September 28, 2025 • 90 mins
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Scary Stories and Rain.
A couple things before we begin.I have two new podcasts that I
would love for you to check out.It's the same type of stories,
but one with a crackling campfire background and one with
more of a dark, eerie background.
Scary Stories and Fire and ScaryStories in the Dark.
The links to each of them are inthe description to this episode.
(00:22):
Please check them out and give them a follow.
It would really mean a lot. And if you're not following this
podcast yet, please do that as well so you get reminded when a
new episode comes out every single night.
Also, if you haven't subscribed yet, you can get rid of all of
the ads for 299 a month and be automatically entered to win
every single giveaway that I do every month.
(00:43):
Just 299, no more ads, all the giveaways.
I want to say thank you for being here and I really hope you
enjoy this episode. This incident happened just a
few hours earlier and I'm telling this story currently at
(01:03):
my workplace. I work in the garden area of a
home improvement store. I don't work the cash registers
and my manager doesn't even let me water the flowers, so a lot
of the time I have nothing to do.
This results in me taking extremely long bathroom breaks
where I just scroll on my phone.I know it sounds bad, but it's
(01:24):
better than standing around trying to look busy.
Today was the same as any other with me wasting time in the
bathroom. Nothing of interest happened
until my work phone buzzed at the same time as the stall next
to mine. This becomes important later.
A few seconds later I see that the guy in the next stall had
(01:45):
his hand stretched to the groundwith his palm facing up.
I at first thought he had run out of toilet paper and was
asking for mine. He just stayed silent for a
while, so I ignored him after that.
Then he started moving that handuncomfortably close to my leg,
so I immediately scooted away and prepared to leave.
(02:07):
Once the man noticed that, he hurriedly got out of his stall
before I could leave. Another few seconds of silence.
I took a peek out from the gap of the stall door to see what he
was doing. And just like a scene from a
horror movie, our eyes connected.
He was barely an inch away from my door, trying to peek inside.
(02:28):
My blood ran cold. If you're wondering why I didn't
immediately open the door and cuss the guy out, I really hate
confrontation. I avoid it whenever possible,
and I do my best to not draw attention to myself.
I stood sideways by the door so he wouldn't be able to see me.
That's when the whispering started.
(02:50):
I don't know what the first thing he said was, but it
sounded like moaning. The next part was a bit more
audible. He said something along the
lines of wanting to see more of my unflushed toilet paper.
I was thoroughly disgusted. This guy was a complete creep
and I was alone in the bathroom with him.
(03:11):
My heart was beating faster by the second.
I knew I had to stay there untilanother person came into the
bathroom. No way was I going to confront
him alone. Probably a minute later, someone
finally arrives and I take this as my chance to wash my hands
and get out of there. Thankfully, the presence of the
(03:31):
other person made the man quit his creepy behavior.
As I was about to leave, he blocked my path for a quick
second before stepping aside. The weird thing was I don't even
think he works at the store because he wasn't wearing any
vest. My store is extremely lenient
about uniform, but most workers at least wear a vest or
(03:53):
something connected to the store.
He just looked like a regular customer.
I am certain I heard two phone Dings echo in that bathroom.
The phones have a signature ringto them so it couldn't have been
a coincidence either way. He only started creeping on me
once the phone ring made it clear that I was an employee.
(04:16):
The situation really creeped me out and I have been totally
unfocused on my work since then.I kept prowling the garden area
looking for any man wearing a similar outfit to the creeper.
I have an incredibly hard time distinguishing faces, so I
probably wouldn't even recognizehim if I did see him again.
(04:45):
This happened to me when I was 21 after I tried to take my own
life. I woke up in the hospital in the
middle of the night to a nurse saying he needed to replace my
IV. He jabs me two or three times
but doesn't hit a vein so I asked if he can get someone else
to try. He says no and keeps going.
(05:07):
As he is doing this he is pushing and wiggling the needles
around under my skin saying he is trying to get the vein.
By the 7th or 8th needle it registers that he is
intentionally trying to hurt me.I asked him why are you doing
this? He just says back it's your own
(05:28):
fault that you're here. I was too weak to fight back and
it was in the middle of the night.
There was no one else around I could call out to.
I have no idea how many times heended up puncturing me in the
end. The next day a different nurse
was taking out my IV. She was horrified because she
said it was the biggest needle she had ever seen using on a
(05:51):
living patient. Not sure why you would use
needles on a dead patient, but that's what she said.
A lot of people shrug this off when I tell them about it, but
it was so terrifying being alone, helpless, and knowing
that the person who was supposedto care for you hated you and
wanted to cause you pain. This happened a few years ago
(06:23):
when I was about 15 years old. It was a pretty common
occurrence at the time for my family and the families of my 2
best friends to go out for dinner.
During one such time, my best friends and I decided that it
would be more adult and cool forus to sit away from the rest of
our families and to just eat andchat at a separate table.
(06:43):
We were a couple of young teens having a fun time.
That's when one of my friends, Jenny, whispered that the guy
sitting at the table next to us seemed to be staring at me.
I slightly turned my head and realized that he did seem to be
looking my way, but I brushed itoff.
I mean we were at a restaurant, people looking around seemed
(07:07):
normal and innocent enough. As the time progressed, my other
friend Gabby also noticed the man staring at me and we began
to get a little more concerned. He had seemed to have finished
his food a long time ago but just continued to sit there
watching us, especially me. The man seems to be in his 30s
(07:29):
and his expression was starting to creep the three of us out,
but we decided not to do anything in case it was just us
overthinking. Eventually the man did pay and
leave, and we felt relieved. But as soon as I took my first
bite of food, Jenny motioned to me frantically.
We were sitting by a window, andas it turned out, the man had
(07:52):
left the restaurant, but he hadn't fully left the premises.
He was standing outside the window staring at me.
At this point we realized this wasn't normal behavior, but we
also didn't want to alert our families and cause a scene, so
we kept eating but also kept ourattention on the window.
(08:13):
By the time we were all done with dinner and our bill had
been paid, the man was still outside.
We were worried he would try something so we stayed close to
our dads on the way out. He followed us as we walked to
our cars from a distance but eventually changed direction and
left. The whole ordeal was super
(08:34):
creepy to us, but we let it go because it was over.
Or so we thought. Three months later, the three of
us decided to visit the busy downtown area of our city for
fun. We were standing on a street
corner trying to figure out where to go next when I felt
Gabby tapping my shoulder. At first I didn't respond, but
(08:58):
when she continued, I looked up and I felt like my heart
stopped. It was the same guy from the
restaurant. The restaurant had been nowhere
near where we were currently standing, yet somehow by sheer
coincidence, we had ran into himagain in a city of huge
population. The guy made eye contact with me
(09:21):
and I could tell he recognized us.
We immediately walked away as fast as we could and he started
to follow. But after a few minutes,
eventually we did lose him. We tried to then continue on
with our plans and did end up having a good time all things
considered. However, just when we had
decided to head back home, we ran into the guy and one of his
(09:45):
friends again. This time we were really freaked
out. He spotted us again and this
time him and his friend followedus.
Gabby said maybe he won't come after us if we go into a makeup
store. We tried that, but Nope, they
walked right inside after us. At this point Jenny was ready to
(10:07):
call the police, but we decided to try and lose them one last
time by ducking into a toy store.
We stayed in the store for a while and kept an eye out
outside. They walked back and forth for a
few minutes looking for us, but eventually they left the area
and we decided now was the time to make our move and leave.
(10:28):
This time we lost them for good,but the whole ordeal was beyond
stressful. The three of us never told
anyone else what happened. I still don't know what he
wanted from me or what would have happened if he had caught
up to us, but I'm glad I haven'tseen the guy since.
All these years later, my friends and I think back to this
(10:50):
incident and still think about how crazy the odds were to meet
the same creep more than once intwo completely different random
places. I was 12 years old.
(11:11):
It was the summer between grade 6 and grade 7.
My family had rented this reallyawesome cottage by the ocean in
Prince Edward Island. Big cottage with a jacuzzi.
A field of fresh barley growing in the backyard, which if you
walk to the end of the field there was a little wooden path
that took you into a kilometers worth of our own private beach.
(11:34):
It was easily one of the nicest cottages I ever stayed at.
Prince Edward Island is a beautiful province too, by the
way. Definitely go if you have the
chance. I remember asking about sharks
in the water to my parents and they just laughed and told me to
worry more about jellyfish because the water is too cold
(11:54):
for sharks. But there are a few jellies that
can get you in the shallows if you aren't careful.
They aren't aggressive though. Anyway, the beach we had was
really cool. So many types of crabs and
jellyfish that are actually fun to play with.
All just sprawled out for kilometers of beautiful red sand
(12:14):
decorated with tide pools. When you finally walk all the
way out to the ocean in low tide, you could continue walking
for miles through the surf. Unfortunately I found this out
soon enough. It was a normal day at the beach
with my family filming videos and exploring.
My brother and I ditched our parents and decided to go for a
(12:37):
swim. The water in this beach was
about as warm as the Atlantic water gets.
I swear in the more shallow water it felt just like a public
swimming pool on a very hot day.I was wrestling my brother for a
bit. I slapped him in the back
performing what we called a fivestar.
(12:57):
He got upset and started throwing me around the water.
He then threw a jellyfish at me,stinging me in my chest and
threatened to pee on me, where Ithen threw the jellyfish back at
him and a jellyfish fight erupted.
My parents had reconvened to ourlocation on the shore and
motioned to my brother and I that they had brought lunches.
(13:20):
Later, my brother said to me while making an L on his
forehead and making a face. My parents called me over but I
wanted to keep swimming. This water was barely up to my
waist so I kept walking further out to get to where it became
deeper. I kept walking out until the
water was just up to my nipples and started doing a front crawl.
(13:43):
I did a couple backflips underwater and bobbed up and
down a bit. I then decided I was cold and
turned to head back to the shore.
What I thought were seabirds turned out to be my family
hooting and hollering for me to come back.
They looked like tiny little specks off in the distance.
I could barely make out that my dad was waving his arms in the
(14:05):
air. This instantly freaked me out
because I had no idea I traveledthat far in such a short amount
of time. Being a 12 year old child, I had
no idea anything about under toes or riptides.
I just knew I had to get back toshore like my life depended on
it, because it did. The resistance of the undertow
(14:29):
was fierce. Having gone surfing since this
incident, I now know if you are caught in a riptide to remain
calm and swim parallel to the shore until you get out of the
riptide. That simple.
I did not know this at the time.Full panic ensued.
(14:50):
Thank my lucky stars. In my panic I ended up splashing
myself out of the current. This was because I was a bad
swimmer. If it kept taking me further, I
would have definitely drowned. And the water was becoming
deeper. The undertow at my feet was
still very strong, although manageable enough to slowly move
through, creating lots of resistance and making me work
(15:14):
extra hard. Almost drowning is quite the
workout. I knew I was slowly but surely
making my way back to shore. My parents saw that I was
heading back, so they continued to eat lunch.
I was becoming exhausted just trying to March and swim my way
back into shore. I was still very far away when
(15:36):
something forced me to stop doing everything I was doing and
listen to the sound of my pounding heartbeat.
Something slippery and soft brushed up against my leg.
I looked around, tried to make out the ocean floor below the
waist deep water I was standing in, still fighting the waves.
(15:56):
There was no seaweed below me, must have been a jellyfish or
some sort of fish, I tried to reassure myself as I began
moving forward again. As I'm thinking this and trying
to make out what's underneath the waves, I thought I saw a
shadow in the water. A wave obstructed whatever it
(16:17):
was and before I could even think about anything, I felt the
force of that same slippery sensation slide across my entire
body. Something was in the water with
me and it was gigantic. Soft, but gigantic and
terrifying at the same time. I could barely breathe I was so
(16:39):
shook. In some fit of hysterical panic
I started trying to swim away asfast and explosively as I could.
First front crawl which switchedto a backstroke to see behind me
before I pretty much had an asthma attack and was forced to
stop. I could barely breathe properly
and was shaking with fear. I remembered in school that
(17:02):
sharks have a sort of ESP and can sense fear.
They respond to panicking humanslike they are wounded prey.
I kept scanning all around me. I could barely see anything
through the waves until the sun poked out.
Inside a particularly big wave was a giant black 10 to 12 foot
(17:24):
long sea monster. It swam diagonally in my
direction so fast it was like italmost vanished into thin air.
I was still far from the shore. I decided to slowly walk 1 foot
at a time, planting my feet and fighting the undertow.
I was still in waist deep water.I remembered on Shark Week that
(17:46):
sharks can swim at 40 kilometersand most shark attacks occur in
waist deep water. I thought a wave looked like a
shark fin and I immediately shifted position to face my
demise. Then I noticed in this level of
fear, almost every wave looks like a shark fin.
As I looked around frantically, the sun went behind another
(18:09):
cloud removing the glare and I swear about 10 feet away from me
was a dark shadow twice my size.I froze as it disappeared out of
sight again. I did a 360 and couldn't see it
anywhere. The same level of fear took over
me where I decided to stop taking my time and start
(18:33):
backstroking as fast as I could like some sort of water strider
insect. I had seen Jaws at this point in
my life and every time my legs would kick together, a little V
of wake would form on the water surface looking almost exactly
like the shark nose as it is surfacing the water and
attacking people. Periodically I would abandoned
(18:56):
swimming altogether and start screaming and kicking my legs
viciously in front of me in the hopes that I get its nose.
I wasn't even sure if it was around me anymore, in hindsight,
but at that very moment, that shark was going to bite my balls
off any second. My heel brushed something again
and again. I was scraping bottom.
(19:19):
The water level was now down to my knees.
I stood up and sprinted as fast as I could to shore.
I kissed the sand. As I got out of the water, my
parents began scolding me about going out that far, telling me
about riptides, et cetera. Great, now they tell me.
I thought. I was shivering, shaking,
(19:42):
utterly exhausted and so emotionally and mentally
rattled. I just disassociated and said
nothing as they gave me crap. I did not tell my parents or my
brother about any of this. My brother could be a huge jerk
and I almost knew for a fact that none of them would really
believe me. I could hear them already.
(20:04):
There's no sharks in these waters.
It must have been seaweed. My brother making chicken
gestures at me. I saved myself the trouble.
I just said nothing, ate my lunch, drank some juice and
decided to go back to the cottage after.
Sharks rarely attack humans. If they did, people wouldn't go
(20:28):
swimming. Beaches in Florida would be a
bloodbath of slaughtered surfers.
It's even more rare to find big sharks in Prince Edward Island.
That isn't a lie. My parents reassured me
repeatedly on the road trip downand after getting to the cottage
that you will never find a sharkin the Maritimes because the
water is just too cold. Any sharks you see will be super
(20:52):
small and restricted to the Gulfand very shallow bays.
As we were driving to another beach days later, the radio DJ
gave a shout out to the largest white shark ever recorded.
It was a female, just over 6 meters long.
Caught in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence off the coast of Prince
Edward Island, I decided to staydry and catch some sun that day.
(21:25):
This happened in late October oflast year in Ottawa, ON.
I was visiting my old city to see my parents, which is always
a strenuous endeavor, so I generally try to be in their
house as little as possible whenI'm over to kill some boredom.
One night I decided to go for a jog around the neighborhood I
grew up in around 10:30 PMI was really pushing myself as I quit
(21:51):
drinking and was desperately trying to burn off the excess
belly fat from being drunk and lazy.
During lockdown. I ran basically a huge circuit
around the neighborhood taking me through three parks.
The third park I had to run through has no St. lights.
It has one right in the middle, but Ottawa has a thing where
(22:11):
random lights shut off and this alternates across the city's
power grid to save money and electricity. 9 times out of 10
it isn't shining. Now this park is extremely dark,
especially in a quiet October night with clear skies and dry
ground. The road leading into it is well
(22:34):
illuminated. This is a quaint, quiet,
peaceful suburb. There has been some sketchy
stuff that has happened in this little suburb though.
For example, just a 6 minute walk from my parents house was
one of the biggest drug busts our city has ever seen.
Some gang with automatic illegalweapons, the whole shebang.
(22:56):
There were also a couple of stabbings in other areas, but
very spaced apart and generally resolved by the law immediately.
All in all, it's a very quaint, safe and clean place to raise a
family. If I ever have kids or retire,
Kanata would be an ample place to do it.
I have never once felt unsafe, especially in the neighborhood
(23:18):
my parents lived in as it's fullof some very nice houses.
Through the darkness, I entered the park and passed through the
first part of it, which is a play structure meant for little
kids. Pretty much just a wooden mini
house that's next to a bouncy spring.
This leads to a bigger part of the park with a basketball
court, jungle gym, and a much larger play structure with a big
(23:42):
green triceratops made of plastic in the sandbox.
All this eventually leads to a path that runs behind my old
elementary school. At the end of this path is my
street. I almost finished my run running
through the dark spooky park as I have passed through hundreds
of times before now. I got into the habit of falling
(24:04):
asleep to creepy stories and have been watching a lot of
horror movies lately. As I'm breaking into the
blackness from the adjacent St. leading into the park.
I am on the fence about taking abreak and walking but I remember
I was trying to push myself. I carry on as I think jokingly
to myself, Gee I sure hope nothing spooky happens.
(24:28):
But as I am rounding the corner to the other half of the park, I
heard a distant scraping sound. I noticed a light from
somebody's cell phone shining inthe sandbox.
As I ran closer, I heard this scraping getting louder.
I got even closer and I noticed through the moonlight that it is
a man holding one of those hard Rakes with the sharp tines
(24:53):
grooming the sandbox. Now, some internal intuition
told me that I know this is super weird.
Why is there some guy grooming the sandbox at almost 11:00 PM
with a flashlight? As I approach further, however,
I notice it isn't just a man holding a sharp rake.
(25:14):
It's a man wearing an all black sweat suit with the hood up and
a white hospital mask. He is standing underneath the
play structure, using the tines of the rake to push a pink horse
with wheels on it back and forthand so on and so forth.
He heard the stride of my footsteps approaching and his
(25:35):
head jerked up right in my direction.
He quickly moved out from underneath the play structure
and shined the light on me rightinto my eyes.
This is really. Weird, I thought to myself as I
flashed him an utterly exhausted, awkward wave.
I have asthma and my quads and lungs are giving out.
(25:57):
I try super hard to up the. Pace.
Because I am fairly creeped out at this point.
In a flash, he kills his light and I cannot see a single thing
anymore. My heart jumps into my throat
and I'm very tuckered out at this point, ready to collapse.
I heard a soft shuffling in the sand as I passed him, followed
(26:20):
by rapid footsteps in between mystrides getting closer and
louder instantaneously. It clicks that this guy is
charging me with a rake. It's crazy what fear and
adrenaline can do because I wentfrom zero to 100 real quick,
sprinting faster than I would beable to normally.
(26:41):
My whole body is burning, especially my lungs.
As I cleared the park onto the well lit path.
I was moving so fast and pantingso loud I couldn't even tell if
he was following me or not. I didn't look back.
I cleared the end of the path and saw some guy getting out of
his car with him as my witness. I turned around, panting myself
(27:04):
to death and wheezing. He was gone.
I walked back to my street and went into my house, hacking up
disgusting amounts of phlegm, absolutely drenched in sweat.
I avoided telling my parents this story at first, just to
avoid their reaction, but everyone else in my life knew
pretty quick. I don't care for police, so
(27:28):
calling them wasn't even something that crossed my mind.
Later, when I reconnected with an old friend, one who never
left Ottawa, she informed me that my old elementary school
converts to a homeless shelter at night.
They set up cots in the gymnasium and kick them out at
6:00 AM. Her reaction was to rationalize
(27:50):
that it was probably a mentally ill homeless person who was
bored and couldn't sleep. But what if he had a different
intention? Was he waiting for a jogger to
pass by? Was he trying to scare people
just for the fun of it? Or was he really in a violent
mood? I guess I will never know.
(28:21):
I have been working for an independent hotel for just over
4 years now. We are the number one rated
hotel in our city and proud of it.
I mostly work in housekeeping but I've done some time at the
front desk as well. I love my job and have always
said that my bosses are great. Now being a housekeeper, I've
(28:43):
seen some things. I've seen a room where someone
snuck in their dog, kitten, and chicken.
We don't allow pets. I once had a room that I was
cleaning as a stay over that hadtripods set up around the bed,
professional camera equipment, cases, an adult sized pacifier
(29:03):
on site, and excel sized children's diapers.
The two people that were in thatroom were in their early 20s.
I even had a room once that we had to call the cops on for a
raid because we found drugs. They found a lot of drugs and
weapons in that room. Today is the first time I've
(29:23):
ever actually felt scared to be in a guest's room.
As I'm working on a room that's already been vacated, a man in
the next room over catches me atmy supply cart.
He is set to be staying for several days and tells me you
can go ahead and clean my room. Now I'm going down for
breakfast. Excellent.
(29:45):
I love getting my stay overs done early on, it makes things
easier for the people working laundry the sooner we get The
Dirty laundry down to them. So I pop over into his room,
opening it up and propping the door open with a stopper like we
always do. The first thing I notice is that
he has around 20 prescription bottles lined up on one of the
(30:06):
two beds, along with insulin andneedles.
I'm nosy, I'll admit it, and I wanted to see what he was on.
Oddly, it was only two differenttypes of medication.
For all 20 bottles, about 2/3 were a diabetes medication and
the rest were a cholesterol medication.
(30:28):
That's a little weird that he has so many bottles of the same
meds, but whatever. I go to make the bed and see
that some of the bedding has been stained and I sigh, knowing
now that I'll have to change allthe bedding instead of just
being able to turn down the sheets and blankets.
So I leave the room, closing it behind me to get the linens I
(30:49):
need and then head right back tothe room.
I propped the door open again and head to set the clean linens
on the desk chair when I see outof the corner of my eye 2 notes
sitting on the TV armoire. It wouldn't mean anything except
I caught the word kill scrawled on it.
(31:09):
I dropped the linens and took a closer look.
What I read on the first note made my blood run cold.
You don't have to forgive her, you just can't kill her.
You are here to take money and alcohol away from you.
Get over having to kill her and you can safely leave.
(31:30):
My heart was pounding. My eyes went to the second note,
which had just looked like A to do list at first glance, but in
the end made my stomach churn. Spray and wash Apply for
Medicare insubordination. The soul is healed by being with
children. Bank card follow up Inheritance
(31:55):
savings Kauai pop 10,500 map Montana.
There will be a day of reckoning.
Did you tell mom what I said? How did Bev get my address?
It was too much. I quickly snapped pictures of
them on my phone so I could showmy boss why I would not clean
(32:17):
his room. I left the room quickly closing
it up behind me. As the door closes I turn and I
see the man just 10 feet away from me coming back to his room.
My heart is in my throat but I manage a smile and tell him I
need more supplies. I'll be back to your room in a
(32:39):
bit. I take off straight for the
elevator, having noticed our maintenance man waiting for the
slow transport. In a hushed tone, I tell him
what I found and he sees I'm shaken.
Not a normal state for me. He rides down with me and I go
straight to my boss and tell herthat for the first time in all
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these years, I am not comfortable being in a guest
room. I show her the pictures and her
face is still and pale. She goes to the front desk and
asks our general manager for a minute of her time and brings
her into the office to show her.She agreed this was not a safe
situation and took our maintenance man with her to go
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inform the man that he had one hour to get his belongings and
leave the hotel and he was not welcome back.
I spent a few minutes in the laundry room trying to calm
down, then my boss went back up with me to the floor until the
man was officially out of the hotel.
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When I was about nine years old,my family used to live in a
remote area on the outskirts of town.
Considering the location of the suburb, that area was surrounded
by warehouses and such. At the time, my family did not
have a phone in the house and neither did our neighbors.
There were no cell phones back then, or they were a luxury and
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not everyone could afford one. This took place in the end of
the 90s, so if I needed to call my mom whilst she was at work, I
had to either go to my dad's work or a company next to his
which was closer to make a phonecall.
My dad's work was a relatively short walk from our house,
probably 30 minutes or less. My dad was working at a huge
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unloading dock for metallurgicalnatural resources shipments.
In order to get to my dad's work, I had to walk past another
adjacent company, just like the one where my dad was working.
I will call it Docks 2. My dad's work as well as Docks 2
had a sort of watchtower. It is just a cabin mounted at
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the top of a tall platform and you need to go up a decent
amount of stairs to get to the top.
There was always a guard inside overseeing the whole yard from
the top during the day and nightto make sure no one is in danger
and no break insurance. The phones were located only on
site watchtowers at the time. Docks too were much closer to
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our house, about a 10 minute walk.
One day, as I've done many timesbefore, I went to docks too to
make a call. I climbed the stairs, knocked on
the door and was welcomed in by a guard I used to see quite
often and knew well. However, that day he wasn't
alone. The new guy, who was 28 at the
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time, was there. Apparently he was a new employee
hired to work shifts. He was this very tanned man,
always wearing military style outfits.
I was just an average looking child looking exactly my age.
My hair was very blonde, which made my cheeks always appear
rosy red and give me even more of a childish appearance.
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When the new guy saw me that day, he would not take his eyes
off me. As soon as I was about to finish
my call with my mom, the new guywent outside to smoke.
When I came out, he smiled at meand asked me what my name is and
whether I came there often to make calls.
I don't remember what I said, but I felt very shy because he
(36:31):
was staring deeply into my eyes.I will call him the creep.
Fast forward a few days and I came to that tower again to make
a call and there he was again but that time he was alone.
I spoke to my mom and as I was about to leave he asked me if I
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want any tea to which I refused.He then proceeded to ask how my
school was going and things likethat.
He offered to help me with my homework however I told him I
have got it all sorted. Harmless, but strange.
On a side note, I just want to say that what gave me shivers
when I was near him is whenever he looked at me he looked drunk,
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which was very unsettling. Mind you, he wasn't actually
drunk, but his eyes would get sohazy and his face flush red.
Sometime later I saw him again. That time I was walking to my
dad's work with my friend and hewas doing some digging in docks
too. When he saw me through the metal
(37:38):
fence that was separating us, hejust leaned against his shovel
and stared at me. He didn't say hi or anything.
After those encounters, for quite some time I took
alternative routes to see my dador play with puppies at my dad's
work or make calls to my mom because he really creeped me
(37:59):
out. However, one day I had to call
my mom urgently. My dad's work phone didn't work
so I had to go to Doc's 2 tower hoping I wouldn't see him.
The creep was there and oh boy was he so happy I came.
He was complaining how I don't come anymore to see him.
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As I was making a call he grabbed another chair and sat
right next to me very close. It took a while for my mom to
get on the phone because she wasbusy with something and someone
went to get her whilst I was on the line.
It felt like hours waiting and the creep was just seated next
to me looking at me and smiling.When my mom finally got to the
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phone he got up and went to makeme tea and brought some
biscuits. When I was done talking he
insisted I have some tea with them, which I didn't and he just
kept on trying to strike a conversation but this time the
tone of conversation was different.
He asked me how old exactly I was and I told him 12.
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I have no idea why I lied. He told me his age and although
I knew he was much older, I feltreally weirded out that he
wanted to talk to me so badly orhad any interest in me.
My alarms did go off every time I was around him, but I guess I
didn't feel overly in danger. He then proceeded to tell me
(39:29):
that I was beautiful and asked me whether I had a boyfriend.
He asked me if I have already dated boys and what type of boys
I liked. I was so uncomfortable and so
eager to leave at that point, but he would just keep dragging
me into these weird conversations.
I could tell he was drinking that day.
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When I began moving towards the door, he followed me.
Eventually we both were outside.However, in order to get down
from the tower, you need to walkthis narrow path towards the
stairs. He stood blocking it so I
couldn't leave. He got very close to me and I
was freaking out. The only escape tactic I could
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come up with as a child was to pretend that I'm seeing someone
from the top of the tower. So I began waving my hand at the
road, down at the bottom and towards houses in the distance,
pretending I see someone I know and saying.
Oh. Look, that's my uncle, he's
waving. The creep looked in that
direction but either didn't careor could tell that I was lying.
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I kept on telling him that the uncle who waved back is a very
big angry man and if I don't come down this instance and go
home, we both are going to be introuble.
The creep didn't fudge. He got even closer and
eventually pressed me against the railing.
He kept on asking me his weird questions whilst I was terrified
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to move because I didn't want tomove my body against his if that
makes any sense. So I just froze.
He asked me if I would go on a date with him and that he is
looking for a girlfriend and at that particular moment someone
was coming up the stairs to the tower.
So he let me go but asked me to come back.
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I have not told anyone about this encounter at that stage
because I was afraid that my parents would get angry.
I also felt very embarrassed andthought that people would judge
me for what's happened. Sometime later I was home and it
was around 9 PMI know what time it was because it was my
bedtime. Suddenly a car pulled into our
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driveway. I came to see who it was through
the front room window and I could see it was the creep, but
this time with other guys blasting music in his car and
shouting my name. I have no idea how he knew where
I lived. He must have followed me.
One day. My dad was outraged.
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He asked me who these people were, but before I could even
answer, he rushed outside. Apparently the creep wanted me
to go out with him and his friends.
My dad obviously refused, sayingthat I am a child and too young
to hang out with them or go out at this time of night and that
if he sees any one of them ever again he will beat the living
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heck out of them. So they drove away.
I was so upset with my dad that he called me a child in front of
them. I think because we lived so far
away from everything, I was really keen to make friends as
there were no kids around. As such, for a while after that
I had not seen the creep again or heard of him.
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A significant time later I was walking to my dad's work again
and I have completely forgotten about this creep.
He was working in docks too withhis friends, maybe those that
came with him that night in the car or maybe these were just his
Co workers. I got scared when I saw him and
even though he shouted hi to me,I pretended to not hear it.
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He said something to his friendsand I remember so clearly how
one of his friends exclaimed loudly her.
I guess he told them about me orhis interest in me, but no one
expected me to be a child. I looked at the guy that
exclaimed. He was staring at me in utter
disbelief. He must have been 20 to 25 or so
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I think, and the creep was saying something to him.
His friend screamed at him. Have you lost your mind?
Clearly the creep didn't see me as a child like everyone else
did. Fast forward again, maybe half a
year later. One day I was home alone in the
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evening, waiting for my parents to come back from work.
We lived in a very safe community, so sometimes I'd be
home by myself for a little bit after school until my parents
got home. I was playing a game whereby I
was a singer. I had this stage created in the
living room and I was performingin front of the chairs,
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pretending chairs were my live audience.
It was pitch black outside. At some point during my
performance, I see someone staring at me through the living
room window. That person must have been
crouching down as only the top of their face could be seen from
the bottom. As soon as that person realized
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I saw them, they ran. I was so embarrassed that
someone saw me performing, scared and shocked at the same
time that I was glued to the floor.
I don't know if that was him. Our dog didn't react at all,
maybe because the music was playing very loud.
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I was scared to go outside the house and check, but I peered
through the window and no one was there.
That person had to climb over a wooden fence to get to our
living room window. I told my parents about it.
I have also asked my friend whether it was him who came
around but he said it wasn't. I don't know if my friend felt
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shy to admit he was watching me or whether it was the creep.
In closing, one day I went to Doc's too with my dad as my dad
needed something from there for work.
I saw the old guard that I knew well and asked about the creep
and was told that he doesn't work there anymore.
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I don't know whatever became of him when this particular
experience occurred. It was July of 1982 and I just
turned 13. As part of my birthday
celebration, my parents took me and several of my friends to see
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Conan the Barbarian at the New Walk in Theater in Liberty.
This was quite a change from watching a movie from the bed of
a truck at the drive in. Instead of fighting mosquitoes
big enough to completely exsanguinate us and trying to be
still enough so the big aluminumspeaker didn't fall off the side
rail of the truck bed. We were able to sit in air
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conditioning no less, and enjoy our popcorn and sodas without
welts and blood spatters. For several weeks after that, we
all made swords out of anything we could find and beat, slashed,
hacked, and stabbed the crap outof anything we thought was
worthy of being a foe. Mostly this resulted in a bunch
of decapitated weeds and flowersand a few slaughtered spiders.
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One of my friends got his father's machete and we spent a
happy afternoon seeing which of us could chop a sapling tree
down in a single hack. We almost had a fist fight over
who got to use it to kill a little snake we found.
It disappeared before we had a chance.
Conan was the hero of the day for that summer, right up until
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we saw First Blood just after Halloween.
One day we decided that we needed to build our own Temple
of Set, which was Falsa Doom's cavernous fortress from the
Conan movie. We didn't have a Princess
Valeria to rescue, but we thought it would be cool to at
least have a cave to stealthily invade.
We had visions of tunnels and caverns and underground rooms
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filled with. Treasure to steal.
After much arguing and discussion, we finally decided
that the best location for our imaginary massacre would be at
the bottom of one of the steep banks of the river by a sandbar.
The following weekend we all went to the riverbank with our
various instruments of destruction.
We had a regular shovel, 2 sharpshooter shovels, a hatchet,
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and a pickaxe. The area that we chose was at a
bend in the river that was abouta 10 minute walk from the road.
The level of the river was low and it left a great expanse of
sandy shoreline in the bend where the sediments had build up
into a sandbar that was high anddry when the river level was
low. Over the years, the river had
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cut into the earth, leaving highbanks at this particular bend
that were maybe 12 or 15 feet above us.
It was already undercut to an extent and we had to clean out
the trash and beer cans from previous visitors before we
could start working. We spent the following week
digging into the side of the bank.
We dug a hole about 10 feet deepand then began making our
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cavern. It was more work than we
anticipated, so it was a lot slower than we wanted.
We usually worked in 10 or 15 minute bursts and then we would
work on a ^2 off berm with the dirt we had excavated to hide
the entrance. Before we finally got bored with
the whole idea of multiple tunnels and caverns, we had dug
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a tunnel about 3 feet in diameter and 10 feet deep into
the Bank of the river. At the end of the tunnel, we had
dugout an area that was more of a small room than it was a cave.
We made the floor as level as wecould in an area that was about
10 feet on each side. The top of the ceiling was
probably 8 feet from the floor. We finally stopped at that
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height because we ran into rootsfrom the trees on the top of the
bank and we were tired of tryingto expand it because we kept
getting dirt and grit into our eyes and mouths.
We thought the end result was awesome.
We dug little alcoves into the walls and put candles in them to
provide lighting. It went from our own version of
the Temple of Set to a little clubhouse.
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It was really cool inside there when the weather was hot
outside. It was even better when the
candles lit up the area in a horror movie type of light and
you looked up you could see the roots hanging down.
We were all pretty proud of our accomplishment.
We built the berm at the tunnel entrance up to about 6 feet high
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and made the outside look like it followed the natural slope of
the sandbar. The end result was that if you
were to walk along the shorelineand weren't actually looking for
it, you would more than likely have walked past it without even
noticing. This became our home away from
home and provided us with hour upon hour of fun and
entertainment. We even camped out there a few
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times that summer. One weekend, we found that our
little hidey hole had been used by someone else.
When we crawled into our cave, we found several beer cans in a
blanket and a pair of socks. Evidently some of the older
teens in the area we're using ittoo.
We spent that day discussing booby traps and other means of
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discouraging the invaders from using our cave, but we finally
decided that if we did anything to protect our cave, it would
probably result in someone destroying it.
Over the next few weeks, we found more beer cans, cigarette
butts, a crushed pack of Camels that was empty, a Styrofoam
cooler without the lid, A Frisbee, and a key chain with
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three or four keys on it. We put the Styrofoam cooler
upside down in the middle of TheCave and left the keys sitting
on it. The next time we returned, the
keys had been replaced with a Budweiser that we all took turns
sampling and a new box of candles.
We had a lot of adventures in The Cave that summer.
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We were Conan in the temple, we were Rambo in the mines, and it
was the Castle of the Crystal from the Dark Crystal.
Then one day we all met at The Cave to find that part of the
ceiling had collapsed. An area about the size of a big
tractor tire had fallen, leavingeven more roots showing.
We got an old galvanized tub that was about the size of a
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Turkey pan and tied a piece of clothesline we had liberated to
each handle, one leading inside The Cave and one to the outside.
Me and Jerry would pull the tub out and empty it after Terry and
Bobby filled it inside The Cave.After it was empty, they would
pull it back inside and fill it again.
We were about halfway finished when we.
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Heard the laughter. At first we thought it was
whoever was using our cave. When we weren't, we were a
little excited to see who it was.
But then we heard the voices that went with the laughter.
It was Bubba Hayne and his brother Henry and a couple of
their friends. They were the bullies of our
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area. They were notorious for being
the local Tufts. They all walked around with
their elbows cocked back and their chests puffed out.
They all smoked and talked with language that would have caused
me to get beaten half to death and my mouth washed out with
dish detergent if I had ever been caught using it myself.
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Bubba was 19 or 20 and had been in jail several times.
He was mean and quick to fight and it didn't matter if you were
half his size. He terrified all of us younger
kids. We debated crawling into The
Cave and keeping quiet until they passed us by, but if they
knew about The Cave then we'd only be caught without anywhere
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to run. So we took off running in the
opposite direction of the voices.
We climbed up the bank, around the bend, and circled back to
watch from the top of the bank where we were safe and able to
run if necessary. As we watched from our elevated
vantage point, they came around the bend.
Bubba and Henry were pulling a small aluminum boat through the
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water with a rope tied to the loop in the front.
The boat had an ice chest and several Flathead catfish laying
in it among empty beer cans, andthey were talking about finding
more fish. Evidently they were planning to
have a big fish fry. Walking along in the front of
them were Gerald and Ricky, alsoknown for being less than
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friendly. They were both walking in the
water about chest deep along thefar side of the riverbank.
They were all wearing cut off shorts and drinking beer.
Ricky would stop occasionally and feel the wall of the bank
under the water as we watched. He disappeared under the sandy
water for several seconds and then surfaced again and said
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nothing and they continued walking.
They were talking about which girls would be at the event and
who they hoped would come and who they'd like to hook up with.
They were noodling for fish. Noodling is one of those
activities that can be both exciting and dangerous.
The way it works is you look forwhere a catfish or natural
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erosion has made a hole in the bottom of the riverbed, usually
on one side or the other as the current isn't as strong there.
The person doing the noodling will stick his hand into the
hole and feel around for a fish.If a catfish is there, it will
think the hand is a smaller fishand therefore food and try to
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eat it. When the catfish has your hand
in its mouth, you grab it by thelower jaw or through the gills
and pull it out. Obviously any catfish with a
mouth big enough to engulf your hand is a good sized fish
ranging in size from 20 to 60 lbs on average.
The problem with doing this is that occasionally you can get a
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fish that is actually too big toeasily extract and doesn't want
to let its lunch get away. It has been a fight to retrieve
your hand and get your head backabove the water before you
drown. While they don't actually have
teeth, catfish have millions of tiny little spikes on their lips
that can scratch you up pretty good.
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Another danger is that you encounter something other than a
catfish, like a snapping turtle.If this happens, it is entirely
possible to lose a finger. I am not too proud to admit that
I'm too chicken to go noodling. As we watched, Ricky went under
the water again. After what seemed like 2 or 3
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minutes, his hand suddenly shot up from the water and waved back
and forth. Gerald immediately went under to
help him and they came back up aminute later, sputtering and
gasping for air. They had caught a big one, about
four feet long. Henry and Bubba pulled the boat
over to them and they all wrestled the fish into the boat
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with the others. They congratulated each other
and toasted their fortune with afresh beer.
After a few swigs, they continued on their way.
Eventually they were out of sight, heading toward the more
populated areas of the bottom where they lived.
We didn't think they would be coming back, so we jumped back
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down and continued our work. Bobby realized that they had
walked right by our cave and didn't even notice.
That was just fine with the restof us.
About 5 minutes after we had started working on the fallen
dirt again, we heard screams andshouts from the direction where
Bubba and his friends had gone. They were sounds of fright.
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We forgot about getting pounded on and ran around the sandbar to
the direction of the screams. When we saw Bubba and his
friends, they were on the opposite side of the river than
before, and the boat was floating downstream toward us.
Terry caught the line as it passed, but he wasn't strong
enough to stop it, so Jerry and I grabbed on too, while Bobby
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waded into the water and pushed it from behind.
We all figured that our helping gesture would make us immune
from any bullying for at least alittle while.
As we walked the boat back to them, Gerald was actually
getting sick in the sand and Ricky was retching.
Bubba and Henry were both white as a bed sheet and we're walking
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back and forth, hugging their arms in tight against their
chests as if they were freezing.They saw us coming to them and
immediately went into the tough guy mode with their chest puffed
out and elbows coughed. For a minute I thought we'd made
a mistake in thinking they'd appreciate our assistance.
Henry was the first to realize what we were doing and shouted
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an enthusiastic thanks and jogged in our direction.
He helped drag the boat up to Bubba and the others.
We were all apprehensive and ready to take off running, but
no one seemed interested in being a bully.
I looked to see who got hurt, but everyone seems to have all
their fingers and toes and therewasn't any blood anywhere, so I
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asked what happened. Bubba glanced out across the
river to the other side, about 60 feet away, but didn't say
anything. Henry finally said that they
thought they saw a dead body. Gerald turned around, wiping his
mouth with the back of his hand and spit.
They ain't no thinking to it. I had my hand around its damn
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ankle, he said. I reached into that hole and
felt what I thought was a tail and pulled on it and came up
with a damn sock and shoe. We all looked at the opposite
Bank of the river, searching intently for any signs of blood
and gore, but couldn't see anything.
When we asked where it was, Ricky told us that it was about
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5 feet down at the bottom of thebig catfish hole.
We we got to call the police. Gerald stammered.
He kept wiping his hand on his pants.
He stooped and gathered a handful of sand and washed his
hands with it. Bubba told him to call the
police if he wanted, but that hedidn't want any part of it.
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Then he looked at us and told usto forget he was there.
He told us not to mention his name at all.
Then he and Henry turned around and began walking upstream
toward where everyone lived. Gerald and Ricky looked back and
forth at each other. Nobody knew what to do.
Finally, Ricky told Gerald to wait and he'd go call the
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sheriff and ran off. We all stood there for a minute,
half afraid to talk. We knew about Bubba and acted
accordingly. But Gerald wasn't as well known
to us. We all know who he was and had
heard stories, but none of us had ever had any direct contact
with him before this. Finally, Terry asked him how it
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happened and who had screamed. Gerald looked at him with big
bulging eyes, still wiping his hands up and down his pants.
I don't think he realized what he was doing.
He stared for a minute like he was waiting to see if we were
going to make fun of him, but wewere all half scared of him and
wouldn't have dared to poke fun at him anyway.
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After a minute he told us they were going to have a big fish
fry later. They had been out noodling to
get more fish so they'd be sure to have enough.
They were planning to get just one more before they stopped.
He looked at us and held his hands at shoulder level, palms
facing inward, and shook them vigorously.
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Just one more, he said, shaking his hand so hard that water
sprinkled on us from his wet hair.
He told us that he had been walking along, feeling for holes
in the riverbed with his feet. When he found the hole, he had
gone under and felt around with his hand.
When he felt what he thought wasa tail, he said that he grabbed
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it really hard, ready for the fish to try and swim away.
When he felt something oozing between his fingers, he told us
that he braced his feet and pulled and it just came up.
As he told the story, he mined all of his actions.
He told us that just as it was getting close enough to the
surface of the water for him to see how big it was, that he
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noticed it was white instead of the dark Gray color.
Then he saw the sock and shoe. That was when Ricky saw it and
yelled. Ricky's sudden yell startled
Gerald, who thought the leg was alive.
They both ran to the boat and told Bubba and Henry what they
had seen. Bubba didn't believe him, so he
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and Henry waited over to the hole and found the body.
In their rush to get away from it, they lost the boat.
After a minute, we came around the bend, bringing the boat with
us. Ricky came back in a few minutes
and announced that the sheriff was on his way.
They hurriedly removed the ice chest and empty cans from the
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boat and Ricky took everything away.
After another few minutes he came walking back with two
uniformed men. The sheriff listened as the
story was told again. He took everyone's name and
address and phone number. He went back to his car while
the deputy was asking Gerald andRicky more questions.
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Was the body a male or female? Was the body white or black?
Was it an adult or a child? Are you sure it was human and
not animal? After what seemed like 10 hours
to us kids but was probably lessthan an hour, the sheriff
appeared again. He was walking with four other
(01:03:31):
men who were all wearing wet suits and had scuba gear.
Two of the men started taking a bunch of photos and plotted the
area on a map and took more photos from the bank above the
hole and from where we were standing and from the opposite
bank on our side of the river. As the two men took the photos,
the other two went underwater and confirmed that it was indeed
(01:03:54):
a human body. Two of the men went back to
wherever they had parked and returned with a table and
another camera. As they returned, the sheriff
told us that we should probably leave the area and stared at us
until we took the hint and left.We ran back toward our cave and
climbed the bank again, this time circling the opposite
(01:04:17):
direction and sneaking to the edge of the bank overlooking the
scene of the excitement. The scuba divers used the second
camera to take more photos underwater.
They couldn't have been very good photos because the water
was only neck deep and they completely disappeared in the
murky water. After they finished taking
photos, they brought the table out to the edge of the water.
(01:04:40):
The table was actually a large float that two of the men held
in place while the other two went underwater.
Again, I don't know exactly whatI was expecting to see, but this
thing they brought up out of theriver actually gave me bad
dreams for a few weeks afterwards.
It was evidently a man. His face was swollen and his
(01:05:01):
eyes and ears were gone. His belly was huge.
He was wearing blue shorts and only had one sock and shoe.
The thing that got me the most was his color.
Gerald had said he was white, but he was actually a dull Gray
color with darker Gray and greenmottled spots and he looked
(01:05:23):
slimy. 2 of his fingers were just bone.
His mouth was open and as they rolled him over onto the float,
a bunch of nasty water flowed out.
As I watched them walk the floatback over to our side of the
river, I noticed more and more details.
The skin covering his elbows andknees was gone.
(01:05:47):
The part that I thought was sockwas actually skin.
Evidently when Gerald grabbed the leg and pulled on it, he had
separated the skin and it just slid down the ankle.
The part that I remembered most.The part that made me have bad
dreams was his head. No eyes, no ears, his mouth
(01:06:10):
opened and full of who knows what.
His facial skin was swollen to an almost comical size, but the
skin around the tip of his chin was gone, showing bone.
From watching television and reading books, I'd expected the
body to be locked stiff with rigor mortis, but it wasn't.
(01:06:31):
His arms and legs actually flopped around as though the
bones had turned to rubber. The last thing I remember about
the man's body was the sight I saw as they carried him off
toward the houses. The bottom of the foot without a
shoe wasn't wrinkled, and it wasSnow White.
This was the first time I had ever seen an actual dead person.
(01:06:55):
Of course, I had seen countless dead people on television and in
the movies, but never in real life.
I don't know if that was the reason for the bad dreams or if
it was because of the condition of the body.
It was probably a combination ofthe two.
I never knew who he was or how he died.
(01:07:16):
I asked my mother a few days later and after yelling at me
for being down at the river, shesaid that she had only heard
about the police finding a body.We went to the little cave a
week or so later to see if therewas anything new left in it, but
it had completely collapsed, leaving a huge divot on the top.
One of the trees on top was still standing, but at a drunken
(01:07:38):
angle. It had rained, and that was
evidently enough to collapse TheCave in on itself.
None of us cared though. The gruesome discovery had
killed the magic of the place for us.
The following summer, that wholeside of the bank was gone,
including the tree. Yeah.
(01:23:50):
Yeah.
Welcome to Scary Stories and Rain.
A couple things before we begin.I have two new podcasts that I
would love for you to check out.It's the same type of stories,
but one with a crackling campfire background and one with
more of a dark, eerie background.
Scary Stories and Fire and ScaryStories in the Dark.
The links to each of them are inthe description to this episode.
(00:22):
Please check them out and give them a follow.
It would really mean a lot. And if you're not following this
podcast yet, please do that as well so you get reminded when a
new episode comes out every single night.
Also, if you haven't subscribed yet, you can get rid of all of
the ads for 299 a month and be automatically entered to win
every single giveaway that I do every month.
(00:43):
Just 299, no more ads, all the giveaways.
I want to say thank you for being here and I really hope you
enjoy this episode. This incident happened just a
few hours earlier and I'm telling this story currently at
(01:03):
my workplace. I work in the garden area of a
home improvement store. I don't work the cash registers
and my manager doesn't even let me water the flowers, so a lot
of the time I have nothing to do.
This results in me taking extremely long bathroom breaks
where I just scroll on my phone.I know it sounds bad, but it's
(01:24):
better than standing around trying to look busy.
Today was the same as any other with me wasting time in the
bathroom. Nothing of interest happened
until my work phone buzzed at the same time as the stall next
to mine. This becomes important later.
A few seconds later I see that the guy in the next stall had
(01:45):
his hand stretched to the groundwith his palm facing up.
I at first thought he had run out of toilet paper and was
asking for mine. He just stayed silent for a
while, so I ignored him after that.
Then he started moving that handuncomfortably close to my leg,
so I immediately scooted away and prepared to leave.
(02:07):
Once the man noticed that, he hurriedly got out of his stall
before I could leave. Another few seconds of silence.
I took a peek out from the gap of the stall door to see what he
was doing. And just like a scene from a
horror movie, our eyes connected.
He was barely an inch away from my door, trying to peek inside.
(02:28):
My blood ran cold. If you're wondering why I didn't
immediately open the door and cuss the guy out, I really hate
confrontation. I avoid it whenever possible,
and I do my best to not draw attention to myself.
I stood sideways by the door so he wouldn't be able to see me.
That's when the whispering started.
(02:50):
I don't know what the first thing he said was, but it
sounded like moaning. The next part was a bit more
audible. He said something along the
lines of wanting to see more of my unflushed toilet paper.
I was thoroughly disgusted. This guy was a complete creep
and I was alone in the bathroom with him.
(03:11):
My heart was beating faster by the second.
I knew I had to stay there untilanother person came into the
bathroom. No way was I going to confront
him alone. Probably a minute later, someone
finally arrives and I take this as my chance to wash my hands
and get out of there. Thankfully, the presence of the
(03:31):
other person made the man quit his creepy behavior.
As I was about to leave, he blocked my path for a quick
second before stepping aside. The weird thing was I don't even
think he works at the store because he wasn't wearing any
vest. My store is extremely lenient
about uniform, but most workers at least wear a vest or
(03:53):
something connected to the store.
He just looked like a regular customer.
I am certain I heard two phone Dings echo in that bathroom.
The phones have a signature ringto them so it couldn't have been
a coincidence either way. He only started creeping on me
once the phone ring made it clear that I was an employee.
(04:16):
The situation really creeped me out and I have been totally
unfocused on my work since then.I kept prowling the garden area
looking for any man wearing a similar outfit to the creeper.
I have an incredibly hard time distinguishing faces, so I
probably wouldn't even recognizehim if I did see him again.
(04:45):
This happened to me when I was 21 after I tried to take my own
life. I woke up in the hospital in the
middle of the night to a nurse saying he needed to replace my
IV. He jabs me two or three times
but doesn't hit a vein so I asked if he can get someone else
to try. He says no and keeps going.
(05:07):
As he is doing this he is pushing and wiggling the needles
around under my skin saying he is trying to get the vein.
By the 7th or 8th needle it registers that he is
intentionally trying to hurt me.I asked him why are you doing
this? He just says back it's your own
(05:28):
fault that you're here. I was too weak to fight back and
it was in the middle of the night.
There was no one else around I could call out to.
I have no idea how many times heended up puncturing me in the
end. The next day a different nurse
was taking out my IV. She was horrified because she
said it was the biggest needle she had ever seen using on a
(05:51):
living patient. Not sure why you would use
needles on a dead patient, but that's what she said.
A lot of people shrug this off when I tell them about it, but
it was so terrifying being alone, helpless, and knowing
that the person who was supposedto care for you hated you and
wanted to cause you pain. This happened a few years ago
(06:23):
when I was about 15 years old. It was a pretty common
occurrence at the time for my family and the families of my 2
best friends to go out for dinner.
During one such time, my best friends and I decided that it
would be more adult and cool forus to sit away from the rest of
our families and to just eat andchat at a separate table.
(06:43):
We were a couple of young teens having a fun time.
That's when one of my friends, Jenny, whispered that the guy
sitting at the table next to us seemed to be staring at me.
I slightly turned my head and realized that he did seem to be
looking my way, but I brushed itoff.
I mean we were at a restaurant, people looking around seemed
(07:07):
normal and innocent enough. As the time progressed, my other
friend Gabby also noticed the man staring at me and we began
to get a little more concerned. He had seemed to have finished
his food a long time ago but just continued to sit there
watching us, especially me. The man seems to be in his 30s
(07:29):
and his expression was starting to creep the three of us out,
but we decided not to do anything in case it was just us
overthinking. Eventually the man did pay and
leave, and we felt relieved. But as soon as I took my first
bite of food, Jenny motioned to me frantically.
We were sitting by a window, andas it turned out, the man had
(07:52):
left the restaurant, but he hadn't fully left the premises.
He was standing outside the window staring at me.
At this point we realized this wasn't normal behavior, but we
also didn't want to alert our families and cause a scene, so
we kept eating but also kept ourattention on the window.
(08:13):
By the time we were all done with dinner and our bill had
been paid, the man was still outside.
We were worried he would try something so we stayed close to
our dads on the way out. He followed us as we walked to
our cars from a distance but eventually changed direction and
left. The whole ordeal was super
(08:34):
creepy to us, but we let it go because it was over.
Or so we thought. Three months later, the three of
us decided to visit the busy downtown area of our city for
fun. We were standing on a street
corner trying to figure out where to go next when I felt
Gabby tapping my shoulder. At first I didn't respond, but
(08:58):
when she continued, I looked up and I felt like my heart
stopped. It was the same guy from the
restaurant. The restaurant had been nowhere
near where we were currently standing, yet somehow by sheer
coincidence, we had ran into himagain in a city of huge
population. The guy made eye contact with me
(09:21):
and I could tell he recognized us.
We immediately walked away as fast as we could and he started
to follow. But after a few minutes,
eventually we did lose him. We tried to then continue on
with our plans and did end up having a good time all things
considered. However, just when we had
decided to head back home, we ran into the guy and one of his
(09:45):
friends again. This time we were really freaked
out. He spotted us again and this
time him and his friend followedus.
Gabby said maybe he won't come after us if we go into a makeup
store. We tried that, but Nope, they
walked right inside after us. At this point Jenny was ready to
(10:07):
call the police, but we decided to try and lose them one last
time by ducking into a toy store.
We stayed in the store for a while and kept an eye out
outside. They walked back and forth for a
few minutes looking for us, but eventually they left the area
and we decided now was the time to make our move and leave.
(10:28):
This time we lost them for good,but the whole ordeal was beyond
stressful. The three of us never told
anyone else what happened. I still don't know what he
wanted from me or what would have happened if he had caught
up to us, but I'm glad I haven'tseen the guy since.
All these years later, my friends and I think back to this
(10:50):
incident and still think about how crazy the odds were to meet
the same creep more than once intwo completely different random
places. I was 12 years old.
(11:11):
It was the summer between grade 6 and grade 7.
My family had rented this reallyawesome cottage by the ocean in
Prince Edward Island. Big cottage with a jacuzzi.
A field of fresh barley growing in the backyard, which if you
walk to the end of the field there was a little wooden path
that took you into a kilometers worth of our own private beach.
(11:34):
It was easily one of the nicest cottages I ever stayed at.
Prince Edward Island is a beautiful province too, by the
way. Definitely go if you have the
chance. I remember asking about sharks
in the water to my parents and they just laughed and told me to
worry more about jellyfish because the water is too cold
(11:54):
for sharks. But there are a few jellies that
can get you in the shallows if you aren't careful.
They aren't aggressive though. Anyway, the beach we had was
really cool. So many types of crabs and
jellyfish that are actually fun to play with.
All just sprawled out for kilometers of beautiful red sand
(12:14):
decorated with tide pools. When you finally walk all the
way out to the ocean in low tide, you could continue walking
for miles through the surf. Unfortunately I found this out
soon enough. It was a normal day at the beach
with my family filming videos and exploring.
My brother and I ditched our parents and decided to go for a
(12:37):
swim. The water in this beach was
about as warm as the Atlantic water gets.
I swear in the more shallow water it felt just like a public
swimming pool on a very hot day.I was wrestling my brother for a
bit. I slapped him in the back
performing what we called a fivestar.
(12:57):
He got upset and started throwing me around the water.
He then threw a jellyfish at me,stinging me in my chest and
threatened to pee on me, where Ithen threw the jellyfish back at
him and a jellyfish fight erupted.
My parents had reconvened to ourlocation on the shore and
motioned to my brother and I that they had brought lunches.
(13:20):
Later, my brother said to me while making an L on his
forehead and making a face. My parents called me over but I
wanted to keep swimming. This water was barely up to my
waist so I kept walking further out to get to where it became
deeper. I kept walking out until the
water was just up to my nipples and started doing a front crawl.
(13:43):
I did a couple backflips underwater and bobbed up and
down a bit. I then decided I was cold and
turned to head back to the shore.
What I thought were seabirds turned out to be my family
hooting and hollering for me to come back.
They looked like tiny little specks off in the distance.
I could barely make out that my dad was waving his arms in the
(14:05):
air. This instantly freaked me out
because I had no idea I traveledthat far in such a short amount
of time. Being a 12 year old child, I had
no idea anything about under toes or riptides.
I just knew I had to get back toshore like my life depended on
it, because it did. The resistance of the undertow
(14:29):
was fierce. Having gone surfing since this
incident, I now know if you are caught in a riptide to remain
calm and swim parallel to the shore until you get out of the
riptide. That simple.
I did not know this at the time.Full panic ensued.
(14:50):
Thank my lucky stars. In my panic I ended up splashing
myself out of the current. This was because I was a bad
swimmer. If it kept taking me further, I
would have definitely drowned. And the water was becoming
deeper. The undertow at my feet was
still very strong, although manageable enough to slowly move
through, creating lots of resistance and making me work
(15:14):
extra hard. Almost drowning is quite the
workout. I knew I was slowly but surely
making my way back to shore. My parents saw that I was
heading back, so they continued to eat lunch.
I was becoming exhausted just trying to March and swim my way
back into shore. I was still very far away when
(15:36):
something forced me to stop doing everything I was doing and
listen to the sound of my pounding heartbeat.
Something slippery and soft brushed up against my leg.
I looked around, tried to make out the ocean floor below the
waist deep water I was standing in, still fighting the waves.
(15:56):
There was no seaweed below me, must have been a jellyfish or
some sort of fish, I tried to reassure myself as I began
moving forward again. As I'm thinking this and trying
to make out what's underneath the waves, I thought I saw a
shadow in the water. A wave obstructed whatever it
(16:17):
was and before I could even think about anything, I felt the
force of that same slippery sensation slide across my entire
body. Something was in the water with
me and it was gigantic. Soft, but gigantic and
terrifying at the same time. I could barely breathe I was so
(16:39):
shook. In some fit of hysterical panic
I started trying to swim away asfast and explosively as I could.
First front crawl which switchedto a backstroke to see behind me
before I pretty much had an asthma attack and was forced to
stop. I could barely breathe properly
and was shaking with fear. I remembered in school that
(17:02):
sharks have a sort of ESP and can sense fear.
They respond to panicking humanslike they are wounded prey.
I kept scanning all around me. I could barely see anything
through the waves until the sun poked out.
Inside a particularly big wave was a giant black 10 to 12 foot
(17:24):
long sea monster. It swam diagonally in my
direction so fast it was like italmost vanished into thin air.
I was still far from the shore. I decided to slowly walk 1 foot
at a time, planting my feet and fighting the undertow.
I was still in waist deep water.I remembered on Shark Week that
(17:46):
sharks can swim at 40 kilometersand most shark attacks occur in
waist deep water. I thought a wave looked like a
shark fin and I immediately shifted position to face my
demise. Then I noticed in this level of
fear, almost every wave looks like a shark fin.
As I looked around frantically, the sun went behind another
(18:09):
cloud removing the glare and I swear about 10 feet away from me
was a dark shadow twice my size.I froze as it disappeared out of
sight again. I did a 360 and couldn't see it
anywhere. The same level of fear took over
me where I decided to stop taking my time and start
(18:33):
backstroking as fast as I could like some sort of water strider
insect. I had seen Jaws at this point in
my life and every time my legs would kick together, a little V
of wake would form on the water surface looking almost exactly
like the shark nose as it is surfacing the water and
attacking people. Periodically I would abandoned
(18:56):
swimming altogether and start screaming and kicking my legs
viciously in front of me in the hopes that I get its nose.
I wasn't even sure if it was around me anymore, in hindsight,
but at that very moment, that shark was going to bite my balls
off any second. My heel brushed something again
and again. I was scraping bottom.
(19:19):
The water level was now down to my knees.
I stood up and sprinted as fast as I could to shore.
I kissed the sand. As I got out of the water, my
parents began scolding me about going out that far, telling me
about riptides, et cetera. Great, now they tell me.
I thought. I was shivering, shaking,
(19:42):
utterly exhausted and so emotionally and mentally
rattled. I just disassociated and said
nothing as they gave me crap. I did not tell my parents or my
brother about any of this. My brother could be a huge jerk
and I almost knew for a fact that none of them would really
believe me. I could hear them already.
(20:04):
There's no sharks in these waters.
It must have been seaweed. My brother making chicken
gestures at me. I saved myself the trouble.
I just said nothing, ate my lunch, drank some juice and
decided to go back to the cottage after.
Sharks rarely attack humans. If they did, people wouldn't go
(20:28):
swimming. Beaches in Florida would be a
bloodbath of slaughtered surfers.
It's even more rare to find big sharks in Prince Edward Island.
That isn't a lie. My parents reassured me
repeatedly on the road trip downand after getting to the cottage
that you will never find a sharkin the Maritimes because the
water is just too cold. Any sharks you see will be super
(20:52):
small and restricted to the Gulfand very shallow bays.
As we were driving to another beach days later, the radio DJ
gave a shout out to the largest white shark ever recorded.
It was a female, just over 6 meters long.
Caught in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence off the coast of Prince
Edward Island, I decided to staydry and catch some sun that day.
(21:25):
This happened in late October oflast year in Ottawa, ON.
I was visiting my old city to see my parents, which is always
a strenuous endeavor, so I generally try to be in their
house as little as possible whenI'm over to kill some boredom.
One night I decided to go for a jog around the neighborhood I
grew up in around 10:30 PMI was really pushing myself as I quit
(21:51):
drinking and was desperately trying to burn off the excess
belly fat from being drunk and lazy.
During lockdown. I ran basically a huge circuit
around the neighborhood taking me through three parks.
The third park I had to run through has no St. lights.
It has one right in the middle, but Ottawa has a thing where
(22:11):
random lights shut off and this alternates across the city's
power grid to save money and electricity. 9 times out of 10
it isn't shining. Now this park is extremely dark,
especially in a quiet October night with clear skies and dry
ground. The road leading into it is well
(22:34):
illuminated. This is a quaint, quiet,
peaceful suburb. There has been some sketchy
stuff that has happened in this little suburb though.
For example, just a 6 minute walk from my parents house was
one of the biggest drug busts our city has ever seen.
Some gang with automatic illegalweapons, the whole shebang.
(22:56):
There were also a couple of stabbings in other areas, but
very spaced apart and generally resolved by the law immediately.
All in all, it's a very quaint, safe and clean place to raise a
family. If I ever have kids or retire,
Kanata would be an ample place to do it.
I have never once felt unsafe, especially in the neighborhood
(23:18):
my parents lived in as it's fullof some very nice houses.
Through the darkness, I entered the park and passed through the
first part of it, which is a play structure meant for little
kids. Pretty much just a wooden mini
house that's next to a bouncy spring.
This leads to a bigger part of the park with a basketball
court, jungle gym, and a much larger play structure with a big
(23:42):
green triceratops made of plastic in the sandbox.
All this eventually leads to a path that runs behind my old
elementary school. At the end of this path is my
street. I almost finished my run running
through the dark spooky park as I have passed through hundreds
of times before now. I got into the habit of falling
(24:04):
asleep to creepy stories and have been watching a lot of
horror movies lately. As I'm breaking into the
blackness from the adjacent St. leading into the park.
I am on the fence about taking abreak and walking but I remember
I was trying to push myself. I carry on as I think jokingly
to myself, Gee I sure hope nothing spooky happens.
(24:28):
But as I am rounding the corner to the other half of the park, I
heard a distant scraping sound. I noticed a light from
somebody's cell phone shining inthe sandbox.
As I ran closer, I heard this scraping getting louder.
I got even closer and I noticed through the moonlight that it is
a man holding one of those hard Rakes with the sharp tines
(24:53):
grooming the sandbox. Now, some internal intuition
told me that I know this is super weird.
Why is there some guy grooming the sandbox at almost 11:00 PM
with a flashlight? As I approach further, however,
I notice it isn't just a man holding a sharp rake.
(25:14):
It's a man wearing an all black sweat suit with the hood up and
a white hospital mask. He is standing underneath the
play structure, using the tines of the rake to push a pink horse
with wheels on it back and forthand so on and so forth.
He heard the stride of my footsteps approaching and his
(25:35):
head jerked up right in my direction.
He quickly moved out from underneath the play structure
and shined the light on me rightinto my eyes.
This is really. Weird, I thought to myself as I
flashed him an utterly exhausted, awkward wave.
I have asthma and my quads and lungs are giving out.
(25:57):
I try super hard to up the. Pace.
Because I am fairly creeped out at this point.
In a flash, he kills his light and I cannot see a single thing
anymore. My heart jumps into my throat
and I'm very tuckered out at this point, ready to collapse.
I heard a soft shuffling in the sand as I passed him, followed
(26:20):
by rapid footsteps in between mystrides getting closer and
louder instantaneously. It clicks that this guy is
charging me with a rake. It's crazy what fear and
adrenaline can do because I wentfrom zero to 100 real quick,
sprinting faster than I would beable to normally.
(26:41):
My whole body is burning, especially my lungs.
As I cleared the park onto the well lit path.
I was moving so fast and pantingso loud I couldn't even tell if
he was following me or not. I didn't look back.
I cleared the end of the path and saw some guy getting out of
his car with him as my witness. I turned around, panting myself
(27:04):
to death and wheezing. He was gone.
I walked back to my street and went into my house, hacking up
disgusting amounts of phlegm, absolutely drenched in sweat.
I avoided telling my parents this story at first, just to
avoid their reaction, but everyone else in my life knew
pretty quick. I don't care for police, so
(27:28):
calling them wasn't even something that crossed my mind.
Later, when I reconnected with an old friend, one who never
left Ottawa, she informed me that my old elementary school
converts to a homeless shelter at night.
They set up cots in the gymnasium and kick them out at
6:00 AM. Her reaction was to rationalize
(27:50):
that it was probably a mentally ill homeless person who was
bored and couldn't sleep. But what if he had a different
intention? Was he waiting for a jogger to
pass by? Was he trying to scare people
just for the fun of it? Or was he really in a violent
mood? I guess I will never know.
(28:21):
I have been working for an independent hotel for just over
4 years now. We are the number one rated
hotel in our city and proud of it.
I mostly work in housekeeping but I've done some time at the
front desk as well. I love my job and have always
said that my bosses are great. Now being a housekeeper, I've
(28:43):
seen some things. I've seen a room where someone
snuck in their dog, kitten, and chicken.
We don't allow pets. I once had a room that I was
cleaning as a stay over that hadtripods set up around the bed,
professional camera equipment, cases, an adult sized pacifier
(29:03):
on site, and excel sized children's diapers.
The two people that were in thatroom were in their early 20s.
I even had a room once that we had to call the cops on for a
raid because we found drugs. They found a lot of drugs and
weapons in that room. Today is the first time I've
(29:23):
ever actually felt scared to be in a guest's room.
As I'm working on a room that's already been vacated, a man in
the next room over catches me atmy supply cart.
He is set to be staying for several days and tells me you
can go ahead and clean my room. Now I'm going down for
breakfast. Excellent.
(29:45):
I love getting my stay overs done early on, it makes things
easier for the people working laundry the sooner we get The
Dirty laundry down to them. So I pop over into his room,
opening it up and propping the door open with a stopper like we
always do. The first thing I notice is that
he has around 20 prescription bottles lined up on one of the
(30:06):
two beds, along with insulin andneedles.
I'm nosy, I'll admit it, and I wanted to see what he was on.
Oddly, it was only two differenttypes of medication.
For all 20 bottles, about 2/3 were a diabetes medication and
the rest were a cholesterol medication.
(30:28):
That's a little weird that he has so many bottles of the same
meds, but whatever. I go to make the bed and see
that some of the bedding has been stained and I sigh, knowing
now that I'll have to change allthe bedding instead of just
being able to turn down the sheets and blankets.
So I leave the room, closing it behind me to get the linens I
(30:49):
need and then head right back tothe room.
I propped the door open again and head to set the clean linens
on the desk chair when I see outof the corner of my eye 2 notes
sitting on the TV armoire. It wouldn't mean anything except
I caught the word kill scrawled on it.
(31:09):
I dropped the linens and took a closer look.
What I read on the first note made my blood run cold.
You don't have to forgive her, you just can't kill her.
You are here to take money and alcohol away from you.
Get over having to kill her and you can safely leave.
(31:30):
My heart was pounding. My eyes went to the second note,
which had just looked like A to do list at first glance, but in
the end made my stomach churn. Spray and wash Apply for
Medicare insubordination. The soul is healed by being with
children. Bank card follow up Inheritance
(31:55):
savings Kauai pop 10,500 map Montana.
There will be a day of reckoning.
Did you tell mom what I said? How did Bev get my address?
It was too much. I quickly snapped pictures of
them on my phone so I could showmy boss why I would not clean
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his room. I left the room quickly closing
it up behind me. As the door closes I turn and I
see the man just 10 feet away from me coming back to his room.
My heart is in my throat but I manage a smile and tell him I
need more supplies. I'll be back to your room in a
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bit. I take off straight for the
elevator, having noticed our maintenance man waiting for the
slow transport. In a hushed tone, I tell him
what I found and he sees I'm shaken.
Not a normal state for me. He rides down with me and I go
straight to my boss and tell herthat for the first time in all
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these years, I am not comfortable being in a guest
room. I show her the pictures and her
face is still and pale. She goes to the front desk and
asks our general manager for a minute of her time and brings
her into the office to show her.She agreed this was not a safe
situation and took our maintenance man with her to go
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inform the man that he had one hour to get his belongings and
leave the hotel and he was not welcome back.
I spent a few minutes in the laundry room trying to calm
down, then my boss went back up with me to the floor until the
man was officially out of the hotel.
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When I was about nine years old,my family used to live in a
remote area on the outskirts of town.
Considering the location of the suburb, that area was surrounded
by warehouses and such. At the time, my family did not
have a phone in the house and neither did our neighbors.
There were no cell phones back then, or they were a luxury and
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not everyone could afford one. This took place in the end of
the 90s, so if I needed to call my mom whilst she was at work, I
had to either go to my dad's work or a company next to his
which was closer to make a phonecall.
My dad's work was a relatively short walk from our house,
probably 30 minutes or less. My dad was working at a huge
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unloading dock for metallurgicalnatural resources shipments.
In order to get to my dad's work, I had to walk past another
adjacent company, just like the one where my dad was working.
I will call it Docks 2. My dad's work as well as Docks 2
had a sort of watchtower. It is just a cabin mounted at
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the top of a tall platform and you need to go up a decent
amount of stairs to get to the top.
There was always a guard inside overseeing the whole yard from
the top during the day and nightto make sure no one is in danger
and no break insurance. The phones were located only on
site watchtowers at the time. Docks too were much closer to
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our house, about a 10 minute walk.
One day, as I've done many timesbefore, I went to docks too to
make a call. I climbed the stairs, knocked on
the door and was welcomed in by a guard I used to see quite
often and knew well. However, that day he wasn't
alone. The new guy, who was 28 at the
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time, was there. Apparently he was a new employee
hired to work shifts. He was this very tanned man,
always wearing military style outfits.
I was just an average looking child looking exactly my age.
My hair was very blonde, which made my cheeks always appear
rosy red and give me even more of a childish appearance.
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When the new guy saw me that day, he would not take his eyes
off me. As soon as I was about to finish
my call with my mom, the new guywent outside to smoke.
When I came out, he smiled at meand asked me what my name is and
whether I came there often to make calls.
I don't remember what I said, but I felt very shy because he
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was staring deeply into my eyes.I will call him the creep.
Fast forward a few days and I came to that tower again to make
a call and there he was again but that time he was alone.
I spoke to my mom and as I was about to leave he asked me if I
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want any tea to which I refused.He then proceeded to ask how my
school was going and things likethat.
He offered to help me with my homework however I told him I
have got it all sorted. Harmless, but strange.
On a side note, I just want to say that what gave me shivers
when I was near him is whenever he looked at me he looked drunk,
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which was very unsettling. Mind you, he wasn't actually
drunk, but his eyes would get sohazy and his face flush red.
Sometime later I saw him again. That time I was walking to my
dad's work with my friend and hewas doing some digging in docks
too. When he saw me through the metal
(37:38):
fence that was separating us, hejust leaned against his shovel
and stared at me. He didn't say hi or anything.
After those encounters, for quite some time I took
alternative routes to see my dador play with puppies at my dad's
work or make calls to my mom because he really creeped me
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out. However, one day I had to call
my mom urgently. My dad's work phone didn't work
so I had to go to Doc's 2 tower hoping I wouldn't see him.
The creep was there and oh boy was he so happy I came.
He was complaining how I don't come anymore to see him.
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As I was making a call he grabbed another chair and sat
right next to me very close. It took a while for my mom to
get on the phone because she wasbusy with something and someone
went to get her whilst I was on the line.
It felt like hours waiting and the creep was just seated next
to me looking at me and smiling.When my mom finally got to the
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phone he got up and went to makeme tea and brought some
biscuits. When I was done talking he
insisted I have some tea with them, which I didn't and he just
kept on trying to strike a conversation but this time the
tone of conversation was different.
He asked me how old exactly I was and I told him 12.
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I have no idea why I lied. He told me his age and although
I knew he was much older, I feltreally weirded out that he
wanted to talk to me so badly orhad any interest in me.
My alarms did go off every time I was around him, but I guess I
didn't feel overly in danger. He then proceeded to tell me
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that I was beautiful and asked me whether I had a boyfriend.
He asked me if I have already dated boys and what type of boys
I liked. I was so uncomfortable and so
eager to leave at that point, but he would just keep dragging
me into these weird conversations.
I could tell he was drinking that day.
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When I began moving towards the door, he followed me.
Eventually we both were outside.However, in order to get down
from the tower, you need to walkthis narrow path towards the
stairs. He stood blocking it so I
couldn't leave. He got very close to me and I
was freaking out. The only escape tactic I could
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come up with as a child was to pretend that I'm seeing someone
from the top of the tower. So I began waving my hand at the
road, down at the bottom and towards houses in the distance,
pretending I see someone I know and saying.
Oh. Look, that's my uncle, he's
waving. The creep looked in that
direction but either didn't careor could tell that I was lying.
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I kept on telling him that the uncle who waved back is a very
big angry man and if I don't come down this instance and go
home, we both are going to be introuble.
The creep didn't fudge. He got even closer and
eventually pressed me against the railing.
He kept on asking me his weird questions whilst I was terrified
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to move because I didn't want tomove my body against his if that
makes any sense. So I just froze.
He asked me if I would go on a date with him and that he is
looking for a girlfriend and at that particular moment someone
was coming up the stairs to the tower.
So he let me go but asked me to come back.
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I have not told anyone about this encounter at that stage
because I was afraid that my parents would get angry.
I also felt very embarrassed andthought that people would judge
me for what's happened. Sometime later I was home and it
was around 9 PMI know what time it was because it was my
bedtime. Suddenly a car pulled into our
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driveway. I came to see who it was through
the front room window and I could see it was the creep, but
this time with other guys blasting music in his car and
shouting my name. I have no idea how he knew where
I lived. He must have followed me.
One day. My dad was outraged.
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He asked me who these people were, but before I could even
answer, he rushed outside. Apparently the creep wanted me
to go out with him and his friends.
My dad obviously refused, sayingthat I am a child and too young
to hang out with them or go out at this time of night and that
if he sees any one of them ever again he will beat the living
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heck out of them. So they drove away.
I was so upset with my dad that he called me a child in front of
them. I think because we lived so far
away from everything, I was really keen to make friends as
there were no kids around. As such, for a while after that
I had not seen the creep again or heard of him.
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A significant time later I was walking to my dad's work again
and I have completely forgotten about this creep.
He was working in docks too withhis friends, maybe those that
came with him that night in the car or maybe these were just his
Co workers. I got scared when I saw him and
even though he shouted hi to me,I pretended to not hear it.
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He said something to his friendsand I remember so clearly how
one of his friends exclaimed loudly her.
I guess he told them about me orhis interest in me, but no one
expected me to be a child. I looked at the guy that
exclaimed. He was staring at me in utter
disbelief. He must have been 20 to 25 or so
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I think, and the creep was saying something to him.
His friend screamed at him. Have you lost your mind?
Clearly the creep didn't see me as a child like everyone else
did. Fast forward again, maybe half a
year later. One day I was home alone in the
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evening, waiting for my parents to come back from work.
We lived in a very safe community, so sometimes I'd be
home by myself for a little bit after school until my parents
got home. I was playing a game whereby I
was a singer. I had this stage created in the
living room and I was performingin front of the chairs,
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pretending chairs were my live audience.
It was pitch black outside. At some point during my
performance, I see someone staring at me through the living
room window. That person must have been
crouching down as only the top of their face could be seen from
the bottom. As soon as that person realized
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I saw them, they ran. I was so embarrassed that
someone saw me performing, scared and shocked at the same
time that I was glued to the floor.
I don't know if that was him. Our dog didn't react at all,
maybe because the music was playing very loud.
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I was scared to go outside the house and check, but I peered
through the window and no one was there.
That person had to climb over a wooden fence to get to our
living room window. I told my parents about it.
I have also asked my friend whether it was him who came
around but he said it wasn't. I don't know if my friend felt
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shy to admit he was watching me or whether it was the creep.
In closing, one day I went to Doc's too with my dad as my dad
needed something from there for work.
I saw the old guard that I knew well and asked about the creep
and was told that he doesn't work there anymore.
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I don't know whatever became of him when this particular
experience occurred. It was July of 1982 and I just
turned 13. As part of my birthday
celebration, my parents took me and several of my friends to see
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Conan the Barbarian at the New Walk in Theater in Liberty.
This was quite a change from watching a movie from the bed of
a truck at the drive in. Instead of fighting mosquitoes
big enough to completely exsanguinate us and trying to be
still enough so the big aluminumspeaker didn't fall off the side
rail of the truck bed. We were able to sit in air
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conditioning no less, and enjoy our popcorn and sodas without
welts and blood spatters. For several weeks after that, we
all made swords out of anything we could find and beat, slashed,
hacked, and stabbed the crap outof anything we thought was
worthy of being a foe. Mostly this resulted in a bunch
of decapitated weeds and flowersand a few slaughtered spiders.
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One of my friends got his father's machete and we spent a
happy afternoon seeing which of us could chop a sapling tree
down in a single hack. We almost had a fist fight over
who got to use it to kill a little snake we found.
It disappeared before we had a chance.
Conan was the hero of the day for that summer, right up until
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we saw First Blood just after Halloween.
One day we decided that we needed to build our own Temple
of Set, which was Falsa Doom's cavernous fortress from the
Conan movie. We didn't have a Princess
Valeria to rescue, but we thought it would be cool to at
least have a cave to stealthily invade.
We had visions of tunnels and caverns and underground rooms
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filled with. Treasure to steal.
After much arguing and discussion, we finally decided
that the best location for our imaginary massacre would be at
the bottom of one of the steep banks of the river by a sandbar.
The following weekend we all went to the riverbank with our
various instruments of destruction.
We had a regular shovel, 2 sharpshooter shovels, a hatchet,
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and a pickaxe. The area that we chose was at a
bend in the river that was abouta 10 minute walk from the road.
The level of the river was low and it left a great expanse of
sandy shoreline in the bend where the sediments had build up
into a sandbar that was high anddry when the river level was
low. Over the years, the river had
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cut into the earth, leaving highbanks at this particular bend
that were maybe 12 or 15 feet above us.
It was already undercut to an extent and we had to clean out
the trash and beer cans from previous visitors before we
could start working. We spent the following week
digging into the side of the bank.
We dug a hole about 10 feet deepand then began making our
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cavern. It was more work than we
anticipated, so it was a lot slower than we wanted.
We usually worked in 10 or 15 minute bursts and then we would
work on a ^2 off berm with the dirt we had excavated to hide
the entrance. Before we finally got bored with
the whole idea of multiple tunnels and caverns, we had dug
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a tunnel about 3 feet in diameter and 10 feet deep into
the Bank of the river. At the end of the tunnel, we had
dugout an area that was more of a small room than it was a cave.
We made the floor as level as wecould in an area that was about
10 feet on each side. The top of the ceiling was
probably 8 feet from the floor. We finally stopped at that
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height because we ran into rootsfrom the trees on the top of the
bank and we were tired of tryingto expand it because we kept
getting dirt and grit into our eyes and mouths.
We thought the end result was awesome.
We dug little alcoves into the walls and put candles in them to
provide lighting. It went from our own version of
the Temple of Set to a little clubhouse.
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It was really cool inside there when the weather was hot
outside. It was even better when the
candles lit up the area in a horror movie type of light and
you looked up you could see the roots hanging down.
We were all pretty proud of our accomplishment.
We built the berm at the tunnel entrance up to about 6 feet high
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and made the outside look like it followed the natural slope of
the sandbar. The end result was that if you
were to walk along the shorelineand weren't actually looking for
it, you would more than likely have walked past it without even
noticing. This became our home away from
home and provided us with hour upon hour of fun and
entertainment. We even camped out there a few
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times that summer. One weekend, we found that our
little hidey hole had been used by someone else.
When we crawled into our cave, we found several beer cans in a
blanket and a pair of socks. Evidently some of the older
teens in the area we're using ittoo.
We spent that day discussing booby traps and other means of
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discouraging the invaders from using our cave, but we finally
decided that if we did anything to protect our cave, it would
probably result in someone destroying it.
Over the next few weeks, we found more beer cans, cigarette
butts, a crushed pack of Camels that was empty, a Styrofoam
cooler without the lid, A Frisbee, and a key chain with
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three or four keys on it. We put the Styrofoam cooler
upside down in the middle of TheCave and left the keys sitting
on it. The next time we returned, the
keys had been replaced with a Budweiser that we all took turns
sampling and a new box of candles.
We had a lot of adventures in The Cave that summer.
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We were Conan in the temple, we were Rambo in the mines, and it
was the Castle of the Crystal from the Dark Crystal.
Then one day we all met at The Cave to find that part of the
ceiling had collapsed. An area about the size of a big
tractor tire had fallen, leavingeven more roots showing.
We got an old galvanized tub that was about the size of a
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Turkey pan and tied a piece of clothesline we had liberated to
each handle, one leading inside The Cave and one to the outside.
Me and Jerry would pull the tub out and empty it after Terry and
Bobby filled it inside The Cave.After it was empty, they would
pull it back inside and fill it again.
We were about halfway finished when we.
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Heard the laughter. At first we thought it was
whoever was using our cave. When we weren't, we were a
little excited to see who it was.
But then we heard the voices that went with the laughter.
It was Bubba Hayne and his brother Henry and a couple of
their friends. They were the bullies of our
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area. They were notorious for being
the local Tufts. They all walked around with
their elbows cocked back and their chests puffed out.
They all smoked and talked with language that would have caused
me to get beaten half to death and my mouth washed out with
dish detergent if I had ever been caught using it myself.
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Bubba was 19 or 20 and had been in jail several times.
He was mean and quick to fight and it didn't matter if you were
half his size. He terrified all of us younger
kids. We debated crawling into The
Cave and keeping quiet until they passed us by, but if they
knew about The Cave then we'd only be caught without anywhere
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to run. So we took off running in the
opposite direction of the voices.
We climbed up the bank, around the bend, and circled back to
watch from the top of the bank where we were safe and able to
run if necessary. As we watched from our elevated
vantage point, they came around the bend.
Bubba and Henry were pulling a small aluminum boat through the
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water with a rope tied to the loop in the front.
The boat had an ice chest and several Flathead catfish laying
in it among empty beer cans, andthey were talking about finding
more fish. Evidently they were planning to
have a big fish fry. Walking along in the front of
them were Gerald and Ricky, alsoknown for being less than
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friendly. They were both walking in the
water about chest deep along thefar side of the riverbank.
They were all wearing cut off shorts and drinking beer.
Ricky would stop occasionally and feel the wall of the bank
under the water as we watched. He disappeared under the sandy
water for several seconds and then surfaced again and said
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nothing and they continued walking.
They were talking about which girls would be at the event and
who they hoped would come and who they'd like to hook up with.
They were noodling for fish. Noodling is one of those
activities that can be both exciting and dangerous.
The way it works is you look forwhere a catfish or natural
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erosion has made a hole in the bottom of the riverbed, usually
on one side or the other as the current isn't as strong there.
The person doing the noodling will stick his hand into the
hole and feel around for a fish.If a catfish is there, it will
think the hand is a smaller fishand therefore food and try to
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eat it. When the catfish has your hand
in its mouth, you grab it by thelower jaw or through the gills
and pull it out. Obviously any catfish with a
mouth big enough to engulf your hand is a good sized fish
ranging in size from 20 to 60 lbs on average.
The problem with doing this is that occasionally you can get a
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fish that is actually too big toeasily extract and doesn't want
to let its lunch get away. It has been a fight to retrieve
your hand and get your head backabove the water before you
drown. While they don't actually have
teeth, catfish have millions of tiny little spikes on their lips
that can scratch you up pretty good.
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Another danger is that you encounter something other than a
catfish, like a snapping turtle.If this happens, it is entirely
possible to lose a finger. I am not too proud to admit that
I'm too chicken to go noodling. As we watched, Ricky went under
the water again. After what seemed like 2 or 3
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minutes, his hand suddenly shot up from the water and waved back
and forth. Gerald immediately went under to
help him and they came back up aminute later, sputtering and
gasping for air. They had caught a big one, about
four feet long. Henry and Bubba pulled the boat
over to them and they all wrestled the fish into the boat
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with the others. They congratulated each other
and toasted their fortune with afresh beer.
After a few swigs, they continued on their way.
Eventually they were out of sight, heading toward the more
populated areas of the bottom where they lived.
We didn't think they would be coming back, so we jumped back
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down and continued our work. Bobby realized that they had
walked right by our cave and didn't even notice.
That was just fine with the restof us.
About 5 minutes after we had started working on the fallen
dirt again, we heard screams andshouts from the direction where
Bubba and his friends had gone. They were sounds of fright.
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We forgot about getting pounded on and ran around the sandbar to
the direction of the screams. When we saw Bubba and his
friends, they were on the opposite side of the river than
before, and the boat was floating downstream toward us.
Terry caught the line as it passed, but he wasn't strong
enough to stop it, so Jerry and I grabbed on too, while Bobby
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waded into the water and pushed it from behind.
We all figured that our helping gesture would make us immune
from any bullying for at least alittle while.
As we walked the boat back to them, Gerald was actually
getting sick in the sand and Ricky was retching.
Bubba and Henry were both white as a bed sheet and we're walking
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back and forth, hugging their arms in tight against their
chests as if they were freezing.They saw us coming to them and
immediately went into the tough guy mode with their chest puffed
out and elbows coughed. For a minute I thought we'd made
a mistake in thinking they'd appreciate our assistance.
Henry was the first to realize what we were doing and shouted
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an enthusiastic thanks and jogged in our direction.
He helped drag the boat up to Bubba and the others.
We were all apprehensive and ready to take off running, but
no one seemed interested in being a bully.
I looked to see who got hurt, but everyone seems to have all
their fingers and toes and therewasn't any blood anywhere, so I
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asked what happened. Bubba glanced out across the
river to the other side, about 60 feet away, but didn't say
anything. Henry finally said that they
thought they saw a dead body. Gerald turned around, wiping his
mouth with the back of his hand and spit.
They ain't no thinking to it. I had my hand around its damn
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ankle, he said. I reached into that hole and
felt what I thought was a tail and pulled on it and came up
with a damn sock and shoe. We all looked at the opposite
Bank of the river, searching intently for any signs of blood
and gore, but couldn't see anything.
When we asked where it was, Ricky told us that it was about
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5 feet down at the bottom of thebig catfish hole.
We we got to call the police. Gerald stammered.
He kept wiping his hand on his pants.
He stooped and gathered a handful of sand and washed his
hands with it. Bubba told him to call the
police if he wanted, but that hedidn't want any part of it.
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Then he looked at us and told usto forget he was there.
He told us not to mention his name at all.
Then he and Henry turned around and began walking upstream
toward where everyone lived. Gerald and Ricky looked back and
forth at each other. Nobody knew what to do.
Finally, Ricky told Gerald to wait and he'd go call the
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sheriff and ran off. We all stood there for a minute,
half afraid to talk. We knew about Bubba and acted
accordingly. But Gerald wasn't as well known
to us. We all know who he was and had
heard stories, but none of us had ever had any direct contact
with him before this. Finally, Terry asked him how it
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happened and who had screamed. Gerald looked at him with big
bulging eyes, still wiping his hands up and down his pants.
I don't think he realized what he was doing.
He stared for a minute like he was waiting to see if we were
going to make fun of him, but wewere all half scared of him and
wouldn't have dared to poke fun at him anyway.
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After a minute he told us they were going to have a big fish
fry later. They had been out noodling to
get more fish so they'd be sure to have enough.
They were planning to get just one more before they stopped.
He looked at us and held his hands at shoulder level, palms
facing inward, and shook them vigorously.
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Just one more, he said, shaking his hand so hard that water
sprinkled on us from his wet hair.
He told us that he had been walking along, feeling for holes
in the riverbed with his feet. When he found the hole, he had
gone under and felt around with his hand.
When he felt what he thought wasa tail, he said that he grabbed
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it really hard, ready for the fish to try and swim away.
When he felt something oozing between his fingers, he told us
that he braced his feet and pulled and it just came up.
As he told the story, he mined all of his actions.
He told us that just as it was getting close enough to the
surface of the water for him to see how big it was, that he
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noticed it was white instead of the dark Gray color.
Then he saw the sock and shoe. That was when Ricky saw it and
yelled. Ricky's sudden yell startled
Gerald, who thought the leg was alive.
They both ran to the boat and told Bubba and Henry what they
had seen. Bubba didn't believe him, so he
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and Henry waited over to the hole and found the body.
In their rush to get away from it, they lost the boat.
After a minute, we came around the bend, bringing the boat with
us. Ricky came back in a few minutes
and announced that the sheriff was on his way.
They hurriedly removed the ice chest and empty cans from the
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boat and Ricky took everything away.
After another few minutes he came walking back with two
uniformed men. The sheriff listened as the
story was told again. He took everyone's name and
address and phone number. He went back to his car while
the deputy was asking Gerald andRicky more questions.
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Was the body a male or female? Was the body white or black?
Was it an adult or a child? Are you sure it was human and
not animal? After what seemed like 10 hours
to us kids but was probably lessthan an hour, the sheriff
appeared again. He was walking with four other
(01:03:31):
men who were all wearing wet suits and had scuba gear.
Two of the men started taking a bunch of photos and plotted the
area on a map and took more photos from the bank above the
hole and from where we were standing and from the opposite
bank on our side of the river. As the two men took the photos,
the other two went underwater and confirmed that it was indeed
(01:03:54):
a human body. Two of the men went back to
wherever they had parked and returned with a table and
another camera. As they returned, the sheriff
told us that we should probably leave the area and stared at us
until we took the hint and left.We ran back toward our cave and
climbed the bank again, this time circling the opposite
(01:04:17):
direction and sneaking to the edge of the bank overlooking the
scene of the excitement. The scuba divers used the second
camera to take more photos underwater.
They couldn't have been very good photos because the water
was only neck deep and they completely disappeared in the
murky water. After they finished taking
photos, they brought the table out to the edge of the water.
(01:04:40):
The table was actually a large float that two of the men held
in place while the other two went underwater.
Again, I don't know exactly whatI was expecting to see, but this
thing they brought up out of theriver actually gave me bad
dreams for a few weeks afterwards.
It was evidently a man. His face was swollen and his
(01:05:01):
eyes and ears were gone. His belly was huge.
He was wearing blue shorts and only had one sock and shoe.
The thing that got me the most was his color.
Gerald had said he was white, but he was actually a dull Gray
color with darker Gray and greenmottled spots and he looked
(01:05:23):
slimy. 2 of his fingers were just bone.
His mouth was open and as they rolled him over onto the float,
a bunch of nasty water flowed out.
As I watched them walk the floatback over to our side of the
river, I noticed more and more details.
The skin covering his elbows andknees was gone.
(01:05:47):
The part that I thought was sockwas actually skin.
Evidently when Gerald grabbed the leg and pulled on it, he had
separated the skin and it just slid down the ankle.
The part that I remembered most.The part that made me have bad
dreams was his head. No eyes, no ears, his mouth
(01:06:10):
opened and full of who knows what.
His facial skin was swollen to an almost comical size, but the
skin around the tip of his chin was gone, showing bone.
From watching television and reading books, I'd expected the
body to be locked stiff with rigor mortis, but it wasn't.
(01:06:31):
His arms and legs actually flopped around as though the
bones had turned to rubber. The last thing I remember about
the man's body was the sight I saw as they carried him off
toward the houses. The bottom of the foot without a
shoe wasn't wrinkled, and it wasSnow White.
This was the first time I had ever seen an actual dead person.
(01:06:55):
Of course, I had seen countless dead people on television and in
the movies, but never in real life.
I don't know if that was the reason for the bad dreams or if
it was because of the condition of the body.
It was probably a combination ofthe two.
I never knew who he was or how he died.
(01:07:16):
I asked my mother a few days later and after yelling at me
for being down at the river, shesaid that she had only heard
about the police finding a body.We went to the little cave a
week or so later to see if therewas anything new left in it, but
it had completely collapsed, leaving a huge divot on the top.
One of the trees on top was still standing, but at a drunken
(01:07:38):
angle. It had rained, and that was
evidently enough to collapse TheCave in on itself.
None of us cared though. The gruesome discovery had
killed the magic of the place for us.
The following summer, that wholeside of the bank was gone,
including the tree. Yeah.
(01:23:50):
Yeah.
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