October 2, 2025 • 75 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'm kind of weird about social
media these days. I used to be really into
(01:03):
Facebook when I first moved to college.
It kept me in touch with my friends and family back home and
it was nice feeling like I wasn't so far away from them.
Building up a collection of photos, checking into places,
sharing every little detail of my life so that everyone could
see how great I was doing. My entire world was online for
(01:24):
all to see. And because I'm dumb, I was
pretty liberal about my privacy setting too.
So one day I get this message request from someone I have
never heard of before. It just said hey I checked their
profile to see if they were in the same class as me or
something but it turned out we had no mutuals and they lived on
(01:46):
the other side of the country. So as you can imagine I am
pretty confused as to why they are messaging me.
But I'm also curious so I just reply.
Hey do we know each other? I don't know what I was
expecting him to say when I saw that he was typing a reply and I
remember thinking that maybe he was looking for someone with the
(02:07):
same name as me or something. But then his response pops up
and all it said was I'm going tokill you with the cowboy emoji
on the end. I stare at the message for a few
seconds, not scared at all, justlike what the heck.
(02:29):
I then take another look at the guy's profile, seeing a bunch
more pictures of him wielding knives in the woods somewhere.
I mean, that was at least a little intimidating, but what
really got me were all these rants that he had posted about
how much his life sucked, how unfair things were, and how he
would love to take it out on someone who deserved it.
(02:53):
And then the videos that were unplayable because they had been
removed by Facebook admins but still had captions like that
chainsaw goes through his neck like butter.
Crying laughing face. That's when I started to worry.
It didn't seem like this guy wasjust having fun playing a prank
on a stranger by trying to scarethem.
(03:15):
He seemed legit crazy and seriously angry.
That nut case could have been studying every one of my
statuses, picture posts and check insurance for weeks before
he decided to message me. He could have screenshotted all
my stuff too so it didn't matterif I blocked him or not.
He had my name, my school where I hung out, the names of my
(03:39):
friends and family, everything. I thought maybe I was just
making a big deal out of nothingat the time, but later on I
could barely sleep thinking about.
It. How horrifying I thought it was
that he could have been driving across the country as I lay
there in bed, having just pickeda person at random to kill and
(04:00):
being crazy or angry enough to actually do it.
You can call me paranoid all youlike, but I just couldn't get
this guy out of my head. Like the idea of him hunting me
down or whatever was unnerving enough.
I mean he had enough info on me to be able to ambush me at a
dozen different places that I just couldn't avoid because they
(04:21):
were school or grocery shopping or just my dorm room.
But what had me freaked out is that the creep might have been
able to learn so much about me and I was dumb or vain enough to
let it happen in the 1st place. I knew the Internet was full of
crazies, I just didn't expect itto reach out and touch me in the
(04:42):
way that it did. If I didn't make it clear
already, I did actually block the guy, but some weird grim
curiosity had me unblocking his account one day so I could sort
of check up on him and make surehe wasn't about to do anything
too nuts. There were no rants, no
threatening statuses, just a long series of photo posts that
(05:05):
made me think he had taken up photography or something.
I'm scrolling through them when I start to get this familiar
feeling from looking at that scenery.
I couldn't be 100% sure, but I'dswear a lot of the pictures he
had taken were of things that were around the town I was
living in. There were no street signs or
(05:27):
anything, nothing to actually confirm he had actually driven
across the country, but if he wasn't taking pictures in the
town that looked remarkably similar to mine, then I could
have been in a lot of trouble. I expected that guy to jump me
for weeks after. Like I was a complete nervous
wreck. It messed with my sleep, I lost
(05:50):
a bunch of weight being in an almost constant state of
anxiety. For the better part of a month.
He didn't find me. Nothing happened as a result,
thankfully, but just knowing that he could pretty much come
and get me anytime he liked got to me in ways I never even
imagined it ever could. We put ourselves on Front St. in
(06:13):
a big way with social media and there could be literally anybody
out there just lurking on our profiles.
So like I said, now I am kind ofweird and cautious about social
media. I don't put too much out there.
I don't use my real name. I run the strictest privacy
settings possible and I really recommend that you do too.
(06:45):
When I was a kid growing up in North Carolina, I was a member
of the Boy Scouts of America. I know it might seem corny, but
my time in the Boy Scouts honestly made for some of the
fondest memories of my childhood.
And as much as my friends these days like to make jokes about
the deviant proclivities of my. Former scout masters.
Nothing remotely weird or unsavory ever happened with any
(07:08):
of them. There was a lot of fishing,
camping, field craft, and community service.
Just some good old fashioned wholesomeness that gave my
parents a break from me from time to time.
Well, all except for this one time.
So one summer my scout troop goes on this big camping trip up
(07:29):
into the Smokies. For those unfamiliar with the
term, the Smokies or Great SmokyMountains, are a part of the
Greater Appalachian Mountains and are also home to the Great
Smoky Mountains National Park, one of the most highly visited
national parks in the country. The name Smokies comes from the
natural fog that often hangs over the mountain tops,
(07:51):
appearing as large smoke plumes from a distance and originate
from organic compounds that are exhaled by the local vegetation.
But excuse the high school science lesson I'll get on with.
It. So we're up in the Smokies
having a good time, when one night while sitting around the
campfire after dinner, one of our scout masters decides to
(08:13):
tell us a creepy campfire tale. He starts telling us the story
of Atlanta, which is the Cherokee name meaning
Spearfinger, or one with the pointed spear.
Spearfinger supposedly lived in the western part of North
Carolina, right up in the Smoky Mountains where we were camped
at the time, and her name referred to the long, slender,
(08:38):
sharp finger on her right hand which she used to slice up her
child victims whose livers she ate raw.
As legend has it, she apparentlyclutched the Stony skin on her
right hand tightly because her heart was actually hidden in her
palm there. Our scout master goes on to tell
(08:58):
us how because spear finger skinwas made of stone, she was
invulnerable to the arrows of the Cherokee and her footsteps
sounded like Thunder as she walked along the mountainside.
Whenever her deep voice rumbled around the hillsides, it would
scare all the birds away, a warning sign to those she was
hunting as she sang her favoritesong, UE La Nasiku, or Liver I
(09:27):
Eat It. Spearfinger was also said to be
able to take on the appearance of her child victims family
members, often taking the form of a kindly old woman to trick
her victims into feeling safe around her.
She would lull the child to sleep, running her fingers
through their hair to calm them before stabbing her pointed
(09:49):
finger through the back of the neck or through the heart.
She would then tear out the livers of her victims before
feasting on them, leaving her mouth covered with fresh blood.
Needless to say, by the time ourscout master had finished
telling us the story, we are allcompletely and utterly
terrified, and only managed to stop freaking out once he had
(10:12):
gotten out his old guitar and sang us a few songs.
But that night, while back in mytent with a buddy of mine, I
found myself totally unable to sleep.
I kept imagining that if I did, spear finger would come RIP my
tent open and stab me in the heart with her long, sharp,
(10:34):
Stony finger, all before tearingout my liver and eating it.
Then, right as I was about to drift off to sleep, a bright
light lit up one side of my tent.
I was completely frozen in fear for a moment, whispering for my
sleeping buddy to wake up, but Iwas totally unable to rouse.
(10:55):
Him. I carried on staring at the side
of the tent, wondering where thebright light was coming from as
it seemed way too intense to be from someone's torch.
Then I just about let out a whimper of fear when I heard a
hissing sound and saw a shadow passing over the fabric of my
tent. I called out to them asking who
(11:18):
was there, but no one said a thing in response.
There was just another faint hissing sound as the figure
seemed to creep closer and closer to my tent.
Then I saw the figure raise a hand, and I almost choked in
terror when I saw a single long pointed finger and a hissing
(11:40):
voice whisper. I screamed, ripping my way
through the front flap of my tent and tearing around the
campsite, screaming. It's Spearfinger, It's
Spearfinger. She's come to eat my liver.
Please don't let her eat my liver.
(12:01):
I expected the rest of the camp to start screaming too, to burst
out of their tents in terror, orto maybe just stay inside them
in the hopes that Spearfinger might pass them over.
And don't get me wrong, there were a couple of other cries of
fear that accompanied my own, but the sound that made me slow
to a stop and peer around in confusion was the sound of
(12:25):
laughter. When I looked, I saw another one
of the scouts, this kid named Devin, and he was just about
doubled over in hysterics with along slender twig tied to one
finger. I must have been boiling with
rage at the time, but Devin justthought that it was extra funny,
(12:46):
waving the long wooden twig at me and making the same hissing
sound again before bursting intolaughter.
I swear that was probably the most scared and embarrassed I
ever was during my entire childhood.
And all because that little punkDevin decided to pull a prank on
me. Ever since then, I have never
(13:07):
been able to hear the words Smoky Mountains without
remembering that Boy Scout camping trip, even if it does
make me kind of smile these days.
But what doesn't make me smile is seeing liver in the deli
section of a grocery store. Because all I think about
sometimes is the idea of spearfinger hushing a child to
(13:27):
sleep, stroking their hair, singing them a little lullaby
with the voice of their grandma or favorite aunt, all before
ripping out their liver and feasting on it.
With her Stony skin, lips drenched with dark, fresh blood,
(13:56):
Geraldine Largay kept a detailedrecord of her journey along the
Appalachian Trail during the summer of 2013 in a small black
notebook. Due to her pace, she had adopted
the trail name Inchworm, but fora slow Walker she had still
managed to cover an immense distance, hiking almost 1000
(14:17):
miles from Harpers Ferry in WestVirginia with a close friend of
hers named Jane Lee. George Largay, Geraldine's
husband of 42 years, was drivingahead of them, arranging care
packages and supply pickups for them, occasionally ferrying them
to motels for the relief of a hot shower or a night in a soft
(14:38):
bed. But on June 30th, as Jane and
Geraldine reached New Hampshire,Jane was forced into an early
end for her adventure due to a family emergency, but Geraldine
insisted on continuing the hike.The trail was almost at an end,
and she would not give up so easily.
(14:59):
Jane would later say that Geraldine had a poor sense of
direction, had taken a wrong turn on the trail more than
once, and would become flusteredwhenever she made such mistakes.
Then, while she was all alone, Geraldine ended up taking
another wrong turn up in Maine, wandering into terrain so wild
(15:19):
that it is used by the state's National Guard for military
training. She kept writing after she lost
her way, even as her food supplydwindled along with her hopes of
being found. She ended up waiting nearly a
month in The Maine woods for help that would never come.
Geraldine had left the trail in one of its most rugged sections,
(15:40):
with thick underbrush and fir trees packed so tightly that the
landscape became a maze of greenery.
You step off the trail a little,then turn around, and it's very
difficult to see where the path is, reported a volunteer who
spends time doing trail maintenance in the area.
If you didn't know which way thetrail was, you could easily walk
(16:01):
in circles for hours. Knowing she was hopelessly lost,
Geraldine sought high ground in the hopes of getting a signal on
her cell phone. Lost since yesterday, she texted
her husband off trail. 3 or 4 miles.
Call police for what to do, please.
(16:21):
She tried over and over to send messages, but none went through.
In some trouble, another text toGeorge Read.
Got off trail to go to the bathroom.
Now lost, she asked him to call the Appalachian Mountain Club to
see if a trail maintainer could help her, but again, the message
(16:43):
was never received. Around July 23rd, she set up her
tent atop sticks and pine needles under a canopy of
hemlock trees so thick that theyobscured her from rescuers
searching from the air. She tied a shiny silver blanket
between 2 trees, possibly to attract attention, but the
(17:03):
foliage was simply too dense forthe blankets to be seen from the
air. Geraldine was scheduled to meet
her husband on July 23rd in Wyman Township, but she never
showed. The following day, George
reported her missing. Multiple agencies and volunteers
would take part in the search for her, using horses and
(17:25):
helicopters to traverse the tough terrain.
Agonizingly, it would turn out that Geraldine was less than a
mile from the trail itself, close enough that in all
likelihood, searchers had probably passed by her campsite
without actually realizing it. Infuriatingly, the rescuers were
(17:45):
bombarded with a number of falsetips regarding the missing
woman's whereabouts. Some purported that she had been
murdered and strung up in the trees, saying they'd seen her
with sketchy looking men who might have intended to harm her,
while others suggesting that shehad fallen in a river and
drowned. A number of psychics called to
(18:07):
report visions of her, includingone who incorrectly insisted
that she had broken her ankle. Others injected a kind of social
justice warrior agenda into the situation, contending that
Geraldine had been spotted at a woman's shelter in Tennessee.
This actually diverted valuable resources away from the search,
(18:28):
with accusations that her husband was a batterer, when in
reality he had never laid a finger on her for the entirety
of their marriage. Her last entry reflected A
strikingly graceful acceptance of what was coming.
When you find my body, please call my husband George and my
(18:49):
daughter Carrie, she wrote. It will be the greatest kindness
for them to know that I am dead and where you found me, no
matter how many years from now. It would be two years before a
logging company surveyor stumbled upon her campsite and
remains, solving a mystery that had been tormenting her family
(19:09):
and defied teams of experienced searchers.
Misses Largay, a retired nurse from Tennessee, had survived
nearly a month on her own, longer than many old backwoods
hands thought possible before dying of exposure and
starvation. Her dead body was found on
October 14th, 2015, still insideher sleeping bag in a campsite
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she kept tidy until the day she passed away.
Around her lay her final few belongings, including a blue and
white bandana, a rosary, birthday candles, lighters.
Dental floss, a sewing kit and two water bottles.
One still containing water. Two weeks after she was found,
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Geraldine's family visited the area in which she tragically
lost her life. They left a white wooden cross
decorated with messages etched in black Marker 1, written in a
child's handwriting, said I wishyou were here.
It is quite simply terror inducing that even in a country
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as populous and settled as the United States.
A person can still go missing ona simple mountain trail and
vanish almost without a trace, only to be found months later
having starved to death in a country where there is such
abundance of sustenance and civilization.
Humankind has tamed more and more of America since the
(20:40):
nation's founding, but it seems that some particular areas of
the country will always be wild.My name is Honey.
I am almost 30 and I use Instagram to share pictures of
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my art. All right, I know what you're
thinking. Honey is a weird name, so please
don't tell me what I already know.
No, it's not a nickname. My parents are from California
and they're like Uber hippies, so go figure.
As you can probably guess I grewup in this really overly loving
(21:22):
peace nick environment, which I'm sure sounds cool at first
but let's just say it left me wholly unprepared to deal with
some of the darker things in life.
Needless to say I really struggled with my mental health
and mid to late 20s. I don't want to totally blame my
parents for that, I think they did the best they could, but
(21:44):
they seriously didn't help with their just fill your heart with
love bull crap when what I needed was actual therapy and
antidepressants. I did get access to professional
help in the end, but what reallyhelped me keep it together in
the meantime was my art. Before I started to suffer with
(22:05):
depression and stuff, I used to paint and draw some pretty basic
stuff. Landscapes, portraits, floral
displays, stuff like that. But when I started to really
suffer, I let out all my stress,anxiety, and sadness onto paper.
And as weird as it sounds, that's when my art really
(22:27):
started to flourish. It was probably the only silver
lining to ever come out of my poor mental health.
The more I posted my newer, darker art on Instagram, the
more attention it got. My follower count shot up.
I got offers of commissions. I actually managed to hook up
with a T-shirt merch company andmake a few sales that way too.
(22:52):
Like I drew this pizza demon thing one time and that's made
me a few 100 bucks from people wanting that thing on AT shirt
too. But when I saw dark I really do
mean I started drawing some really messed up stuff.
The pizza demon thing was probably the lightest hearted
thing I put out there in that time, and even then people said
(23:14):
it was super messed up. So as you might imagine, my new
followers included some pretty messed up people too.
I don't say that to be rude or mean either.
I say that because one of them in particular made my life
pretty difficult. So I get Adm off this guy who
says he's really loved my work and wanted a piece commissioned.
(23:38):
Of course I say yes. So he follows up by asking what
my rates are. I had no idea what I was doing
in terms of dollar amounts at the time.
So when I quoted him like 80 bucks for a picture, he started
explaining that I needed to value my art more, how my work
was just as valuable as any other, and how I should be
(23:59):
charging a whole bunch more for my art.
I had no idea what to up my amount to, so I kind of threw
out a few ballpark figures before the guy makes my jaw hit
the floor when he offers me a straight grand for an A3 sized
picture of whatever I wanted to draw or paint.
I couldn't believe it, $1000 fora picture, which was way more
(24:23):
money than I've ever made in my whole life.
I got to work straight away and within a week I had poured my
heart and soul out onto paper, sent it off and got my money via
PayPal. Having that kind of affirmation
actually lifted my mood to the highest it had been in months.
I felt valued, like I could contribute something to the
(24:46):
world. I was still dealing with my
demons, but when I learned I could actually profit from them,
that I could make use of something that plagued me, it
was a great feeling. I stayed in touch with the guy.
I had never been so grateful to anyone in my life until that
point, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't think I'd be able
(25:08):
to get more money out of him if he wanted something else
commissioned. We used to talk back and forth
the fair bits and he shared thathe too was an artist.
I asked him what kind of artist he was and he told me that he
worked in some very unusual mediums.
Naturally, this only got me all the more curious as I got super
(25:30):
dark with my art too, but he seemed pretty timid to talk
about it. I get that people can be shy
about showing off their artwork.I was pretty shy too at one
point, but this guy needed some serious coaxing in order to show
me anything. When he finally agreed to show
me anything, he told me he wouldonly do it via one of those self
(25:53):
destructing messages that insta now does.
I didn't question anything, likeI knew he had send one of those
self destructing pictures maybe so he could pretend his
intellectual property or something.
I was a little confused as to why he didn't seem to trust me,
but hey, I pretty much adored this guy.
(26:13):
So like I said, I didn't ask toomany questions.
I waited patiently for him to send me a picture of some of his
work. It took a minute or two, but he
sends me this 3 second self destructing picture that I was
honestly super excited to see bythat point.
But when I actually saw what it was, even if it was for a real
(26:36):
brief time, I really, really wished I hadn't.
It looked like a goat's head in a jar of some kind, and the
fluid it was floating in looked sort of greenish black, and I'm
pretty sure it was formaldehyde.But it wasn't just that.
The guy had opted to make a few little additions to the goat's
(26:59):
head, additions that I could notall catch because of how quick
the picture flashed before my eyes.
But they were horrible. It looked like he had carved the
lips away so that all the creatures teeth were showing and
on each one was carved or written a little symbol.
I am also pretty sure he had either chemically changed the
(27:20):
creatures eyes or replaced them entirely with a kind of metal or
semi precious stone. They had this weird glint to
them. Like I said, there wasn't enough
time for me to drink the whole thing in, but there was plenty
more about the creature's head that had been messed with.
It wasn't the details which really got me, it was the idea
(27:43):
that the corpse of an animal hadbeen so horribly disrespected
just so he could try to make some kind of art out of it.
I had questions, a lot of questions, but the first thing I
had to ask him was if it was really real or just some kind of
mock up. He told me it was very very
(28:03):
real, that he had gotten a hold of a goat's head from a butcher,
preserved it, and then basicallysurgically edited the whole
thing over time, mostly using dental tools apparently for the
sake of precision. I personally thought the whole
thing was a disgrace. I'm vegan and I try to stay as
(28:24):
ethical as possible, but at the same time I didn't want to go
imposing my own world view on the guy, especially since I
liked him so much. I also didn't want to offend
him. So I told him his work was
interesting and jaw-dropping, then asked if he worked with ink
and paper or any variation on that.
(28:47):
He told me no, that he only worked with skulls, how they
were the capsule that held all the hopes and dreams and fears
and needs of the once living creature they belonged to, and
that working with them was kind of sacred.
I didn't really know what to sayto that.
He was right, in a way. He sounded absolutely crazy for
(29:10):
saying it out loud, but I couldn't entirely refute his
point. It was like talking to some kind
of insane genius. Not long after, he asked me if I
thought he was cruel to work in such a medium.
I told him people might find hiswork provocative, maybe even
objectionable, but that it was fascinating nevertheless.
(29:33):
Then he asked if I wanted to seemore.
Unlike the first time, there wasno doubt in me that I most
definitely did not want to see any more of this guy's work.
But like I said before, I also really didn't want to offend
him. So what could I do?
It took me much longer to reply to his message that time, but in
(29:55):
the end I told him sure and he replied saying he would use
another self destructing messageagain.
I waited a minute or two for themessage to come through and when
it did I opened up the message thread and tapped the little
reveal message thing with some reluctance.
(30:16):
The first time around for that goat's head thing, I at least
had some degree of curiosity, but that time I was just plain
horrified by what I saw. It was a monkey's head, or at
least it looked like it was somekind of primate.
And if I thought the goat's headhad received some disturbing
(30:37):
additions, this latest 1 turned out to be 1000 times worse.
It was so bad I only caught the briefest glimpse of it and had
to just look away and lock my phone screen to get away from
it. I was a little more
confrontational with him after that, telling him that this one
was considerably more disturbingthan the first, and that I
(30:58):
thought I was maybe too sensitive to see any more of his
work. He asks why, and I broke it down
to him that I had been vegan fora few years, that I was a real
animal lover, and although I could stomach the goat's head
thing, I really couldn't handle the monkey as it looked far too
human to me. That's when he replied to me.
(31:22):
It's interesting you should say that and goes on to explain that
it's his dream to work with the human skull.
How he has put up a few ads on 4Chan and stuff asking if anyone
would be willing to donate theirhead should they die, but hadn't
gotten any replies when he told me he was getting really
(31:43):
impatient and that he was worried he wouldn't get a chance
to realize his dream. The whole exchange had reached
peak creepiness by that point asyou can imagine, and it was fast
getting to the point when I was reaching for that block option
as I just didn't feel safe talking to him anymore.
(32:03):
So by the time he actually messaged me another self
destructing message asking if I would be willing to help him get
a hold of a human head, I just noped out of there and stopped
replying to him. Like I am not sure he was
actually asking me to like kill someone with him or for him, but
just the idea of going about procuring an actual human head.
(32:27):
No, but I couldn't bring myself to block him.
Like he was a potential source of sales after all and I could
make a lot of money from the guyif I kept him interested in my
work. I try not to think about it but
I get these really bad feelings from time to time.
Like what if he catches on to the fact that I just ignore him?
(32:50):
And what if he decides that it'smy head that he would like to
use to complete his magnum opus?I try to be very careful with
what I post now, making sure it's only ever pictures of my
art and that the handful of landscape photos I had posted on
my profile have been deleted just so whoever it is can't get
an idea of where I live. Because if they do work out
(33:12):
where I'm at, there's just no way I'd be able to go around
feeling safe. Not which someone whose ambition
it is to work with severed humanheads, knowing where I lay mine
at night. Back in 2003, I was a struggling
(33:33):
college student who had grown upin a very expensive California
beach town. Rent was, even back then,
ridiculous. I have no idea how anybody can
actually go to College in this town anymore, but in order to
survive with both college loans and full time jobs, my
girlfriend and I ended up livingin quite a few interesting
(33:55):
situations. One time we rented half of a
restroom in a trailer park, for example, because it was only
$600 a month 20 years ago. So when this apparent gem of a
situation came up on our radar, we were more than excited.
It was a small trailer that had been converted to a house at the
(34:16):
back of one of the only farms within walking distance of the
downtown area as well as our school.
It's hard to describe this place, but I'll try.
There was a gorgeous porch that looked over, a yard that
contains the only functional bath on the property, a huge
aloe Vera plant, and beyond a Grove of trees was an entire
(34:37):
organic garden, again within walking distance of the downtown
area and school. But it was still very secluded.
There was no phone in the house,for example, and back then we
could not get cell reception while in the house.
We would have to walk about 5 minutes down the long driveway.
But. That wasn't the main reason it
(34:58):
was so affordable. The main reason was the
unfortunate fact that this property was not just very
isolated, but at the base of a well known forest area that was
frequented by the homeless and drug addicted community of the
area with no neighbors anywhere nearby.
But it was affordable and gorgeous.
(35:19):
So me and my 19 year old girlfriend moved in.
Did I mention her nickname in high school was Pamela because
of her resemblance to the Baywatch star Pamela Anderson?
She would argue that she is actually way prettier because
she has Reese Witherspoon's face.
I would argue neither because this girlfriend eventually
became my ex-wife, but that is adifferent story.
(35:41):
So we moved in. We were extremely excited to
live in such a unique location that was both remote yet
extremely close to everything and somehow affordable.
Who cared if it was a bit funky?We were very used to living in
funky houses in this area. Anything not funky would require
us selling our internal organs or something.
(36:03):
Another bad joke, but rent in this house was and still is
extremely ridiculous. We had only spent a handful of
days at this rental before two of her friends came over to
visit and to go for a walk in the nearby forest area.
I should add they both also looked and dressed very similar
to my girlfriend. Looking back.
(36:23):
The four of us wandering throughan area well known to be the
home to a large population of the county's homeless and
addicted population was probablya terrible idea, but it was a
gorgeous area and we had no way of knowing what would happen.
Later that night after dinner her friends left and we probably
watched a movie and then headed back to the back of the house to
(36:46):
the bedroom area. Now I should describe that the
way this house was set up was that you walk into the house via
2 double doors that opened into the living room.
The bedroom area was just a halfsized wall that separated the
bed from the living room, and the kitchen and bathroom was off
to the side of this main area. Sometime in the middle of the
(37:06):
night I awoke to the 2 double doors opening.
In a flash of an instant I knew there was somebody in our house.
I was in extremely good physicalshape and within an instant I
knew that the only weapon I had access to was my skateboard.
It was at the foot of my bed, something I can only describe as
teenage mutants. Ninja skills took over me and I
(37:29):
knew that I could roll, grab theboard, and strike the metal
trucks over whoever was coming at us.
And so I jumped for my board andstarted screaming at the top of
my lungs. Who is this, Who are you, What
do you want? He probably thought I had some
actual weapon. I looked straight at this guy in
my living room. He was a very large male dressed
(37:52):
in all black with a black wool cap.
He said there's been a terrible accident, I needed to use your
phone, he's dying outside. Then the guy ran out of the same
doors he came in. My girlfriend was obviously in
shock at this point. We sat there for what seemed
(38:13):
like a very long time, but probably only a couple minutes.
Then we went outside with our cell phones to begin the long
walk down the dark driveway in order to get into cell reception
and call the police. I guess we didn't realize that
we could have probably dialed 911 and got reception via the
emergency service network, though I don't know if that was
(38:35):
even a thing back in 2003. As we walked down the long
driveway and the only Rd. in thearea, we saw no accident.
There were no signs of anyone having been there at all at the
end of the driveway. Once we got cell reception we
called the police and we waited there for them to arrive.
(38:56):
When they arrived they took a look around the property and
gave us the sad truth. There really wasn't anything
they could do. He probably ran off into the
woods. They apologized but said the
only thing they could do would to be come back if he returned.
Yeah, it's not the most comforting message.
So we drove to my parents house,told them the whole story, and
(39:19):
slept in my childhood bedroom that night.
The following day we returned because all our stuff was there,
including the two cats. My girlfriend refused to stay
the night. But I decided to stay.
I ended up sitting in the livingroom chair with a baseball bat
in my hand the entire night. It was the last night that we
(39:41):
even attempted to stay there. I'm not exactly sure how many
days later I saw the following story on the cover of our local
paper, but it was within the following week or two.
Apparently there was a serial predator in our town.
He frequented the exact area of our rental and the sketch was
(40:01):
exactly how I would have described the individual that I
saw in my living room that night.
It started the first time I caught the bus to work.
I've been having some major car trouble and it looked like my
(40:22):
car was going to be in the shop for up to two whole weeks.
That meant for 10 whole days I'dhave to take the bus to and from
work. It was an inconvenience, sure,
but I am not so stuck up or sheltered that I was dreading
taking public transport or anything.
My main concern was getting caught in a rainstorm or
something, but investing in a sturdy umbrella pretty much put
(40:44):
those fears to bed. If I had only known that the
trouble with taking the bus wasn't the time spent or the
exposure to the crazy weather weget here in the Pacific
Northwest, it was the people I'dbe riding with, or more
specifically, one person in particular.
So another thing that sucked about having to take the bus was
(41:05):
how much earlier I had to wake up.
OK, 30 minutes earlier isn't allthat bad, but it still sucked
seeing 6:30 instead of 7:00. AMI would have to be at the bus
stop by 7:15 in order to be at work by 8:00 AM sharp.
And given the area I was living in at the time, this usually
meant I had to stop to myself. But then either the 3rd or 4th
(41:29):
day I arrived at the stop, I discovered I wasn't alone.
At first the guy just looked like a construction worker as he
was wearing heavy boots, jeans and one of those big warm
looking highlighter pen jackets with the reflective strips on
it. I didn't pay him any mind.
It was way too early to interactwith anyone so I just stood
(41:52):
there under the shelter just listening to my podcasts.
The next thing I know I feel someone tapping on my shoulder.
There was literally no one else around, so of course it was the
guy in the construction jacket. So then I take out my earbud,
turn to him and ask him if I canhelp him, to which the guy
repeats good morning. In this passive aggressive way.
(42:18):
I assumed he thought I was just ignoring him, so I apologized
and made it clear that I just couldn't hear him only right in
that moment. I swear I smelled one of the
single grossest smells ever. It was a mix of the guy's breath
and his general odor, which I guess I hadn't picked up on at
first because it was so cold outside.
(42:39):
If I had to guess, I would say the guy probably hadn't brushed
his teeth in a decade, and this was sharply evidenced by the
state of his mouth. Honestly, it looked like his
mouth had died and was just waiting for the rest of him to
catch up. It was truly awful and I found
myself severely pitying the people who had to work with him,
(42:59):
not to mention myself who had toshare a bus with the guy.
I tried sitting as far away as possible from him, but I swear
he literally followed me right to the back of the bus to sit in
the opposite seat. And yes, you guessed it, he
tried talking to me the entire time.
I know what some of you might bethinking at this point, Just
(43:20):
take an Uber or stagger your schedule to avoid the guy.
Well, I've already spent $45.00 in a month's Orca pass and I
wasn't exactly in the best of financial situations at the
time, so that was definitely guiding my poor decision making.
That and the guy wasn't at the stop every morning, not at first
(43:41):
anyway, so I figured I would just suck it up and keep using
my orca card. But then he was there another
morning, then another, always trying to talk to me until it
was on the verge of being harassment.
Then one day I get the call saying my car would be ready the
following afternoon, meaning I would only have to take the bus
(44:02):
one more time. I was elated, but naturally my
not so secret admirer was waiting for me that final
morning. I had already asked the guy to
leave me alone by that point, but he just wasn't taking the
hint. So to try and get back at him, I
decided to give his employer a call to see if they knew what he
(44:23):
was up to while in uniform. And when I saw in uniform he had
a company pass hanging around his neck and his jacket had the
company name on it too. So I looked them up, gave them a
call and told them one of their employees wouldn't leave me
alone. I know that these days that
probably seems like a super Karen thing to do, but to me it
(44:44):
was preferable to getting the cops involved and all I wanted
to do was just scare the guy, not like actually get him fired
or anything. But none of that mattered
anyway, because when I called the company and described the
guy the secretary hit me with, oh, we fired him months ago.
He didn't return his uniform, sowe took it out of his paycheck.
(45:06):
That's when it hit me that afterthat first chance meeting, the
first week I was riding the bus,he had only been there to harass
me. He sure wasn't catching the bus
to work, at least not to work for the company whose pass he
had. So the idea that I was totally
oblivious to the fact I was being stalked.
Legitimately one of the worst feelings of my life.
(45:29):
The only thing is, as bad as things seemed right then, they
were about to get so much worse.So I was back to using my car.
About two weeks had gone by and I was halfway to forgetting
about this guy and the whole thing.
Then this one evening I finish up late at work and get home at
like 6:45. It's dark, it's cold, I'm
(45:54):
starving, and all I want to do is just curl up on the couch and
go to sleep. My apartment at the time had two
locks, each requiring a different type of key.
You unlocked the first one so you could use the second to
actually open the door. But when I go to unlock the
first lock, it seems like my keyis jammed.
(46:16):
It wasn't, it's just that the lock hadn't been locked at all.
It wasn't out of the question that I had just forgotten to
lock it that morning, but it waslike a built in part of my
routine. It seemed really odd that I just
neglected to do it anyway. I shrug it off, too focused on
my planned pre dinner of coffee and molten hot pop tarts, then
(46:39):
walk into my apartment. That's when I smell it.
It was that same rotten mouth smell that had clung to this bus
guy like a dark cloud. It's weird how your brain just
files those kinds of smells awayand the moment you smell them
again, certain memories just come flooding back.
(47:01):
Well, it was exactly like that as I stood in the dark hallway
of my apartment, hand on my heart.
I think that's the most terrified I've ever been in my
life. Knowing that he was close
without being able to see him, Ijust bolted back out of my
apartment, back down into the parking lot of my building,
(47:21):
jumped into my car, and called the cops.
The whole time I'm locking up the 2nd floor windows of my
apartment just waiting to see him moving around my apartment
or something. But there was nothing.
It got to the point where I thought I might be going crazy,
that maybe it was backed up sewage or something and I just
had the dumbest panic attack in the history of panic attacks.
(47:45):
But. Still.
The cops show up and I let them into the building and then
direct them up to where my apartment was, telling them that
the door should still be open. By that point I figured they
would go in, find a dead rat in my toilet bowl or whatever it
was, and then just leave. What happened next will stay
(48:06):
with me for the rest of my life.So if you remember, I'm watching
my own apartment windows from mycar while the cops are on their
way to search my place. I think that the next thing I'm
going to see is the cops walkingaround my apartment, probably
complaining about this crazy person downstairs who is scared
of bad smells. Only the next person I see is
(48:29):
him, the man from the bus. He's not wearing his jacket or
anything, but his greasy Gray hair gave him away from a mile
off. He literally ducks behind my
apartment curtains, probably after the cops had announced
themselves, and he tries to stand as thin and still as
possible. I couldn't believe he had done
(48:51):
something so dumb. They were pretty thin curtains
too so it wasn't like he was fooling anyone.
But the moment one of the cops appeared in my window, I watched
the guy pull something out of his jacket.
I don't know if it was a knife or something else, but the cop
was basically wise to the whole thing and tasered him before he
(49:12):
could make a move. But the whole time I am watching
the whole thing unfold, feeling completely and utterly helpless,
all while screaming look out he's got something with no one
around to hear me. I stayed in my car for
everything that followed and I actually watched the cops
leading the guy out of my apartment building in handcuffs.
(49:35):
It was like an actual nightmare knowing that he had been waiting
in my apartment for me, all after I thought I was totally
rid of the guy. The only good news was that he
had violated probation and was headed back to prison to finish
the latter half of an 8 year sentence for the exact same
crime only committed years before.
(49:56):
It was a relief knowing there was no chance of running into
him for another four years, but it was still haunting to know
how close I had come to whateverit was he was planning for me.
In a way, I should be weirdly thankful that he didn't take
care of himself, because if I hadn't been able to smell him as
soon as I walked in, I might notbe telling this story right now.
(50:30):
In late 2008, I came one night to find my mom sitting in the
kitchen, all alone in floods of tears.
When I asked her what was wrong,her answer made my jaw drop.
My dad had left her. There was absolutely no
indication that anything was wrong with their marriage or
that he was remotely unhappy. But that afternoon while I was
(50:53):
out, he had apparently packed a few things into a suitcase, told
her he was leaving, and just disappeared.
I only mention this because it explains why my mom and little
sister just didn't want to be inthe house over Christmas and New
Year's. That kind of family oriented
time of year would have just been way too hard on them, so
(51:14):
they basically buggered off to Mexico for a month to just
decompress or whatever. The point being, I was all alone
for Christmas and New Year. Christmas Day sucked and I
realized they were right about not wanting to be alone in the
house at that time of year. So for New Year's Eve I decided
to throw a little get together for me and a load of my friends,
(51:36):
hoping that a little party mighttake away some of the sadness I
felt as a result of my dad leaving.
So on the night itself, it ends up being about 20 to 30 of us
getting together in my parents place, getting drunk, listening
to music, playing Xbox, just a big hangout among some of the
people I was closest to. It was a really good night to
(51:58):
start off with, and it really did help take my mind off things
for a little while. We did the whole New Year's
countdown thing, set off fireworks, generally having a
brilliant little night together.But the drunker we all got, the
messier things became, until it was just a medley of people
throwing up or arguing among themselves.
(52:20):
Two of the people who ended up fighting were my friend Chris
and his girlfriend at the time, a girl named Katie.
From what I could gather, Katie thought Chris had been flirting
with a mutual friend of ours andhad taken issue with it.
Chris was insisting that they were just being friendly and it
was nothing to worry about, but Katie was adamant that something
(52:40):
was going on, that he was cheating on her, blah blah blah.
You know how it is, teenage drama.
Now I know Chris really did loveher, so it wasn't like a stand
up argument. It was more like him begging for
her to see reason and to not gettoo mad and dump him over some
perceived bit of flirting. He swore he would never do
(53:00):
anything like that, that she wasthe only girl for him, how much
he loved her, all this romantic theatrical stuff that you might
expect from two young lovers. It wasn't really any of my
business though, so me and the other party guests just sort of
left them to it while we got on with trying to have fun.
Then a little while later, I find Chris sitting in the back
(53:23):
garden swigging off a bottle of raw vodka on his own.
I go up to him and ask if he's OK, only to find that he's
crying completely drunk, saying that Katie dumped him and left.
I tried to be a good friend and console him as best I could,
saying that she was probably just drunk and over emotional
(53:44):
and saying there was a good chance they'd get back together
over the next couple of days when she realized this was a
mistake. But he was insistent that she
was gone for good and that they wouldn't be getting back
together. All I could do was get him on
his feet and hug it out with him.
The poor guy really was in one bad state.
I managed to convince him to hand over the vodka, drink some
(54:07):
water and then get some sleep inmy bed so he could maybe sober
up a little bit before heading home.
He agrees and I took him in and then leave him to get some rest.
About an hour or so later the party is winding down and the
remainder of us are just chilling in the TV room when
someone goes off to use the toilet.
(54:28):
They return like seconds later saying someone's in the
bathroom, throwing up and then asking if they can go pee in the
back garden. Of course I tell them no, I
didn't want them peeing all overmy mom's flower beds and that I
will run upstairs to see if I can get whoever it is out of the
bathroom. So I get to the bathroom
upstairs and I can hear someone gagging and retching on the
(54:50):
other side of the locked door. My friend Julia joins me a
little concerned and starts trying to help me talk to the
person who's locked themselves in the bathroom.
It's sometime then that I noticed that 2.
Doors are open. The first being my bedroom, the
second being a little cupboard on the 1st floor landing.
I check my bedroom and see that the bed is empty, so it's
(55:14):
obviously Chris that's in the bathroom puking his guts out
because of all the vodka he drank.
I shut the door to the bedroom, then go to close the door to the
other room, which happens to be a little cupboard that my mom
kept cleaning supplies in. My first thought was that Chris
had opened up that door thinkingit was the bathroom in his
drunken haze, then ran to the right bathroom in his
(55:36):
desperation to puke. But I noticed something that at
first I didn't really understandthe significance of.
The cleaning supplies that my mom usually kept all neat and a
little plastic box were spilled all over the floor.
Not like open fluid spilling out.
They were just all out-of-the-box, like someone had
(55:58):
been rooting through them. As I'm wondering why someone
would do something like that, Julia calls out that the person
who had locked themselves in thebathroom, presumably Chris, had
gone quiet all of a sudden and that they weren't responding.
That's when I put two and two together.
Violent vomiting, cleaning supplies missing, deep drunken
(56:22):
depression. Chris was trying to end it all.
I flew to the bathroom door and started to kick the doors off
the hinges. Julius screams in shock at what
I'm doing and the people from the living room start piling out
towards the bottom of the stairsand utter confusion.
I have been really protective ofthe house all night, not wanting
(56:43):
people to smoke inside, not wanting people peeing anywhere
they shouldn't, trying to stop spillages and all that.
Then there I was, booting down my own bathroom door.
It was way too heavy to actuallykick off the hinges, but I did
manage to kick a. Hole in the wood paneling.
And that's when I got a look inside.
(57:03):
Chris was laying there, a bottleof bleach next to him, and there
was a pink fluid all over the floor and his clothes.
It was pink because he had drankthe bleach and it had corroded
or burned the inside of him so much that he had vomited up
blood. We were distraught, terrified,
(57:24):
almost sure he was gone, but we were extremely quick to call an
ambulance. Chris had his stomach pumped and
he survived, but it took a long time for him to be back to
normal because he puked, the fumes had damaged his lungs or
something, so we had trouble eating, drinking and breathing
(57:45):
for at least a month after that.12 years and I have never
forgotten that and I'm sure neither has he because as far as
I know, Chris never drink vodka again.
Because if the smell of it makesme think of that night, who
knows what horrible memories it brings back for him.
(01:10:06):
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'm kind of weird about social
media these days. I used to be really into
(01:03):
Facebook when I first moved to college.
It kept me in touch with my friends and family back home and
it was nice feeling like I wasn't so far away from them.
Building up a collection of photos, checking into places,
sharing every little detail of my life so that everyone could
see how great I was doing. My entire world was online for
(01:24):
all to see. And because I'm dumb, I was
pretty liberal about my privacy setting too.
So one day I get this message request from someone I have
never heard of before. It just said hey I checked their
profile to see if they were in the same class as me or
something but it turned out we had no mutuals and they lived on
(01:46):
the other side of the country. So as you can imagine I am
pretty confused as to why they are messaging me.
But I'm also curious so I just reply.
Hey do we know each other? I don't know what I was
expecting him to say when I saw that he was typing a reply and I
remember thinking that maybe he was looking for someone with the
(02:07):
same name as me or something. But then his response pops up
and all it said was I'm going tokill you with the cowboy emoji
on the end. I stare at the message for a few
seconds, not scared at all, justlike what the heck.
(02:29):
I then take another look at the guy's profile, seeing a bunch
more pictures of him wielding knives in the woods somewhere.
I mean, that was at least a little intimidating, but what
really got me were all these rants that he had posted about
how much his life sucked, how unfair things were, and how he
would love to take it out on someone who deserved it.
(02:53):
And then the videos that were unplayable because they had been
removed by Facebook admins but still had captions like that
chainsaw goes through his neck like butter.
Crying laughing face. That's when I started to worry.
It didn't seem like this guy wasjust having fun playing a prank
on a stranger by trying to scarethem.
(03:15):
He seemed legit crazy and seriously angry.
That nut case could have been studying every one of my
statuses, picture posts and check insurance for weeks before
he decided to message me. He could have screenshotted all
my stuff too so it didn't matterif I blocked him or not.
He had my name, my school where I hung out, the names of my
(03:39):
friends and family, everything. I thought maybe I was just
making a big deal out of nothingat the time, but later on I
could barely sleep thinking about.
It. How horrifying I thought it was
that he could have been driving across the country as I lay
there in bed, having just pickeda person at random to kill and
(04:00):
being crazy or angry enough to actually do it.
You can call me paranoid all youlike, but I just couldn't get
this guy out of my head. Like the idea of him hunting me
down or whatever was unnerving enough.
I mean he had enough info on me to be able to ambush me at a
dozen different places that I just couldn't avoid because they
(04:21):
were school or grocery shopping or just my dorm room.
But what had me freaked out is that the creep might have been
able to learn so much about me and I was dumb or vain enough to
let it happen in the 1st place. I knew the Internet was full of
crazies, I just didn't expect itto reach out and touch me in the
(04:42):
way that it did. If I didn't make it clear
already, I did actually block the guy, but some weird grim
curiosity had me unblocking his account one day so I could sort
of check up on him and make surehe wasn't about to do anything
too nuts. There were no rants, no
threatening statuses, just a long series of photo posts that
(05:05):
made me think he had taken up photography or something.
I'm scrolling through them when I start to get this familiar
feeling from looking at that scenery.
I couldn't be 100% sure, but I'dswear a lot of the pictures he
had taken were of things that were around the town I was
living in. There were no street signs or
(05:27):
anything, nothing to actually confirm he had actually driven
across the country, but if he wasn't taking pictures in the
town that looked remarkably similar to mine, then I could
have been in a lot of trouble. I expected that guy to jump me
for weeks after. Like I was a complete nervous
wreck. It messed with my sleep, I lost
(05:50):
a bunch of weight being in an almost constant state of
anxiety. For the better part of a month.
He didn't find me. Nothing happened as a result,
thankfully, but just knowing that he could pretty much come
and get me anytime he liked got to me in ways I never even
imagined it ever could. We put ourselves on Front St. in
(06:13):
a big way with social media and there could be literally anybody
out there just lurking on our profiles.
So like I said, now I am kind ofweird and cautious about social
media. I don't put too much out there.
I don't use my real name. I run the strictest privacy
settings possible and I really recommend that you do too.
(06:45):
When I was a kid growing up in North Carolina, I was a member
of the Boy Scouts of America. I know it might seem corny, but
my time in the Boy Scouts honestly made for some of the
fondest memories of my childhood.
And as much as my friends these days like to make jokes about
the deviant proclivities of my. Former scout masters.
Nothing remotely weird or unsavory ever happened with any
(07:08):
of them. There was a lot of fishing,
camping, field craft, and community service.
Just some good old fashioned wholesomeness that gave my
parents a break from me from time to time.
Well, all except for this one time.
So one summer my scout troop goes on this big camping trip up
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into the Smokies. For those unfamiliar with the
term, the Smokies or Great SmokyMountains, are a part of the
Greater Appalachian Mountains and are also home to the Great
Smoky Mountains National Park, one of the most highly visited
national parks in the country. The name Smokies comes from the
natural fog that often hangs over the mountain tops,
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appearing as large smoke plumes from a distance and originate
from organic compounds that are exhaled by the local vegetation.
But excuse the high school science lesson I'll get on with.
It. So we're up in the Smokies
having a good time, when one night while sitting around the
campfire after dinner, one of our scout masters decides to
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tell us a creepy campfire tale. He starts telling us the story
of Atlanta, which is the Cherokee name meaning
Spearfinger, or one with the pointed spear.
Spearfinger supposedly lived in the western part of North
Carolina, right up in the Smoky Mountains where we were camped
at the time, and her name referred to the long, slender,
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sharp finger on her right hand which she used to slice up her
child victims whose livers she ate raw.
As legend has it, she apparentlyclutched the Stony skin on her
right hand tightly because her heart was actually hidden in her
palm there. Our scout master goes on to tell
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us how because spear finger skinwas made of stone, she was
invulnerable to the arrows of the Cherokee and her footsteps
sounded like Thunder as she walked along the mountainside.
Whenever her deep voice rumbled around the hillsides, it would
scare all the birds away, a warning sign to those she was
hunting as she sang her favoritesong, UE La Nasiku, or Liver I
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Eat It. Spearfinger was also said to be
able to take on the appearance of her child victims family
members, often taking the form of a kindly old woman to trick
her victims into feeling safe around her.
She would lull the child to sleep, running her fingers
through their hair to calm them before stabbing her pointed
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finger through the back of the neck or through the heart.
She would then tear out the livers of her victims before
feasting on them, leaving her mouth covered with fresh blood.
Needless to say, by the time ourscout master had finished
telling us the story, we are allcompletely and utterly
terrified, and only managed to stop freaking out once he had
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gotten out his old guitar and sang us a few songs.
But that night, while back in mytent with a buddy of mine, I
found myself totally unable to sleep.
I kept imagining that if I did, spear finger would come RIP my
tent open and stab me in the heart with her long, sharp,
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Stony finger, all before tearingout my liver and eating it.
Then, right as I was about to drift off to sleep, a bright
light lit up one side of my tent.
I was completely frozen in fear for a moment, whispering for my
sleeping buddy to wake up, but Iwas totally unable to rouse.
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Him. I carried on staring at the side
of the tent, wondering where thebright light was coming from as
it seemed way too intense to be from someone's torch.
Then I just about let out a whimper of fear when I heard a
hissing sound and saw a shadow passing over the fabric of my
tent. I called out to them asking who
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was there, but no one said a thing in response.
There was just another faint hissing sound as the figure
seemed to creep closer and closer to my tent.
Then I saw the figure raise a hand, and I almost choked in
terror when I saw a single long pointed finger and a hissing
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voice whisper. I screamed, ripping my way
through the front flap of my tent and tearing around the
campsite, screaming. It's Spearfinger, It's
Spearfinger. She's come to eat my liver.
Please don't let her eat my liver.
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I expected the rest of the camp to start screaming too, to burst
out of their tents in terror, orto maybe just stay inside them
in the hopes that Spearfinger might pass them over.
And don't get me wrong, there were a couple of other cries of
fear that accompanied my own, but the sound that made me slow
to a stop and peer around in confusion was the sound of
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laughter. When I looked, I saw another one
of the scouts, this kid named Devin, and he was just about
doubled over in hysterics with along slender twig tied to one
finger. I must have been boiling with
rage at the time, but Devin justthought that it was extra funny,
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waving the long wooden twig at me and making the same hissing
sound again before bursting intolaughter.
I swear that was probably the most scared and embarrassed I
ever was during my entire childhood.
And all because that little punkDevin decided to pull a prank on
me. Ever since then, I have never
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been able to hear the words Smoky Mountains without
remembering that Boy Scout camping trip, even if it does
make me kind of smile these days.
But what doesn't make me smile is seeing liver in the deli
section of a grocery store. Because all I think about
sometimes is the idea of spearfinger hushing a child to
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sleep, stroking their hair, singing them a little lullaby
with the voice of their grandma or favorite aunt, all before
ripping out their liver and feasting on it.
With her Stony skin, lips drenched with dark, fresh blood,
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Geraldine Largay kept a detailedrecord of her journey along the
Appalachian Trail during the summer of 2013 in a small black
notebook. Due to her pace, she had adopted
the trail name Inchworm, but fora slow Walker she had still
managed to cover an immense distance, hiking almost 1000
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miles from Harpers Ferry in WestVirginia with a close friend of
hers named Jane Lee. George Largay, Geraldine's
husband of 42 years, was drivingahead of them, arranging care
packages and supply pickups for them, occasionally ferrying them
to motels for the relief of a hot shower or a night in a soft
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bed. But on June 30th, as Jane and
Geraldine reached New Hampshire,Jane was forced into an early
end for her adventure due to a family emergency, but Geraldine
insisted on continuing the hike.The trail was almost at an end,
and she would not give up so easily.
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Jane would later say that Geraldine had a poor sense of
direction, had taken a wrong turn on the trail more than
once, and would become flusteredwhenever she made such mistakes.
Then, while she was all alone, Geraldine ended up taking
another wrong turn up in Maine, wandering into terrain so wild
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that it is used by the state's National Guard for military
training. She kept writing after she lost
her way, even as her food supplydwindled along with her hopes of
being found. She ended up waiting nearly a
month in The Maine woods for help that would never come.
Geraldine had left the trail in one of its most rugged sections,
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with thick underbrush and fir trees packed so tightly that the
landscape became a maze of greenery.
You step off the trail a little,then turn around, and it's very
difficult to see where the path is, reported a volunteer who
spends time doing trail maintenance in the area.
If you didn't know which way thetrail was, you could easily walk
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in circles for hours. Knowing she was hopelessly lost,
Geraldine sought high ground in the hopes of getting a signal on
her cell phone. Lost since yesterday, she texted
her husband off trail. 3 or 4 miles.
Call police for what to do, please.
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She tried over and over to send messages, but none went through.
In some trouble, another text toGeorge Read.
Got off trail to go to the bathroom.
Now lost, she asked him to call the Appalachian Mountain Club to
see if a trail maintainer could help her, but again, the message
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was never received. Around July 23rd, she set up her
tent atop sticks and pine needles under a canopy of
hemlock trees so thick that theyobscured her from rescuers
searching from the air. She tied a shiny silver blanket
between 2 trees, possibly to attract attention, but the
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foliage was simply too dense forthe blankets to be seen from the
air. Geraldine was scheduled to meet
her husband on July 23rd in Wyman Township, but she never
showed. The following day, George
reported her missing. Multiple agencies and volunteers
would take part in the search for her, using horses and
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helicopters to traverse the tough terrain.
Agonizingly, it would turn out that Geraldine was less than a
mile from the trail itself, close enough that in all
likelihood, searchers had probably passed by her campsite
without actually realizing it. Infuriatingly, the rescuers were
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bombarded with a number of falsetips regarding the missing
woman's whereabouts. Some purported that she had been
murdered and strung up in the trees, saying they'd seen her
with sketchy looking men who might have intended to harm her,
while others suggesting that shehad fallen in a river and
drowned. A number of psychics called to
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report visions of her, includingone who incorrectly insisted
that she had broken her ankle. Others injected a kind of social
justice warrior agenda into the situation, contending that
Geraldine had been spotted at a woman's shelter in Tennessee.
This actually diverted valuable resources away from the search,
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with accusations that her husband was a batterer, when in
reality he had never laid a finger on her for the entirety
of their marriage. Her last entry reflected A
strikingly graceful acceptance of what was coming.
When you find my body, please call my husband George and my
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daughter Carrie, she wrote. It will be the greatest kindness
for them to know that I am dead and where you found me, no
matter how many years from now. It would be two years before a
logging company surveyor stumbled upon her campsite and
remains, solving a mystery that had been tormenting her family
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and defied teams of experienced searchers.
Misses Largay, a retired nurse from Tennessee, had survived
nearly a month on her own, longer than many old backwoods
hands thought possible before dying of exposure and
starvation. Her dead body was found on
October 14th, 2015, still insideher sleeping bag in a campsite
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she kept tidy until the day she passed away.
Around her lay her final few belongings, including a blue and
white bandana, a rosary, birthday candles, lighters.
Dental floss, a sewing kit and two water bottles.
One still containing water. Two weeks after she was found,
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Geraldine's family visited the area in which she tragically
lost her life. They left a white wooden cross
decorated with messages etched in black Marker 1, written in a
child's handwriting, said I wishyou were here.
It is quite simply terror inducing that even in a country
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as populous and settled as the United States.
A person can still go missing ona simple mountain trail and
vanish almost without a trace, only to be found months later
having starved to death in a country where there is such
abundance of sustenance and civilization.
Humankind has tamed more and more of America since the
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nation's founding, but it seems that some particular areas of
the country will always be wild.My name is Honey.
I am almost 30 and I use Instagram to share pictures of
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my art. All right, I know what you're
thinking. Honey is a weird name, so please
don't tell me what I already know.
No, it's not a nickname. My parents are from California
and they're like Uber hippies, so go figure.
As you can probably guess I grewup in this really overly loving
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peace nick environment, which I'm sure sounds cool at first
but let's just say it left me wholly unprepared to deal with
some of the darker things in life.
Needless to say I really struggled with my mental health
and mid to late 20s. I don't want to totally blame my
parents for that, I think they did the best they could, but
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they seriously didn't help with their just fill your heart with
love bull crap when what I needed was actual therapy and
antidepressants. I did get access to professional
help in the end, but what reallyhelped me keep it together in
the meantime was my art. Before I started to suffer with
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depression and stuff, I used to paint and draw some pretty basic
stuff. Landscapes, portraits, floral
displays, stuff like that. But when I started to really
suffer, I let out all my stress,anxiety, and sadness onto paper.
And as weird as it sounds, that's when my art really
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started to flourish. It was probably the only silver
lining to ever come out of my poor mental health.
The more I posted my newer, darker art on Instagram, the
more attention it got. My follower count shot up.
I got offers of commissions. I actually managed to hook up
with a T-shirt merch company andmake a few sales that way too.
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Like I drew this pizza demon thing one time and that's made
me a few 100 bucks from people wanting that thing on AT shirt
too. But when I saw dark I really do
mean I started drawing some really messed up stuff.
The pizza demon thing was probably the lightest hearted
thing I put out there in that time, and even then people said
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it was super messed up. So as you might imagine, my new
followers included some pretty messed up people too.
I don't say that to be rude or mean either.
I say that because one of them in particular made my life
pretty difficult. So I get Adm off this guy who
says he's really loved my work and wanted a piece commissioned.
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Of course I say yes. So he follows up by asking what
my rates are. I had no idea what I was doing
in terms of dollar amounts at the time.
So when I quoted him like 80 bucks for a picture, he started
explaining that I needed to value my art more, how my work
was just as valuable as any other, and how I should be
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charging a whole bunch more for my art.
I had no idea what to up my amount to, so I kind of threw
out a few ballpark figures before the guy makes my jaw hit
the floor when he offers me a straight grand for an A3 sized
picture of whatever I wanted to draw or paint.
I couldn't believe it, $1000 fora picture, which was way more
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money than I've ever made in my whole life.
I got to work straight away and within a week I had poured my
heart and soul out onto paper, sent it off and got my money via
PayPal. Having that kind of affirmation
actually lifted my mood to the highest it had been in months.
I felt valued, like I could contribute something to the
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world. I was still dealing with my
demons, but when I learned I could actually profit from them,
that I could make use of something that plagued me, it
was a great feeling. I stayed in touch with the guy.
I had never been so grateful to anyone in my life until that
point, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't think I'd be able
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to get more money out of him if he wanted something else
commissioned. We used to talk back and forth
the fair bits and he shared thathe too was an artist.
I asked him what kind of artist he was and he told me that he
worked in some very unusual mediums.
Naturally, this only got me all the more curious as I got super
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dark with my art too, but he seemed pretty timid to talk
about it. I get that people can be shy
about showing off their artwork.I was pretty shy too at one
point, but this guy needed some serious coaxing in order to show
me anything. When he finally agreed to show
me anything, he told me he wouldonly do it via one of those self
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destructing messages that insta now does.
I didn't question anything, likeI knew he had send one of those
self destructing pictures maybe so he could pretend his
intellectual property or something.
I was a little confused as to why he didn't seem to trust me,
but hey, I pretty much adored this guy.
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So like I said, I didn't ask toomany questions.
I waited patiently for him to send me a picture of some of his
work. It took a minute or two, but he
sends me this 3 second self destructing picture that I was
honestly super excited to see bythat point.
But when I actually saw what it was, even if it was for a real
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brief time, I really, really wished I hadn't.
It looked like a goat's head in a jar of some kind, and the
fluid it was floating in looked sort of greenish black, and I'm
pretty sure it was formaldehyde.But it wasn't just that.
The guy had opted to make a few little additions to the goat's
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head, additions that I could notall catch because of how quick
the picture flashed before my eyes.
But they were horrible. It looked like he had carved the
lips away so that all the creatures teeth were showing and
on each one was carved or written a little symbol.
I am also pretty sure he had either chemically changed the
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creatures eyes or replaced them entirely with a kind of metal or
semi precious stone. They had this weird glint to
them. Like I said, there wasn't enough
time for me to drink the whole thing in, but there was plenty
more about the creature's head that had been messed with.
It wasn't the details which really got me, it was the idea
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that the corpse of an animal hadbeen so horribly disrespected
just so he could try to make some kind of art out of it.
I had questions, a lot of questions, but the first thing I
had to ask him was if it was really real or just some kind of
mock up. He told me it was very very
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real, that he had gotten a hold of a goat's head from a butcher,
preserved it, and then basicallysurgically edited the whole
thing over time, mostly using dental tools apparently for the
sake of precision. I personally thought the whole
thing was a disgrace. I'm vegan and I try to stay as
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ethical as possible, but at the same time I didn't want to go
imposing my own world view on the guy, especially since I
liked him so much. I also didn't want to offend
him. So I told him his work was
interesting and jaw-dropping, then asked if he worked with ink
and paper or any variation on that.
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He told me no, that he only worked with skulls, how they
were the capsule that held all the hopes and dreams and fears
and needs of the once living creature they belonged to, and
that working with them was kind of sacred.
I didn't really know what to sayto that.
He was right, in a way. He sounded absolutely crazy for
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saying it out loud, but I couldn't entirely refute his
point. It was like talking to some kind
of insane genius. Not long after, he asked me if I
thought he was cruel to work in such a medium.
I told him people might find hiswork provocative, maybe even
objectionable, but that it was fascinating nevertheless.
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Then he asked if I wanted to seemore.
Unlike the first time, there wasno doubt in me that I most
definitely did not want to see any more of this guy's work.
But like I said before, I also really didn't want to offend
him. So what could I do?
It took me much longer to reply to his message that time, but in
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the end I told him sure and he replied saying he would use
another self destructing messageagain.
I waited a minute or two for themessage to come through and when
it did I opened up the message thread and tapped the little
reveal message thing with some reluctance.
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The first time around for that goat's head thing, I at least
had some degree of curiosity, but that time I was just plain
horrified by what I saw. It was a monkey's head, or at
least it looked like it was somekind of primate.
And if I thought the goat's headhad received some disturbing
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additions, this latest 1 turned out to be 1000 times worse.
It was so bad I only caught the briefest glimpse of it and had
to just look away and lock my phone screen to get away from
it. I was a little more
confrontational with him after that, telling him that this one
was considerably more disturbingthan the first, and that I
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thought I was maybe too sensitive to see any more of his
work. He asks why, and I broke it down
to him that I had been vegan fora few years, that I was a real
animal lover, and although I could stomach the goat's head
thing, I really couldn't handle the monkey as it looked far too
human to me. That's when he replied to me.
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It's interesting you should say that and goes on to explain that
it's his dream to work with the human skull.
How he has put up a few ads on 4Chan and stuff asking if anyone
would be willing to donate theirhead should they die, but hadn't
gotten any replies when he told me he was getting really
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impatient and that he was worried he wouldn't get a chance
to realize his dream. The whole exchange had reached
peak creepiness by that point asyou can imagine, and it was fast
getting to the point when I was reaching for that block option
as I just didn't feel safe talking to him anymore.
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So by the time he actually messaged me another self
destructing message asking if I would be willing to help him get
a hold of a human head, I just noped out of there and stopped
replying to him. Like I am not sure he was
actually asking me to like kill someone with him or for him, but
just the idea of going about procuring an actual human head.
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No, but I couldn't bring myself to block him.
Like he was a potential source of sales after all and I could
make a lot of money from the guyif I kept him interested in my
work. I try not to think about it but
I get these really bad feelings from time to time.
Like what if he catches on to the fact that I just ignore him?
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And what if he decides that it'smy head that he would like to
use to complete his magnum opus?I try to be very careful with
what I post now, making sure it's only ever pictures of my
art and that the handful of landscape photos I had posted on
my profile have been deleted just so whoever it is can't get
an idea of where I live. Because if they do work out
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where I'm at, there's just no way I'd be able to go around
feeling safe. Not which someone whose ambition
it is to work with severed humanheads, knowing where I lay mine
at night. Back in 2003, I was a struggling
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college student who had grown upin a very expensive California
beach town. Rent was, even back then,
ridiculous. I have no idea how anybody can
actually go to College in this town anymore, but in order to
survive with both college loans and full time jobs, my
girlfriend and I ended up livingin quite a few interesting
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situations. One time we rented half of a
restroom in a trailer park, for example, because it was only
$600 a month 20 years ago. So when this apparent gem of a
situation came up on our radar, we were more than excited.
It was a small trailer that had been converted to a house at the
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back of one of the only farms within walking distance of the
downtown area as well as our school.
It's hard to describe this place, but I'll try.
There was a gorgeous porch that looked over, a yard that
contains the only functional bath on the property, a huge
aloe Vera plant, and beyond a Grove of trees was an entire
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organic garden, again within walking distance of the downtown
area and school. But it was still very secluded.
There was no phone in the house,for example, and back then we
could not get cell reception while in the house.
We would have to walk about 5 minutes down the long driveway.
But. That wasn't the main reason it
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was so affordable. The main reason was the
unfortunate fact that this property was not just very
isolated, but at the base of a well known forest area that was
frequented by the homeless and drug addicted community of the
area with no neighbors anywhere nearby.
But it was affordable and gorgeous.
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So me and my 19 year old girlfriend moved in.
Did I mention her nickname in high school was Pamela because
of her resemblance to the Baywatch star Pamela Anderson?
She would argue that she is actually way prettier because
she has Reese Witherspoon's face.
I would argue neither because this girlfriend eventually
became my ex-wife, but that is adifferent story.
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So we moved in. We were extremely excited to
live in such a unique location that was both remote yet
extremely close to everything and somehow affordable.
Who cared if it was a bit funky?We were very used to living in
funky houses in this area. Anything not funky would require
us selling our internal organs or something.
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Another bad joke, but rent in this house was and still is
extremely ridiculous. We had only spent a handful of
days at this rental before two of her friends came over to
visit and to go for a walk in the nearby forest area.
I should add they both also looked and dressed very similar
to my girlfriend. Looking back.
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The four of us wandering throughan area well known to be the
home to a large population of the county's homeless and
addicted population was probablya terrible idea, but it was a
gorgeous area and we had no way of knowing what would happen.
Later that night after dinner her friends left and we probably
watched a movie and then headed back to the back of the house to
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the bedroom area. Now I should describe that the
way this house was set up was that you walk into the house via
2 double doors that opened into the living room.
The bedroom area was just a halfsized wall that separated the
bed from the living room, and the kitchen and bathroom was off
to the side of this main area. Sometime in the middle of the
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night I awoke to the 2 double doors opening.
In a flash of an instant I knew there was somebody in our house.
I was in extremely good physicalshape and within an instant I
knew that the only weapon I had access to was my skateboard.
It was at the foot of my bed, something I can only describe as
teenage mutants. Ninja skills took over me and I
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knew that I could roll, grab theboard, and strike the metal
trucks over whoever was coming at us.
And so I jumped for my board andstarted screaming at the top of
my lungs. Who is this, Who are you, What
do you want? He probably thought I had some
actual weapon. I looked straight at this guy in
my living room. He was a very large male dressed
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in all black with a black wool cap.
He said there's been a terrible accident, I needed to use your
phone, he's dying outside. Then the guy ran out of the same
doors he came in. My girlfriend was obviously in
shock at this point. We sat there for what seemed
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like a very long time, but probably only a couple minutes.
Then we went outside with our cell phones to begin the long
walk down the dark driveway in order to get into cell reception
and call the police. I guess we didn't realize that
we could have probably dialed 911 and got reception via the
emergency service network, though I don't know if that was
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even a thing back in 2003. As we walked down the long
driveway and the only Rd. in thearea, we saw no accident.
There were no signs of anyone having been there at all at the
end of the driveway. Once we got cell reception we
called the police and we waited there for them to arrive.
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When they arrived they took a look around the property and
gave us the sad truth. There really wasn't anything
they could do. He probably ran off into the
woods. They apologized but said the
only thing they could do would to be come back if he returned.
Yeah, it's not the most comforting message.
So we drove to my parents house,told them the whole story, and
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slept in my childhood bedroom that night.
The following day we returned because all our stuff was there,
including the two cats. My girlfriend refused to stay
the night. But I decided to stay.
I ended up sitting in the livingroom chair with a baseball bat
in my hand the entire night. It was the last night that we
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even attempted to stay there. I'm not exactly sure how many
days later I saw the following story on the cover of our local
paper, but it was within the following week or two.
Apparently there was a serial predator in our town.
He frequented the exact area of our rental and the sketch was
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exactly how I would have described the individual that I
saw in my living room that night.
It started the first time I caught the bus to work.
I've been having some major car trouble and it looked like my
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car was going to be in the shop for up to two whole weeks.
That meant for 10 whole days I'dhave to take the bus to and from
work. It was an inconvenience, sure,
but I am not so stuck up or sheltered that I was dreading
taking public transport or anything.
My main concern was getting caught in a rainstorm or
something, but investing in a sturdy umbrella pretty much put
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those fears to bed. If I had only known that the
trouble with taking the bus wasn't the time spent or the
exposure to the crazy weather weget here in the Pacific
Northwest, it was the people I'dbe riding with, or more
specifically, one person in particular.
So another thing that sucked about having to take the bus was
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how much earlier I had to wake up.
OK, 30 minutes earlier isn't allthat bad, but it still sucked
seeing 6:30 instead of 7:00. AMI would have to be at the bus
stop by 7:15 in order to be at work by 8:00 AM sharp.
And given the area I was living in at the time, this usually
meant I had to stop to myself. But then either the 3rd or 4th
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day I arrived at the stop, I discovered I wasn't alone.
At first the guy just looked like a construction worker as he
was wearing heavy boots, jeans and one of those big warm
looking highlighter pen jackets with the reflective strips on
it. I didn't pay him any mind.
It was way too early to interactwith anyone so I just stood
(41:52):
there under the shelter just listening to my podcasts.
The next thing I know I feel someone tapping on my shoulder.
There was literally no one else around, so of course it was the
guy in the construction jacket. So then I take out my earbud,
turn to him and ask him if I canhelp him, to which the guy
repeats good morning. In this passive aggressive way.
(42:18):
I assumed he thought I was just ignoring him, so I apologized
and made it clear that I just couldn't hear him only right in
that moment. I swear I smelled one of the
single grossest smells ever. It was a mix of the guy's breath
and his general odor, which I guess I hadn't picked up on at
first because it was so cold outside.
(42:39):
If I had to guess, I would say the guy probably hadn't brushed
his teeth in a decade, and this was sharply evidenced by the
state of his mouth. Honestly, it looked like his
mouth had died and was just waiting for the rest of him to
catch up. It was truly awful and I found
myself severely pitying the people who had to work with him,
(42:59):
not to mention myself who had toshare a bus with the guy.
I tried sitting as far away as possible from him, but I swear
he literally followed me right to the back of the bus to sit in
the opposite seat. And yes, you guessed it, he
tried talking to me the entire time.
I know what some of you might bethinking at this point, Just
(43:20):
take an Uber or stagger your schedule to avoid the guy.
Well, I've already spent $45.00 in a month's Orca pass and I
wasn't exactly in the best of financial situations at the
time, so that was definitely guiding my poor decision making.
That and the guy wasn't at the stop every morning, not at first
(43:41):
anyway, so I figured I would just suck it up and keep using
my orca card. But then he was there another
morning, then another, always trying to talk to me until it
was on the verge of being harassment.
Then one day I get the call saying my car would be ready the
following afternoon, meaning I would only have to take the bus
(44:02):
one more time. I was elated, but naturally my
not so secret admirer was waiting for me that final
morning. I had already asked the guy to
leave me alone by that point, but he just wasn't taking the
hint. So to try and get back at him, I
decided to give his employer a call to see if they knew what he
(44:23):
was up to while in uniform. And when I saw in uniform he had
a company pass hanging around his neck and his jacket had the
company name on it too. So I looked them up, gave them a
call and told them one of their employees wouldn't leave me
alone. I know that these days that
probably seems like a super Karen thing to do, but to me it
(44:44):
was preferable to getting the cops involved and all I wanted
to do was just scare the guy, not like actually get him fired
or anything. But none of that mattered
anyway, because when I called the company and described the
guy the secretary hit me with, oh, we fired him months ago.
He didn't return his uniform, sowe took it out of his paycheck.
(45:06):
That's when it hit me that afterthat first chance meeting, the
first week I was riding the bus,he had only been there to harass
me. He sure wasn't catching the bus
to work, at least not to work for the company whose pass he
had. So the idea that I was totally
oblivious to the fact I was being stalked.
Legitimately one of the worst feelings of my life.
(45:29):
The only thing is, as bad as things seemed right then, they
were about to get so much worse.So I was back to using my car.
About two weeks had gone by and I was halfway to forgetting
about this guy and the whole thing.
Then this one evening I finish up late at work and get home at
like 6:45. It's dark, it's cold, I'm
(45:54):
starving, and all I want to do is just curl up on the couch and
go to sleep. My apartment at the time had two
locks, each requiring a different type of key.
You unlocked the first one so you could use the second to
actually open the door. But when I go to unlock the
first lock, it seems like my keyis jammed.
(46:16):
It wasn't, it's just that the lock hadn't been locked at all.
It wasn't out of the question that I had just forgotten to
lock it that morning, but it waslike a built in part of my
routine. It seemed really odd that I just
neglected to do it anyway. I shrug it off, too focused on
my planned pre dinner of coffee and molten hot pop tarts, then
(46:39):
walk into my apartment. That's when I smell it.
It was that same rotten mouth smell that had clung to this bus
guy like a dark cloud. It's weird how your brain just
files those kinds of smells awayand the moment you smell them
again, certain memories just come flooding back.
(47:01):
Well, it was exactly like that as I stood in the dark hallway
of my apartment, hand on my heart.
I think that's the most terrified I've ever been in my
life. Knowing that he was close
without being able to see him, Ijust bolted back out of my
apartment, back down into the parking lot of my building,
(47:21):
jumped into my car, and called the cops.
The whole time I'm locking up the 2nd floor windows of my
apartment just waiting to see him moving around my apartment
or something. But there was nothing.
It got to the point where I thought I might be going crazy,
that maybe it was backed up sewage or something and I just
had the dumbest panic attack in the history of panic attacks.
(47:45):
But. Still.
The cops show up and I let them into the building and then
direct them up to where my apartment was, telling them that
the door should still be open. By that point I figured they
would go in, find a dead rat in my toilet bowl or whatever it
was, and then just leave. What happened next will stay
(48:06):
with me for the rest of my life.So if you remember, I'm watching
my own apartment windows from mycar while the cops are on their
way to search my place. I think that the next thing I'm
going to see is the cops walkingaround my apartment, probably
complaining about this crazy person downstairs who is scared
of bad smells. Only the next person I see is
(48:29):
him, the man from the bus. He's not wearing his jacket or
anything, but his greasy Gray hair gave him away from a mile
off. He literally ducks behind my
apartment curtains, probably after the cops had announced
themselves, and he tries to stand as thin and still as
possible. I couldn't believe he had done
(48:51):
something so dumb. They were pretty thin curtains
too so it wasn't like he was fooling anyone.
But the moment one of the cops appeared in my window, I watched
the guy pull something out of his jacket.
I don't know if it was a knife or something else, but the cop
was basically wise to the whole thing and tasered him before he
(49:12):
could make a move. But the whole time I am watching
the whole thing unfold, feeling completely and utterly helpless,
all while screaming look out he's got something with no one
around to hear me. I stayed in my car for
everything that followed and I actually watched the cops
leading the guy out of my apartment building in handcuffs.
(49:35):
It was like an actual nightmare knowing that he had been waiting
in my apartment for me, all after I thought I was totally
rid of the guy. The only good news was that he
had violated probation and was headed back to prison to finish
the latter half of an 8 year sentence for the exact same
crime only committed years before.
(49:56):
It was a relief knowing there was no chance of running into
him for another four years, but it was still haunting to know
how close I had come to whateverit was he was planning for me.
In a way, I should be weirdly thankful that he didn't take
care of himself, because if I hadn't been able to smell him as
soon as I walked in, I might notbe telling this story right now.
(50:30):
In late 2008, I came one night to find my mom sitting in the
kitchen, all alone in floods of tears.
When I asked her what was wrong,her answer made my jaw drop.
My dad had left her. There was absolutely no
indication that anything was wrong with their marriage or
that he was remotely unhappy. But that afternoon while I was
(50:53):
out, he had apparently packed a few things into a suitcase, told
her he was leaving, and just disappeared.
I only mention this because it explains why my mom and little
sister just didn't want to be inthe house over Christmas and New
Year's. That kind of family oriented
time of year would have just been way too hard on them, so
(51:14):
they basically buggered off to Mexico for a month to just
decompress or whatever. The point being, I was all alone
for Christmas and New Year. Christmas Day sucked and I
realized they were right about not wanting to be alone in the
house at that time of year. So for New Year's Eve I decided
to throw a little get together for me and a load of my friends,
(51:36):
hoping that a little party mighttake away some of the sadness I
felt as a result of my dad leaving.
So on the night itself, it ends up being about 20 to 30 of us
getting together in my parents place, getting drunk, listening
to music, playing Xbox, just a big hangout among some of the
people I was closest to. It was a really good night to
(51:58):
start off with, and it really did help take my mind off things
for a little while. We did the whole New Year's
countdown thing, set off fireworks, generally having a
brilliant little night together.But the drunker we all got, the
messier things became, until it was just a medley of people
throwing up or arguing among themselves.
(52:20):
Two of the people who ended up fighting were my friend Chris
and his girlfriend at the time, a girl named Katie.
From what I could gather, Katie thought Chris had been flirting
with a mutual friend of ours andhad taken issue with it.
Chris was insisting that they were just being friendly and it
was nothing to worry about, but Katie was adamant that something
(52:40):
was going on, that he was cheating on her, blah blah blah.
You know how it is, teenage drama.
Now I know Chris really did loveher, so it wasn't like a stand
up argument. It was more like him begging for
her to see reason and to not gettoo mad and dump him over some
perceived bit of flirting. He swore he would never do
(53:00):
anything like that, that she wasthe only girl for him, how much
he loved her, all this romantic theatrical stuff that you might
expect from two young lovers. It wasn't really any of my
business though, so me and the other party guests just sort of
left them to it while we got on with trying to have fun.
Then a little while later, I find Chris sitting in the back
(53:23):
garden swigging off a bottle of raw vodka on his own.
I go up to him and ask if he's OK, only to find that he's
crying completely drunk, saying that Katie dumped him and left.
I tried to be a good friend and console him as best I could,
saying that she was probably just drunk and over emotional
(53:44):
and saying there was a good chance they'd get back together
over the next couple of days when she realized this was a
mistake. But he was insistent that she
was gone for good and that they wouldn't be getting back
together. All I could do was get him on
his feet and hug it out with him.
The poor guy really was in one bad state.
I managed to convince him to hand over the vodka, drink some
(54:07):
water and then get some sleep inmy bed so he could maybe sober
up a little bit before heading home.
He agrees and I took him in and then leave him to get some rest.
About an hour or so later the party is winding down and the
remainder of us are just chilling in the TV room when
someone goes off to use the toilet.
(54:28):
They return like seconds later saying someone's in the
bathroom, throwing up and then asking if they can go pee in the
back garden. Of course I tell them no, I
didn't want them peeing all overmy mom's flower beds and that I
will run upstairs to see if I can get whoever it is out of the
bathroom. So I get to the bathroom
upstairs and I can hear someone gagging and retching on the
(54:50):
other side of the locked door. My friend Julia joins me a
little concerned and starts trying to help me talk to the
person who's locked themselves in the bathroom.
It's sometime then that I noticed that 2.
Doors are open. The first being my bedroom, the
second being a little cupboard on the 1st floor landing.
I check my bedroom and see that the bed is empty, so it's
(55:14):
obviously Chris that's in the bathroom puking his guts out
because of all the vodka he drank.
I shut the door to the bedroom, then go to close the door to the
other room, which happens to be a little cupboard that my mom
kept cleaning supplies in. My first thought was that Chris
had opened up that door thinkingit was the bathroom in his
drunken haze, then ran to the right bathroom in his
(55:36):
desperation to puke. But I noticed something that at
first I didn't really understandthe significance of.
The cleaning supplies that my mom usually kept all neat and a
little plastic box were spilled all over the floor.
Not like open fluid spilling out.
They were just all out-of-the-box, like someone had
(55:58):
been rooting through them. As I'm wondering why someone
would do something like that, Julia calls out that the person
who had locked themselves in thebathroom, presumably Chris, had
gone quiet all of a sudden and that they weren't responding.
That's when I put two and two together.
Violent vomiting, cleaning supplies missing, deep drunken
(56:22):
depression. Chris was trying to end it all.
I flew to the bathroom door and started to kick the doors off
the hinges. Julius screams in shock at what
I'm doing and the people from the living room start piling out
towards the bottom of the stairsand utter confusion.
I have been really protective ofthe house all night, not wanting
(56:43):
people to smoke inside, not wanting people peeing anywhere
they shouldn't, trying to stop spillages and all that.
Then there I was, booting down my own bathroom door.
It was way too heavy to actuallykick off the hinges, but I did
manage to kick a. Hole in the wood paneling.
And that's when I got a look inside.
(57:03):
Chris was laying there, a bottleof bleach next to him, and there
was a pink fluid all over the floor and his clothes.
It was pink because he had drankthe bleach and it had corroded
or burned the inside of him so much that he had vomited up
blood. We were distraught, terrified,
(57:24):
almost sure he was gone, but we were extremely quick to call an
ambulance. Chris had his stomach pumped and
he survived, but it took a long time for him to be back to
normal because he puked, the fumes had damaged his lungs or
something, so we had trouble eating, drinking and breathing
(57:45):
for at least a month after that.12 years and I have never
forgotten that and I'm sure neither has he because as far as
I know, Chris never drink vodka again.
Because if the smell of it makesme think of that night, who
knows what horrible memories it brings back for him.
(01:10:06):
Yeah.
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