B (12:58)

This episode is brought to you by aws. Amazon Q Business is the new generative AI Assistant from aws. Many tasks can make business slow, like wading through mud. Help. Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon Q can securely understand your business data to help you streamline tasks like summarizing quarterly results or doing complex analyses in no time. Q Got this. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for you@aws.com learnmore. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business. Get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today.

A (13:55)

Over 10 years ago I used to live in a peninsula in Norway. It was quite idyllic actually, as my sister, my mom and I lived within walking distance of a beach. We had a short and incredibly narrow driveway that led to the house and the only window in the house facing the driveway was my bedroom window. This is an important detail. I was about 9 or 10 at the time when this incident happened. I was in the living room watching a show. I think it was around 6 or 7pm as it got dark pretty pretty fast at the time of the year January. I had been sitting there for hours when my mother told me to go to my bedroom and watch TV as we were having guests over. Soon I grabbed my things and went to my room. I remember the room felt really cold so I turned on the heater and went back out to the living room to get my candy or something like that. On my way out the door a sudden feeling of dread washed over me and I had this feeling that someone was looking at me. I don't know how to explain this feeling, but it was as if I subconsciously could see someone outside my window from the corner of my eye but not realize it until I grabbed the door handle. I turned around quickly and glanced out the window. Nothing. I felt really stupid and brushed it off as me just being paranoid or dramatic. I got my candy and went back into my room. The first thing I noticed was that my bedroom window had been slightly opened and I did not remember opening it myself. I figured maybe my mom did. Suddenly I heard a sort of scratching sound outside my window and this time I froze. I couldn't process what was going on. There was a person outside my window. His face was glued to the glass and he was holding his hands on each side to get a better look inside my room as my window was quite far up. When standing outside I could only see his head for a brief second. I thought maybe he was one of the guests mom was talking about, but I had never seen him in my entire life. He was just standing there staring at me. I couldn't move. Or maybe I could, but I didn't want to. I was too scared. He looked like he was in his 40s and I remember him having really dark circles around his eyes. He just stood there for what felt like an eternity and then suddenly widened his eyes and continued to stare. This scared the crap out of me and I managed to call for my mom. The man panicked and disappeared quickly. As I was in the middle of telling my mom that this man was standing outside the window, the doorbell rang. My mom answered the door and would not let me out in the hallway to see who it was. I just remember her looking uneasy when she came back. A few months later, the same man was arrested and charged with murder after his neighbors complained about a horrific smell coming from his apartment. After all these years, my mom finally told me what the man said at the door. He told her that someone had ordered takeout and he wanted to check if it was the right address. This this being a small peninsula, she recognized him from a small vegetable shop and realized he was lying. She got scared and quickly told him no one had ordered anything. A year later we moved to the city and only now I fully understand why. I truly believe that if my mom had not been there, I would not be alive today. Sometimes I feel guilty for the girl's death and wonder if she would be alive and well today if I had been taken instead.

B (17:46)

This episode is brought to you by United Airlines. When you want to make the most of your vacation, book with United. They're an airline that cares about your travels as much as you do. United is transforming the flying experience with Bluetooth connectivity, screens, power at every seat and bigger overhead bins to help fit everyone's bag. And with their app, you can skip the bag check line, get live updates and more. Change the way you fly. Book your next trip today@united.com this episode is brought to you by Amazon. The holidays are here and you know what that means. It's time to get your friends and family the gifts they deserve. Take the stress out of shopping with Amazon's great deals and low prices on a huge range of items from toys to tech and much more. Whoever you're gifting for, Amazon has great prices on everything you need this holiday season. Shop last minute deals now. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why Lifelock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.

A (19:18)

This happened around 2006. I was 12 years old at the time. At the time, my grandparents used to live in a small house beside a big lake called called Lagoa do Emeru, in the countryside of Santa Carina, Brazil. My cousins and I used to spend days, sometimes weeks, in their house, especially during our school vacations. It was a really cool place to stay. And the house had an enormous plot of land where we used to play soccer and do kids stuff, and a private pier at the end of it, from where we would jump into the lake during the hot Brazilian summer days. One of the lands near my grandfather's land was occupied by my grandma's sister's house. And the other side was unoccupied, just woods with a public pier, probably double the size of my grandpa's private pier. The public pier was wider, probably around 1 to 5 meters, and was about 50 meters long from end to end. It was perfect for us kids to run together and jump into the lake. And we felt that we had plenty of privacy there, far away from our grandparents view. One night around midnight, myself and three cousins decided to go to the end of the public pier to relax a little and just mess around. So we silently left my grandpa's house, jumped the fence to the next land plot and went straight to the end of the public pier. We stood there for about 35 minutes, messing around and talking to each other. And that's when my cousin first saw him. A man with a yellow dirty raincoat that was almost brown. At the beginning of the pier. We just stood there silently staring at him and at each other. That's when he started slowly walking towards the end of the pier. But at the time, there was no light pole at the beginning of the pier, just at the end of it, because that's where the fishermen would stand to do their business. So we just stared at him, not being able to recognize him or at least see if he was carrying something. The man continued walking, and when he reached the first light pole, where we were able to start recognizing his features, he stopped. Then we could finally see him. An old man, missing teeth, with a big gray beard and with a strange smile. Smile on his face, like he really wanted to laugh, but couldn't. At this moment, everyone was freaking out because we had no escape route, just the lake. And nobody wanted to show up at my grandpa's house, all wet, with regular clothes after midnight. Especially when we left the house secretly. Not to mention how cold the water would be at that time. We could see that he had no fishing rod with him, but started to mimic and had some big heavy fish on the line, but in a really exaggerated way, like he was a cartoon character. He was already creeping us out, but this put it over the top. The man suddenly turned to us with a sad face like he was sad that he didn't catch his imaginary fish and mimicked casting the baited fishing line into us, waited two seconds and started reeling his imaginary line in. But instead of making the pulling line movement like he did before, he started to jump closer to us, every turn of his heel like he was being pulled by us. That's when we decided we had enough and being grounded was probably better than being murdered by this guy by some mimicking maniac. And all four of us jumped into the lake and started swimming to my grandpa's pier. When we got there, probably around 15 seconds later, the man was gone. To this day, I have no idea who it was or what he was planning, but there's something about that mimicking fisherman that I cannot get out of my mind. There's no way I will ever forget him and it has been 16 years now. I was a nurse for seven years and my entire career I worked at a single facility. The facility had many renovations done during the years since it opened in 1960. By 2011 when I started there, only half the facility was the original building and the rest had all been added on over over the years. I worked nights, mostly because I'm a night owl and found it easier than mornings. I had a number of odd experiences, but I'll share the main ones that stick with me. Firstly, I have had experiences with the supernatural since the age of three, so I believe in the supernatural, but wasn't obsessed, more aware of it, if that makes sense. There was one wing in particular that was part of the original building which had a small sitting room with a television for residents to enjoy during the day. During my night shifts, this one area gave me such a feeling of dread and fear that I would only be near it for as long as I absolutely had to. I would go out of my way to take the long way back to the nurse's station just to avoid being near it. Nothing I know of happened there, but my gut feeling was screaming at me that there was something there and it was not happy. This feeling eased during the daylight, but once it was night the feeling was there. It felt as if someone was watching me and they did not like the fact that I was there. I spoke to a few other nurses about this and they all claimed they experienced the same feelings. One other incident sticks with me. A 90 year old woman, let's call her Jane, went to breakfast and then asked to be taken back to her Room for a sleep she was a very healthy woman, but she said she wasn't feeling well when the nurse did her next round. 20 minutes later she found that the resident had passed away. In her sleep. I found out that it was an aortic aneurysm, so she didn't suffer. Unfortunately, death is rarely quick in aged care. It's usually a slow process of days or weeks. Jane was a very sweet Polish lady. She had outlived her children and her husband had passed away many years before, so she never had visitors. I would check on her and bring her tea at exactly 9:30pm and say good night every night. As you could probably guess, not everything goes to schedule in healthcare and it's not always possible to stick to a strict routine. But if it got to 9:35, she would ring her call bell asking for her tea and then apologize profusely for ringing her bell. And every time I answered with whenever you need help, press the button. You're not in trouble. I love to help. She would then always say her usual good night, sweet, sweet girl. And I would leave and get on with my shift. The funeral home was late to pick her up. I helped the undertaker in the afternoon when I started my shift, all the rooms had a call bell next to the toilet, one next to the bed, and the residents wore a necklace or bracelet with a call bell attached to that as well. When a resident passes, their room's call bells are disconnected the same day and the person personal bell is put on the nurse's station ready for the next person to move in. At 9:36, the call bell to her room started ringing. This was not possible, obviously. Her room had been disconnected and her personal bell was sitting in a drawer next to me. Slightly freaked out, I went down to her room and checked to make sure that there wasn't a dementia patient who had wandered in there. Maybe maintenance hadn't turned the bell off yet, even though I personally spoke to them after they did so. I was just trying to rationalize it, I guess. I went into the room and it was pitch black. No one was inside and the bells had definitely been turned off as I was unable to turn it off from inside the room and I had to cancel it from the main desk. I instantly had a feeling of peace. Weird, because in every other situation I would have been a mess. I think she was just trying to say goodbye. As I was closing the door to her room, I heard a shriek and my best friend came running down the corridor crying in a state. Once I got her to Calm down, she said. I was in X wing charting and Jane walked past me in her nightie. Then she turned the corner to the front wing. But when I looked around the corner, she wasn't there. She's dead, right? She died. What did I just see? It happened last year year between Christmas and New Year's Eve. I'm from the French Caribbean, so it's not unusual to scuba dive during Christmas holidays. My family and I booked a few dives. They are all really good scuba divers. Better than me. They passed a few scuba diving levels that allow them to participate in way more technical dives that I'm allowed to do. I enjoy scuba diving as well and I'm able to do almost every every casual dive. But I don't feel safe diving without an instructor yet. Even more if it's a dive with decompression stops required. If anyone isn't familiar with scuba diving, here's a quick explanation. You can dive safely until a certain deep before the pressure becomes dangerous. If you dive below that point, which is roughly 20 meters or 65ft, you have to do decompression stops during your ascent. It means that you have to stop while going back to the surface a certain time to let your body adapt itself to the pressure. If you ride up too quickly, you may catch decompression sickness which can lead in worst case scenario to death. So we decided that I could manage a little private lesson with an instructor first prior to more exiting dives with my family. So the first day, my family was enjoying a dive on a technical spot that I wasn't feeling up to. While I was alone with my instructor and retrieving my old scuba diving reflexes, everything went okay. We were on a beautiful coral reef, there was many beginners on the boat and I was by far the most experienced here. So finally my instructor decided that he could manage me with another student, which was truly a beginner. And after a small. After a small briefing with every safety rules and hand sign, which is the only way to communicate underwater, we began our descent. I quickly retrieved all my old reflexes and was enjoying myself going back and forth to the instructor and the beginner diver during at least 20 minutes, everything was perfect. Besides one thing, it was a windy day and there was a heavy swell. It's less of a problem underwater than it is for a surface swimmer. The only thing was that it requires more physical effort to swim. And so my air bottle was emptying a little quicker than usual, which is normal. I signed to my instructor that I was running Thin of air and he nodded. It was far from being critical level. It was at this moment that I saw a young man swimming towards me. It wasn't the instructor nor the other student. I have never seen him before, but he was in full scuba diving gear and we were the only dive boat on the spot. So I assumed he was with us and I just didn't pay attention to him on the boat. He was swimming fast towards me and then signed me that he was out of air. When an air failure happens in scuba diving, there is a very strict procedure. You have to help the person, no questions asked, because every second is vital. If you faint underwater, you drown. On your gear you have two breathing devices, regulator and the octopus. I'm not sure about the English word for it, a main device and a spare device. So I handed the guy my spare breathing device, which means that we both were breathing on my gear, consuming twice as air as I was consuming alone. I waited until the guy seemed seemed to have calmed down and tried to hand sign him to go see my instructor. He shook his head no and signed me to start my ascent. I understand this as the procedure. I was a little low on air and above the decompression stop level. So the right thing to do was going up to the surface before having an air failure. And I have had to tell my instructor first. The guy was very reluctant and it was strange because it would have taken us like 30 seconds to tell the instructor and he would have started an ascent with us. During this time I was panicking as seeing my own air level going down and I saw that our instructor was staring at us quizzically and swimming towards us. It was at this moment that the guy let go of my spare air device and started swimming away, breathing again in his own breathing device. I was totally lost and started my ascent with my instructor. Once at the surface, because of the tides, I was feeling dizzy and nauseous. So my bizarre encounter wasn't the first thing that I debriefed. It was after I calmed down and the boat driving us towards the beach without the strange guy that I asked my instructor about what happened. Oh, I don't know, maybe a guy who lost his group and needed some time to calm down. I replied, okay, but why did he tell me that he was out of air? My instructor told me that I probably misunderstood his hand signing, that he was probably not telling me he was having an air failure because he left breathing in his own device. I'm sure I saw him do the air failure sign, but okay. The next day I joined my family during my dive and the instructor was different. It was a girl this time named Charlie. I have had time to think about that guy and I was worried about him. So I told everything that happened to Charlie and asked her if she knew the guy and if he was okay because I never saw him return to the surface. She asked me to describe him, which I did. And she said, oh, that's just Marvin. Don't worry about him. He's preparing himself to become a scuba diving instructor. Every time he has a day off from the restaurant he's working in, he asks us to take him to the coral reef in the mornings and pick him up in the afternoon. I ate at his restaurant that afternoon and saw him. Don't worry. I was feeling relieved and told myself that it was just a comprehension issue with Marvin. The rest of the week went without any incident. I was doing more and more technical dives and everything went very smoothly. Charlie was a wonderful instructor. Never saw Marvin again. That being said, until the last dive. It was on New Year's Eve. We planned the best dive on that day. It was on a shipwreck and I felt trained enough to try it without any instructor, just my family and I. It was fairly deep for a beginner like myself. 30 meters at its down point, around 98ft. My first day male instructor was there and told us that he would be exploring the shipwreck too. So we would cross him and he would help me if he saw that I needed it. It was very comforting to know and my family felt comforted too when I told them that. So we began our descent and started swimming around the shipwreck. We crossed our old instructor twice, but every time I signed him that everything was okay. It was at that moment that that I saw Marvin swimming towards me. At this moment, I was about 5 to 10 meters above my down point, still staying under my decompression stop level. Though I was a little surprised and even more surprised when he signed me again that he was out of air. I was mistrustful, but if there was any chance that it would be true, I couldn't not help him. So I handed him my spare breather. This time I had a lot of air left, so it wasn't a problem. He took it and started breathing it in and took my arm. I reached over to see his air level instruments, but he prevented me from seeing it. Then he signed me to start an ascent with him. I immediately signed no. I wasn't at my deepest when he reached, but I have been deeper during this time and I had a decompression stop to do. I saw that my father saw us, but he quickly looked away, probably not understanding what was going on. I tapped at my diving computer, a device which calculates when and how long to decompress to signify it to him. He shrugged, smiled at me and started swimming up, still holding me. I was paralyzed for a few seconds and the thing that helped me react was that my diving computer was telling me to stop. Stop and decompress now. I then understood that I was in danger, that if I let him do what he wanted, I would die from the bends. I then started screaming, only to remember that no noise can be heard underwater. I started wriggling frantically as I saw my father and sisters way below me, my diving computer alerting me more and more intensely. At that moment, my father saw us and he reacted. He swam very quickly towards us and I managed to hit the guy as my dad grabbed my ankle and suddenly dragged me deeper. The guy then quickly swam away. My dad dragged me deeper again and then we waited for a very long decompression stop to ensure that I was okay, then started heading towards the surface very slowly and cautiously on the surface. I started crying frantically and went back to the boat. My father then told me that he thought Marvin was my old instructor and this was why he wasn't surprised at first. I then told this to my old instructor, who took it more seriously this time, and told me to point out Marvin when he returned to the surface. The thing is, he never did. The next day on New Year, we went one last time time to the Scuba diving Club because my little sisters had a diploma to collect and we saw Charlie still rattled. I told her what happened with Marvin and then she told me that Marvin was at the restaurant yesterday for New Year's Eve and he did not want to go scuba diving. Which means that this guy was not Marvin. And to this day I still have no idea who it was and what he wanted, what he was doing and why he tried to kill me. Maybe twice.

B (38:38)

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A (39:09)

This story is true and it happened to me on April 27th in Caracas, my then girlfriend, now wife and I had been staying at my mother in law's apartment apartment for a few weeks because my mother's apartment where we lived was being remodeled at the time. For some context, the apartment where we were staying is located on the fourth floor of a relatively small 10 floor building which was positioned right in front of the city's main highway. I say small because there are very tall buildings in my city which were as tall as 40 or 50 floors. And the people that lived in these buildings suffered greatly when the elevators did not work. Imagine going up and down the stairs for 50 or 60 floors. That's a lot of exercise for one day. So there were a lot of things that I had to get used to in that place. Chief among them was hearing the sounds of cars, trucks, bikes, flat tires, damaged exhaust pipes, and occasional gunshots that came from the poor neighborhoods that were close to my girlfriend's home, which could be heard during the day and the night. In contrast, my mother's neighborhood was usually very quiet, especially at night, so I had to change my sleeping habits a little bit. So I usually went to bed quite late at night, usually at midnight or 1am this apartment was smaller than my apartment and it was located on a different side of the city. But I did not care about those things as long as I could get a good night's sleep next to my wife, since I sometimes suffered from insomnia. The first time I came to my wife's apartment, I noticed there was a small hill with a huge tree, some medium small sized plants, bushes and patches of grass which were right next to the highway. And this seemed a little creepy to me. At night on that hill, I noticed there was a small makeshift aluminum shack. I thought that was a little funny and I thought to myself, well, that's weird. Maybe there's a homeless person living there. If he does, he must be crazy about living there. On the first two nights I stayed there, even though I could hear the loud sounds of the highway, it took me a while to fall asleep. But fortunately everything was okay and I was able to get a good night's sleep on those two days. But the third night, as much as I wanted it to be exactly the same, it was quite different than the first. I remember it was late at night, I think it was midnight or even later, and I was almost sound asleep. I was listening to some scary stories on my cell phone to fall asleep to, just like I always did, however crazy that sounds. Suddenly I was startled by the ear piercing screams of some man or woman hurling a long string of f bombs, bombs and other curses at somebody or at something. This woke me up right away and scared the heck out of me at the same time. I thought to myself, who or what was that? I shook my wife's shoulder and told her, honey, did you hear that? And she was still almost completely asleep, but responded, hear what? It was nothing. Go back to bed, honey. However, I heard the curses again, so I decided to investigate what was going on. I got up from bed, rubbed my eyes, put on my slippers and walked slowly and quietly out of our bedroom towards the balcony where I could clearly see the highway and the small hill next to it. Now I could hear the curses more clearly and it sounded like the voice of a deranged man. And I thought to myself, maybe I was right. Maybe there's a homeless person living in that metal hut. I was now standing shirtless in my boxers and slippers on the dark balcony, looking over to that hill where I saw that metal hut on the first day I slept in my wife's apartment. Weirdly enough, I was able to see a small campfire and a barefoot man coming out of the shack who had long disheveled hair and a long bushy beard. He was shirtless and wearing torn pants that were almost destroyed. He came out of the small shack, he was smoking something and he was standing in that hill in the dark, screaming his lungs out and cursing a lot for some reason while he was looking towards the highway. I thought that this man must be crazy, getting drunk enough to be yelling at passing cars or the people or dogs that were all the way on the other side of the highway. This made me feel terrified and I asked myself, what is that guy saying? And isn't he cold because of this racket? There were some neighborhood dogs barking in this man's direction. I thought it was really strange for someone to scream so much, especially this late at night. Unfortunately for me, my mother in law was a night owl like me and usually slept in the living room. So she turned on the kitchen light out of the blue to get some water. Water and went back to sleep which reflected a little bit towards the balcony. I turned my head around and was a little blinded by the glare of the light. But at the same time I was scared that this man would see me staring at him in that moment. I crouched down so the man could not see me, but I was horrified when I saw this man walk to the fire and angrily put it out with his bare feet. He turned his head around from the highway to look at the outer wall of the building and all the while was still cursing out loud. I thought to myself, maybe he's having a bad trip or something. Suddenly this crazy guy looked up at the building wall. He walked until he was right in front of it and yelled, I can't take it anymore and the voices are driving me crazy. And started to repeatedly bash his head into the wall until his head was bleeding while he yelled, get out of my head. The sound it made was terrifying. When he was done, he touched his head with his right hand and wiped the blood off. Now he looked crazier than ever. Out of the blue, the guy looked up and noticed that I was staring at him. So he yelled, what are you looking at? So I was scared to death. At this point, I threw myself to the balcony's ceramic floor floor again. I winced at how cold it was and hid there for a while. I thought to myself, out of sight, out of mind, right? The crazy guy kept screaming his curses at me. I decided that was enough for me and quietly made my way back to the bed. I felt horrified about what I saw and I could barely sleep that night since all I could hear was my mother in law's snores and this guy's screaming late into the night. The next day I felt extremely tired because I was not able to rest the night before. I told my wife about what happened and she told me, yeah, at some point you get used to that crazy guy and his screams. But I don't think she believed me when I told her that I saw him bash his brains into the wall and almost kill himself. So it dawned on me, what if I hear this guy screams to night again? Should I call the authorities? But I decided not to do it because my country's police are basically useless. So I still don't know what to do about this crazy screaming man, but I know I will never look off of that balcony window at night again. I had blocked this story from my memory until my girlfriend reminded me of it a couple days ago. I started dating my girlfriend at the end of my senior year and before we started dating, I used multiple dating apps. In many of my dating app profiles, I had my Snapchat listed so that people could add me. Nothing led to anything with the dating apps. I would talk to people for a bit and eventually the conversation would die out. When I began dating my girlfriend, I had deleted the apps but never deleted my account, meaning people would still see my profile and my Snapchat in it. I realized this after a Few people would add me, but it didn't go anywhere because I would tell them I had a girlfriend. As you would imagine, the conversation would end there. But there was this one guy that added me.

C (47:31)

Me.

A (47:31)

Let's call him Adam. And he asked me if I was available. Being straight, I was used to guys adding me. So I gave him the usual response, Sorry, I'm straight and I have a girlfriend. I expected him to leave me alone, but he didn't. At first the messages were normal. How was your day? What did you do today? Simple stuff like that. Being the nice guy I am, I responded because I thought this guy just wanted to be friends. Then the message progressively got more creepy. He started asking questions about my girlfriend and not the basic questions. Questions like is she good in bed? I simply responded with, those are personal questions and I don't feel comfortable answering them. Adam would always apologize and not talk to me for a few days. Then he would hit me back up again and continue with creepy questions. I eventually told my girlfriend about the situation and my girlfriend is super sweet, but she is also very aggressively protective over me. So she adds this guy and basically tells him that he needs to leave me alone. Unfortunately, this enraged Adam, who responded by saying that I needed to get rid of my girlfriend. Naturally, I defended my girlfriend and blocked Adam. Everything was cool for a week or so after until another account added me. The guy's name was Tyler and he seemed cool. He was nice to me and respected my relationship with my girlfriend. As the days go by, I started to notice that Tyler's vocabulary was very similar to Adam's. I wasn't sure so I didn't make any assumptions that it was him. So I gave Tyler's snap to girlfriend who adds him to investigate. As soon as she adds Tyler's snap, Tyler flips out on her, which confirmed that it was Adam. As soon as this realization is made, I block him again. From here, everything goes quiet from Adam for about a month. So I live in the suburbs of Chicago and both my girlfriend and I live down the street from each other. So naturally we do see each other a lot and both our families are really good friends. On top of that, our families would also house sit or pet sit for each other. Anyway, a month goes by until I get a letter with no address or name on it, just my name on the front. I open it and to my shock and horror, it is basically a love letter from Adam. The premise of the letter was basically him saying that he loves me, me and he wants me to run off with Him. The letter also takes a very inappropriate turn halfway through with him describing what he wants me to do to him and what he wants to do to me. At this moment, two horrifying realizations hit me. One is that he knows my address and two he dropped that letter off himself, meaning that he is in my town. I immediately call my girlfriend who is equally as shocked as I am and after consulting with my parents we call the cops. Unfortunately, since I had blocked as well as removed Adam's social media information and the letter had no return address, there was nothing we could do about it. Day after day letters would keep appearing in my mailbox until they started appearing in my girlfriend's mailbox as well. Her letters were far worse than mine. Adam wrote how much he hated her and how much he wanted to hurt her. He also stated many times of the ways he would inflict pain onto her until she broke up with me. Like me, she took this to the cops and again they could do nothing about it. My girlfriend's family had plans to go to Hawaii for vacation and I was to house sit for them. The first couple days went fine until around one of the last night nights I was there as per usual, I was over at their house watching TV on the couch when the power went out. Mind you, it was around 1am and it was pitch black when the lights went out. The next few seconds were silent when I heard a window smash from the office. To understand this more, let me give you the layout of the house. When you entered the front door, to your left was the living room, straight ahead was both the kitchen and stairs and to the right was the office and dining room on the upstairs level. As soon as you reached the top of the stairs, a bathroom was straight ahead and my girlfriend's room was on the right and the other bedrooms on the left. Immediately I got up, grabbed a kitchen knife and ran upstairs to hide while I called the cops. I quickly got into my girlfriend's room and slipped into her closet closet. As soon as I was able to contact the operator, I heard the pounding of the intruder running up the steps. Thankfully, I had relayed all the information to the operator in time, who then stayed on the phone as we both remained quiet. The intruder took a left when he reached the top of the stairs, which gave more time for the cops to arrive and for me to get ready just in case I needed to defend myself. A few minutes go by until I heard the intruder start walking towards my girlfriend's room. In the few precious seconds I had, I slipped out of the closet and positioned myself next to the door. As soon as he opened the door and started to enter the room, I took the kitchen knife and drove it into his shoulder. A young man screamed in pain as I heard a heavy metallic object make a large thud as it hit hit the ground. From there, I bolted out of the house where I was met by four squad cars outside. I threw my hands in the air, shouting that he was upstairs. A few minutes go by and the intruder was dragged out, still screaming in pain. With the siren lights flooding the street, I got a glimpse of his face. It was Adam. Adam was from Texas and had traveled all the way up to my state to be with me. He had rented a room at a local motel and would put letters in both my girlfriend's and my mailbox daily. He would do this in the early hours of the morning, which was confirmed by the security footage of the motel he was staying at that night. Adam had plans to hurt my girlfriend, or worse and her family. He managed to pry open the power box and switch off the power power to her house along with neighboring houses. He broke in with the intent of my girlfriend being there. Unfortunately for him, she was enjoying a tropical vacation. To be honest, I have no idea how this would have ended if I wasn't there that night. And I am grateful that my girlfriend and her family are okay. And I am grateful every day that I was at that house instead of my girlfriend that night.

C (54:51)

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