October 1, 2025 • 80 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. I am from Auteoroa, New Zealand.
We do have the odd missing person or scary case, but it's
(01:05):
otherwise safe here and not muchhappens.
I mean that in a way that as a 19 year old girl I feel
comfortable to walk the streets at night or go on hikes alone
because it is pretty safe and everyone looks out for one
another generally. This happened in the summer of
2019. My boyfriend and I were headed
(01:27):
out on a picnic date to a spot we had visited before plenty of
times. Carakariki Track.
It's at the end of a very long windy rural farm road off the
state highway. So you drive for like 15 to 20
minutes from the main road down a long farm stretch and at the
end is a large cul-de-sac and the surrounding massive farm.
(01:50):
The owners of the farm have leftthe land kind of open to the
public as a reserve because there are native trees and other
things. Because about a 15 minute walk
from the cul-de-sac car park, there is a small waterfall you
can swim in. The track is really popular as
it's one of the closest swimmingspots to the nearest city,
(02:10):
Hamilton, and it's really scenic.
You cross foot bridges, pass by Creek beds, etcetera.
The farmers still go through every now and then to do their
farm work and there are fenced off areas that the public can't
enter as they still actively work the land.
This particular day my boyfriendand I were super happy because
(02:32):
it was empty in the parking lot and it was a super hot summer's
day so that was really rare. The farmer was crossing the cows
through the gate on a quad as wearrived and he smiled and waved
at us. He's an older man and we had
spoke before as we were regular visitors, so we set off towards
the waterfall. We crossed 1 foot bridge and
(02:55):
passed through a big paddock of cows.
The track is quite narrow and the Creek is right off the edges
so you have to be careful. We saw the waterfall, decided
against swimming as we had no towels, and headed back toward
the car park. Now on our way back we decided
to go down a little bit of a steep gravel off ramp on the
(03:16):
track that led to a more privatetree covered area right by the
Creek. Here is where it starts.
We were kissing and whatnot. I was laying on my stomach
reading a book and my boyfriend was sitting up playing on his
phone and he was rubbing my backand playing with my hair.
We were there for about 10 minutes before I turned and
(03:37):
glanced up the gravel path and way up even further.
On a hill through one of the farmers gates I saw a big man on
a quad bike who I did not recognize as one of the farmers
as there is only the one old couple who worked the land.
He was just sitting there staring at my boyfriend and I
and I don't even want to think about how long he had been there
(03:59):
before I noticed. I told my boyfriend and as soon
as the guy saw we were both looking at him he opened the
gate and started heading down. Now both of us immediately got
up to leave as we did not want to have a conversation with a
farmer about us getting freaky on his land, which is what we
both assumed would happen, but it was so much worse.
(04:22):
This guy came down the gravel track and ran his quad right
through the Creek. He left it there running in the
water and got off. He was talking to himself saying
things along the lines of I messed up the engine over and
over before he even got near us.My boyfriend and I were
(04:42):
gathering our things to leave atthis point and he starts to head
towards us. He didn't even make small talk
which was really strange becausehe went straight into saying
have you guys seen any fish? I'm looking for some fish to
kill. My boyfriend tells the guy that
there's no fish in the Creek as it's fresh water and he's
(05:04):
probably best off to catch some eel and this sends him into a
fit and he starts saying I don'twant no eel, I want to kill some
fish. I had made it a point to not
look at the guy in the eyes as Ididn't want to draw the
conversation towards myself because I was already extremely
freaked out and I didn't want him to notice that.
(05:27):
My boyfriend is much more of thecalm and strong one when it
comes to stuff like this, but for a second I did look at the
guy and I thought he looked likehis face was slightly deformed.
Possible Bell's palsy as I work in aged care and I've seen it a
bit and it looked similar. I bent down to tie my shoe and
(05:48):
when I was standing back up that's when I saw the weapon on
the man's waist. Listen to me close now.
This is my first and last time in my entire life I have ever
seen a real life weapon. It is incredibly hard to get one
in New Zealand, especially afterthe regulations following the
(06:08):
incident in Christchurch. And not only that, he had one
weapon on his belt and was waving another one around in his
hand while he talked to my boyfriend about wanting to kill
some fish. He was aiming it down to the
Creek every now and again and then swinging it around on his
finger. My boyfriend gave me this stern
(06:29):
look and stern is the best word for it because the looks spoke a
million things to me in the moment and he nodded his head
towards the gravel hill leading back to the track.
I grabbed the two bags we had, fake checked my phone and told
the man that our family were waiting for us back at the car
park. He completely ignored what I had
(06:50):
said and instead said that's a cool hat you've got on or
something about my hat that was completely irrelevant.
So I dismissed myself and said goodbye and made my way to the
hill. In my mind I did not want to
look back and see my boyfriend be hurt and then have a weapon
pointed at my head. I knew that our best bet was me
(07:14):
getting up this hill onto the narrow path he couldn't ride his
quad down and sprinting to the farmer's house.
As I'm walking up the hill, thisguy says to my boyfriend.
That's a. Really pretty girl you got
there. And it was like all the
intentions of his I didn't want to believe or confirmed.
(07:35):
I felt like I would die. My boyfriend though said a quick
thank you, we'll be off now and headed up the hill with me.
The guy kept talking on like theconversation hadn't ended even
as we headed away and he stood there weapon in hand watching us
leave. As soon as we were around the
(07:56):
corner, we sprinted all the way back to the car park where we
hadn't noticed before there wereover 10 empty shells laying on
the ground. We had run into two girls in
bathing suits just arriving at the spot as we did and informed
them about everything. They got in their cars and left
immediately. We tried to go to the farmer's
(08:18):
house to ask if he knew the guy,as we had never seen him on the
land before, but they were not home.
As for the weapon, it's still sofreaky to me as I've never seen
one before. Not a big deal, I know, but it
looked quite old and rusty, and when we discussed the incident
on the way home, my boyfriend suggested that they were
(08:40):
probably handed down to him fromsomeone else.
This incident has stuck with me for the past few years and my
boyfriend and I have not been able to return to the spot,
which sucks because that's wherewe had our first date and it was
a really sentimental place for us.
I had to drive past the road leading to the track for like a
year as I commuted between townsand it always made me feel sick.
(09:06):
I could have lost my life or my partner that day and I'm always
extremely grateful that my boyfriend is the man that he is
and was able to steer the guy away from us for us to leave and
to communicate to me through movement to tell me what to do
in my freaked out state. He told me after that that he
was ready to die if he had to because knowing the guy had been
(09:28):
watching us beforehand and complimented me in the way that
he did was clear that he could have had some scary intentions.
It's also made me way more fearful now to travel in the
Bush alone, which I have done mywhole life.
(09:52):
Last night I was laying in bed reading a little before I went
to sleep. I think it's important to
clarify that I live on the outskirts of my town.
Still in town, but definitely onthe edge off the highway that
leads out of town and into abouta 15 mile long stretch of lots
of country. Woods, fields, a few residences,
(10:17):
but mostly open highway. So other than the other tenants
in my actual apartment building,it's normally very quiet in my
area. My building is a square with
four apartments, and for each ofus, our door simply faces out
into the open. There's no lobby or foyer or
anything. My door in particular looks out
(10:39):
into a large field that goes up a hill.
I don't remember the exact time,but sometime between 1:00 and
2:00 AM someone randomly startedbanging on my door, which would
freak me out in the broad daylight, but especially in the
middle of the night. I nervously went to ask who it
was and this guy with a deep voice claimed he was a police
(11:04):
officer and that I needed to lethim in.
That's what he said I needed to let me in, not that I needed to
open the door. Luckily I watch and listen to a
lot of true crime stuff so I gotpretty suspicious real quick.
I got near instant alarm bells because he couldn't tell me why
(11:26):
I needed to let him in, what I supposedly did, and he never
asked what my name was. He also didn't really sound like
a police officer if you know what I mean.
Obviously I was feeling creeped out so I called 911 to confirm
that there was actually an officer at my address and they
(11:47):
said there wasn't. At this point I'm freaking out
and I kind of call out through the door that I'm on the phone
with the police and the guy justkind of bangs on my door one
more time then stops making all noise, I presume because he ran
off. They dispatched 2 cars to my
(12:08):
apartment and the officers took a good look around.
Unfortunately the guy was long gone by the time they got here
and I never saw him so I don't have a description of him or
anything. But the cops said two things to
make me feel better. One, they would post more
patrols in my area over Halloween weekend, and two, it
(12:31):
was most likely a Halloween prank because the bar down the
street from my apartment had hada party and it was just closed
not too long before. Always trust your instincts and
remember that if you have any doubts about someone claiming to
be a police officer, call 911 and confirm that they are who
(12:52):
they say they are. Dispatch and the officers who
came tonight told me you will not get in trouble for making
sure the person talking to you is actually an officer.
This also applies to situations where it's night time and dark
so you can't really see for sureif it's a real cop car behind
them or not. If you see flashing lights
(13:15):
behind you on a back Rd. or a dark area at night, put on your
hazard lights and call 911 firstto make sure it's actually a
police car. You won't get in trouble.
Better safe than sorry. OK, so I will preface this by
(13:43):
saying that these events happened exactly 20 years ago,
pretty much to the day. I will also mention that this
could come across as anticlimactic as it does not end
with a dead body or an imprisonment.
It is however true and accurate as I remember it.
So it was not long before my 9thbirthday.
(14:05):
I was a shy, introverted kid whoonly had a few friends.
Therefore, I was eager to impress them.
A few friends are better than none, right?
This story involves my closet friend at the time, whose name
was Damon. Being so shy, I would never turn
up to any parties or social events.
(14:26):
I just couldn't face it. But it worried me that this
would eventually cause me to lose my few friendships.
You can imagine my horror when my dad picked me up from the
school gates and Damon's mother picked him up at the same time
and asks me on the spot. Damon and his brother are going
to caravan park this weekend. Would you like to come?
(14:49):
For those unfamiliar, a caravan holiday in the UK is just a
cheap couple of days in a huge field full of trailers with
tacky nearby entertainment and amusements.
On the spot. And terrified of being rude, I
accepted. And come Friday evening I was
sat in the car in the back in between Damon and his little
(15:11):
brother Lucas, who was two yearsyounger than us.
It was only a short car ride, but all this felt so
uncomfortable and unfamiliar to me, floating through the dark
back streets I hadn't seen before as wind and rain lashed
the windshield while the wipers did all they could to keep up.
When we arrived it was already late.
(15:35):
We watched some stuff on TV and went to bed.
I had one of those brick Nokia phones that you could play snake
on that I promised I would text my dad on to let him know I was
OK, which I did. The strong Gale swayed the
caravan that night as I fell into an uneasy sleep.
(15:55):
The next day we hit the shops tospend our pocket money and then
in the afternoon we went to the quote UN quote entertainment
with Damon and Lucas's parents. It was just awful live acting
with clowns and such things. I may have been 8 but I wasn't a
baby. So then later on at around 8:00
(16:16):
PM the adult entertainment comeson.
A comedian of some sort and me and Damon and Lucas are
absolutely bored stiff. Me and Damon decided we just
want to head back to the caravan, watch them South Park
and look at our cool new stuff we bought earlier that day.
I saw Damon ask his parents who are happily drinking away and
(16:39):
chatting to other parents and asa child it seemed swapping life
stories. Eventually they gave Damon the
keys to the caravan which was about a 5 minute walk away, but
instructed us to take Lucas too.We took the keys and headed out.
We walked for about two minutes in the cold and dark, mindlessly
(17:01):
chatting about our eyeball ringswe bought earlier at the gift
shop and saying how they automatically give you a super
hard punch. Just stupid 8 year old chat when
we noticed that in between two caravans there was a white van.
I know, cliche. It had its back doors wide open.
(17:23):
I thought nothing of it, maybe someone had just got here and
was unloading his stuff wrong. As we walked by the van, a man
emerges from the blackness and approaches us very slowly.
This was not a normal walk. I remember it being like how you
(17:43):
would walk in the dark, being very careful not to step on
anything. Strangely, we still weren't too
worried until he actually spoke.He stared at us for a few
seconds but did not smile or physically acknowledge us.
Then he blurts out an enthusiastic.
(18:03):
All right boys, can one of you strong lads help me shift this
heavy box into the back of my van?
I hurt my back. Now back then stranger danger
wasn't as commonly spoke about as it is today, but I absolutely
knew this was not right. His walk, his voice, his eyes.
(18:27):
I had a million thoughts in about 10 seconds.
What can I do? Call my dad?
He's miles away from here. Scream for help.
There's no one in these caravans.
They are all at the entertainment.
Fight this guy. Yeah, right.
I thought things couldn't get any worse.
(18:50):
I was wrong. As me and Damon stood frozen,
his younger brother naively saysyeah OK, I'm strong and starts
marching towards this guy's van which was only about 15 feet
away from us. I will never forget his horrid
face when he saw Lucas walking towards him.
(19:12):
It was like a spider that had caught a family.
I heard Damon let out a broken screech.
Lucas. No.
It is at this point I am ashamedto say that I continued walking
the way we were originally meantto go and fast.
I couldn't watch this. What if he murdered Lucas in
(19:33):
front of me? What if he came and grabbed me?
The only thing I could think to do was walk quickly and try to
find someone, anyone who could help.
About 10 seconds later Damon andLucas came sprinting up behind
me and shouted run and ran. We did.
(19:54):
Oh how we ran. I don't know how Damon got Lucas
away, I don't know if the man chased us, I don't know what he
wanted with us. But I have a few ideas.
As we approach the caravan I begin to feel semi rational
again. As we catch our breath, I can
remember saying to Damon, why couldn't we just run back to the
(20:18):
entertainment area to get your parents?
And Damon replied what and run towards him?
It was a good point, but I was too busy trying not to cry to
say anything else as Damon fumble around with the keys at
the caravan door. For some reason or another, the
keys just did not work. We tried all of them, turning
(20:42):
them in all directions, pushing and pulling and hoping and
praying. I can clearly picture in my mind
being stood there on that dark night with the Damon and Lucas,
the key halfway hanging out of the lock, the fear and the
confusion. But most of all, I remember
Damon looking straight at me after turning bright red with
(21:05):
puffy eyes and bursting into tears because he had realized
what I would then realize seconds later.
We had to go back. Strangely, Lucas was the only
one not crying. I think he was too young to
understand the danger that we were truly in.
(21:26):
After deciding that we were in just as much danger standing
there as we would be going back,we headed back towards Damon's
parents. I have never ran that fast in
the 20 years since then, and I dare say that Damon would say
the same. About halfway there we hear the
(21:46):
most disgusting primal whale youcan imagine.
It was about 5 seconds long and it sounded like a mixture of
anger and pain. We never stopped, just made
brief eye contact and kept going.
Had the man killed someone or was this man screaming because
(22:07):
he knew that we had gotten away?We would never know.
We burst through the entertainment area doors and
sprinted towards Damon's parentswho were blissfully unaware of
the horrors that had just occurred.
I remember his mother staring atus wide eyed with her mouth open
and we burst into floods of tears, half because of the
(22:31):
trauma and half because of the relief.
I felt so warm and safe. We tried to explain in Babble
and gibberish, but I am not surewe got our point across.
The next morning I asked to go straight home.
I don't truly understand what happened that night.
(22:52):
I don't know who he was, what hewanted or why he screamed, but
like I said, I have my theories.But no one was killed that night
in the caravan park and nobody else was around to scream.
(23:16):
To understand my story you sort of have to know a tiny bit about
trespassing laws in our country,in that we don't have any.
So long as you're respectful andnon destructive.
You can walk over any hills you like and in my case camp on any
beach of your choosing so long as once you leave the area is
(23:37):
how you found it. I used to love camping when I
was little. Our family would go multiple
times a year with a large group of my parents, friends, and
their kids. On average, there were maybe 10
of us at a time, which was a bitof a logistical challenge since
we always headed out to this onereally remote beach on the
(23:57):
coast. Actually, we weren't the only
ones. There's always yachts bobbing
just off the shore with people in them and other campers lining
up and down the beach. Most of them also had children
or teenagers so it wasn't a wildparty scene.
It was very much an informal family holiday spot.
(24:18):
There was even a small building with toilets and showers
installed nearby. Even though this was in the
middle of nowhere, I guess the local council must have figured
it out and got sick of people peeing behind bushes.
We took a trip up in spring 2011.
I am really bad with time but I know this because I got my dog
(24:39):
in winter 2010 after picking herout that November from the
shelter as a birthday gift from me to me as I paid her adoption
fee. Let me tell you a little bit
about my Parmesan. Parmesan came to me as a six
month old puppy who had been rescued from a dog fighting
situation. We are not entirely sure what
(25:00):
breed she is exactly, but my best guess is a lurcher staffy
mix. She is a wonderfully well
tempered dog with people and most dogs.
But you absolutely do not threaten her.
She'll have you so by the time of this camping trip.
I've had parmesan for a few months.
She had never come camping with us before, but as far as my
(25:23):
family are concerned, dogs go oncamping trips, so when we all
piled into the car, she came too.
Unusually though, none of the family friends could make it, so
it was only me, my sister, my dad and my mom.
I wasn't that attached to the other kids.
I would rather play with my dog and I'd still have my sister.
(25:46):
The drive took about six hours and because we had left a bit
later, although I don't rememberwhy, we had left later than
normal, we arrived at sunset. Not a good time to be building a
tent, but we had expected to arrive, two other campers
already set up and the beach illuminated by campfires.
The beach was empty. In spite of this, my parents
(26:10):
started taking stuff out and trying to build the tent.
They asked us to fetch some of the lighter bags from the boot
of the car while they sat pointing a flashlight at the
sand to see properly. I rolled down the window of the
car for parmesan before getting out.
It was pretty hot for that time of year and I wanted her to have
some fresh air. Always got to be looking out for
(26:32):
my furry little homie as we're fumbling about in the dark on a
beach in the middle of nowhere. It's pretty spooky.
The only Rd. that led to this beach was circular and had a
bridge over the water, meaning you could basically circle
around the beach like a big O shape if you felt like it.
(26:53):
I wasn't really paying any attention to the road.
I was complaining that I was tired as kids are.
After maybe 15 minutes of my dadtrying to nail the tent into the
sand, my mom is asking him had he seen that car drive around.
It's been a few Times Now. My dad kind of shrugged her off.
(27:13):
He's sort of like that. I don't know if he said anything
back to her, but after a few more minutes a car pulled up
next to ours on the road and someone got out.
It was maybe 15 or 20 feet from the cars to where we were and
the light was pretty low except for the torches.
We weren't expecting to see anyone else out here at this
(27:35):
point and I think my mom said itmust be the security.
I don't know why a random beach would have security.
I think what she meant was the Wildlife Trust or something as
they do occasionally come down to do their nosy check UPS.
The guy was walking pretty unevenly.
He must have been intoxicated because he had that stagger to
(27:57):
him. There was absolutely no way this
guy was sober. Cool, a junkie.
Not an unusual find, but it's rare to see them in the wild.
As he walked into flashlight range we realized he was
carrying a large knife, maybe 15inches, although I was small at
(28:18):
the time so maybe my sense of scale was off.
I don't like my dad, but credit to him.
Once he saw this he got up immediately, holding on to the
camping mallet and put us all behind him.
The man began to shout wildly atus that we cannot camp here and
he was just letting us know. My dad tried to initially be a
(28:41):
bit low key with the guy and told him that was fine, we would
leave, but this didn't work. He kept coming closer to us, so
my dad started shouting and the man shouted back.
My sister and I were crying. I remember shaking.
I was utterly terrified, as I'm sure anyone would be in that
(29:03):
situation. It really did seem like this guy
and my dad were going to fight, and I'm going to be honest, I
didn't fancy my dad's chances. While it's grim to consider, I
am absolutely convinced this manwould have killed my dad and
possibly us as well once he was done, as I don't think my mother
(29:23):
would have had the common sense to run with us.
I love her, but she has always put my dad in her relationship
with him above us. This isn't how it went down.
A bolt from the black, like a wolf descending on its prey took
us all by surprise. Most of all, the man with the
knife. In that moment, Parmesan was the
(29:47):
apex predator large canines represent in nature.
She got him good by the arm and clamped down hard, ripping his
jacket and shredding the skin underneath.
He dropped the knife as it was in the arm.
She bit, he kicked her, he punched her and eventually got
(30:07):
her off. He grabbed the knife from the
sand and ran back to his car anddrove off.
Parmesan did not follow. She stayed with us, her mouth
covered in blood. As quickly as we could, we all
gathered our things and all got back in the car, all pretty
shook up by the incident. I looked Parmesan over.
(30:30):
She was OK, but the car's windowwas much more open than I'd left
it. We think what happened was when
the shouting started she must have put her paws up on the gap
I'd left for her as it was an old car and had those rolling
down windows and not electric. We think she must have been able
to hit it with her paws to forceit down enough to squeeze out.
(30:53):
This is not the end of my story.We were all pretty scared and
since we had the dog with us we couldn't book a hotel for the
night. My parents decided to just drive
home so we could all feel safe, but first we had to drive into
the nearest town for gas as we were kind of low.
I spent that time trying to clean up Parmesan.
(31:14):
I'd always loved dogs, but what she had just done blew my mind.
As we drove into town we came across a gas station, but it
looked closed. My dad drove up closer to get a
better look and stuck his head out the window to get a better
look at the sign. My mom asked him what on earth
he was doing and he told her he was trying to see when it opens.
(31:38):
My heart sank. Parked in the corner behind a
van, so we hadn't seen him at first, was the man with the
knife. He was sitting on the back of
his car, using some tissue paperto clean up his arm.
It looked pretty bad. Without stopping to refuel or
look anywhere else in town, my dad drove us right out of there.
(32:01):
He decided to go to the next town over, but the next town
over was 60 miles away. He didn't have that much gas.
We realized as we began driving we were going to run out.
That's fine. Dad said we had AAA.
They would come tow us home or at least get us somewhere
acceptable for the night. Better than staying in the last
(32:24):
town. After driving for maybe 5
minutes, lights flash us from behind another car.
The same car the man had been driving.
It was him following us. The next half hour was one of
the worst half hours of my life.I had a complete and utter
(32:45):
breakdown, as did everyone really.
I could tell my parents were trying to keep it under wraps so
it wouldn't upset us, but we were not that little.
We were both double digits. We knew how dangerous this
situation was. My dad turned off the radio and
the man followed us for 55 milesbefore he peeled away onto
(33:07):
another Rd. Our fuel meter was on the big
red E for the last 10 miles. We were driving on fumes.
I don't really believe in God, but if he does exist, this
seemed like one of his miracles.Once we got there, we drove into
a gas station and refilled to a full tank before driving the
(33:28):
rest of the way home. My sister and I slept in the car
after that. I only woke up once we made it
all the way home. Just grateful that nothing worse
had happened after that. After getting some sleep my mom
phoned the non-emergency line for the police and reported what
happened. They never got back to us after
(33:49):
that, but apparently the woman she spoke to said they may wish
to in the future as he matched the description given of a
suspect wanted in relation to a murder charge.
No idea if he actually was that guy or just a random psycho.
As I said, they never got back to us.
(34:09):
So what's the take away other than crazy man on the beach?
Well, for me it's that I love Parmesan.
I love dogs. She's still with us now, old as
the hills and twice as grizzled as one of my mom's friends likes
to joke. I don't know why she did what
(34:31):
she did that day. I could not tell you what her
thought process was. What I do know is that this poor
dog was born into an environmentwhere they abused and neglected
her, only to be rescued and taken to a shelter where her
mother and siblings all found homes before her.
Despite how badly people had treated her when I took her
(34:52):
home, she forgave but not forgot.
I think the saying is I never trust a person who doesn't like
a dog, but I always trust a dog when they don't like a person.
They have a very good understanding of human body
language and I think she must have understood how dangerous
(35:12):
this guy was. If you're able to, please adopt.
You might find yourself in a situation like mine someday.
Hopefully not. I promise you, if you're willing
to save a four legged friend's life, they will pay you back
tenfold if they're able to without a thought for their own
safety. I paid $78 for Parmesan's
(35:36):
adoption fee, which is a lot when you're a kid, but it chills
me to my bones knowing if I hadn't been so insistent on
getting a dog I might be dead. The worst thing I ever bought
(35:57):
off the market, hands down. This coffee machine I bought
using Facebook marketplace. The thing was an absolute steal
so I expected it to have a few flaws or whatever, but man, it
was barely functioning by the time UPS delivered it to my
house. Yet still it was made in Italy
(36:19):
and it would do for making my coffee for the time being.
But over the next couple of daysI started to hear something
weird going on in the machine, akind of low ticking noise that I
had never heard any other coffeemachine make before.
I could have just called a repair guy, but I figured I
would just buy a new one come next paycheck.
(36:40):
So I just ignored the problem and figured I would throw the
coffee machine in the trash oncethe new one arrived.
Then one morning I am making coffee when I could have sworn I
saw something moving on the top of the machine.
I just put it down to a sleepy brain and drank my coffee.
But the thought kept bothering me as I went about my morning,
(37:03):
so I finally decided to actuallytake a look inside the machine.
It took me a little while, but Ifinally got the outer casing
off. Yet when I pulled it off to
reveal the machine's guts, I screamed.
I swear I could have cracked thekitchen windows.
Inside the coffee machine was the biggest nest of cockroaches
(37:25):
I have ever seen in my life. To this day the little buggers
absolutely disgust me and seeingso many of them and something
I've been using to drink my coffee, the thought makes me
want to throw up even after all this time.
As soon as I screamed and dropped the lid onto the kitchen
counter next to the machine, they all got spooked and
(37:48):
scattered in every direction. Just a storm of skittering legs
that I swear had me literally traumatized for like a week
afterward. I just bailed.
My husband had to deal with pretty much everything, but you
can bet that I was infinitely grateful for it.
Getting Roach eggs in the house meant that we needed to have the
(38:09):
whole kitchen fumigated, but it was a small price to pay to get
those evil little things out of my kitchen.
Still, with a few hundred that we had to spend on
exterminators. Turned out to be the most
expensive coffee machine I ever bought.
Don't try to cheap it out people, because sometimes you
get what you pay for. With a nest of cockroaches
(38:32):
thrown in as a creepy crawly freebie.
I feel like every neighborhood has a family of absolute
psychos. Almost everyone I've spoken to
about this sort of thing seems to remember one group of
(38:55):
absolute wrong INS, be it from their childhoods or from their
current lives. And if there's one thing I have
learned from their collective memories and stories, it's that
whenever there's a family like that around, it's only a matter
of time before something comes to a head or something finally
boils over. And that's exactly what happened
(39:16):
with the psycho family that lived in the neighborhood when I
was a kid. The only thing is, most of the
people I've spoken to said the breaking point came with some
kind of family argument or confrontation with neighbors
spilled out into the streets outside.
Police were called, arrests weremade.
(39:37):
Usually a for sale sign or two went up in the aftermath.
But I almost wish my story was that simple or ended that
relatively amicably, because what happened in my case is
something that haunts me to thisday, with possibilities and
ramifications that I find genuinely terrifying.
I grew up in 70s Britain in a pretty small town in a place
(40:01):
called Wiltshire. We were quite a small community,
everyone knew everyone and consequently everyone knew
everyone's business too. There was this one boy called
Lewis, and he was the only childof the Prestige family.
A very peculiar family name if ever there was one.
(40:22):
But that's not the reason I'll never forget it.
The Prestige family were peculiar by name.
And peculiar by nature, too. But then peculiar seems like
entirely the wrong word to use. Peculiar makes you think of
something quaint and adorably abnormal.
But there was nothing adorable about the Prestige family.
(40:44):
They were just weird. Scarily weird, too.
I think one of my earliest memories of Lewis is during an
assembly in primary school. It's about 8:00 in the morning,
all the kids in the school are sat in the main hole, and it's
deathly quiet apart from our headmaster making announcements
and the soft sobs of young Louis.
(41:07):
He did not stop crying for the entire assembly.
And it didn't just remain this quiet weeping either.
His tears built in pitch and intensity until he was wailing
so loud that a teacher had to remove him altogether.
I remember feeling really sorry for him, but as time went on it
(41:28):
was just something you sort of got used to.
They were the weird family in our town, and since they didn't
get into any serious confrontations outside of their
own family units, people just sort of let them be.
The next serious incident I remember was years later in
secondary school, when the schoolyard suddenly became abuzz
(41:49):
with people gossiping over something.
People were crowding around the school gates, looking at
something, some of them laughing, some of them just
gawping at the sight of a lad dressed entirely in a school
uniform except for one crucial piece of it, his trousers.
It turned out to be Louis. From what I heard, he had been
(42:11):
basically pushed out of the car by we assume to be his dad, and
rumors went flying around that Louis hadn't been quite ready to
leave the house when his dad wasready to take him to school that
morning. Instead of waiting for him to
put on his school trousers, Louis's dad just drug him to the
car and took him to school with no pants on, basically to teach
(42:32):
him a lesson to be ready on time.
I'm not entirely sure how true the reasoning was, but I do know
that I witnessed Louis having towalk into school in nothing but
his school jumper, his shoes, and his underwear with my own
eyes. I am also not entirely sure how
Lewis was still allowed to live with his evidently abusive
(42:53):
parents either. Again, rumors went around that
they had had a visit from socialworkers, but this I believe
because for a while there seems to be little in the way of
serious incidents coming out of the Prestige household.
Obviously, the visit from child welfare services had been enough
to shake them up into changing their ways, or so it seemed now.
(43:19):
All this came to a head when I was 15, maybe just over a year
before we all left secondary school and bid farewell to
compulsory education for good. One morning, Louis turns up to
school in his own clothes, a pair of pumps and a colorful
jumper. He gets pulled aside by a
teacher who I think at that point was well aware of the
(43:42):
situation at home, and Louis says something quietly to him
before the pair of them disappear into the building
which housed the main office. The next thing I know, apart
from the shoes he was wearing, Lewis has an entirely new school
uniform. New blazer, new tie, new jumper,
(44:03):
everything. And from that day on, he seemed
like an almost entirely new person too.
He didn't get dropped off at school by his parents anymore.
He seemed more confident and open, more talkative with other
kids. He even started playing football
with us at lunchtime, something he had never done before.
(44:24):
We actually got quite pally withhim for a while, and on more
than one occasion he invited us back home with him to play.
We politely declined of course, thinking of some made-up excuse
to not have to go around the Prestige house, but still,
things seemed to be making a vast improvement.
Emphasis on seemed though, because after a long holiday
(44:47):
weekend, Louis failed to turn upthe school at all.
This didn't have anyone talking about it too much.
Kids were routinely off on the odd one or two days with
illness, but Louis went an entire week without showing up
for school and that really did get us talking.
I don't know if it was because Iwas so young and naive or just
(45:09):
didn't connect the dots, but I didn't think there was any link
between all the police activity around our town and Louis not
being in school. But one Saturday afternoon, my
mom and dad called me into the kitchen and asked me if I'd been
around Louis's house at all recently.
I told them no, but that I had been invited at one point and
(45:32):
when I said that my mom gave my dad this look that seems to be a
weird mix of horror and relief, like I had dodged a bullet or
something not long after that. I got.
Word through some friends of mine that there had been a
brutal double murder in town that someone had been arrested
for it too. Our little town barely had any
(45:56):
crime at all. I think the most serious thing
to happen for decades at that point was a car theft.
So the idea that there had been a single murder, let alone 2,
just set the town alight and there was much speculation over
who the killer was and how the killings had come about.
(46:16):
Looking back on it now, I can see why the adults might want to
shield us from the whole thing, and it was only a few years
later than I realized why the police had made such an effort
to keep the identity of the murderer a secret.
It's like that when a murderer is under the age of 18.
When they are a minor, their identity is kept secret for as
(46:39):
long as possible. But that's only really possible
with the media, because it did not take long before the
residents of our town figured out what happened, and it was
bound to trickle down to a sooner or later.
The reason Louis's parents didn't seem to be around
anymore, the reason he was so happy and confident and
(46:59):
carefree, was because Louis had killed them.
He had finally rid himself of the people that had made his
life hell. I get that.
But the fact that a kid killing his own parents could make him
so happy? That is something I have never
been able to truly understand. The horrible thing was looking
(47:21):
back on the event years later and sort of piercing together
the puzzle. For example, the day he came to
school in his own clothes was probably the morning he had
killed them, and since he had gotten blood on his school
uniform, he had to dispose of it.
All the times he had invited us back to his place to watch TV or
(47:42):
play football, his parents wouldhave been dead in the upstairs
bedroom, assuming that's where he had killed them.
If we had gone around, maybe we would have been able to smell
them or see flies buzzing aroundthe bedroom door or something.
We were all just one little spurof the moment.
Yes, from finding out, finding their bodies.
(48:05):
Maybe if that was the case then Lewis would have killed us too.
(52:23):
Yeah. Yeah.
(01:16:28):
Yeah. 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. I am from Auteoroa, New Zealand.
We do have the odd missing person or scary case, but it's
(01:05):
otherwise safe here and not muchhappens.
I mean that in a way that as a 19 year old girl I feel
comfortable to walk the streets at night or go on hikes alone
because it is pretty safe and everyone looks out for one
another generally. This happened in the summer of
2019. My boyfriend and I were headed
(01:27):
out on a picnic date to a spot we had visited before plenty of
times. Carakariki Track.
It's at the end of a very long windy rural farm road off the
state highway. So you drive for like 15 to 20
minutes from the main road down a long farm stretch and at the
end is a large cul-de-sac and the surrounding massive farm.
(01:50):
The owners of the farm have leftthe land kind of open to the
public as a reserve because there are native trees and other
things. Because about a 15 minute walk
from the cul-de-sac car park, there is a small waterfall you
can swim in. The track is really popular as
it's one of the closest swimmingspots to the nearest city,
(02:10):
Hamilton, and it's really scenic.
You cross foot bridges, pass by Creek beds, etcetera.
The farmers still go through every now and then to do their
farm work and there are fenced off areas that the public can't
enter as they still actively work the land.
This particular day my boyfriendand I were super happy because
(02:32):
it was empty in the parking lot and it was a super hot summer's
day so that was really rare. The farmer was crossing the cows
through the gate on a quad as wearrived and he smiled and waved
at us. He's an older man and we had
spoke before as we were regular visitors, so we set off towards
the waterfall. We crossed 1 foot bridge and
(02:55):
passed through a big paddock of cows.
The track is quite narrow and the Creek is right off the edges
so you have to be careful. We saw the waterfall, decided
against swimming as we had no towels, and headed back toward
the car park. Now on our way back we decided
to go down a little bit of a steep gravel off ramp on the
(03:16):
track that led to a more privatetree covered area right by the
Creek. Here is where it starts.
We were kissing and whatnot. I was laying on my stomach
reading a book and my boyfriend was sitting up playing on his
phone and he was rubbing my backand playing with my hair.
We were there for about 10 minutes before I turned and
(03:37):
glanced up the gravel path and way up even further.
On a hill through one of the farmers gates I saw a big man on
a quad bike who I did not recognize as one of the farmers
as there is only the one old couple who worked the land.
He was just sitting there staring at my boyfriend and I
and I don't even want to think about how long he had been there
(03:59):
before I noticed. I told my boyfriend and as soon
as the guy saw we were both looking at him he opened the
gate and started heading down. Now both of us immediately got
up to leave as we did not want to have a conversation with a
farmer about us getting freaky on his land, which is what we
both assumed would happen, but it was so much worse.
(04:22):
This guy came down the gravel track and ran his quad right
through the Creek. He left it there running in the
water and got off. He was talking to himself saying
things along the lines of I messed up the engine over and
over before he even got near us.My boyfriend and I were
(04:42):
gathering our things to leave atthis point and he starts to head
towards us. He didn't even make small talk
which was really strange becausehe went straight into saying
have you guys seen any fish? I'm looking for some fish to
kill. My boyfriend tells the guy that
there's no fish in the Creek as it's fresh water and he's
(05:04):
probably best off to catch some eel and this sends him into a
fit and he starts saying I don'twant no eel, I want to kill some
fish. I had made it a point to not
look at the guy in the eyes as Ididn't want to draw the
conversation towards myself because I was already extremely
freaked out and I didn't want him to notice that.
(05:27):
My boyfriend is much more of thecalm and strong one when it
comes to stuff like this, but for a second I did look at the
guy and I thought he looked likehis face was slightly deformed.
Possible Bell's palsy as I work in aged care and I've seen it a
bit and it looked similar. I bent down to tie my shoe and
(05:48):
when I was standing back up that's when I saw the weapon on
the man's waist. Listen to me close now.
This is my first and last time in my entire life I have ever
seen a real life weapon. It is incredibly hard to get one
in New Zealand, especially afterthe regulations following the
(06:08):
incident in Christchurch. And not only that, he had one
weapon on his belt and was waving another one around in his
hand while he talked to my boyfriend about wanting to kill
some fish. He was aiming it down to the
Creek every now and again and then swinging it around on his
finger. My boyfriend gave me this stern
(06:29):
look and stern is the best word for it because the looks spoke a
million things to me in the moment and he nodded his head
towards the gravel hill leading back to the track.
I grabbed the two bags we had, fake checked my phone and told
the man that our family were waiting for us back at the car
park. He completely ignored what I had
(06:50):
said and instead said that's a cool hat you've got on or
something about my hat that was completely irrelevant.
So I dismissed myself and said goodbye and made my way to the
hill. In my mind I did not want to
look back and see my boyfriend be hurt and then have a weapon
pointed at my head. I knew that our best bet was me
(07:14):
getting up this hill onto the narrow path he couldn't ride his
quad down and sprinting to the farmer's house.
As I'm walking up the hill, thisguy says to my boyfriend.
That's a. Really pretty girl you got
there. And it was like all the
intentions of his I didn't want to believe or confirmed.
(07:35):
I felt like I would die. My boyfriend though said a quick
thank you, we'll be off now and headed up the hill with me.
The guy kept talking on like theconversation hadn't ended even
as we headed away and he stood there weapon in hand watching us
leave. As soon as we were around the
(07:56):
corner, we sprinted all the way back to the car park where we
hadn't noticed before there wereover 10 empty shells laying on
the ground. We had run into two girls in
bathing suits just arriving at the spot as we did and informed
them about everything. They got in their cars and left
immediately. We tried to go to the farmer's
(08:18):
house to ask if he knew the guy,as we had never seen him on the
land before, but they were not home.
As for the weapon, it's still sofreaky to me as I've never seen
one before. Not a big deal, I know, but it
looked quite old and rusty, and when we discussed the incident
on the way home, my boyfriend suggested that they were
(08:40):
probably handed down to him fromsomeone else.
This incident has stuck with me for the past few years and my
boyfriend and I have not been able to return to the spot,
which sucks because that's wherewe had our first date and it was
a really sentimental place for us.
I had to drive past the road leading to the track for like a
year as I commuted between townsand it always made me feel sick.
(09:06):
I could have lost my life or my partner that day and I'm always
extremely grateful that my boyfriend is the man that he is
and was able to steer the guy away from us for us to leave and
to communicate to me through movement to tell me what to do
in my freaked out state. He told me after that that he
was ready to die if he had to because knowing the guy had been
(09:28):
watching us beforehand and complimented me in the way that
he did was clear that he could have had some scary intentions.
It's also made me way more fearful now to travel in the
Bush alone, which I have done mywhole life.
(09:52):
Last night I was laying in bed reading a little before I went
to sleep. I think it's important to
clarify that I live on the outskirts of my town.
Still in town, but definitely onthe edge off the highway that
leads out of town and into abouta 15 mile long stretch of lots
of country. Woods, fields, a few residences,
(10:17):
but mostly open highway. So other than the other tenants
in my actual apartment building,it's normally very quiet in my
area. My building is a square with
four apartments, and for each ofus, our door simply faces out
into the open. There's no lobby or foyer or
anything. My door in particular looks out
(10:39):
into a large field that goes up a hill.
I don't remember the exact time,but sometime between 1:00 and
2:00 AM someone randomly startedbanging on my door, which would
freak me out in the broad daylight, but especially in the
middle of the night. I nervously went to ask who it
was and this guy with a deep voice claimed he was a police
(11:04):
officer and that I needed to lethim in.
That's what he said I needed to let me in, not that I needed to
open the door. Luckily I watch and listen to a
lot of true crime stuff so I gotpretty suspicious real quick.
I got near instant alarm bells because he couldn't tell me why
(11:26):
I needed to let him in, what I supposedly did, and he never
asked what my name was. He also didn't really sound like
a police officer if you know what I mean.
Obviously I was feeling creeped out so I called 911 to confirm
that there was actually an officer at my address and they
(11:47):
said there wasn't. At this point I'm freaking out
and I kind of call out through the door that I'm on the phone
with the police and the guy justkind of bangs on my door one
more time then stops making all noise, I presume because he ran
off. They dispatched 2 cars to my
(12:08):
apartment and the officers took a good look around.
Unfortunately the guy was long gone by the time they got here
and I never saw him so I don't have a description of him or
anything. But the cops said two things to
make me feel better. One, they would post more
patrols in my area over Halloween weekend, and two, it
(12:31):
was most likely a Halloween prank because the bar down the
street from my apartment had hada party and it was just closed
not too long before. Always trust your instincts and
remember that if you have any doubts about someone claiming to
be a police officer, call 911 and confirm that they are who
(12:52):
they say they are. Dispatch and the officers who
came tonight told me you will not get in trouble for making
sure the person talking to you is actually an officer.
This also applies to situations where it's night time and dark
so you can't really see for sureif it's a real cop car behind
them or not. If you see flashing lights
(13:15):
behind you on a back Rd. or a dark area at night, put on your
hazard lights and call 911 firstto make sure it's actually a
police car. You won't get in trouble.
Better safe than sorry. OK, so I will preface this by
(13:43):
saying that these events happened exactly 20 years ago,
pretty much to the day. I will also mention that this
could come across as anticlimactic as it does not end
with a dead body or an imprisonment.
It is however true and accurate as I remember it.
So it was not long before my 9thbirthday.
(14:05):
I was a shy, introverted kid whoonly had a few friends.
Therefore, I was eager to impress them.
A few friends are better than none, right?
This story involves my closet friend at the time, whose name
was Damon. Being so shy, I would never turn
up to any parties or social events.
(14:26):
I just couldn't face it. But it worried me that this
would eventually cause me to lose my few friendships.
You can imagine my horror when my dad picked me up from the
school gates and Damon's mother picked him up at the same time
and asks me on the spot. Damon and his brother are going
to caravan park this weekend. Would you like to come?
(14:49):
For those unfamiliar, a caravan holiday in the UK is just a
cheap couple of days in a huge field full of trailers with
tacky nearby entertainment and amusements.
On the spot. And terrified of being rude, I
accepted. And come Friday evening I was
sat in the car in the back in between Damon and his little
(15:11):
brother Lucas, who was two yearsyounger than us.
It was only a short car ride, but all this felt so
uncomfortable and unfamiliar to me, floating through the dark
back streets I hadn't seen before as wind and rain lashed
the windshield while the wipers did all they could to keep up.
When we arrived it was already late.
(15:35):
We watched some stuff on TV and went to bed.
I had one of those brick Nokia phones that you could play snake
on that I promised I would text my dad on to let him know I was
OK, which I did. The strong Gale swayed the
caravan that night as I fell into an uneasy sleep.
(15:55):
The next day we hit the shops tospend our pocket money and then
in the afternoon we went to the quote UN quote entertainment
with Damon and Lucas's parents. It was just awful live acting
with clowns and such things. I may have been 8 but I wasn't a
baby. So then later on at around 8:00
(16:16):
PM the adult entertainment comeson.
A comedian of some sort and me and Damon and Lucas are
absolutely bored stiff. Me and Damon decided we just
want to head back to the caravan, watch them South Park
and look at our cool new stuff we bought earlier that day.
I saw Damon ask his parents who are happily drinking away and
(16:39):
chatting to other parents and asa child it seemed swapping life
stories. Eventually they gave Damon the
keys to the caravan which was about a 5 minute walk away, but
instructed us to take Lucas too.We took the keys and headed out.
We walked for about two minutes in the cold and dark, mindlessly
(17:01):
chatting about our eyeball ringswe bought earlier at the gift
shop and saying how they automatically give you a super
hard punch. Just stupid 8 year old chat when
we noticed that in between two caravans there was a white van.
I know, cliche. It had its back doors wide open.
(17:23):
I thought nothing of it, maybe someone had just got here and
was unloading his stuff wrong. As we walked by the van, a man
emerges from the blackness and approaches us very slowly.
This was not a normal walk. I remember it being like how you
(17:43):
would walk in the dark, being very careful not to step on
anything. Strangely, we still weren't too
worried until he actually spoke.He stared at us for a few
seconds but did not smile or physically acknowledge us.
Then he blurts out an enthusiastic.
(18:03):
All right boys, can one of you strong lads help me shift this
heavy box into the back of my van?
I hurt my back. Now back then stranger danger
wasn't as commonly spoke about as it is today, but I absolutely
knew this was not right. His walk, his voice, his eyes.
(18:27):
I had a million thoughts in about 10 seconds.
What can I do? Call my dad?
He's miles away from here. Scream for help.
There's no one in these caravans.
They are all at the entertainment.
Fight this guy. Yeah, right.
I thought things couldn't get any worse.
(18:50):
I was wrong. As me and Damon stood frozen,
his younger brother naively saysyeah OK, I'm strong and starts
marching towards this guy's van which was only about 15 feet
away from us. I will never forget his horrid
face when he saw Lucas walking towards him.
(19:12):
It was like a spider that had caught a family.
I heard Damon let out a broken screech.
Lucas. No.
It is at this point I am ashamedto say that I continued walking
the way we were originally meantto go and fast.
I couldn't watch this. What if he murdered Lucas in
(19:33):
front of me? What if he came and grabbed me?
The only thing I could think to do was walk quickly and try to
find someone, anyone who could help.
About 10 seconds later Damon andLucas came sprinting up behind
me and shouted run and ran. We did.
(19:54):
Oh how we ran. I don't know how Damon got Lucas
away, I don't know if the man chased us, I don't know what he
wanted with us. But I have a few ideas.
As we approach the caravan I begin to feel semi rational
again. As we catch our breath, I can
remember saying to Damon, why couldn't we just run back to the
(20:18):
entertainment area to get your parents?
And Damon replied what and run towards him?
It was a good point, but I was too busy trying not to cry to
say anything else as Damon fumble around with the keys at
the caravan door. For some reason or another, the
keys just did not work. We tried all of them, turning
(20:42):
them in all directions, pushing and pulling and hoping and
praying. I can clearly picture in my mind
being stood there on that dark night with the Damon and Lucas,
the key halfway hanging out of the lock, the fear and the
confusion. But most of all, I remember
Damon looking straight at me after turning bright red with
(21:05):
puffy eyes and bursting into tears because he had realized
what I would then realize seconds later.
We had to go back. Strangely, Lucas was the only
one not crying. I think he was too young to
understand the danger that we were truly in.
(21:26):
After deciding that we were in just as much danger standing
there as we would be going back,we headed back towards Damon's
parents. I have never ran that fast in
the 20 years since then, and I dare say that Damon would say
the same. About halfway there we hear the
(21:46):
most disgusting primal whale youcan imagine.
It was about 5 seconds long and it sounded like a mixture of
anger and pain. We never stopped, just made
brief eye contact and kept going.
Had the man killed someone or was this man screaming because
(22:07):
he knew that we had gotten away?We would never know.
We burst through the entertainment area doors and
sprinted towards Damon's parentswho were blissfully unaware of
the horrors that had just occurred.
I remember his mother staring atus wide eyed with her mouth open
and we burst into floods of tears, half because of the
(22:31):
trauma and half because of the relief.
I felt so warm and safe. We tried to explain in Babble
and gibberish, but I am not surewe got our point across.
The next morning I asked to go straight home.
I don't truly understand what happened that night.
(22:52):
I don't know who he was, what hewanted or why he screamed, but
like I said, I have my theories.But no one was killed that night
in the caravan park and nobody else was around to scream.
(23:16):
To understand my story you sort of have to know a tiny bit about
trespassing laws in our country,in that we don't have any.
So long as you're respectful andnon destructive.
You can walk over any hills you like and in my case camp on any
beach of your choosing so long as once you leave the area is
(23:37):
how you found it. I used to love camping when I
was little. Our family would go multiple
times a year with a large group of my parents, friends, and
their kids. On average, there were maybe 10
of us at a time, which was a bitof a logistical challenge since
we always headed out to this onereally remote beach on the
(23:57):
coast. Actually, we weren't the only
ones. There's always yachts bobbing
just off the shore with people in them and other campers lining
up and down the beach. Most of them also had children
or teenagers so it wasn't a wildparty scene.
It was very much an informal family holiday spot.
(24:18):
There was even a small building with toilets and showers
installed nearby. Even though this was in the
middle of nowhere, I guess the local council must have figured
it out and got sick of people peeing behind bushes.
We took a trip up in spring 2011.
I am really bad with time but I know this because I got my dog
(24:39):
in winter 2010 after picking herout that November from the
shelter as a birthday gift from me to me as I paid her adoption
fee. Let me tell you a little bit
about my Parmesan. Parmesan came to me as a six
month old puppy who had been rescued from a dog fighting
situation. We are not entirely sure what
(25:00):
breed she is exactly, but my best guess is a lurcher staffy
mix. She is a wonderfully well
tempered dog with people and most dogs.
But you absolutely do not threaten her.
She'll have you so by the time of this camping trip.
I've had parmesan for a few months.
She had never come camping with us before, but as far as my
(25:23):
family are concerned, dogs go oncamping trips, so when we all
piled into the car, she came too.
Unusually though, none of the family friends could make it, so
it was only me, my sister, my dad and my mom.
I wasn't that attached to the other kids.
I would rather play with my dog and I'd still have my sister.
(25:46):
The drive took about six hours and because we had left a bit
later, although I don't rememberwhy, we had left later than
normal, we arrived at sunset. Not a good time to be building a
tent, but we had expected to arrive, two other campers
already set up and the beach illuminated by campfires.
The beach was empty. In spite of this, my parents
(26:10):
started taking stuff out and trying to build the tent.
They asked us to fetch some of the lighter bags from the boot
of the car while they sat pointing a flashlight at the
sand to see properly. I rolled down the window of the
car for parmesan before getting out.
It was pretty hot for that time of year and I wanted her to have
some fresh air. Always got to be looking out for
(26:32):
my furry little homie as we're fumbling about in the dark on a
beach in the middle of nowhere. It's pretty spooky.
The only Rd. that led to this beach was circular and had a
bridge over the water, meaning you could basically circle
around the beach like a big O shape if you felt like it.
(26:53):
I wasn't really paying any attention to the road.
I was complaining that I was tired as kids are.
After maybe 15 minutes of my dadtrying to nail the tent into the
sand, my mom is asking him had he seen that car drive around.
It's been a few Times Now. My dad kind of shrugged her off.
(27:13):
He's sort of like that. I don't know if he said anything
back to her, but after a few more minutes a car pulled up
next to ours on the road and someone got out.
It was maybe 15 or 20 feet from the cars to where we were and
the light was pretty low except for the torches.
We weren't expecting to see anyone else out here at this
(27:35):
point and I think my mom said itmust be the security.
I don't know why a random beach would have security.
I think what she meant was the Wildlife Trust or something as
they do occasionally come down to do their nosy check UPS.
The guy was walking pretty unevenly.
He must have been intoxicated because he had that stagger to
(27:57):
him. There was absolutely no way this
guy was sober. Cool, a junkie.
Not an unusual find, but it's rare to see them in the wild.
As he walked into flashlight range we realized he was
carrying a large knife, maybe 15inches, although I was small at
(28:18):
the time so maybe my sense of scale was off.
I don't like my dad, but credit to him.
Once he saw this he got up immediately, holding on to the
camping mallet and put us all behind him.
The man began to shout wildly atus that we cannot camp here and
he was just letting us know. My dad tried to initially be a
(28:41):
bit low key with the guy and told him that was fine, we would
leave, but this didn't work. He kept coming closer to us, so
my dad started shouting and the man shouted back.
My sister and I were crying. I remember shaking.
I was utterly terrified, as I'm sure anyone would be in that
(29:03):
situation. It really did seem like this guy
and my dad were going to fight, and I'm going to be honest, I
didn't fancy my dad's chances. While it's grim to consider, I
am absolutely convinced this manwould have killed my dad and
possibly us as well once he was done, as I don't think my mother
(29:23):
would have had the common sense to run with us.
I love her, but she has always put my dad in her relationship
with him above us. This isn't how it went down.
A bolt from the black, like a wolf descending on its prey took
us all by surprise. Most of all, the man with the
knife. In that moment, Parmesan was the
(29:47):
apex predator large canines represent in nature.
She got him good by the arm and clamped down hard, ripping his
jacket and shredding the skin underneath.
He dropped the knife as it was in the arm.
She bit, he kicked her, he punched her and eventually got
(30:07):
her off. He grabbed the knife from the
sand and ran back to his car anddrove off.
Parmesan did not follow. She stayed with us, her mouth
covered in blood. As quickly as we could, we all
gathered our things and all got back in the car, all pretty
shook up by the incident. I looked Parmesan over.
(30:30):
She was OK, but the car's windowwas much more open than I'd left
it. We think what happened was when
the shouting started she must have put her paws up on the gap
I'd left for her as it was an old car and had those rolling
down windows and not electric. We think she must have been able
to hit it with her paws to forceit down enough to squeeze out.
(30:53):
This is not the end of my story.We were all pretty scared and
since we had the dog with us we couldn't book a hotel for the
night. My parents decided to just drive
home so we could all feel safe, but first we had to drive into
the nearest town for gas as we were kind of low.
I spent that time trying to clean up Parmesan.
(31:14):
I'd always loved dogs, but what she had just done blew my mind.
As we drove into town we came across a gas station, but it
looked closed. My dad drove up closer to get a
better look and stuck his head out the window to get a better
look at the sign. My mom asked him what on earth
he was doing and he told her he was trying to see when it opens.
(31:38):
My heart sank. Parked in the corner behind a
van, so we hadn't seen him at first, was the man with the
knife. He was sitting on the back of
his car, using some tissue paperto clean up his arm.
It looked pretty bad. Without stopping to refuel or
look anywhere else in town, my dad drove us right out of there.
(32:01):
He decided to go to the next town over, but the next town
over was 60 miles away. He didn't have that much gas.
We realized as we began driving we were going to run out.
That's fine. Dad said we had AAA.
They would come tow us home or at least get us somewhere
acceptable for the night. Better than staying in the last
(32:24):
town. After driving for maybe 5
minutes, lights flash us from behind another car.
The same car the man had been driving.
It was him following us. The next half hour was one of
the worst half hours of my life.I had a complete and utter
(32:45):
breakdown, as did everyone really.
I could tell my parents were trying to keep it under wraps so
it wouldn't upset us, but we were not that little.
We were both double digits. We knew how dangerous this
situation was. My dad turned off the radio and
the man followed us for 55 milesbefore he peeled away onto
(33:07):
another Rd. Our fuel meter was on the big
red E for the last 10 miles. We were driving on fumes.
I don't really believe in God, but if he does exist, this
seemed like one of his miracles.Once we got there, we drove into
a gas station and refilled to a full tank before driving the
(33:28):
rest of the way home. My sister and I slept in the car
after that. I only woke up once we made it
all the way home. Just grateful that nothing worse
had happened after that. After getting some sleep my mom
phoned the non-emergency line for the police and reported what
happened. They never got back to us after
(33:49):
that, but apparently the woman she spoke to said they may wish
to in the future as he matched the description given of a
suspect wanted in relation to a murder charge.
No idea if he actually was that guy or just a random psycho.
As I said, they never got back to us.
(34:09):
So what's the take away other than crazy man on the beach?
Well, for me it's that I love Parmesan.
I love dogs. She's still with us now, old as
the hills and twice as grizzled as one of my mom's friends likes
to joke. I don't know why she did what
(34:31):
she did that day. I could not tell you what her
thought process was. What I do know is that this poor
dog was born into an environmentwhere they abused and neglected
her, only to be rescued and taken to a shelter where her
mother and siblings all found homes before her.
Despite how badly people had treated her when I took her
(34:52):
home, she forgave but not forgot.
I think the saying is I never trust a person who doesn't like
a dog, but I always trust a dog when they don't like a person.
They have a very good understanding of human body
language and I think she must have understood how dangerous
(35:12):
this guy was. If you're able to, please adopt.
You might find yourself in a situation like mine someday.
Hopefully not. I promise you, if you're willing
to save a four legged friend's life, they will pay you back
tenfold if they're able to without a thought for their own
safety. I paid $78 for Parmesan's
(35:36):
adoption fee, which is a lot when you're a kid, but it chills
me to my bones knowing if I hadn't been so insistent on
getting a dog I might be dead. The worst thing I ever bought
(35:57):
off the market, hands down. This coffee machine I bought
using Facebook marketplace. The thing was an absolute steal
so I expected it to have a few flaws or whatever, but man, it
was barely functioning by the time UPS delivered it to my
house. Yet still it was made in Italy
(36:19):
and it would do for making my coffee for the time being.
But over the next couple of daysI started to hear something
weird going on in the machine, akind of low ticking noise that I
had never heard any other coffeemachine make before.
I could have just called a repair guy, but I figured I
would just buy a new one come next paycheck.
(36:40):
So I just ignored the problem and figured I would throw the
coffee machine in the trash oncethe new one arrived.
Then one morning I am making coffee when I could have sworn I
saw something moving on the top of the machine.
I just put it down to a sleepy brain and drank my coffee.
But the thought kept bothering me as I went about my morning,
(37:03):
so I finally decided to actuallytake a look inside the machine.
It took me a little while, but Ifinally got the outer casing
off. Yet when I pulled it off to
reveal the machine's guts, I screamed.
I swear I could have cracked thekitchen windows.
Inside the coffee machine was the biggest nest of cockroaches
(37:25):
I have ever seen in my life. To this day the little buggers
absolutely disgust me and seeingso many of them and something
I've been using to drink my coffee, the thought makes me
want to throw up even after all this time.
As soon as I screamed and dropped the lid onto the kitchen
counter next to the machine, they all got spooked and
(37:48):
scattered in every direction. Just a storm of skittering legs
that I swear had me literally traumatized for like a week
afterward. I just bailed.
My husband had to deal with pretty much everything, but you
can bet that I was infinitely grateful for it.
Getting Roach eggs in the house meant that we needed to have the
(38:09):
whole kitchen fumigated, but it was a small price to pay to get
those evil little things out of my kitchen.
Still, with a few hundred that we had to spend on
exterminators. Turned out to be the most
expensive coffee machine I ever bought.
Don't try to cheap it out people, because sometimes you
get what you pay for. With a nest of cockroaches
(38:32):
thrown in as a creepy crawly freebie.
I feel like every neighborhood has a family of absolute
psychos. Almost everyone I've spoken to
about this sort of thing seems to remember one group of
(38:55):
absolute wrong INS, be it from their childhoods or from their
current lives. And if there's one thing I have
learned from their collective memories and stories, it's that
whenever there's a family like that around, it's only a matter
of time before something comes to a head or something finally
boils over. And that's exactly what happened
(39:16):
with the psycho family that lived in the neighborhood when I
was a kid. The only thing is, most of the
people I've spoken to said the breaking point came with some
kind of family argument or confrontation with neighbors
spilled out into the streets outside.
Police were called, arrests weremade.
(39:37):
Usually a for sale sign or two went up in the aftermath.
But I almost wish my story was that simple or ended that
relatively amicably, because what happened in my case is
something that haunts me to thisday, with possibilities and
ramifications that I find genuinely terrifying.
I grew up in 70s Britain in a pretty small town in a place
(40:01):
called Wiltshire. We were quite a small community,
everyone knew everyone and consequently everyone knew
everyone's business too. There was this one boy called
Lewis, and he was the only childof the Prestige family.
A very peculiar family name if ever there was one.
(40:22):
But that's not the reason I'll never forget it.
The Prestige family were peculiar by name.
And peculiar by nature, too. But then peculiar seems like
entirely the wrong word to use. Peculiar makes you think of
something quaint and adorably abnormal.
But there was nothing adorable about the Prestige family.
(40:44):
They were just weird. Scarily weird, too.
I think one of my earliest memories of Lewis is during an
assembly in primary school. It's about 8:00 in the morning,
all the kids in the school are sat in the main hole, and it's
deathly quiet apart from our headmaster making announcements
and the soft sobs of young Louis.
(41:07):
He did not stop crying for the entire assembly.
And it didn't just remain this quiet weeping either.
His tears built in pitch and intensity until he was wailing
so loud that a teacher had to remove him altogether.
I remember feeling really sorry for him, but as time went on it
(41:28):
was just something you sort of got used to.
They were the weird family in our town, and since they didn't
get into any serious confrontations outside of their
own family units, people just sort of let them be.
The next serious incident I remember was years later in
secondary school, when the schoolyard suddenly became abuzz
(41:49):
with people gossiping over something.
People were crowding around the school gates, looking at
something, some of them laughing, some of them just
gawping at the sight of a lad dressed entirely in a school
uniform except for one crucial piece of it, his trousers.
It turned out to be Louis. From what I heard, he had been
(42:11):
basically pushed out of the car by we assume to be his dad, and
rumors went flying around that Louis hadn't been quite ready to
leave the house when his dad wasready to take him to school that
morning. Instead of waiting for him to
put on his school trousers, Louis's dad just drug him to the
car and took him to school with no pants on, basically to teach
(42:32):
him a lesson to be ready on time.
I'm not entirely sure how true the reasoning was, but I do know
that I witnessed Louis having towalk into school in nothing but
his school jumper, his shoes, and his underwear with my own
eyes. I am also not entirely sure how
Lewis was still allowed to live with his evidently abusive
(42:53):
parents either. Again, rumors went around that
they had had a visit from socialworkers, but this I believe
because for a while there seems to be little in the way of
serious incidents coming out of the Prestige household.
Obviously, the visit from child welfare services had been enough
to shake them up into changing their ways, or so it seemed now.
(43:19):
All this came to a head when I was 15, maybe just over a year
before we all left secondary school and bid farewell to
compulsory education for good. One morning, Louis turns up to
school in his own clothes, a pair of pumps and a colorful
jumper. He gets pulled aside by a
teacher who I think at that point was well aware of the
(43:42):
situation at home, and Louis says something quietly to him
before the pair of them disappear into the building
which housed the main office. The next thing I know, apart
from the shoes he was wearing, Lewis has an entirely new school
uniform. New blazer, new tie, new jumper,
(44:03):
everything. And from that day on, he seemed
like an almost entirely new person too.
He didn't get dropped off at school by his parents anymore.
He seemed more confident and open, more talkative with other
kids. He even started playing football
with us at lunchtime, something he had never done before.
(44:24):
We actually got quite pally withhim for a while, and on more
than one occasion he invited us back home with him to play.
We politely declined of course, thinking of some made-up excuse
to not have to go around the Prestige house, but still,
things seemed to be making a vast improvement.
Emphasis on seemed though, because after a long holiday
(44:47):
weekend, Louis failed to turn upthe school at all.
This didn't have anyone talking about it too much.
Kids were routinely off on the odd one or two days with
illness, but Louis went an entire week without showing up
for school and that really did get us talking.
I don't know if it was because Iwas so young and naive or just
(45:09):
didn't connect the dots, but I didn't think there was any link
between all the police activity around our town and Louis not
being in school. But one Saturday afternoon, my
mom and dad called me into the kitchen and asked me if I'd been
around Louis's house at all recently.
I told them no, but that I had been invited at one point and
(45:32):
when I said that my mom gave my dad this look that seems to be a
weird mix of horror and relief, like I had dodged a bullet or
something not long after that. I got.
Word through some friends of mine that there had been a
brutal double murder in town that someone had been arrested
for it too. Our little town barely had any
(45:56):
crime at all. I think the most serious thing
to happen for decades at that point was a car theft.
So the idea that there had been a single murder, let alone 2,
just set the town alight and there was much speculation over
who the killer was and how the killings had come about.
(46:16):
Looking back on it now, I can see why the adults might want to
shield us from the whole thing, and it was only a few years
later than I realized why the police had made such an effort
to keep the identity of the murderer a secret.
It's like that when a murderer is under the age of 18.
When they are a minor, their identity is kept secret for as
(46:39):
long as possible. But that's only really possible
with the media, because it did not take long before the
residents of our town figured out what happened, and it was
bound to trickle down to a sooner or later.
The reason Louis's parents didn't seem to be around
anymore, the reason he was so happy and confident and
(46:59):
carefree, was because Louis had killed them.
He had finally rid himself of the people that had made his
life hell. I get that.
But the fact that a kid killing his own parents could make him
so happy? That is something I have never
been able to truly understand. The horrible thing was looking
(47:21):
back on the event years later and sort of piercing together
the puzzle. For example, the day he came to
school in his own clothes was probably the morning he had
killed them, and since he had gotten blood on his school
uniform, he had to dispose of it.
All the times he had invited us back to his place to watch TV or
(47:42):
play football, his parents wouldhave been dead in the upstairs
bedroom, assuming that's where he had killed them.
If we had gone around, maybe we would have been able to smell
them or see flies buzzing aroundthe bedroom door or something.
We were all just one little spurof the moment.
Yes, from finding out, finding their bodies.
(48:05):
Maybe if that was the case then Lewis would have killed us too.
(52:23):
Yeah. Yeah.
(01:16:28):
Yeah. Yeah.
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