours one night.
I happily obliged. I love dogs, and he had to
be at least a decent person for all the good
things I've heard about him. He gave me his home
address and we arranged for me to come by Friday
night to meet his dogs and get all the usual

(01:35:30):
instructions before he left. I made my way to his
neighborhood and parked in front of a very normal, nice
looking two story home. Greg met me at the front
door with his two sweet golden retrievers, whom I loved immediately.
He showed me the food and said they've already been

(01:35:50):
for a walk twice, so I could just let the
dogs into the fence backyard if they had to pee.
He was going to leave, and I would basically hang
out there with the dogs for a few hours and
then leave for the night and Greg would be coming
home early the next day. As he pointed things out
to me in the house, Greg was super friendly and enthusiastic,

(01:36:13):
just like I've always seen him at the crisis center.
He was a round man with a greg O te
a white smile, with gap teeth. He seemed a little
dressed up to me with his shiny collared shirt, but
I thought maybe he was going to a fancy event.
Just when I'm wondering when Greg is actually gonna leave,

(01:36:34):
he asked me if I would like to see the
upstairs of the house. It strikes me as a little weird,
but I thought, Hey, he's house proud. That's cool, I said,
and he led me up the carpeted stairs and down
a dark hole. He opened his bedroom door, which had
only been slightly cracked. He walked into the room and

(01:36:56):
turned around and said, yeah, so this is my bedroom.
His giant bed took up most of the room and
had a red velvet canopy. There's black lace all over
on the curtains, the pillows, the comforter. That decor was
like French boudoir, when the rest of the house was
the style of a single dude and most concerning of all,

(01:37:18):
there's at least four candles light. He proceeded to then
sit on his bed and smile at me, expectantly, wagging
his bushy eyebrows. I laughed, backing up a little. I think,
I said something like I think he've got the wrong idea,
to which he brought up some flirty comments he had
overheard me say to a fellow volunteer, and I had

(01:37:40):
a little crush on something dumb, like I like making out.
Then he smiled again and patted the bed next to him.
My mouth fell open as I realized that because he
overheard me say something that was maybe a little risque,
he really thought I was open to some kind of
dog sitting flaing and not to toot my own horn.

(01:38:02):
But I was young and cute then, and he was
well not. I thought he was rather beastly and old,
and in no way have I ever flirted with him.
I wish I could say I had some zinger to
shut down his gross attempt at romance, but I was

(01:38:22):
too shocked to do anything other than crossed my arms
over my chest and shake my head. No. His face
dropped its letterman s smile, and it was like a
cold chill came into the room. Well, i'd better be going,
he said, and looked at me in almost absolute darkness
and disdain, barely trying to conceal his disappointment. I could

(01:38:46):
tell you it was embarrassed. I was too, he grumbled,
as he hastily blew out the candles and started walking
me towards the bedroom door to leave. I quickly scooted
out of the room before him, almost jumped down the stairs.
Within minutes, Greg had grabbed his keys and left through
the garage, closing it after him. Before he left, he

(01:39:09):
bitterly said to call him if I had any problems.
When he was gone, it was definitely silent, except for
the click of the dog's nails on the linoleum as
they danced around me. My heart was still pounding. I
wanted to get out of there, but I also wanted
to make sure the dogs were okay. Plus I did
feel better with him out of the house. The next

(01:39:33):
few hours passed uneventfully. When it was about eight or
nine at night, I was ready to leave. Then I
realized Greg had not left me with any key. I
checked the front door and hoped that it would be
the kind that you don't need a key to lock,
you know, the push in lock type. But it was
a dead bowl. I had this weird sinking feeling in

(01:39:56):
my chest. I went out the sliding glass door to
the back. I called Greg. He sounded amused again when
he answered, Greg, you forgot to leave me a key
to lock up your house, I said, in when I
tried to make a calm, almost joking voice. Oh whoops,

(01:40:17):
he replied, Now sounded surprised at all. He chuckled a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:40:24):
Maybe he can get out through the garage.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
He suggested, And I liked that idea.

Speaker 2 (01:40:29):
Or if that doesn't work, you can just sleep in
my bed.

Speaker 1 (01:40:33):
He suggested, casually cross I did not like that idea
and ignored it. He told me to call him back
if he needed to come home. I assured him that
I would be fine. I went to the dark garage,
turned on the light, shut myself in so the dogs
would be in the house and not escape. Then I

(01:40:54):
opened the garage door and did that thing where you
close it and run underneath it. Only I hadn't done
the maneuver for decades, and this was a new safe
version of a garage door that would detect the objects
underneath and not close. As the door bounced back, I thought,
fucking Greg knew this would happen. I felt it. My

(01:41:17):
last memory is letting the Golden Retrievers, who had been
winding and scratching out the door into the garage with
me after the garage door closed, and hugging them as
I cried into the fur of their necks. I had
enough and I couldn't stop the tears. And then, try
as I might, I can't remember what happened next. Did

(01:41:38):
I call Greg back, did he come home? Did I
call someone else? Did I just leave the door unlocked
despite my people pleas their personality. I have tried and
tried to remember, but it's almost like I blocked out
after that moment in the garage. Maybe my brain's protecting me.
I don't know if I ever saw Greg again, just

(01:41:59):
can't remember. He died suddenly of a heart attack a
few years later, which I found out through a mutual
volunteer friend on Facebook. I got an ugly pit in
my stomach when I heard the news and was kind
of angry seeing everyone praising him. I kept picturing him
patting the bed next to him in his bedroom with

(01:42:20):
that smirk on his face. I'm glad he helped all
the people he did, but I was a naive young
woman who was doing him a favor and didn't expect
nor deserved to be hit on. I also realized that
he probably didn't need a dog sitter at all and
just was trying to get lucky. When I rebuffed him,
I reckon he went and sat at Arby's. This is

(01:42:50):
a convoluted story, so bear with me as I try
to relay everything I can recall about what led me
to the conclusion that my ex housemate could have potentially
been a serial killer or a serial killer in the making.
It was the summer of twenty fifteen when I moved in,
and at first appearances, my housemate, Landlord Mike, was somewhat normal,

(01:43:12):
if not a bit socially awkward or dysfunctional. When I
was signing the papers, he was adamant that I should
never go into the basement, which I thought was odd,
but I really needed a place to stay, and well,
people have their little quirks, so I just chucked it
up to that at the time. As I got to
know Mike and our cohabitation continued, I learned more about

(01:43:34):
the depths of his dysfunction. Firstly, that he used math.
Now I don't automatically judge people based on vices, but
I was surprised of the extent of his use. He
was probably the first person I ever knew that used
math and bounced a full time job and enjoyed a
decent amount of success. The reason this is so important

(01:43:55):
to the story is that when he would be around
the house drinking and using men, he would start to
run off at the mouth. He would often joke that
if I smolled a lie coming from the basement, not
to think anything of it. I think it was probably
the third time he said it that I asked why
he keep saying that, and he said, I used chemicals
to clean up after the bodies, with a wily grin

(01:44:18):
on his face. I tried to chalk it up to
a bad sense of humor, but it didn't sit right
with me. He was also very particular that I let
him know my comings and goings and my work schedule.
I remember him being shocked and uncomfortable one day when
I ended up taking off of work because he didn't
realize that I was home. I remember that day because

(01:44:40):
there was a lot of clanging and what sounded like
muffled shouting coming from the basement. His car was in
the driveway, but he was not in the main house
or his bedroom. Other days he would play very loud
music that bumped through the whole house. Sometimes he would
even play NPR talk radio at these volumes. In retrospect,
I think he may have been trying to make sounds.

(01:45:03):
He would make remarks about sex workers, saying, you could
do whatever you want. You can choke them, beat them
to death, and nobody cares. I took exception to this.
I told him that I thought that was messed up.
But when he would get tweaking, he'd always come back
around to alluding to some kind of violence, talking about

(01:45:24):
how he was a normal white guy who owned a
house and had a good career, so the police would
never suspect him. At this point, I started to think
that he's gone too far to simply be joking. I
was in a weird position because money was ted at
the time and my options were few. I tried to
convince myself that even if he was messed up, he's

(01:45:45):
probably just engaged in an outward fantasy. I knew that
he would pay for sex workers on occasion, but again
did not judge that activity at face value. But it
started becoming concerning. Then. At one point, when I was
doing laundry, I caught whiffs of decomposition. The house we
were in was in southeast Portland. It was relatively new,

(01:46:08):
and having grown up in upstate New York, I know
that animals can be trapped in the walls and die,
but this was in the garage and there were no
animals scurrying in the walls. This was strange and telling
to me. I considered carefully what to do and decided
I wanted to confront him about the smell. I decided

(01:46:29):
to poise the question in somewhat of a suggestive way
by expanding on his jokes. I told him that he
needs to do a better job cleaning up the bodies
because I smelled decomposition from the garage. I will never
forget his reaction. His eyes widened. He shot me a
sharp glare somewhere between fear and anger. He stumbled over

(01:46:52):
his words and eventually responded, what really. I said, yes, really,
and there was a few seconds of awkward before he
said thanks for letting me know, and promptly went into
his bedroom and set the door. A few days after this,
he went into the upper cross space in the garage
while I was again doing laundry. He called out for me,

(01:47:14):
trying to convince me to come up into the crawl space.
My body locked up and my instincts were screaming at
me that if went up there, I would not be
coming back. I gave an excuse that I can't remember now,
packed up my laundry, threw it in my room, and left.
He spent a lot of time in that padlocked basement
without a doorknob. The only way in was through the backyard.

(01:47:39):
I wish I would have gone down there in retrospect
to either confirm or dismiss the suspicions once and for all.
For the last couple of months that I lived there,
I was privy to more graphic comments about women, sex
workers and talks about sexual violence, and he was using
more and more. He wants to show me a video

(01:48:00):
he made. He was a graphic designer and an artist
as well. It featured heavy bondage themes with distorted audio
of women screaming and the strange leering figure in a
plague doctor costume. It was one of those situations where
any one of these things alone would be innocuous, but
as they all accumulated, it became suspicious to me. It

(01:48:25):
was in October twenty sixteen that I left there, taking
off as I really wanted to get out of the
house in the worst way. I didn't give notice that
I was leaving. My last night there. He was drinking
and tweaking again, starting on the same conversation, loosely describing
murder and sexual violence in a tone of some sort

(01:48:46):
of edgy joke. I told him that he'd be caught eventually,
not even holding back my suspicions anymore. He reiterated that
he would be the last person that the police would
suspect and asserted that they wouldn't catch him. He said
this in a very serious and concise way, dropping the

(01:49:06):
pretense he had been using before I left the next morning.
This haunted me for months, then a year, then a
year and a half. I felt as though I hadn't
done anything. The guilt was eating away at me. So
I called Portland Crime Stoppers and put in an anonymous
tip describing what I described here. When I did, the

(01:49:29):
operator started going back and forth, putting me in hold
because This call had piqued the interest of the police
sergeant who was assigned to the call center, so they
were asking me detailed questions about his vehicle, his house,
the methods he described, etc. It seemed like they took interest.
I gave them as much information as I could remember

(01:49:50):
and left it at that, feeling just a little better
that I had at least tried to do something about it.
Fast forward to recent times. I told my mother about
all of this, and she became interested, asking what house
this was, and she ended up pulling it up on
Google Maps. She put it in the street view and
noticed that there is a large enclosed trailer in the

(01:50:12):
driveway that wasn't there when I was. I can only
theorize why it might have been there, but can't put
together the practical reason for it were why he would
be using it unless he was moving or using it
to hold things to discard immediately. That is pure conjecture,
but I couldn't help. But wonder. I doubt that I'll

(01:50:32):
ever get closure or have my suspicions validated, unless he
does finally get caught and arrested and I read about it.
I have grown up poor and been around the low
life a lot. I have interacted with many sketchy and
unsavory people in my life, but none of them have
ever made the impression that Mike had made on me.

(01:50:53):
Make of it as you will, but I hope I
never meet him again. This is a weird experience that
happened to me today. I'm a nineteen year old female.
I was driving to my school today and got behind

(01:51:13):
this tan BMW to make a right turn. We both
turned and I went to the other lane and went
past him because I was just going faster, and I
think they beeped at me, which I was confused because
I didn't do anything to him. I have to go
past one stop light before I get to the one
I need. I saw in my review mirror that he

(01:51:35):
had his right turn signal on. I didn't see if
they had made the turn because of bus got in
front of me and I was focused on that. I
went to make a left turn and was sitting in
the left turn lane when the driver pulled up next
to me. Mind you, he's in the lane where traffic
is ongoing and busy. He starts beeping at me and

(01:51:57):
points at me with his finger to follow him into
the parking lot. It's kind of hard to explain, but
he makes a right into a parking lot that's next
to the traffic. I didn't follow him and made a
gesture with my hands saying, oh, well, I could see
him sitting there watching me. Well, I waited to make
a left turn. I stopped looking at him and was

(01:52:21):
just waiting for the bus in front of me to
turn left so I could get out of there and
go to school. The driver was a mail forty to
fifty and I don't think he followed me further, but
it would have been hard to tell because there's a
lot of people behind me going into school at the time.
I thought maybe he was going to call the police
and say I hit him and didn't pull over, or

(01:52:43):
he was upset at me for passing him. But I
wasn't tarogating him or anything like that. I was just
sitting in my car for a long time time at
the gas station before getting out to pump my gas.

(01:53:04):
Then when I got back into my car, this girl
I had seen earlier when I first got to the
gas station came and knocked on my window and asked
me for five dollars for gas. I was like, yeah,
for sure, so we go in and I pay for
our gas and she was like, yeah, gas is just
so expensive, and I agreed with her, and I was like,

(01:53:25):
I totally get it. She said, it's so hard because
there's someone pushing the gas pedal for me and throwing
me into the car and pushing my foot on the pedal,
not those exact words in that order, but basically that,
and it confused me so bad. I was like what.
It made me freak out and I didn't know what

(01:53:47):
to do. We walked back. Her car was full of
stuff and there's no one in there but her, but
I was still freaked out, both for her and for me.
She asked for my social media and I was kind
of weirded out, so I said I don't have any,
and then she asked for my number, so I just
gave it to her. She asked if I wanted to

(01:54:09):
hang out, and I was like, no, I'm sorry, but yeah.
I left and drove around for a while before going
to my actual destination. No idea what to think about
this encounter, not sure what was happening, but I left
feeling very nervous for her and for myself. On Super

(01:54:36):
Bowl Sunday two, thousand and four, my mom and dad
went to a bar to watch the game, and they
got a family friend to babysit me. She was sixteen
at the time. She was told under no circumstances she
was allowed to leave the house, what time they would
be home, and all that good stuff. Of course, being sixteen,
she didn't listen and took me to her friend's house

(01:54:58):
to watch the game. I'm not sure how far away
he lived from us, but it couldn't have been that far.
As we walked, I wasn't my stroller. We left pretty
soon after the game because my parents wouldn't be too
far behind us, but my babysitter forgot to buckle me
in as she was in such a hurry. However, on

(01:55:18):
our way home, we were walking down the street when
a car started getting slower and pulling up towards us.
The passenger door flew open and a man grabbed me.
My babysitter, obviously freaking out, thought so quickly and remembered
she was an incredibly skilled boxer and beat the fuck
out of him. I guess he realized I wasn't worth

(01:55:39):
getting beaten up by a sixteen year old girl, so
they took their losses and the car sped away. We
sprinted home. My parents obviously were incredibly angry at her
for taking me out, and she never got to babysit
me again. We did call the police, but they never
found out who did it. So there's a grown man
roaming this of Chicago who got beat up by a

(01:56:02):
sixteen year old girl. That's enough justice, I fear. Fun fact,
this is my first memory, So stranger, who gave me
a terrifying start to remembering things, let's not meet so

(01:56:22):
earlier today. I was walking my dog when the car
pulled up next to me and asked if I had
ID When I asked why, he said that he needed
to buy a phone and a phone plan. I couldn't
hear that well. When I was trying to get out
of the convo, I told him that my idea wasn't
on me. He then asked if he could use my
phone number. I told him no, and he drove away.

(01:56:45):
Maybe two minutes later, another car pulled up and asked
me for my Instagram. The cars looked pretty similar, and
I'm pretty sure they worked together. I'm not sure what
they were trying to do, but I quickly went back
to my apartment. I know this isn't super creepy, but
I guess I just wanted to share it in case
someone else knows what their intentions could have been, not

(01:57:06):
to mention I'm a young lady who's walking alone. This
happened when I was about twelve or thirteen. For important context,
I lived in an apartment complex that was two sets
of rows, each with four apartments. I lived in the

(01:57:27):
apartment closest to the street of one row and had
two cousins that lived in the apartment at the very
end of the row in the back. I would hang
out with them just about daily. We were into soccer
at the time, and we would walk to a park
about four or five streets away along with some of
the neighborhood kids and play soccer there. Now I say

(01:57:48):
neighborhood kids, but it's about a big group of about
fifteen kids in total, and the ages ranged from about
ten years old all the way up to seventeen. One
of my two cousins was the seventeen year old, which
is why my parents allowed me to go out without
their supervision. So on this day, like usual, we made

(01:58:08):
our way down to the park. Some of us would
walk some of us would ride scooters or skateboards. I
had my bike that day. We get to the park
and we start playing. About halfway through our game, my
parents drive by and call out to me from the car.
They told me that they're going to the store and
to wait for the park for them. Okay, no big deal.

(01:58:31):
I figure they must just want to go somewhere else afterwards,
and it's easier to pick me up in front of
the park than for me to wait back at the house.
Of course, this doesn't make too much sense because it's
only a four street distance by the time. To my
twelve year old mind, it was perfectly logical. We keep
playing for about another hour. Then, as we get closer

(01:58:53):
to sunset, more and more kids start making their way
back to their houses. My cousin wanted to leave. They
asked me if I was ready to go. I said
that my parents told me to wait for them here,
so they left and I stayed behind. Eventually it was
just me, no big deal. I was familiar with the
neighborhood and have my bike and the energy of a

(01:59:15):
twelve year old, so I started riding my bike up
and down the street, just killing time. At this point,
it hasn't occurred to me that even if my parents
wanted me to wait at the park, they wanted to
have wanted me to wait past sunset. Eventually, I get
impatient and hungry, but not wanting to be grounded for
disobeying my parents, I kept waiting and except instead of

(01:59:38):
waiting at the park, I crossed the street and was
waiting there. After a few minutes, the car drove up
and stopped next to me. Nothing scary yet there was
a stop sign, so I don't really pay too much mind,
except when it drove away, I realized the car looked weird.
It was old and boxy, like an eighties car, But

(01:59:59):
what stood out was that it looks spray painted gray.
It was definitely not real car paint or done by
a professional. I don't know if someone who stole a
car would be that dumb draw them that much attention
to it, or if the look was intentional, but you
could tell that it was just spray painted all over. Anyway,
drove away and I kept waiting, annoyed. Now, then the

(02:00:24):
car comes back from the other side of the street.
I noticed it because it's hard to ignore at this point,
but by survival instincts are still not kicking in. Maybe
they were just lost or wanting to turn around without
doing the U turn since the park was a big square,
going around it and coming back is easy enough to do.

(02:00:45):
A few minutes go by, they drive up again and
again stop at the stop sign. This time, I'm starting
to get nervous, so I look over at the car.
Two men are inside, very scruffy looking, unkept beard's hair,
dirty faces, stains on their shirts. They look at me,

(02:01:05):
they both smile at the same time. They look at
each other, smile even bigger and the creepiest smile I've
ever seen someone do to this day. Then drove away.
Their smiles creeped me out so much that I was
now on high alert. In particular, I was watching the
other side of the park where they would have to
come from if they went around again like they did

(02:01:28):
the first time. Sure enough, they did. This also means
that they were now on the same side of the
street as me, So as soon as I saw the
car now, I jumped on my bike rode as fast
as I humanly could. I could hear one of them
yelling something, but honestly I don't know what it was.
I was too busy writing for my life. I could

(02:01:48):
hear the car catching up, but I was too scared
to even turn around. I somehow made it to my
street ran into the building, but I didn't want them
to see where I lived, since my apartment would have
been the one visible from the street, so I went
to the back behind my cousin's apartment and hid there.
My reasoning was if they followed me inside the building,

(02:02:09):
they would see me knocking on the door and get
me before anyone answered, if it wasn't obvious. This was
before cell phones. I waited for what felt like a
few hours, but it was probably only twenty minutes or
so before I had enough courage to make the short
walk down the row of apartments to mine and tried
the door. It was unlocked, so I went inside and

(02:02:31):
my parents were there, sitting on the couch watching TV.
They asked me how our game was completely nonchalant, and
I asked them why they hadn't come picked me up.
They both looked confused. They asked me why they would
tell me to wait there instead of home when it
was only four streets different and I had my bike.

(02:02:53):
Once I said it, it made more sense, but to
this day, I swear that they told me to wait
there for them. They explained that when they drove up,
they told me that they were going to leave the
door unlocked for me in case I got home before
they did. I guess, in my excitement for the game,
I must have completely misheard them. I simply went to
my room after that, never telling them about it, because

(02:03:16):
as a dumb kid, I knew if I said something,
they wouldn't let me go play soccer anymore, and that
was clearly more important than my physical well being. I
never saw those guys or that car again. I look
back on it now and it doesn't matter how fast
I pedaled on my bike. They were in a car.
They should have and could have caught up to me
if they wanted to. So I don't know what their

(02:03:38):
intentions were, if they were just having to laugh at
my expense, if they were trying to scare me, or
if they actually had something darker in mind. But I
do think back to that day now and get chills
every time I realize how much different my life would
be right now if they had caught up to me.
So to the creepy men in the spray painted car.

(02:03:59):
Let's not me to get When I was young, I
went fishing with my dad and my best friend. We
waded through some deeper water to reach a shallow sandbar
where the fish were biting. It was quiet and peaceful.

(02:04:22):
We stayed out there for quite a while, casting lines
under the hot sun, surrounded by nothing but water, sky,
and occasional splash of a mullet. But the tide began
to shift slowly. The water that had been just above
my ankles crept higher and higher until I was waist
deep and it was still rising. Then in an instant,

(02:04:45):
the entire world snapped into focus. A huge shark seven
maybe eight feet long, exploded through the school of maullet,
thrashing to the surface just feet from where I was.
The water was panicked as if fish scattered. I froze,
We all did, my Dad, my best friend, just standing

(02:05:06):
there in the sudden silence, mouths sanging it open, staring
at the space where the predator had just torn through
the water. No one screamed, no one ran. My dad
calm but daily serious said, walk back, slowly, slowly, don't splash.
So we did, but the tide it came in more

(02:05:29):
than we realized. My dad and friend were taller. They
could still manage the deeper water. For me, though, it
was another story. The stretch between the sandbar and the
shore was now over my head. I couldn't walk anymore.
I could barely bounce off the bottom. The water reached
their chest, but I was gasping just to keep my

(02:05:51):
head above the surface, one hand gripping my fishing rod
awkwardly overhead, while the rest of me flailed beneath the waterline.
I was completely helpless. We all knew that the shark
was still circling somewhere in the murky water behind us.
It could have been six feet away, it could have
been inches. I couldn't see, couldn't move fast, could barely breathe.

(02:06:16):
It felt like a nightmare, like one of those dreams
where you're trying to escape something in the dark but
your legs won't work. Except this was real. There was
something in the dark, and it had teeth. Even then,
I knew the odds. I knew it was unlikely that
the shark would come after me. It was hunting mullet,
not people. But if there was ever a moment I

(02:06:38):
had been attacked, that was it. As a kid alone
in the deep water, barely able to stay afloat, splashing
just enough to draw attention, surrounded by bait, fish and
blood scent. A few years later, just a few miles away,
a man was killed after jumping off his deck right
into the path of a bull shark chasing mout. So yeah,

(02:07:01):
I knew the odds, but I also knew the water.
A few years ago, I went with my then girlfriend
to the beach. We were boogie boarding from the first
sandbar back to shore. It was during the week and

(02:07:21):
the place was deserted. No lifeguards, no other swimmers, just us.
We were alone on the surf for what felt like
a quarter of a mile in every direction. She was
riding a wave back to the shore, laughing, her board
cutting through the foam. I stayed back, facing the open water,
watching the horizon. I was trying to read the waves,

(02:07:44):
looking for the next good one to ride back. That's
when I saw it. Fins more than one, a shark,
maybe twenty yards from me. It cut through the surface
of water like knives, gliding in it of sight between
the swells. No splashing, no thrashing, just quiet predatory movement.

(02:08:08):
My stomach turned to ice. I waited for the next wave,
heart hammering, trying not to move fast. When it came,
I didn't hesitate. I rode straight back to the shore,
every second, expecting a surge of water behind me or
a flash of gray below. I didn't want to scare her,
so when I reached the sand, I just said, Hey,

(02:08:29):
let's go hang out under the tent for the rest
of the day. My voice came out steadier than I felt.
But she saw right through me. She knew without me
saying a word, she'd guessed exactly what I had seen.
I didn't get a good enough look at it to
know what kind of shark it was, sand shark, bull tiger,

(02:08:50):
maybe even a hammer head. It didn't matter. When you
see a living missile of teeth and muscle pointed in
your general direction, you don't stick around to identify it.
You get out. The ocean is a shark's territory. I've
always been taught to respect that, But seeing that fin,
seeing it glide so close in silence, made me really

(02:09:13):
something else. How many times have sharks been there and
I didn't see them? How many shadows had passed beneath me,
just out of sight, And all the years i've been swimming.
That thought still freaks me out more than the fin
that I did see. Growing up, my grandma used to

(02:09:37):
babysit me. She lived with my uncle and he had
a rot wilder, big, powerful, but always friendly. She was
kind of the dog you didn't have to worry about
until you had a reason to. One afternoon, when I
was nine or ten, I got into my head that
I was gonna pretend to be a pro wrestler. I
wrapped my arms and hands in white masking tape like

(02:10:00):
I'd seen on TV. I spent the next hour slamming
stuffed animals into an imaginary ring. When I got tired,
I got a few action figures and was wandering outside
the car port, there where the deer stands aer stored
and where the rt wether usually slept. She was there,
curled up, fast asleep. I sat down a few feet

(02:10:23):
away and started playing. Everything was quiet, peaceful. Then I
heard it, subtle at first, just the sound of a
dog stirring. I didn't even look up, but then came
a growl, low, deep, not playful. That was when I
turned around and froze. The rotwither was staring at me.

(02:10:44):
Her eyes logged onto me like I was pray. Lips curled,
teeth bared. The girl got louder. She wasn't wagging her tail,
she wasn't coming over to stiff me. She was tense,
watching hunting. I tried to talk to her. It's me.
I barely was able to get the words out. I

(02:11:06):
stepped back, slowly, hoping she recognized my voice. But she didn't,
or maybe she did and something in her didn't care.
Then she lunged. It happened fast, muscle and teeth lunging forward,
eyes wide with something I didn't understand but now recognized
as pure instinct, and I swear, and a split second

(02:11:27):
I realized what she was aiming for, my arms, the tape.
I ripped off the masking tape as fast as I
could and threw it at her like it was something cursed.
The moment it hit the ground, she stopped, just stopped,
and I ran full sprint back into the house, heart
pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.

(02:11:50):
I didn't go and do that dog for days. I
barely breathed in the same direction as that car port.
Then out of nowhere, I got asked to feed her.
I opened the door, heart in my throat, and she
was wagging her tail like nothing had ever happened, Just
like that, back to friendly by that day never left
me because for a moment, a terrible moment, I wasn't

(02:12:13):
a kid playing for tend I was prey, and I
saw up close what it looks like when something you
trust suddenly doesn't recognize you anymore, or worse, it does
and still chooses to go in for the kill. I
was stationed in Japan three of the six years I

(02:12:35):
was in the Navy. During that time, I least a
traditional Japanese home. The shower was in its own separate
walk in, with a deep sink, tub, wooden bench, the
whole deal. It was honestly one of my favorite parts
of the place until this morning. I stumbled into the shower,

(02:12:56):
half asleep, barely conscious. As I shut the door behind
me and step towards the tub, something black flashes past
my periphial vision, followed by an immediate thud. I look
down into the tub. There it is a Huntsman spider
the size of my goddamn hand, legs spread wide, motionless,

(02:13:18):
just staring up at me like it's been waiting watching
I freeze. Best guess is that it had been on
the wall behind me. I must have startled it. But
now it's between me and the rest of the room,
coiled like a nightmare. Instincts take over. I grabbed my
shower head from its mouth it's on a hose and

(02:13:41):
aim it directly at the thing. Flush it down the
drain whatever it takes. As soon as the water hits it,
it leaps, not crawls, leaps straight out of the tub
onto the wall, and bolt it for the window. It
moves like it's glitching through reality, faster than it should
have been possible for something that size to move. I

(02:14:03):
try to throw the window open, but before I can't
even touch the glass, it jumps again and runs under
the shower into the powder room. Now I'm naked, concerned,
soaked and breathing hard, while this demon spider waits for
me on the cabinet door outside. It just sits there
like it knows it's baiting me. I make a run

(02:14:27):
for the front door, grab a foot flop, creep back
into the powder room and wing the sandal at it
with everything I've got. Direct hit letgs go flying, But
it's still alive. It limps out of the bathroom. It
disappears under the stairs, slower. Now wounded, I'm done playing games.

(02:14:50):
I grab a can of bug spray, push down the nozzle,
and start moving in for the kill. That's when I
see it curled around the back edge of one of
the stair treads. There's this black, twitching tail. I think
it's a spider. I aim spray, but what drops isn't
the spider. It's something else. A mukad centerpede longer than

(02:15:14):
my forearm, black and red, shiny armored, and it charges me,
not scaring away, charging The front half is raised off
the floor like a cobra, mandibles clicking, biting the air.
I don't scream, I'm just about to pass out. I

(02:15:34):
stumble backwards, unloading the can of spray, trying to stay
on my feet as this thing comes at me like
it has blood in its eyes. I hit it again,
still moving, I turned the flip flop on its edge
and use it like a saw, cutting the thing in
half while it thrashes under the pressure. The second it
stops moving, I remember the spider. It's still alive, still

(02:15:58):
under the stairs. I blow air into the gap and
it runs out fast but stumbling. I raised my flip
flop saw and smash it hard until it stops twitching.
Then I just stood there, soaking, wet, naked, trembling, heart
pounding in my throat, surrounded by venom and legs and

(02:16:20):
parts of things that should not exist in the same
place as a shower. And then I screamed at the
top of my lungs for about thirty seconds straight. The
whole battle lasted maybe three minutes, but it felt like
I spent a year in the house. By the time
I got to work, I was so visibly shaken that
my coworkers stopped what they were doing just to ask

(02:16:43):
me what the hell happened to me. Honestly, I still
can't tell if it was the worst morning of my
life or the most badass thing I've ever done. I
did field work back and forth between the US and
UK and East and South Africa for about ten years.

(02:17:07):
In that time, I spent a good portion of my
life living in remote base camps, hours or even days
from the nearest town out there. You're in the wild's domain.
You stop being on top of the food chain, and
every so often you get reminded of that in a
way you'll never forget. These are some of my oh
shit moments. The first was an elephant, a female with

(02:17:33):
a calf. You don't really understand how big an elephant
is until it's charging you. The ground doesn't shake, it thunders,
dust screams, the sound of breaking branches, all of it
rolls over you at once. Knowing she had a calf
made it worse because there's no bluffing in a charge

(02:17:54):
like that. She wasn't posturing, she meant it. Then there
were the big cats. I know for a fact that
I was stalked at least twice once by a leopard,
easy to identify because it's the only large predator at
that site. The other time, most likely a rogue male lion.

(02:18:16):
That lion was known to hang around the area. You
don't see them, of course, not at first. You just
feel it, a prickle along the back of your neck,
the sense of eyes in the dark. Sometimes you catch
a flash of movement in the brush, a low rustle
of grass behind you where there shouldn't be any, and

(02:18:37):
then you remember you're not tracking it, it's tracking you.
The next was in Alaska. It was a day off
and everyone else had gone into town. I was sitting
in the main tent reading when something made me turn around.
A moose cow with a calf five meters away. If

(02:18:58):
you've never seen a moose up close, you don't understand
how massive and unpredictable they are, especially a mother with
her young. They aren't big dumb deer either. They're unpredictable,
and they're faster than they look. But the one that
still wakes me up at night happened in South Africa.

(02:19:21):
We had a party of the night before. Someone forgot
to close the kitchen door. I woke up hungover, stumbled
into the sink to make coffee. The rubbish bag was
right beneath me. I heard something moving aside. I'd bent
over and sulk shifting. A Mozambique spitting cobra its ted low,

(02:19:45):
slightly flared, one wrung move, one startled breath, and I'd
be blind or dead. Then there were the hyaenas. Two
spotted hyenas broke into the camp one night, killed a
few dogs, and started nosing around the tents. Mine included
you don't forget the sound of a hyenas womp when

(02:20:06):
it's right outside your tent. It's deafening. It makes your
bones feel hollow, and then a noise I didn't even
know existed, the low graw that follows when it's that closed.
That sound doesn't come from outside, it comes from inside you.
I've got dozens of other stories from the years, but

(02:20:29):
none of those have ever made feel the same raw,
primal certainty that I'm not in control here. I could
die right now and nature wouldn't even blink. When I
was a kid, I spent a lot of time at

(02:20:50):
my babysitter's house with their kids. They had a smallish,
hurting type dog, supposedly gentle and sweet, supposedly, but the
sun he was a nightmare. He chased the dog around
with a NERF gun, tackle it, pin it, scream in
his face, basically tormenting it every chance he got that

(02:21:13):
kind of relentless, cruel chaos only kids can generate, and
the adults did nothing, not even a word, just let
it happen like noise in the background. I was seven,
I couldn't do much, and honestly, what made it worse
was this wasn't even the worst abuse that happened to
the house. The dog was just the most visible victim.

(02:21:35):
So I stayed quiet. Then one day, I was just
sitting there. A fly was buzzing overhead, nothing dramatic, just
a fly. The dog was nearby, and of course I
didn't think anything of it. Then I heard this growl, low,
tense and focused, not at me but through me. The

(02:21:58):
next thing I know, there was a a violence, suffocating
blur of fur and teeth and heat of breath. The
dog latched at my face, face snapping, snarling, and second
it was on me, not barking, not nipping, mauling. It

(02:22:18):
won for the fly, but it got me instead, and
it took part of my upper lip. I don't even
remember pain, just confusion, tear, blood, and its face in mind, hot, wet, angry.
We never found the missing chunk, just gone vanished. I've

(02:22:41):
always told people the dog bit me, because that's the
simplest way to explain what happened, but honestly, I think
it ate a piece of my face. The worst part
is I've been afraid of these dogs ever since, which
is embarrassing, right, being afraid of a tiny, hurting dog.

(02:23:02):
But the fear doesn't care how something looks. Fear remembers
the feeling of the breath, the fur, the snapping teeth,
inches away from your eye. The second worst part is
I kept hanging out with a babysitter's kid after they
gave the dog away. Then a year later they told
me they actually gave them to their cousins. They told

(02:23:23):
me this by taking me to their cousin's house without
any warning, without asking, just casually walked into the home
where the same dog was, saying it was retrained. I
don't remember how I reacted. I just remember staring at
the dog across the room and wondering if he remembered
me too, if you recognized my face or what was

(02:23:46):
left of it. I'm from Florida, and I was volunteering
at a local nature conservancy after a big storm had
torn through the area. One of our jobs was to
remove fallen logs that had jammed up in the creek.

(02:24:09):
The creek was about chest deep, fifteen feet wide, and
completely opaque, a thick, tandy stained brown that spoiled all
the light. You couldn't see an inch beneath the surface.
Typical Florida fresh water, but still deeply unsettling when you're
standing in it. I was moving logs shouldered deep in

(02:24:31):
water when I suddenly noticed the shape on the embankment
a massive, motionless, twelve foot alligator. It had been there
the whole time, and I hadn't seen it. Then it
moved without a sound. It slid down the muddy bank
and disappeared into the creek, into the same water I
was standing in. Gone, no splash, no bubbles, just silent.

(02:24:57):
It was like the swamp swolled it whole. I turned
to the land manager, who was still hauling logs beside me,
and I asked, what do I do? They barely looked up. Well,
those logs aren't cutting, move themselves. One of them said
that gator probably just trying to get away from us. Probably,

(02:25:19):
so I stayed for thirty minutes more. I stood in
that water, blindly, feeling around with my legs and hands,
moving logs that were the same size, shape, and color
of the fucking alligator, knowing full well that an actual
alligator was somewhere beneath that surface, inches from my legs,
maybe watching, maybe waiting, maybe gone. Every bump against my boot,

(02:25:44):
every sudden tug of the current, felt like it was
about to become something else, something with teeth. It was
one of the most nerve racking, skin crawling things I've
ever done. And the worst part you never hear them coming.
The only point

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The Best TRUE Scary Stories from October | Real Horror That Will Haunt You | Part 2 of 2

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Best TRUE Scary Stories from October | Real Horror That Will Haunt You | Part 2 of 2