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- [00:01]
Jordan
Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. Before we start this next episode, I just wanted to remind you that you can now become a subscriber to this podcast for the low monthly cost of $2.99. That will get you access to all the episodes with absolutely no ads, no more interruptions. It's a really great option if you use this podcast to relax or sleep. Check out the link in the description to sign up now. I'm kind of weird about social media these days. I used to be really into 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 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 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 same name as me or something. But then his response pops up and all it says said was I'm going to kill you with the cowboy emoji on the end. I stare at the message for a few seconds, not scared at all.
- [01:58]
Alex
Just like what the heck.
- [02:00]
Jordan
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. 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 was just having fun playing a prank on a stranger by trying to scare them. He seemed legit crazy and seriously angry. That nutcase could have been studying every one of my statuses, picture posts and check ins for weeks before he decided to message me. He could have screenshotted all my stuff too, so it didn't matter if I had blocked him or not. He had my name, my school where I hung out, the names of my friends and family, everything. I thought maybe I was just making a big deal out of nothing at the time, but later on I could barely sleep thinking about it. How horrifying a thought it was that he could have been driving across the country as I lay there in bed, having just picked a person at random to kill and being crazy or angry enough to actually do it. You can call me paranoid all you like, 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 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 first place. I knew the Internet was full of crazies, I just didn't expect it to reach out and touch me in the 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 sure he wasn't about to do anything too nuts. There were no rants, no threatening statuses, just a long series of photo posts that made me think he had taken up photography or something. I am scrolling through them when I start to get this familiar feeling from looking at that scenery. I couldn't be 100% sure, but I'd swear 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 anything, nothing to actually confirm he had actually driven across the country, but if he wasn't taking pictures in a 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 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, 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 street in 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 of weird 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.
- [06:21]
Alex
I feel like every neighborhood has a family of absolute psychos. Almost everyone I have spoken to about this sort of thing seems to remember one group of absolute wrongins, be it from their childhoods or from their current lives. And if there's one thing I have learned from their collective memories and stories, it's that whenever there's a family like that around, it's only a matter of time before something comes to a head or something finally boils over. And that's exactly what happened with the psycho family that lived in the neighborhood when I was a kid. The only thing is, most of the people I've spoken to said the breaking point came came with some kind of family argument or confrontation with neighbors spilled out into the streets outside. Police were called, arrests were made. Usually a For Sale sign or two went up in the aftermath. But I almost wish my story was that simple or ended that relatively amicably. Because what happened in my case is something that haunts me to this day, with possibilities and ramifications that I find genuinely terrifying. I grew up in 70s Britain in a pretty small town in a place called Wiltshire. We were quite a small community. Everyone knew everyone and consequently everyone knew everyone's business too. There was this one boy called Louis and he was the only child of the Prestige family, a very peculiar family name if ever there was one. But that's not the reason I'll never forget it. The Prestige family were peculiar by name and peculiar by nature too. But then peculiar seems like entirely the wrong word to use. Peculiar makes you think of something quaint and adorably abnormal. But there was nothing adorable about the Prestige family.
- [08:20]
Jordan
They were just weird. Scarily weird too.
- [08:25]
Alex
I think one of my earliest memories of Lewis is during an assembly in primary school. It's about 8 in the morning. All the kids in the school are sat in the main hall and it's deathly quiet, apart from our headmaster making announcements and the soft sobs of young Lewis. He did not stop crying for the entire assembly and it didn't just remain this quiet weeping either. His tears built in pitch and intensity until he was wailing so loud that a teacher had to remove him altogether. I remember feeling really sorry for him. But as time went on, it was just something you sort of got used to. They were the weird family in our town, and since they didn't get into any serious confrontations outside of their own family units, people just sort of let them be. The next serious incident I remember was years later in secondary school, when the schoolyard suddenly became abuzz with people gossiping over something. People were crowding around the school gates looking at something, some of them laughing, some of them just gawping at the.
- [09:35]
Jordan
Sight of a lad dressed entirely in.
- [09:37]
Alex
His school uniform, except for one crucial.
- [09:40]
Jordan
Piece of it, his trousers.
- [09:43]
Alex
It turned out to be Louis.
- [09:46]
Jordan
From what I heard, he had been.
- [09:47]
Alex
Basically pushed out of the car by.
- [09:49]
Jordan
We assumed to be his dad. And rumors went flying around that Lewis hadn't been quite ready to leave the house when his dad was ready to take him to school that morning, Instead of waiting for him to put on his school trousers, Lewis's dad just drug him to the car and took him to school with no pants on, basically to teach him a lesson to be ready on time. I'm not entirely sure how true the reasoning was, but I do know that I witnessed Lewis having to walk into school in nothing but his school jumper, his shoes and his underwear with my own eyes.
- [10:24]
Alex
I am also not entirely sure how.
- [10:26]
Jordan
Lewis was still allowed to live with his evidently abusive parents either. Again, rumors went around that they had had a visit from social workers, but this I believe, because for a while there seemed to be little in the way of serious incidents coming out of the Prestige household.
- [10:45]
Alex
Obviously, the visit from child welfare services.
- [10:48]
Jordan
Had been enough to shake them up into changing their ways, or so it seemed. Now, all this came to a head when I was 15, maybe just over a year before we all left secondary school and bid farewell to compulsory education for good. One morning, Lewis turns up to school in his own clothes, a pair of pumps and a colorful jumper. He gets pulled aside by a teacher who I think at that point was well aware of the situation at home. And Lewis says something quietly to him before the pair of them disappear into the building which housed the main office. The next thing I know, apart from the shoes he was wearing, Lewis has an entirely new school uniform, new blazer, new tie, new jumper, everything. And from that day on, he seemed like an almost entirely new person too. He didn't get dropped off at school by his parents anymore. He seemed more confident and open, more talkative with other kids. He even Started playing football with us at lunchtime, something he had never done before. We actually got quite pally with him for a while and on more than one occasion he invited us back home with him to play. We politely declined, of course, thinking of some made up excuse to not have to go around the Prestige house. But still things seemed to be making a vast improvement. Emphasis on seemed though, because after a long holiday weekend, Lewis failed to turn up to school at all. This didn't have anyone talking about it too much. Kids were routinely off on the odd one or two days with illness. But Lewis went an entire week without showing up for school. And that really did get us talking. I don't know if it was because I was so young and naive or just didn't connect the dots, but I didn't think there was any link between all the police activity around our town and Louis not being in school. But one Saturday afternoon my mom and dad called me into the kitchen and asked me if I had been around Lewis's house at all recently. I told them no, but that I had been invited at one point. And when I said that, my mom gave my dad this looks that seemed to be a weird mix of horror and relief. Like I had dodged a bullet or something. Not long after that, I got word through some friends of mine that there had been a brutal double murder in town. That someone had been arrested for it too. Our little town barely had any crime at all. I think the most serious thing to happen for decades at that point was a car theft. So the idea that there had been a single murder, let alone two, just set the town alight. And there was much speculation over who the killer was and how the killings had come about. Looking back on it now, I can see why the adults might want to shield us from the whole thing. And it was only a few years later than I realized why the police had made such an effort to keep the identity of the murderer a secret. It's like that when a murderer is under the age of 18, when they are a minor, their identity is kept secret for as long as possible. But that's only really possible with the media. Because it did not take long before the residents of our town figured out what happened. And it was bound to trickle down to us sooner or later. The reason Louis parents didn't seem to be around anymore, the reason he was so happy and confident and carefree, was because Louis had killed them. He had finally rid himself of the people that had made his life hell. I get that. But the fact that a kid killing his own parents could make him so happy. That is something I have never been able to truly understand. The horrible thing was looking back on the event years later and sort of piecing together the puzzle. For example, the day he came to school in his own clothes was probably the morning he had killed them. And since he had gotten blood on his school uniform, he had to dispose of it. All the times he had invited us back to his place to watch TV or play football, his parents would have been dead in the upstairs bedroom, assuming that's where he had killed them. If we had gone around, maybe we would have been able to smell them or see flies buzzing around the bedroom door or something. We were all just one little spur of the moment. Yes, from finding out, finding their bodies. Maybe. If that was the case, then Lewis would have killed us too.
- [16:02]
Alex
The worst thing I ever bought off the market Hands down. This coffee machine I bought using Facebook Marketplace. The thing was an absolute steal, so I expected it to have a few flaws or whatever, but man, it was barely functioning by the time UPS delivered it to my house. Yet still, it was made in Italy and it would do for making my coffee for the time being. But over the next couple of days I started to hear something weird going on in the machine. A kind of low ticking noise that I had never heard any other coffee machine make before. I could have just called a repair.
- [16:42]
Jordan
Guy, but I figured I would just.
- [16:44]
Alex
Buy a new one come next paycheck. So I just ignored the problem and figured I would throw the coffee machine in the trash once the new one arrived. Then one morning I am making coffee when I could have sworn I saw something moving on the top of the machine. I just put it down to a sleepy brain and drank my coffee. But the thought kept bothering me as I went about my morning, so I finally decided to actually take a look inside the machine. It took me a little while, but I finally got the outer casing off. Yet when I pulled it off to reveal the machine's guts, I screamed. I swear I could have cracked the kitchen windows. Inside the coffee machine was the biggest nest of cockroaches I have ever seen in my life. To this day, the little buggers absolutely disgust me. And seeing so many of them in something I had been using to drink my coffee. The thought makes me want to throw up. Even after all this time. As soon as I screamed and dropped the lid onto the kitchen counter next to the machine, they all got spooked and scattered in every direction. Just a storm of skittering legs that I swear had Me literally traumatized for.
- [18:02]
Jordan
Like a week afterward I just bailed.
- [18:06]
Alex
My husband had to deal with pretty much everything, but you can bet that I was infinitely grateful for it. Getting roach eggs in the house meant.
- [18:15]
Jordan
That we needed to have the whole.
- [18:16]
Alex
Kitchen fumigated, but it was a small.
- [18:18]
Jordan
Price to pay to get those evil.
- [18:20]
Alex
Little things out of my kitchen. Still, with the few hundred that we had to spend on exterminators, turned out to be the most expensive coffee machine I ever bought. Don't try to cheap it out people, because sometimes you get what you pay for with a nest of cockroaches thrown in as a creepy crawly freebie. To understand my story, you sort of have to know a tiny bit about trespassing laws in our country in that we don't have any. So long as you're respectful and non destructive, you can walk over any hills you like and in my case camp on any beach of your choosing, so long as once you leave the area is how you found it. I used to love camping When I was little our family would go multiple times a year with a large group of my parents, friends and their kids. On average There were maybe 10 of us at a time, which was a bit of a logistical challenge since we always headed out to this one really remote beach on the coast. Actually, we weren't the only ones. There's always yachts bobbing just off the short with people in them and other campers lining up and down the beach. Most of them also had children or teenagers, so it wasn't a wild party scene. It was very much an informal family holiday spot. There was even a small building with toilets and showers installed nearby, even though this was in the middle of nowhere. I guess the local council must have figured it out and got sick of people peeing behind bushes. We took a trip up in spring 2011. I am really bad with time, but I know this because I got my dog in winter 2010 after picking her out that November from the shelter as a birthday gift from me to me as I paid her adoption fee. Let me tell you a little bit about my Parmesan. Parmesan came to me as a six month old puppy who had been rescued from a dog fighting situation. We are not entirely sure what breed she is exactly, but my best guess is a Lercher staffy mix. She is a wonderfully well tempered dog with people and most dogs, but you absolutely do not threaten her.
- [20:53]
Jordan
She'll have you.
- [20:54]
Alex
So by the time of this camping trip I had had Parmesan for a few Months. She had never come camping with us before, but as far as my family are concerned, dogs go on camping trips. So when we all piled into the car, she came too. Unusually though, none of the family friends could make it. So it was only me, my sister, my dad and my mom. I wasn't that attached to the other kids. I would rather play with my dog and I'd still have my sister. The drive took about six hours and.
- [21:28]
Jordan
Because we had left a bit later.
- [21:30]
Alex
Although I don't remember why we had left later than normal, we arrived at sunset. Not a good time to be building a tent.
- [21:38]
Jordan
But we had expected to arrive to.
- [21:40]
Alex
Other campers already set up and the beach illuminated by campfires. The beach was empty. In spite of this, my parents started taking stuff out and trying to build the tent. They asked us to fetch some of the lighter bags from the boot of the car. While they sat pointing a flashlight at the sand to see properly. I rolled down the window of the car for Parmesan before getting out. It was pretty hot for that time of year and I wanted her to have some fresh air. Always gotta be looking out for my furry little homie. As we're fumbling about in the dark on a beach in the middle of nowhere.
- [22:19]
Jordan
It's pretty spooky.
- [22:21]
Alex
The only road that led to this beach was circular and had a bridge over the water, meaning you could basically circle around the beach like a big.
- [22:29]
Jordan
O shaped if you felt like it.
- [22:32]
Alex
I wasn't really paying any attention to the road. I was complaining that I was tired as kids are. After maybe 15 minutes of my dad trying to nail the tent into the sand, my mom is asking him had he seen that car drive around. It's been a few times now. My dad kind of shrugged her off.
- [22:52]
Jordan
He's sort of like that.
- [22:54]
Alex
I don't know if he said anything back to her, but after a few more minutes, a car pulled up next to ours on the road and someone got out. It was maybe 15 or 20ft from the cars to where we were and the light was pretty low except for the torches. We weren't expecting to see anyone else out here at this point. And I think my mom said it must be the security. I don't know why a random beach would have security. I think what she meant was the wildlife Trust or something, as they do occasionally come down to do their nosy checkups. The guy was walking pretty unevenly. He must have been intoxicated because he had that stagger to him. There was absolutely no way this guy was sober Cool, a junkie. Not an unusual find, but it's rare to see them in the wild. As he walked into flashlight range, we realized he was carrying a large knife, maybe 15 inches. Although I was small at the time, so maybe my sense of scale was off. I don't like my dad, but credit to him. Once he saw this, he got up immediately holding onto the camping mallet and put us all behind him. The man began to shout wildly at us that we cannot camp here and he was just letting us know. My dad tried to initially be a bit low key with the guy and told him that was fine, we would leave, but this didn't work. He kept coming closer to us. So my dad started shouting and the man shouted back. My sister and I were crying. I remember shaking. I was utterly terrified, as I'm sure anyone would be in that situation. It really did seem like this guy and my dad were going to fight. And I'm going to be honest, I didn't fancy my dad's chances. While it's grim to consider, I am absolutely convinced this man would have killed my dad and possibly us as well. Once he was done, as I don't think my mother would have had the common sense to run with us. I love her, but she has always put my dad and her relationship with him above us. This isn't how it went down. A bolt from the black, like a wolf descending on its prey, took us all by surprise. Most of all the man with the knife. In that moment, Parmesan was the apex predator. Large canines represent in nature. She got him good by the arm and clamped down hard, ripping his jacket and shredding the skin underneath. He dropped the knife as it was in the arm. She bit, he kicked her, he punched her and eventually got her off. He grabbed the knife from the sand and ran back to his car and drove off. Parmesan did not follow. She stayed with us, her mouth covered in blood.
- [26:00]
Jordan
As quickly as we could, we all.
- [26:02]
Alex
Gathered our things and all got back in the car, all pretty shook up by the incident. I looked Parmesan over. She was okay, but the car's window was much more open than I had left it. We think what happened was when the shouting started, she must have put her paws up on the gap I had left for her. As it was an old car and had those rolly down windows and not electric. We think she must have been able to hit it with her paws to force it down enough to squeeze out. This is not the end of my story. We were all pretty scared and since we had the dog with us, we couldn't book a hotel for the night. My parents decided to just drive home.
- [26:43]
Jordan
So we could all feel safe.
- [26:45]
Alex
But first we had to drive into the nearest town for gas as we were kind of low. I spent that time trying to clean up Parmesan. I had always loved dogs. But what she had just done blew my mind. As we drove into town, we came across a gas station, but it looked closed. My dad drove up closer to get a better look and stuck his head out the window to get a better look at the sign. My mom asked him what on earth he was doing and he told her he was trying to see when it opens. My heart sank. Parked in the corner behind a van, so we hadn't seen him at first, was the man with the knife. He was sitting on the back of his car using some tissue paper to clean up his arm. It looked pretty bad. Without stopping to refuel or look anywhere else in town, my dad drove us.
- [27:38]
Jordan
Right out of there.
- [27:40]
Alex
He decided to go to the next town over. But the next town over was 60 miles away. He didn't have that much gas. We realized as we began driving we were going to run out. That's fine, dad said. We had aaa. They would come tow us home or at least get us somewhere. Acceptable for the night. Better than staying in the last town. After driving for maybe five minutes, lights flash us from behind another car. The same car the man had been driving. It was him following us. The next half hour was one of the worst half hours of my life. I had a complete and utter breakdown. As did everyone really. I could tell my parents were trying to keep it under wraps so it wouldn't upset us. But we were not that little.
- [28:34]
Jordan
We were both double digits.
- [28:36]
Alex
We knew how dangerous this situation was. My dad turned off the radio and the man followed us for 55 miles before he peeled away onto another road. Our fuel meter was on the big red E. For the last 10 miles we were driving on fumes. I don't really believe in God, but if he does exist, this seemed like one of his miracles. Once we got there, we we drove into a gas station and refilled to a full tank before driving the rest of the way home. My sister and I slept in the car after that I only woke up once. We made it all the way home, just grateful that nothing worse had happened. After that, after getting some sleep, my mom phoned the non emergency line for the police and reported what happened. They never got back to us after that. But apparently the the woman she spoke to said they may wish to in the future as he matched the description given of a suspect wanted in relation to a murder charge. No idea if he actually was that guy or just a random psycho. As I said, they never got back to us.
- [29:49]
Jordan
So what's the takeaway?
- [29:51]
Alex
Other than crazy man on the beach? Well, for me it's that I love Parmesan.
- [29:59]
Jordan
I love dogs.
- [30:01]
Alex
She's still with us now, old as the hills and twice as grizzled as one of my mom's friends likes to joke. I don't know why she did what she did that day. I could not tell you what her thought process was. What I do know is that this poor dog was born into an environment where they abused and neglected her, only to be rescued and taken to a shelter where her mother and siblings all found homes before her.
- [30:28]
Jordan
Despite how badly people had treated her.
- [30:31]
Alex
When I took her home, she forgave but not forgot. I think the saying is I never trust a person who doesn't like a.
- [30:40]
Jordan
Dog, but I always trust a dog.
- [30:43]
Alex
When they don't like a person. They have a very good understanding of human body language and I think she must have understood how dangerous this guy was. If you're able to please adopt, you might find yourself in a situation like mine someday. Hopefully not. I promise you, if you're willing to save a four legged friend's life, they will pay you back tenfold if they're able to without a thought for their own safety. I paid $78 for Parmesan's adoption fee, which is a lot when you're a kid, but it chills me to my bones knowing if I hadn't been so insistent on getting a dog, I might be dead.
- [31:41]
Jordan
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 Scoutmasters, nothing remotely weird or unsavory ever happened with any 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 into the Smokies. For those unfamiliar with the term, the Smokies or Great Smoky Mountains 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 mountaintops, 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 scoutmasters decides to tell us a creepy campfire tale. He starts telling us the story of Udlunta, which is the Cherokee name meaning spear finger 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, 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 apparently clutched the stony skin on her right hand tightly because her heart was actually hidden in her palm there. Our scoutmaster goes on to tell us how, because Spearfinger's skin was 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 favorite song, uela na siku, or liver I eat it. Spearfinger was also said to be able to take on the appearance of her child victim's 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 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 our scoutmaster had finished telling us the story, we were all completely and utterly terrified and only managed to stop freaking out once he had gotten out his old guitar and sang us a few songs. But that night, while back in my tent with a buddy of mine, I found myself totally unable to sleep. I kept imagining that if I did, Spearfinger would come rip my tent open and stab me in the heart with her long, sharp, stony finger, all before tearing out 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 I was totally unable to rouse him. I carried on staring at the side of the tent, wondering where the bright 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 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 voice whisper. Uela na si ku. I screamed, ripping my way through the front flap of my tent and tearing around the campsite, screaming, it's Spear Finger. It's Spearfinger. She's come to eat my liver. Please don't let her eat my liver. I expected the rest of the camp to start screaming too, to burst out of their tents in terror, or to 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 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 a long, slender twig tied to one finger. I must have been boiling with rage at the time, but Devin just thought that it was extra funny, waving the long wooden twig at me and making the same hissing sound again before bursting into laughter. I swear that was probably the most scared and embarrassed I ever was during my entire childhood. And all because that little punk Devin decided to pull a prank on me. Ever since then, I have never been able to hear the words Smoky Mountains without remembering that Boy Scout camping trick, even if it does make me kinda 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 slow 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, skinned lips drenched with dark, fresh blood. Okay, so I will preface this by saying that these events happened exactly 20 years ago, pretty much to the day. I will also mention that this could come across as anticlimactic as it does not end with a dead body or an imprisonment. It is however, true and accurate as I remember it. So it was not long before my ninth birthday. I was a shy, introverted kid who only had a few friends, therefore I was eager to impress them. A few friends are better than none, right? This story involves my closet friend at the time whose name was Damon. Being so shy, I would never turn up to any parties or social events. I just couldn't face it. But it worried me that this would eventually cause me to lose my few friendships. You can imagine my horror when my dad picked me up from the school gates and Damon's mother picked him up at the same time and asked me on the spot. Damon and his brother are going to caravan park this weekend. Would you like to come? For those unfamiliar, a caravan holiday in the UK is just a cheap couple of days in a huge field full of trailers with tacky nearby entertainment and amusements on the spot. And terrified of being rude, I accepted and come Friday evening I was sat in the car in the back in between Damon and his little brother Lucas, who was two years younger than us. It was only a short car ride, but all this felt so uncomfortable and unfamiliar to me, floating through the dark back streets I hadn't seen before as wind and rain lashed the windshield while the wipers did all they could to keep up. When we arrived it was already late. We watched some stuff on TV and went to bed. I had one of those brick Nokia phones that you could play Snake on that I promised I would text my dad on to let him know I was, which I did. The strong gale swayed the caravan that night as I fell into an uneasy sleep. The next day we hit the shops to spend our pocket money and then in the afternoon we went to the quote unquote entertainment with Damon and Lucas's parents.
- [41:21]
Alex
It was just awful.
- [41:22]
Jordan
Live acting with clowns and such things. I may have been eight but I wasn't a baby. So then later on at around 8pm the adult entertainment comes on a comedian of some sort and me and Damon and Lucas are absolutely bored stiff. Me and Damon decided we just want to head back to the caravan, watch some south park and look at our cool new stuff we bought. Earlier that day I saw Damon ask his parents, who are happily drinking away and chatting to other parents and as a child it seemed swapping life stories. Eventually they gave Damon the keys to the caravan, which was about a five minute walk away. But instructed us to take Lucas too. We took the keys and headed out. We walked for about two minutes in the cold and dark, mindlessly chatting about our eyeball rings we bought earlier at the gift shop and saying how they automatically give you a super hard punch. Just stupid 8 year old chat. When we notice that in between two caravans there is a white van. I know, cliche. It had its back doors wide open. I thought nothing of it. Maybe someone had just got here and was unloading his stuff. Wrong. As we walk by the van, a man emerges from the blackness and approaches us very slowly. This was not a normal walk. I remember it being like how you would walk in the dark, being very careful not to step on anything. Strangely, we still weren't too worried until he actually spoke. He stared at us for a few seconds but did not smile or physically acknowledge us. Then he blurts out an enthusiastic alright boys, can one of you strong lads help me shift this heavy box into the back of my van? I hurt my back now back then, stranger danger wasn't as commonly spoke about as it is today. But I absolutely knew this was not right. His walk, his voice, his eyes. I had a million thoughts in about 10 seconds. What can I do? Call my dad. He's miles away from here. Scream for help. There's no one in these caravans. They are all at the entertainment Fight this guy. Yeah, right. I thought things couldn't get any worse. I was wrong. As me and Damon stood frozen, his younger brother naively says, yeah, okay, I'm strong. And starts marching towards this guy's van, which was only about 15ft away from us. I will never forget his horrid face when he saw Lukas walking towards him. It was like a spider that had caught a fly. I heard Damon let out a broken screech. Lukas, no. It is at this point I am ashamed to say that I continued walking the way we were originally meant to go. And fast. I couldn't watch this. What if he murdered Lucas in front of me? What if he came and grabbed me? The only thing I could think to do was walk quickly and try to find someone, anyone, who could help. About 10 seconds later, Damon and Lukas came sprinting up behind me and shouted run. And ran we did. Oh how we ran. I don't know how Damon got Lucas away. I don't know if the man chased us. I don't know what he wanted with us. But I have a few ideas. As we approach the caravan, I begin to feel semi rational again. As we catch our breath, I can remember saying to Damon, why couldn't we just run back to the entertainment area to get your parents? And Damon replied what? And run towards him? It was a good point, but I was too busy trying not to cry to say anything else as Damon fumbled around with the keys at the caravan door. For some reason or another, the keys just did not work. We tried all of them, turning them in all directions, pushing and pulling and hoping and praying. I can clearly picture in my mind being stood there on that dark night with Damon and Lukas, the key halfway hanging out of the lock, the fear and the confusion. But most of all I remember Damon looking straight at me after turning bright red with puffy eyes and bursting into tears because he had realized what I would then realize seconds later. We had to go back. Strangely, Lucas was the only one not crying. I think he was too young to understand the danger that we were truly in. After deciding that we were in just as much danger standing there as we would be going back, we headed back towards Damon's parents. I have never ran that fast in the 20 years since then and I dare say that Damon would say the same. About halfway there we hear the most disgusting primal wail you can imagine. It was about five seconds long and it sounded like a mixture of anger and pain. We never stopped, just made brief eye contact and kept going. Had the man killed someone or was this man screaming because he knew that we had gotten away? We would never know. We burst through the entertainment area doors and sprinted towards Damon's parents who were blissfully unaware of the horrors that had just occurred. I remember his mother staring at us wide eyed with our mouth open and we burst into floods of tears, half because of the trauma and half because of the relief. I felt so warm and safe. We tried to explain in babble and gibberish but I am not sure we got our point across. The next morning I asked to go straight home. I don't truly understand what happened that night. I don't know who he was, what he wanted or why he screamed. But like I said, I have my theories but no one was killed that night in the caravan park and nobody else was around to scream. I am from Aotearoa, New Zealand. We do have the odd missing person or scary case but it's otherwise safe here and not much happens. I mean that in a way that as a 19 year old girl I feel comfortable to walk the streets at night or go on hikes alone because it is pretty safe and everyone looks out for one another. Generally this happened in the summer of 2019, my boyfriend and I were headed out on a picnic date to a spot we had visited before plenty of times, Karakariki Track. It's at the end of a very long windy rural farm road off the state highway. So you drive for like 15 to 20 minutes from the main road down a long farm stretch and at the end is a large cul de sac and the surrounding massive farm. The owners of the farm have left the land kind of open to the public as a reserve because there are native trees and other things. Because about a 15 minute walk from the cul de sac car park there is a small waterfall you can swim in. The track is really popular as it's one of the closest swimming spots to the nearest city, Hamilton. And it's really scenic. You cross foot bridges, pass by creek beds, etc. The farmers still go through every now and then to do their farm work and there are fenced off areas that the public can't enter as they still actively work the land. This particular day my boyfriend and I were super happy because it was empty in the parking lot and it was a super hot summer, summer's day, so that was really rare. The farmer was crossing the cows through the gate on a quad as we arrived and he smiled and waved at us. He's an older man and we had spoke before as we were regular visitors. So we set off towards the waterfall. We crossed one foot bridge and passed through a big paddock of cows. The track is quite narrow and the creek is right off the edges so you have to be careful. We saw the waterfall, decided against swimming as we had no towels and headed back toward the car park. Now on our way back we decided to go down a little bit of a steep gravel off ramp on the track that led to a more private tree covered area right by the creek. Here is where it starts. We were kissing and whatnot. I was laying on my stomach reading a book and my boyfriend was sitting up playing on his phone and he was rubbing my back and playing with my hair. We were there for about 10 minutes before I turned and glanced up the gravel path and way up even further on a hill through one of the farmers gates, I saw a big man on a quad bike who I did not recognize as one of the farmers as there is only the one old couple who work the land. He was just sitting there staring at my boyfriend and I and I don't even want to think about how long he had been there before I noticed. I told my boyfriend and as soon as the guy saw we were both looking at him, he opened the gate and started heading down. Now both of us immediately got up to leave as we did not want to have a conversation with a farmer about us getting freaky on his land, which is what we both assumed would happen, but it was so much worse. This guy came down the gravel track and ran his quad right through the creek. He left it there running in the water and got off. He was talking to himself, saying things along the lines of, ah, I messed up the engine over and over before he even got near us. My boyfriend and I were gathering our things to leave at this point and he starts to head towards us. He didn't even make small talk, which was really strange because he went straight into saying, have you guys seen any fish? I'm looking for some fish to kill. My boyfriend tells the guy that there's no fish in the creek as it's fresh water and he's probably best off to catch some eel and this sends him into a fit and he starts saying, I don't want no eel, I want to kill some. Wish I had made it a point to not look at the guy in the eyes as I didn't want to draw the conversation towards myself because I was already extremely freaked out and I didn't want him to notice that my boyfriend is much more of the calm and strong one when it comes to stuff like this. But for a second I did look at the guy and I thought he looked like his face was slightly deformed, possible Bell's palsy. As I work in aged care and I have seen it a bit and it looked similar. I bent down to tie my shoe and when I was standing back up, that's when I saw the weapon on the man's waist. Listen to me close now. This is my first and last time in my entire life I have ever seen a real life weapon. It is incredibly hard to get one in New Zealand, especially after the regulations following the incident in Christchurch. And not only that, he had one weapon on his belt and was waving another one around in his hand while he talked to my boyfriend about wanting to kill some fish. He was aiming it down to the creek every now and again and then swinging it around on his finger. My boyfriend gave me this stern look and stern is the best word for it because the look spoke a million things to me in the moment and he nodded his head towards the gravel hill leading back to the track. I grabbed the two bags we had fake checked my phone and told the man that our family were waiting for Us back at the car park, he completely ignored what I had said and instead said, that's a cool hat you've got on. Or something about my hat that was completely irrelevant. So I dismissed myself and said goodbye and made my way to the hill. In my mind, I did not want to look back and see my boyfriend be hurt and then have a weapon pointed at my head. I knew that our best bet was me getting up this hill onto the narrow path he couldn't ride his quad down and sprinting to the farmer's house. As I'm walking up the hill, this guy says to my boyfriend, that's a really pretty girl you got there. And it was like all the intentions of his I didn't want to believe or confirmed. I felt like I would die. My boyfriend though, said a quick thank you, we'll be off now and headed up the hill with me. The guy kept talking on like the conversation hadn't ended even as we headed away and he stood there weapon in hand, watching us leave. As soon as we were around the corner, we sprinted all the way back to the car park where we hadn't noticed before There were over 10 empty shells laying on the ground. We had run into two girls in bathing suits just arriving at the spot as we did and informed them about everything. They got in their cars and left immediately. We tried to go to the farmer's house to ask if he knew the guy as we had never seen him on the land before, but they were not home. As for the weapon, it's still so freaky to me as I had never seen one before. Not a big deal, I know, but it looked quite old and rusty and when we discussed the incident on the way home, my boyfriend suggested that they were probably handed down to him from someone else. This incident has stuck with me for the past few years and my boyfriend and I have not been able to return to the spot. Which sucks because that's where we had our first date and it was a really sentimental place for us. I had to drive past the road.
- [56:40]
Alex
Leading to the track for like a.
- [56:42]
Jordan
Year as I commuted between towns and it always made me feel sick. I could have lost my life or my partner that day. And I'm always extremely grateful that my boyfriend is the man that he is and was able to steer the guy away from us for us to leave and to communicate to me through movement to tell me what to do in my freaked out state. He told me after that that he was ready to die if he had to because knowing the guy had Been watching us beforehand and complimented me in the way that he did. Was clear that he could have had some sk scary intentions. It's also made me way more fearful now to travel in the bush alone, which I have done my whole life. Last night I was laying in bed reading a little before I went to sleep. I think it's important to clarify that I live on the outskirts of my town, still in town, but definitely on the edge off the highway that leads out of town and into about a 15 mile long stretch of lots of country, woods, fields, a few residences, but mostly open highway. So other than the other tenants in my actual apartment building, it's normally very quiet in my area. My building is a square with four apartments and for each of us our door simply faces out into the open. There's no lobby or foyer or anything. My door in particular looks out into a large field that goes up a hill. I don't remember the exact time, but sometime between 1 and 2am Someone randomly started banging on my door, which would freak me out in the broad daylight, but especially in the middle of the night. I nervously went to ask who it was and this guy with a deep voice claimed he was a police officer and that I needed to let him in, not that I needed to open the door. Luckily I watch and listen to a lot of true crime stuff, so I got pretty suspicious real quick. I got near instant alarm bells because he couldn't tell me why I needed to let him in, what I supposedly did, and he never asked what my name was. He also didn't really sound like a police officer, if you know what I mean. Obviously I was feeling creeped out, So I called 911 to confirm that there was actually an officer at my address and they said there wasn't. At this point I am freaking out and I kind of call out through the door that I'm on the phone with the police and the guy just kinda bangs on my door one more time, then stops making all noise. I presume because he ran off. They dispatched two cars to my apartment and the officers took a good look around. Unfortunately, the guy was long gone by the time they got here and I never saw him. So I don't have a description of him or anything, but the cops said two things to make me feel better. One, they would post more patrols in my area over Halloween weekend, and two, it was most likely a Halloween prank because the bar down the street from my apartment had had a party and it was just closed not too long before. Always trust your instincts and remember that if you have any doubts about someone claiming to be a police officer, call 911 and confirm that they are who they say they are. Dispatch and the officers who came tonight told me you will not get in trouble for making sure the person talking to you is actually an officer. This also applies to situations where it's nighttime and dark, so you can't really see for sure if it's a real cop car behind them or not. If you see flashing lights behind you on a back road or a dark area at night, put on your hazard lights and call 911 first to make sure it's actually a police car. You won't get in trouble. Better safe than sorry. Geraldine Largay kept a detailed record 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 for a slow walker, she had still managed to cover an immense distance, hiking almost a thousand miles from Harpers Ferry in West Virginia with a close friend of hers named Jane lee George Largay, Geraldine's husband of 42 years, was driving ahead 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 bed. But on June 30, 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. 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 flustered whenever 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 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 supply dwindled 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, 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 the area. If you didn't know which way the trail was, you could easily walk 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 three or four miles. Call police for what to do, please. She tried over and over to send messages, but none went through. In some trouble, another text to George 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 was never received. Around July 23, she set up her tent atop sticks and pine needles under a canopy of hemlock trees so thick that they obscured her from rescuers searching from the air. She tied a shiny silver blanket between two trees, possibly to attract attention, but the foliage was simply too dense for the 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 a search for her, using horses and 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 bombarded with a number of false tips regarding the missing woman's whereabouts. Some purported that she had been murdered and strung up in the trees, saying they had seen her with sketchy looking men who might have intended to harm her, while others suggesting that she had fallen in a river and drowned. A number of psychics called to report visions of her, including one 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 women's shelter in Tennessee. This actually diverted valuable resources away from the search, 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 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 and defied teams of experienced searchers. Mrs. 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 14, 2015, still inside her sleeping bag in a campsite 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, 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. One, written in a child's handwriting, said I wish you were here. It is quite simply terror inducing that even in a country as populous and settled as the United States dates a person can still go missing on a 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 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 my art. Alright, 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 are like uber hippies. So go figure. As you can probably guess, I grew up in this really overly loving pee snick 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 in mid to late 20s. I don't want to totally blame my parents for that. I think they did the best they could, but 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 really helped me keep it together in the meantime was my art. Before I started to suffer with 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, pounds. That's when my art really 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 and make a few sales that way too. Like I drew this pizza demon thing one time and that's made me a few hundred bucks from people wanting that thing on a T 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 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 a DM off this guy who says he's really loved my work and wanted a piece commissioned. 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 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. A thousand dollars for a picture. Which was way more money than I had ever made in my whole life. I got to work straight away and within a week I had poured my hardened 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 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 to get more money out of him if he wanted something else commissioned. We used to talk back and forth a fair bit and he shared that he 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 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 would only do it via one of those self destructing messages that Insta now does. I didn't question anything. Like I knew he'd 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. So like I said, I didn't ask too many 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 three second self destructing picture that I was honestly super excited to see by that point. But when I actually saw what it was, even if it was for a real brief time, I really really wished I hadn't. It looked like a goat's head in a jar of some kind. Like I said, there wasn't enough time for me to drink the whole thing in. 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 real, that he had gotten a hold of a goat's head from a butcher, preserved it, and then basically surgically edited the whole thing over time, mostly using dental tools a apparently for the sake of precision. I personally thought the whole thing was a disgrace. I'm vegan and I tried to stay as ethical as possible, but at the same time I didn't want to go imposing my own worldview 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. 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 say to that. He was right in a way. He sounded absolutely crazy for 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 his work provocative, maybe even objectionable, but that it was fascinating nevertheless. Then he asked if I wanted to see more. Unlike the first time, there was no 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 the end I told him sure, and he replied saying he would use another self destructing message again. I waited a minute or two for the message to come through and when it did, I opened up the message thread and tapped the little reveal message thing with some reluctance. 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 some kind of primate. I was a little more confrontational with him after that, telling him that this one was considerably more disturbing than the first and that I 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 for a 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, 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 their head should they die, but hadn't gotten any replies. When he told me he was getting really 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, as you 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. 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. 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 guy if 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? And what if he decides that it's my 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 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 human heads, knowing where I lay mine at night.
- [82:13]
Alex
It.
- [83:03]
Jordan
It, it.