August 21, 2025 • 10 mins
#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales #familyhorror #courttrauma #mentalbreakdown #realhorrors #toxicrelationships Before college ever began, a young person endured a decade of psychological warfare—marked by betrayals from those closest to them, spirals of family-driven madness, and years entangled in brutal court battles. What should’ve been a coming-of-age turned into a survival story. This haunting narrative explores the trauma of custody wars, emotional manipulation, and the mental toll of growing up in a battlefield disguised as a home. A raw, deeply personal horror based on real scars. horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, familydrama, betrayal, custodybattle, psychologicalabuse, emotionaltrauma, toxicfamily, survivalstory, courtchaos, childhoodhorror, mentalhealth, reallifehorror, personalstory, madness, trauma
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Actually this is kind of long, but certainly full of
incident and hopefully interest. After getting my AA, I took
time off from school to help take care of my
ailing grandparents. This was meant to be merely a short
delay in my schooling, but before my grandfather passed, my
grandmother developed Alzheimer's and I ended up staying with them
(00:20):
close to ten years. I was also doing professional theater work,
and was acting and directing in a place that I
overly optimistically thought might one day turn into a gig
one could live off of. My father and brother were
also involved in caring for my grandparents, so I wasn't
needed twenty four to seven. Then one Saturday night, the
place went out of business, owing me one thousand dollars.
(00:42):
The next morning, my grandmother died, and later that week
I was mugged, leaving me injured enough that for a
few weeks I couldn't lift my left arm above my head.
I had planned to return to school after I was
done helping my grandparents, but after that week, I decided
I deserved some time off, so I just decided to
relax for about a year, do some theater elsewhere, but
otherwise just mellow out Unfortunately, I squandered my free time
(01:07):
by falling or stepping in love, thinking that I had
found the one or some such idiocy. But there were
just too many people that she had to meet without
her clothes, So after about a year the relationship fell apart,
as did I. After all that, I was more than
ready to head off to college, but a new problem arose.
(01:28):
The family home had had a reverse mortgage put on
it in my grandmother's name. A bit more than a
year had passed and they were preparing to take the home.
My father and I were still living there. My father
was getting up in years, so I felt he needed help,
either fighting the seizure or with the move, so I
hung about. Shortly after, I discovered why the reverse mortgage
(01:50):
was necessary. For ten years, my father had been draining
the family trust dry to give to a stripper. He
stole at least a quarter of a million, very likely more.
This trust was created by my grandparents and was meant
to go down to their grandchildren, my brother and myself.
Before it passed on to us. Our father had control
(02:11):
of it. He was allowed to use some of it
for himself, but only for genuine needs, not for giving
it away. To a stripper. This was bad enough, but
on investigating his crime, I discovered something else. In e
mails to others, he repeatedly claimed to be caring for
his parents and me. I have quite mild Tourette syndrome,
(02:32):
which both my parents have used as an excuse to
presume that I have other things wrong with me as well. Basically,
anything about me they disagreed with was a symptom, so
in all likelihood, my father genuinely thought I was incapable
of caring for myself. This was quite upsetting. It would
be bad enough to have one's father's steal from one
(02:53):
and then say he's perfectly capable of supporting himself, he
doesn't need this money. It is quite work for him
to say he's incapable of even caring for himself, and
I'm leaving him nothing, and it wasn't even his money.
In this troubled time, I reached out for support to
an old friend, one I'd known since middle school. He'd
(03:15):
come close to even being adopted into our family, so
I felt he'd be especially supportive. This was foolish and
I was wrong. I found out that he had turned
against me because I didn't like his movie he didn't
put it this way. Admittedly, he was upset that I
had the nerve to suggest ways it could have been improved.
In my defense, I'll say that the only reason I
(03:37):
made suggestions was because he insisted on a long conversation
in which he tried to convince me to like the film.
The conversation stretched out so long that, out of lack
of anything else to say, I offered some suggestions. If
he had simply accepted that I didn't like it and
then moved on, I would have two and no suggestions
would have been made. I hadn't prepared them ahead of time.
(04:01):
The conversation ended amicably enough, with words about keeping in touch.
I sent messages every now and then, but he rarely responded. Eventually,
I asked, are we no longer speaking? He claimed that
he was just too busy to reply lately. It was later,
during my time of need, that he chose to stick
the knife in. I subsequently discovered that he had reached
(04:24):
out to my father, so I suppose he chose his side.
We lost the home, my father and I moved into
an apartment. I'm still gathering evidence and scraping together money
for lawyers. My brother and I finally file suit while
I am still living with my father. This is potentially
quite dangerous. Let me explain years and years before, after
(04:48):
the family business created by my grandfather, then run by
my father, when under my father went a little funny
in the head, just a little funny, he decided he
was a mist with mystical powers. He claimed to be
with the aid of his mystic friends, using those powers
to overthrow a dark force which held dominion over our world.
(05:10):
Once this dark force was gone, everything would be incredibly
wonderful here on earth. When he told me this, I
replied I could hardly wait. He responded that, unfortunately, these
wonderful effects would not be felt until long after I
am gone. My apologies for holding back utopia. This is
how his stripper fit into things. He felt he knew
(05:32):
her in a previous life. She was either his daughter
or his lover in this past life. Personally, this distinction
would have been important to me to get straightened out.
In addition to having mystic powers, my father heard voices,
was paranoid and had lots of guns, and I was
trying to keep him from supporting the woman he was
(05:53):
delusionally devoted to. I may have been in some danger.
I arranged to temporarily move in with my mother if
things got bad. My father never became violent. He actually
didn't give me credit for being capable of taking him
to court, feeling that it was my mother manipulating me
into it. Nevertheless, it became necessary to move out. Shortly
(06:16):
before the move my mother arranged a meeting. At this meeting,
she gave me a list of her demands. I can't
remember much of it, but it mostly had to do
with showing her sufficient respect. I remember something about never
walking ahead of her when we were walking together. Oh yeah,
And there was this other little thing. She claimed that
(06:37):
in the past, when she had been living with my brother,
that he had been plotting to rape her. She warned
me not to similarly plot. This was concerning the accusation
seemed extremely unfounded, and she therefore seemed perhaps not the
best person to move in with lest I suffer the
same slander. Unfortunately, all of my limited funds had gone
(06:59):
to lawyers. I tried to arrange something with my brother,
but his wife wouldn't hear of any one moving in,
so I moved in with my mother. My initial plan
was to find excuses to be away as much as possible,
merely returning to sleep. But her car broke down for
a couple weeks shortly after I moved in, and I
felt I should stick around to help with grocery shopping
(07:21):
and such. After her car was fixed, I had succumbed
to inertia and I never went through with my plan
to be mostly absent. She was fine at first. There
were occasional tensions, but nothing especially noteworthy. After a couple
months of my living there, my brother and I won
the case. We had control of the family trust, but
(07:44):
all we had control of was a couple pieces of land,
which we didn't want to sell because once the trust
had liquid assets, our father could still potentially get a
hold of them. We had one control, but our father
was still connected to the trust. If he had real
financial needs, he could still demand that the trusts satisfy them.
We realized that he could give all of his income
(08:05):
to the stripper and then try to force us to
pay his rent, et CETERA legal action could perhaps prevent this,
but lawyers cost money too. My mother became more tense
after the win, even though no arrangement had been made.
I got the impression that she had been planning to
take advantage of her lodger's new found wealth. When that
(08:26):
failed to come through for her, she apparently ceased to
tamp down her paranoia and neuroses. She started accusing ME
of hiding things from her to play with her mind.
Finding these items didn't help matters. Even if she found
the item herself, it was obviously because I had secretly
returned the item to gaslight her. On one occasion, after
(08:48):
screaming at me about some misplaced thing, she found it.
It was perfectly obvious even to her that I had
done nothing. She claimed that my past behavior meant that
it was perfectly appropriate to accuse me automatically. Even the
appearance of wrongdoing was an offense, and anything I said
in response just up the volume and anger. And she
(09:10):
continued all of this, night after night, week after week,
knowing perfectly well everything I had just been through, except
the failed romance. I tended not to introduce my parents
to many friends or lovers. Funny that she was going
to kick me out and I would have to move
into a half way house or such, but she eventually
(09:31):
backed off from that. I was going to apply a
handy raiser to whichever Vain was most accessible, but I
eventually backed off from that as well. Ultimately, I returned
to college, putting myself massively in debt due to having
no choice but to live on campus for a time,
a campus shared with my former friend, now a professor.
(09:52):
Perhaps this debt could have been avoided, but I was
too broken down by everything to make good decisions any more.
I think that's a long enough read for there's more
to the story. I didn't even mention the sex robots,
but I don't want to try the reader's patience. The
end
Actually this is kind of long, but certainly full of
incident and hopefully interest. After getting my AA, I took
time off from school to help take care of my
ailing grandparents. This was meant to be merely a short
delay in my schooling, but before my grandfather passed, my
grandmother developed Alzheimer's and I ended up staying with them
(00:20):
close to ten years. I was also doing professional theater work,
and was acting and directing in a place that I
overly optimistically thought might one day turn into a gig
one could live off of. My father and brother were
also involved in caring for my grandparents, so I wasn't
needed twenty four to seven. Then one Saturday night, the
place went out of business, owing me one thousand dollars.
(00:42):
The next morning, my grandmother died, and later that week
I was mugged, leaving me injured enough that for a
few weeks I couldn't lift my left arm above my head.
I had planned to return to school after I was
done helping my grandparents, but after that week, I decided
I deserved some time off, so I just decided to
relax for about a year, do some theater elsewhere, but
otherwise just mellow out Unfortunately, I squandered my free time
(01:07):
by falling or stepping in love, thinking that I had
found the one or some such idiocy. But there were
just too many people that she had to meet without
her clothes, So after about a year the relationship fell apart,
as did I. After all that, I was more than
ready to head off to college, but a new problem arose.
(01:28):
The family home had had a reverse mortgage put on
it in my grandmother's name. A bit more than a
year had passed and they were preparing to take the home.
My father and I were still living there. My father
was getting up in years, so I felt he needed help,
either fighting the seizure or with the move, so I
hung about. Shortly after, I discovered why the reverse mortgage
(01:50):
was necessary. For ten years, my father had been draining
the family trust dry to give to a stripper. He
stole at least a quarter of a million, very likely more.
This trust was created by my grandparents and was meant
to go down to their grandchildren, my brother and myself.
Before it passed on to us. Our father had control
(02:11):
of it. He was allowed to use some of it
for himself, but only for genuine needs, not for giving
it away. To a stripper. This was bad enough, but
on investigating his crime, I discovered something else. In e
mails to others, he repeatedly claimed to be caring for
his parents and me. I have quite mild Tourette syndrome,
(02:32):
which both my parents have used as an excuse to
presume that I have other things wrong with me as well. Basically,
anything about me they disagreed with was a symptom, so
in all likelihood, my father genuinely thought I was incapable
of caring for myself. This was quite upsetting. It would
be bad enough to have one's father's steal from one
(02:53):
and then say he's perfectly capable of supporting himself, he
doesn't need this money. It is quite work for him
to say he's incapable of even caring for himself, and
I'm leaving him nothing, and it wasn't even his money.
In this troubled time, I reached out for support to
an old friend, one I'd known since middle school. He'd
(03:15):
come close to even being adopted into our family, so
I felt he'd be especially supportive. This was foolish and
I was wrong. I found out that he had turned
against me because I didn't like his movie he didn't
put it this way. Admittedly, he was upset that I
had the nerve to suggest ways it could have been improved.
In my defense, I'll say that the only reason I
(03:37):
made suggestions was because he insisted on a long conversation
in which he tried to convince me to like the film.
The conversation stretched out so long that, out of lack
of anything else to say, I offered some suggestions. If
he had simply accepted that I didn't like it and
then moved on, I would have two and no suggestions
would have been made. I hadn't prepared them ahead of time.
(04:01):
The conversation ended amicably enough, with words about keeping in touch.
I sent messages every now and then, but he rarely responded. Eventually,
I asked, are we no longer speaking? He claimed that
he was just too busy to reply lately. It was later,
during my time of need, that he chose to stick
the knife in. I subsequently discovered that he had reached
(04:24):
out to my father, so I suppose he chose his side.
We lost the home, my father and I moved into
an apartment. I'm still gathering evidence and scraping together money
for lawyers. My brother and I finally file suit while
I am still living with my father. This is potentially
quite dangerous. Let me explain years and years before, after
(04:48):
the family business created by my grandfather, then run by
my father, when under my father went a little funny
in the head, just a little funny, he decided he
was a mist with mystical powers. He claimed to be
with the aid of his mystic friends, using those powers
to overthrow a dark force which held dominion over our world.
(05:10):
Once this dark force was gone, everything would be incredibly
wonderful here on earth. When he told me this, I
replied I could hardly wait. He responded that, unfortunately, these
wonderful effects would not be felt until long after I
am gone. My apologies for holding back utopia. This is
how his stripper fit into things. He felt he knew
(05:32):
her in a previous life. She was either his daughter
or his lover in this past life. Personally, this distinction
would have been important to me to get straightened out.
In addition to having mystic powers, my father heard voices,
was paranoid and had lots of guns, and I was
trying to keep him from supporting the woman he was
(05:53):
delusionally devoted to. I may have been in some danger.
I arranged to temporarily move in with my mother if
things got bad. My father never became violent. He actually
didn't give me credit for being capable of taking him
to court, feeling that it was my mother manipulating me
into it. Nevertheless, it became necessary to move out. Shortly
(06:16):
before the move my mother arranged a meeting. At this meeting,
she gave me a list of her demands. I can't
remember much of it, but it mostly had to do
with showing her sufficient respect. I remember something about never
walking ahead of her when we were walking together. Oh yeah,
And there was this other little thing. She claimed that
(06:37):
in the past, when she had been living with my brother,
that he had been plotting to rape her. She warned
me not to similarly plot. This was concerning the accusation
seemed extremely unfounded, and she therefore seemed perhaps not the
best person to move in with lest I suffer the
same slander. Unfortunately, all of my limited funds had gone
(06:59):
to lawyers. I tried to arrange something with my brother,
but his wife wouldn't hear of any one moving in,
so I moved in with my mother. My initial plan
was to find excuses to be away as much as possible,
merely returning to sleep. But her car broke down for
a couple weeks shortly after I moved in, and I
felt I should stick around to help with grocery shopping
(07:21):
and such. After her car was fixed, I had succumbed
to inertia and I never went through with my plan
to be mostly absent. She was fine at first. There
were occasional tensions, but nothing especially noteworthy. After a couple
months of my living there, my brother and I won
the case. We had control of the family trust, but
(07:44):
all we had control of was a couple pieces of land,
which we didn't want to sell because once the trust
had liquid assets, our father could still potentially get a
hold of them. We had one control, but our father
was still connected to the trust. If he had real
financial needs, he could still demand that the trusts satisfy them.
We realized that he could give all of his income
(08:05):
to the stripper and then try to force us to
pay his rent, et CETERA legal action could perhaps prevent this,
but lawyers cost money too. My mother became more tense
after the win, even though no arrangement had been made.
I got the impression that she had been planning to
take advantage of her lodger's new found wealth. When that
(08:26):
failed to come through for her, she apparently ceased to
tamp down her paranoia and neuroses. She started accusing ME
of hiding things from her to play with her mind.
Finding these items didn't help matters. Even if she found
the item herself, it was obviously because I had secretly
returned the item to gaslight her. On one occasion, after
(08:48):
screaming at me about some misplaced thing, she found it.
It was perfectly obvious even to her that I had
done nothing. She claimed that my past behavior meant that
it was perfectly appropriate to accuse me automatically. Even the
appearance of wrongdoing was an offense, and anything I said
in response just up the volume and anger. And she
(09:10):
continued all of this, night after night, week after week,
knowing perfectly well everything I had just been through, except
the failed romance. I tended not to introduce my parents
to many friends or lovers. Funny that she was going
to kick me out and I would have to move
into a half way house or such, but she eventually
(09:31):
backed off from that. I was going to apply a
handy raiser to whichever Vain was most accessible, but I
eventually backed off from that as well. Ultimately, I returned
to college, putting myself massively in debt due to having
no choice but to live on campus for a time,
a campus shared with my former friend, now a professor.
(09:52):
Perhaps this debt could have been avoided, but I was
too broken down by everything to make good decisions any more.
I think that's a long enough read for there's more
to the story. I didn't even mention the sex robots,
but I don't want to try the reader's patience. The
end
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.