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Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. Before we begin, be sure to check out my brand new podcast, Scary Stories and Fire. If you would prefer the same great stories but with a super relaxing campfire background, the link is in the description. Also, if you haven't yet, I highly recommend you subscribe to this podcast. If you enjoy listening to Relax or Fall Asleep, hundreds of hours of stories and rain for $2.99 a month that will get you access to all episodes with zero ads. Consider subscribing and I hope you enjoy this episode. Nordstrom brings you the season's most wanted brands, Skims, Mango Free People and Princess polly. All under $100. From trending sneakers to beauty must haves, we've curated the styles you'll wear on repeat this spring. Free shipping, free returns and in store pickup make it easier than ever. Sh in stores and@nordstrom.com this episode is brought to you by State Farm. 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Book it with Priceline. This is a short story that happened to me several years ago but still affects me to this day. Now, objectively speaking, this may not be very scary for others, but the image is burned into my mind and it is something I don't think I will ever forget. School had just ended three weeks prior and my friend and I were just hanging out enjoying a surpassingly beautiful summer night. I live in a very quiet little town. There really isn't much commotion or really much of anything that goes on. We have one main school and our graduating class is tiny compared to most. Around midnight we were pretty sick of playing games and wanted to do something different. He suggested walking around outside on the beautiful clear summer night. Without much hesitation, I agreed. It was after midnight in a quiet town. I figured not much could really go wrong. My parents were asleep, but they trusted me, so sneaking out just to walk probably wouldn't have been a huge issue. We ended up staying out for a couple of hours. We talked about movies, wrestling, and what our plans were for the rest of the summer. Up to this point, it had actually been one of my favorite nights in a long time. Just to be able to enjoy the nice breeze, the moonlight, and have some good old fashioned conversation. We were already on our way back home and we were probably only about five minutes from the house. We were walking down a very low lit street. On the right side were some old houses where 95% of the lights were off and to our left, trees. Nothing but trees. My friend pointed out as we were walking that the way one of the lights were hitting the trees, it looked like a person. We laughed at first and kind of were amazed at how much it really did look like a person. But after a moment the laughter faded away as we realized that maybe this wasn't just a shadow. So, like the fools that we were, we decided to explore and I pulled back a few branches and saw that there was an actual woman standing there. She had a huge, almost disturbing smile on her face. She was old, probably in her late seventies I would guess. She was dressed normal and had lots of nice jewelry on. She looked like how my grandma would dress for holiday parties. But the scariest part was she was just standing there like a statue, smiling at us. For a moment we just stood there in shock and within a split second her smile vanished and she jumped out and made a huge grunt and then screamed. We ran as fast as we could back to the house. To my knowledge, she didn't follow us or anything. Some people may not find this particularly scary, but in the middle of the night when you find a creepy old lady hiding in the trees, it can rattle your cage, let me tell you. Nothing else of note came from this incident, but as I mentioned previously, I will never be able to get the image of her smiling and then suddenly screaming out of my head. Summer break is an awesome time to kick back, relax, and even enjoy some traveling. Unfortunately for me, my summer break did not consist of vacationing or kicking back. My old roommate Dave was going on vacation with his fiance and he asked me to take care of his golden retriever, Millard and me always trying to make a quick buck I quickly accepted. I planned on staying overnight with Millard while Dave was gone for a couple of nights. Feeling lonely, I asked some of my friends to come over and hang out for a while. We sat outside, ate some wings and just hung out for a couple hours. I had to work at 6:30 in the morning, so I kicked them out at around 11pm and decided to get ready for bed. I put on the TV and made myself comfortable on the living room couch. I started to doze off instantly and while I was going in and out, I heard the doorbell ring. I kind of jolted awake and just sat still for a moment. I thought perhaps maybe it was the TV and maybe I just woke myself up thinking that it was the doorbell that was quickly proven false. When the doorbell rang again, my heart was practically jumping out of my chest. I grabbed my watch and saw that it was 11:47pm who the heck would be at the door at this hour of the night? I slowly approached the door as the bell rang again for the third time. It was a shady looking guy with a backwards hat on. He had a big brown bag in his hand. I opened the front door a crack while still keeping the chain on and didn't open the screen door and I asked what he wanted in a very soft and unconvincing voice. He said hi, I have your food delivery. I immediately yelled that I didn't order any food. He proceeded to tell me the address and then followed with that is your address right? I have your delivery. More annoyed than anything else, I told him once more that he had the wrong house and I slammed the door in his face and then turned off all the lights. The house I was staying in was a split level ranch and for those of you who don't know what that is, it's kind of like having a one and a half story house. The basement is usually a living room and it's not completely underground. The windows are usually like eye level. So I went to the basement part of the house and was looking out the front windows. He was sitting in his car with the car not on still parked in the driveway. I was a little spooked so I called my brother to tell him what happened. He told me not to worry and that it was probably some kind of mistake. I agreed and went back to look out the window and the car was still there in the driveway. But the guy was not inside the car anymore. I grabbed the dog and locked myself in Dave's bedroom. She barked and growled all night long, not sure if it was because she could Hear things or because she was just stuck in the room. I hardly slept that night and when it was time for me to leave for work in the morning, I got ready in Dave's bedroom and then ran out the front door as fast as I could. I had a brief moment of relief when I noticed the car wasn't in the driveway. But that soon changed when I turned the corner and the car was parked on the side of the road. I went to work terrified. I blasted my friends that day asking if it was one of them, if it was a practical joke, and they assured me and promised me that it was not them. I came back to feed Millard after work with one of my friends and we noticed footprints all around the house and scratches on the siding of the house where one of the back windows was. It looked like someone had tried to scare me or actually tried to break in and were unsuccessful. In hindsight I realize I should have got the license plate number, but I just thought that maybe I was being paranoid. I could have also asked what company they represented so I could call to see if it was a real order or not. When Dave returned, I brought this up to him and he said that he had never had a similar experience. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe the delivery person was pissed they got pranked and were now stuck with the bill. Or maybe I could have been in real danger. Either way, this is one summer night I still bring up to my friends when they want to hear a freaky story. I'm a 30 year old male and I live in Horsham, England. I have a two year old dog and I take him out for a walk every morning around 5:30am before I head off to work. One December morning my alarm went off and it was time to take my dog Yoshi out for his walk. Where I live there are some woods, riverside walks close by. My dog loves the woods and walking by the stream. I remember it was so cold out, colder than usual. We got to the entrance of the woods and we walked down the trek to get to the bridge to cross the stream. Yoshi stopped whilst halfway along the bridge his ears perked up and he started to sniff at the edge of the bridge. Then he started growling at the side. I tried to calm him down. I couldn't see or hear anything. I started to walk to the edge of the bridge and that's when I heard it. Someone or something screeching. It startled me and Yoshi started barking uncontrollably. I had a thought I could either cross the bridge and go deeper into the woods or turn back. I turned to go back and I froze. I was so terrified at what was standing in front of me. I dropped my dog's leash. A tall person was standing at the entrance of the bridge wearing a tribal mask. I looked in their hand and they were holding an axe. He was still, completely still, just standing there, eyes fixated on me and my dog. Before I could react they let out a deafening scream. My dog was barking and ran in the other direction, deeper into the woods, away from the masked figure. I knew it was fight or flight. I ran deeper into the woods screaming for my dog. I heard footsteps behind me but I could not look back. I just had to get out of the woods and find my dog. I ran. I followed the red arrows as that was the shorter trek in the woods and it would loop back to the main entrance. Tears were streaming down my face. I was exhausted and I kept hearing the footsteps and screeching behind me. I made it to the entrance and I still could not find Yoshi. I thought maybe he ran all the way back to the house. Before I left, I looked back into the woods and I saw them standing behind the trees, the mask in view. They rose their axe above their head and let out that deafening scream again. I ran out of the woods and back to my house. Luckily my dog was outside waiting, clearly shaken up. We went inside. I sat down on my sofa thinking, what on earth did I just experience? Did they just want to torment me? Did they plan on hurting me and my dog? I'll never know. I have heard no one else mention of any tribal masked people in those woods. I have not gone back either. I don't think I ever the missing child is Lucia Blix, 9 years old. Please let her come back home safely. Thursdays. The kidnappers plumbed it meticulously. If money is what it takes to get her back, we're gonna pay it. The secrets they hide. You can't talk about this. You can't write about it are the clues. The mother's hiding something. I know it. To find her, tell me where she is. The Stolen Girl New episodes Thursdays stream on Hulu. McDonald's meets the Minecraft universe with one of six collectibles and your choice of a Big Mac or 10 piece McNuggets with spicy nether Flame sauce. Now available with a Minecraft movie meal at participating McDonald's for a limited time. A Minecraft movie only in theaters. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please for the love of everything good in this world world stop with mint. You can get premium wireless for just 15amonth. Of course if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of 45 for 3 month plan equivalent to 15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com back when I was in university I used to work nights at a pub just a few miles from my parents house. We lived in the countryside so I had to commute to nearby Leeds on weekday mornings, whilst at the weekends I would spend my nights earning much needed beer money. The point is, when my late shift at the pub ended, I would have to walk about two and a half miles along narrow, poorly lit country lanes in order to get home. Yeah, we had a taxi service in a village nearby, but on a weekend it's pretty much fully booked at all times. That and I didn't fancy blowing my nightly wages on a taxi at the end of every shift. I was that frugal student. One of the great things about working pubs in the countryside is that the tips are phenomenal. The sense of community and old fashioned fashioned values meant that farmhands and landed gentry alike would always tip on their orders. Sometimes it was the take your own amount of about 20 pence, but sometimes they would leave you with maybe 4 or 5 pounds of change, especially when they would have a few too many and were feeling overly generous. My shifts usually ended about 11:30pm Once last orders had been called and we had cleaned the down the bars. All the staff would then usually hang around for a drink until about midnight before going our separate ways. Now this one Saturday in particular had been insanely busy. The weather had been spectacular and there had been some kind of garden festival in the area. This meant that all kinds of people from near and far had rolled through the pub and added to my tips glass. By the end of the night I had 112 bucks. It was more than I'd ever had and I'd be damned if I were to waste some of it on a taxi, especially when a belly full of lager would see me home. No problem. So off I went, merrily meandering homewards, feeling like a very rich man as I planned how to spend my newfound fortune. It was dark out, like really dark, with only a silver on the moon in the sky to light my way. But I was just Too buzzed and cheerful to care. It didn't occur to me once that I would be in any kind of danger. About a mile into the journey back home, I'm blasting some AC DC in my earphones when I see the lights of a car coming up behind me. It passes slowly and for a second I think the driver is about to ask for directions. But the car just keeps on going. Like I said, we had had a lot of city folk passing through the village since the festival was going on, so I thought nothing of not being able to recognize the vehicle or its driver. But once the car had passed me about 200 yards or so, it just stopped in the middle of the road. I watch it sitting for a minute or two, continuing on my merry way, until it dawns on me that it's not going to just drive off. I got the weirdest feeling that it was sat there waiting for me. I know that sounds paranoid, but sometimes you just get a bad feeling about something, don't you? A kind of tight feeling in your stomach that tells you something is badly wrong. So I too stopped walking at the side of the road. Just stood there staring at the cars who rear lights until it finally revved its engine and took off into the night. I wasn't freaked out, but I think I can thank the belly full of beer for that. If this had happened while I was sober, I know I would have been much more scared. I'm not some big tough guy, like at all. So when a couple of minutes go by and I see a pair of headlights coming at me from from the opposite side of the road, I'm not worried in the slightest. I just keep walking as the car passes me. But I realize as it does, it's the same car from before. And just like before, it stops just a couple of hundred yards down the road. I am now convinced that it's a car full of city folk who have managed to get lost in the dark. So again, I stop at the side of the road waiting for it to reverse so the driver can ask directions. Only it doesn't. The car does a U turn in the middle of the lane, then switches its headlights off and begins to creep slowly down the road towards me. I wasn't freaked out before, but I was then. In fact, I'm not afraid to admit that I was completely and utterly terrified. I had no idea what exactly the driver's intentions were, but they were obviously not good. My head was spinning with grim ideas of what they were planning. Flashes of robbery, kidnapping, and worse. I just started running Looking for a gap in the hedgerows so I could jump into one of the nearby fields to hide. I finally found one, scrambling over the dry stone wall and badly scraping my elbows in the process. My first thought was to grab my phone from my backpack to call the police, but the light of the screen meant that the driver would be able to find me pretty quickly. I panicked, threw it back into my bag, and decided that hiding was my best option. Even if I did get through to the police, it would take them a while to get here. It might be too late by then. So I'm crouching in the base of a hedge, terrified out of my mind, just trying to hide so that the driver thinks that I have just legged it off over the fields. The only thing I'm relying on at this point is my sense of hearing. I'm listening for footsteps, the car's engine, anything to give me an idea of what's going on on the other side of the hedge. I know it's cliche, but a couple of minutes passing really did feel like half an hour. And in that time I hadn't heard a single thing coming from the road. When it got to the point that I felt like it was safe to check, I started to slowly edge up towards the section of the hedge. I dove over, readying myself to peek over the dry stone wall for any signs of the car. It's right then I heard the sound of car doors slamming. Not one door, but two or three, all closing at once. The car hadn't moved that whole time. They had been sat in the middle of the dark country lane, waiting for me to emerge. My heart was pounding at that point. I cannot convey just how terrifying it is to know that you're being hunted by a gang of complete strangers. I just bolted, hurtling across the dark field in the direction of a small wooded area. I know the area quite well. So despite me not knowing exactly where I would end up, it really didn't matter. By that point, it was either legate or face being caught by the guys hunting me. I hid out in the woods for as long as I could, watching the field I just crossed for shadows or torches, but again, there seemed to be nothing. When the coast was clear, I took off in the opposite direction I had come, crossing fields and staying off the roads until I could find my way back home. Even though it was the middle of the night, I woke my mom and dad and told them exactly what had happened. Naturally, they called the police and arranged for some officers to visit the next morning. So I could give a description. A month or so went by and we had heard nothing back. I had stopped walking home and had started ponying up for taxis just to make sure I made it back safe. But I was actually managing to forget about what had happened or at least let it slip to the back of my mind. That's when the police called back. The guys had been arrested for committing an assault assault on an elderly man just a few villages away from us. They were part of a gang based in nearby Leeds where I went to university, who would drive out into the country at night where there are hardly any CCTV cameras before assaulting people as part of some initiation. I was glad they had all been caught, but it still really bothers me that some people seem to be so worried, willing to commit violence against a total stranger. I still walk places at night sometimes, but I don't use noise canceling headphones anymore and I always carry a small knife just in case. If you work night shifts too, I really recommend you do the same. You never know who's out there lurking in the darkness just waiting to make you you a victim. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. 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With deals like these, your yard wins. Shop in store or online today. Lowe's we help you save valid through 4:30 while supplies last. Actual plant size and selection varies by location. Excludes Hawaii. I work nights in the secure unit of a nursing home here in Massachusetts. For those of you that don't know, the secure unit of any medical facility is where at risk patients are housed. So anyone with mental illnesses, degenerative diseases, or general behavioral problems that mean they can't be given the same sort of freedom as the other patients. When I am on the night shift, I'm pretty much locked in along alone with the patients, their rooms jutting off from the long, dimly lit hallway where my desk resides. Nobody likes working up there at night. It's not like it's any busier, but the lack of support means you just kind of feel vulnerable. Sure, I can just buzz for help from other night nurses if there's an emergency, but other than that. And it's pretty much just one or two nurses attending me entire ward. That and. Well, it does get a little spooky some nights. I don't believe in anything supernatural. I have been a nurse way too long to still entertain ideas about spirits and other such nonsense. But there have been a few incidents on the ward that have creeped me out. Here is a handful. One night I'm right in the middle of my night shift. It's like 2, 3 in the morning, and the ward is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. So when I hear a voice coming from the end of the hull, it immediately sets me on edge. I can see you, was all it said in this almost playful voice. I got up from my desk and looked around, but I was alone. No one was in the hallway. All the patients were still asleep. I can see you, it said again, even creepier this time. I tried to find the source of the voice, but it seemed to be echoing around the corridor. I checked every room, but each and every one of my patients was fast asleep. I was practically shaking by the time I sat back at my desk, and I was rigid with fear. For the remainder of my shift. I told one of the other nurses about the voice I had heard when she arrived in the morning to take over. When I described what the voice had said, she grew quiet before solemnly telling me that one of the recently deceased patients used to say that to his young granddaughter Whenever she would come visit, she would hide behind the curtain from him like a little game. That's when he would say I see you in that sing song way. We eventually discovered that it was someone talking in their sleep, someone who had witnessed the little game played between grandfather and granddaughter and had it slip into their unconscious mind. Mind. Totally rational explanation. But for a while we were all really freaked out we had one particular sweet old lady in the ward whose neighbor in the bed next to her was not a very nice person. I mean not just rude or snarky. I'm talking full on vile and spiteful. She was horrible to everyone, patients and nurses alike. But she was particularly despicable to the sweet old lady in the bed next to her. The sweet old lady would just smile and ignore her occupying herself with her knitting, even though her arthritis made her fingers hurt like the devil. Better to stay occupied, better to keep the mind busy, she'd always say. We were all real sad when she passed. It was quiet during her sleep, a painless way to go. Thankful for small mercies, I suppose. But what was really weird about the whole thing was how her mean neighbor began to act following her passing. Suddenly her less than friendly neighbor was absolutely terrified to sleep in that room. She flat out refused to sleep in the bed that we had once had a hard time getting her out of. And if by some chance you did manage to get her into bed, she would anxiously plead with you to leave the lights on. One night she made it all the way out into the hall without her wheelchair, which was honestly sort of scary all on its own. I had never seen her walk without some kind of mobility aid. She was out of breath and there was pure fear in her eyes, the kind I had never seen in her before. When I called for assistance myself and another nurse took her to the TV room and let her sleep in one of the recliners. She never even said it, but we all knew what she was afraid of. She was afraid of the sweet old lady she had been so mean to, coming back to visit her during the night. This next one probably freaked the nursing staff out the most. So I'll end it here. We had this Greek grandmother staying with us for a while. She was a first generation immigrant who had lived near Boston for many years and hadn't bothered to learn much English. She'll be talking up a storm. No idea what she's saying, but it'll be loud enough to hear all the way down the hall. When I go down to check on her, she stops talking and pretends to sleep, only to resume her one sided conversation when I return to my desk. This'll happen a few times until she genuinely drifts off, but it's a regular occurrence. Most nights she'll repeat this same process, talking to herself in a rather loud voice until she falls asleep. So one day her son comes to visit and I jump at the chance to ask him why his mother talks to herself before she falls asleep. He asks her in Greek, but the face she pulled required no translation. She looked like her son had just asked her the silliest question she had ever heard before responding with just a few words. The man in my room, her son relayed to me. She's talking to her friend. I'm sure I don't need to add that she stays in a room where there aren't any men. Now I'm pretty sure that she's just imagining her friend. She has certainly displayed signs of being in the early stages of dementia, but one or two of the other nurses here don't quite believe she is losing her mind. They talk about how she's the most lonely, lucid woman on the ward despite not being able to speak English. Maybe it's because the residents here are so close to death themselves. Maybe it's because the staff are in constant contact with mortality. Maybe this is just how we deal with the stresses of the job. But some things happen in this place that we can't entirely explain. Or maybe it's just because we don't want to explain them, that the truth might be scarier than anything in any storybook. I met my daughter's father as a teenager when we were in high school. When I first came over to meet his father family, there were immediate red flags. His mom was like no other person I had ever met before. It was like she was just an empty vessel that would spew out shocking and weird things in a girly little voice. When he introduced me, she grabbed my hands and looked into my eyes, saying, oh son, you brought us home a Snow White Virgin. I laughed uncomfortably, wondering if this is some awkward joke. She called out to his father watching TV on the couch, honey, did you see the virgin our son has brought us? He just grumbled and screamed, shut up. She started giggling uncontrollably and then darted off to go smoke outside. My boyfriend wanted me to join him and his mom for a smoke outside. I reluctantly agreed. She was still moving around very strangely on their deck, puffing her cigarette. Have you ever smoked poison ivy? She asked. No, that's dangerous. Have you? I responded. She just started giggling, unconscious, uncontrollably. Mom, why are you asking that? She hasn't smoked poison ivy. That's nonsense, my boyfriend said. So son, what do you see in this sewer rat anyway? His mom pointed at me, rage starting to fill her eyes. Because that's what she is. A dirty sewer rat. I was so confused and at a loss for words. I went from being a Sacred virgin to a sewer rat. I left since she felt this way about me. I'm not going to be talked to like that. Some weeks passed by and my boyfriend told me his mom wanted to apologize to me. I didn't want to go back over there, but he begged me. I again reluctantly agreed. She hugged me when I walked in and said, I would love for you to have dinner here and stay the night. My boyfriend was so excited about it, I didn't have the heart to decline. We were in her room talking while she was writing in a composition notebook, giggling like a child. She got up to go smoke with my boyfriend again. When they left, I picked up her notebook. It was pages upon pages of tiny numbers filling up each page. When my boyfriend returned, I privately told him what I saw. He just brushed it off and said, oh, my mom loves writing in code. Only she can understand it. I'm basically done at this point with the anxiety this family gave me. Ultimately, they decided to call the police on me, saying that I broke in when I was over visiting my boyfriend. I later became pregnant with his child. Not my best choice, but I did get a beautiful daughter out of it and I moved back home with my mother. Once my daughter was born, my boyfriend begged that he could spend the day with our baby at his house. I agreed, but only under the condition that I supervised closely. She was only about 2 months old at this time. We were sitting outside while she slept in his arms. His mom giggled and picked up a large stick. I don't know why, but every time I look at that cute little baby of yours, I just want to beat her with a stick like this one. I get up and run to the car with my daughter. I put her in the seat with his mom chasing after me. She starts struggling with the handle with me, trying to keep me from closing the door to the baby. I push her and am able to close the door and lock it. I drive away with her literally chasing after the car on foot. I told my daughter's dad that I would never bring her over there again. Later that night, her father calls me and I can hear his mother screaming in the background. He says, I have a large knife and I'm going to kill my mom for you. I gasped and replied, no, please don't. You don't want to do that. She's the reason I can't. My own daughter. Things will be better without her. I hear his mom screaming and crying and the phone goes dead. Later on, I hear that she is alive, but he stole her car and then went missing. I made the decision to cut things off with him and never risk our lives with either of those two again. I saw his mother again 10 years later. She was homeless. I frequently see her walking the streets with a basket. I even saw her a few days ago laid out on the sidewalk. As for my ex, he's in prison now. I am so thankful to have escaped that family and that my stupid teenage self got a grip and moved on for the sake of my child's safety. So I might have a different perspective on summer than most of you. I usually hated summer. My parents both worked during the day and left me chores to do every summer single day. I hated it. My friends were out doing everything they wanted while I had to do house and yard work. One particular day I was tasked with painting the spindles on the front porch, which would probably take more than one day to do. While I was out there painting, I heard the loudest noise coming from the street. It sounded like someone was rolling a tool chest down the road. I saw that it was an old guy with a cart that had a bunch of what looked like tools on it. After looking at the cart and putting two and two together, it was a portable cart to sharpen knives. Having some extra cash and thinking that I would do something nice for my parents, I flagged the guy down and ran inside and grabbed the knife block to bring the knives out to be sharpened. I told the guy I was doing it for my parents and he just looked at me and whispered, such a nice boy. He completed the sharpening for me and I gave him the cash and he thanked me and then continued down the road slowly but surely. When my parents got home, I could tell they appreciated the gesture, but I think they were more focused on the painting and how well of a job I did that night. I slept in my living room so I could stay up and watch TV without waking up my parents. I had to pause the TV at one point because I thought I heard a loud noise. I moved the blinds near the couch and looked outside and saw the cart from earlier. What the heck. I saw the cart but no person my dog could tell some something was up so I let her out back and as I went to turn the back porch light on and let her outside, I could have swore I saw someone shuffle behind the garage. I freaked out and woke up my dad and told him what I thought I saw. He looked out front and he did see the cart, but when he went behind the garage he didn't see anything. I went to the side door to make sure the door was locked and the old man was standing directly against it. I screamed for my dad and he ran and came out and confronted the man. I don't remember exactly what he screamed, but he was screaming like I had never heard before, shouting expletives. He called the cops and the cops eventually showed up, took statements, and then took the man away. I think he was charged with trespassing or something along those lines. It's been years since these events have taken place and the only thing I can really still visualize are the spindles on the front porch and the old man's face pressed against the sliding door when I went to go look outside. I don't think I'll ever forget that image as much as I would like to. Anyway, I hope this story spooked a few of you and if not, maybe it was a good one to fall asleep to Two years ago my wife and I purchased a small property on the lake for the family to spend the summer months away from the hustle and bustle of the city. As soon as kindergarten concluded for the year, my wife and I packed up our belongings and our five year old son to set off for our new summer vacation home. My wife is a biologist and she would be able to work from home due to our location and research she could do from our property. Our family is fortunate that she has such a successful job which allows us the freedom to live live comfortably. Unfortunately for me, we have moved a lot over the last 10 to 15 years and I have not been able to stay with the same company for an extended period of time. This new town had one small grocery store that seemed to be the main location that everyone used for shopping. It also seemed to be the hot spot for tourists who would visit once the weather turned warm. Luckily for me, I am a trained butcher from jobs I had in my early 20s, so finding work was usually not very difficult. I applied for a job at this small store and got the job almost immediately. There would be two butchers on staff, myself and the guy who ran the store. His name was Will. He was the person who hired me. For the first few weeks he seemed like a pretty quiet and laid back guy. I would get to work every day shortly after 7am he never really cared that I was usually five minutes late. He was about six foot tall, he had greasy black hair and a really big nose. He had really small green beady eyes. His voice was really low and rumbled a bit when he talked and he had baby looking teeth like when he Smiled, you could see a whole mess of teeth. After the first few weeks is when I noticed things starting to get a little odd. His temper would get out of hand and he would explode on me, seemingly out of nowhere, and then five minutes later, be totally cool again. It didn't really bother me too much because he was technically my boss and I just assumed maybe he had some kind of anger issues. And I'm not one to judge. After these first few weeks of little outbursts, they began to get more uncomfortable. He would start saying things like, you better get done when I leave or you'll be sorry. Or mumble things like, sometimes I think you'd be more help to me if you were dead. This stuff made me uncomfortable, but again, I just assumed that maybe that's just how we managed. I have met a lot of old school butchers during my time in this business and some of them are really intense individuals, so I figured this was just more of the same. Fast forward to a day when I showed up to work 15 minutes late. I got caught in a traffic jam and unfortunately there isn't really alternative routes to get to the store. I showed up and Will was just standing in the meat cooler staring at me. He had a black apron on, covered in blood from cutting all morning, with a huge butcher knife still in his hand. I tried to apologize, but before I could speak, he put his hand up to silence me and said in his deep voice, this will be the last time you're late. The last person to disrespect me. And he kind of paused for a moment and looked down to the ground and then finally finished by saying, never mind. Just don't be late again. The next few days he was very quiet, like something was bothering him, but to me it was great not having to hear him complain about everything. He left early one day and told me to just make sure I cut a few extra things and to clean the meat room. It was about 7pm and I was about to call it a night and head home until I noticed something. In the back corner of the meat cooler we had what was called bone cans. This is a waste can where you dispose of the bones and trimmed fat. Coming out of the bottom of one of the cans was a small pool of blood. Now ordinarily this wouldn't be a huge deal because I see this kind of thing a lot when with my job, but this pool looked fresh and the smell was really bad. I tried to move the can and it was much heavier than it usually was. They get picked up once A week. But this week they were a day late. For some reason I took the lid off and almost passed out due to the smell. I also noticed meat in there that was a strange, strange color and again, a lot more blood than usual. I put the lid back and left that night trying to figure out what the heck was in that can and why it smelled so bad. I have been in this business for a long time as I previously mentioned, and I've smelled bad meat before, but this was so bad. The next day I came in and Will was standing in the cooler again. He looked really angry. He came at me with a crazed look in his eye and a knife in his hand again and said, what do you think you saw in that can, huh? He started to poke my chest with his finger and say in a really hostile and defensive voice, come on pal, tell me what you saw. I know you were digging. Just tell me what you think you saw. His voice started to turn into a yell and this is where I decided to call it quits. Once you put your hands on me, I am done. The crazy thing is I don't even know how he knew. I looked into the bone can. Maybe I left the lid ajar. I couldn't remember. I left and he actually followed me to my car not to apologize but to keep keep on hammering me about the bone can. I drove off and looked in my mirror and he was standing in the parking lot yelling to himself. Now the reality is I didn't actually dig or even look in the can longer than a few seconds. I drove home immediately and my wife of course supported me and was happy to let me just spend the rest of the summer break with my son being a snake. Stay at home dad. About a week after the incident where I quit, I was awoken in my recliner in the living room close to 4 or 5am I was woken up by lights outside that had driven by the property. My wife was already gone for the day and my son was sleeping. All the lights in the house were off and I made my way to the window. There was a massive red pickup truck parked outside my house. Now the scary part is there was nobody inside the truck and even though I couldn't make out a lot of the details, the truck looked like the one always parked outside of the grocery store. It was Will's truck. I went into my son's room and stayed there awake for the rest of the night. At about 7:30am I looked outside side and the truck was gone. For the next few nights I saw that truck driving around the block but I could not see the driver. I told my wife what I had been seeing and she recommended perhaps we go back to the house in the city as her current project was almost done. Anyway. A few weeks after being back in the city, I needed to head back to the lake to grab some of the items we forgot. When I got there one of our windows was broken and things were tossed around like someone had been inside the property. I did report this to local authorities, mostly to document the damage that had been done to the property. I know I don't have any proof that will caused the damage or that my family was actually in danger. I just know something was off about that guy and I think next year we are planning to sell that property and find somewhere much further away from that area. At Capella University, you can learn at your own pace with our flexpath Learning format. 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If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast. Terms apply. Being that I found a community of kindred spirits here at Being Scared, I think that most of us will understand how much I love and look for things to scare me. I have never disbelieved in the paranormal, but I couldn't let myself truly believe in it without experiencing it for myself. As a result, I have gone to a few extremes in my attempts to find my first paranormal encounter. If I travel to city with a quote unquote haunted hotel, that's where I would insist that I stay. Obviously at the front desk. I request the rooms with the most reported encounters and activity. I take every ghost tour I can and particularly enjoy ghost bar crawls. I haven't broken into any abandoned asylums for fear of getting in trouble with the law, but that doesn't mean I haven't looked for at least two decades for what some people say they feel all the time. My most extreme attempts were that I have literally spent the night alone in two different famously haunted graveyards, to no avail. I began to think that if the spirit world exists, maybe they can sense someone who wants to experience it and won't be satisfyingly scared by them. But my love for Halloween and all things scary made it impossible for me to give up. The following is the story of one of the scariest, but also best moments in my life. If you don't already know the stories of the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, you should read up on what is considered by at least some to be the most haunted hotel in Texas where I live. I went down to San Antonio with my mom for a conference she was attending and wanted me to tag along. She knew better than to argue with my request for a room in the famously haunted section of the hotel and we ended up in a cute two room suite in the older half of the hotel, which was the haunted part. Our first night there she fell asleep several hours before me, but I was just in my half of the suite watching TV quietly. Suddenly I experienced a feeling that I had never had before. That moment, I could feel her. It was like all the stories I've heard before without really getting it. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and a numbing chill chill ran through my whole body. I felt like the temperature dropped 20 degrees and I found it hard to breathe properly in that utterly unique physiological and emotional state. I couldn't see her, but I felt her before I heard her. Soon after the first wave of chills and fear, I began to hear the very distinct sound of a woman crying from the open closet roughly six feet away from where I was lying down in my bed. It wasn't in the hallway. I knew it wasn't. It wasn't muffled like it would have been even if the walls were thin. It was right there. I never saw her, but an overwhelming sadness washed over me for the pain I heard in her cries. Once I experienced the chill, fear and sadness, I was so excited. Even though I was still a little scared, I decided not to close the closet door and just to put in earplugs and went to sleep around 2:30am I did not wake up my mom through all of this because she does not share my love of all things scary, like at all. If I woke her up that night, she would not have been able to fall back asleep the next morning. However, I did tell her what happened the night before. She was scared, but believed me when I said I could tell that the spirit was no threat to me or her. We got ready for the day and were locking up our room when we ran into a member of the cleaning staff. She was super friendly and she ended up asking if we liked being in one of the most famously haunted rooms. The next bit here made my blood run cold for a microsecond. My mom mentioned that I thought I had experienced something that night. No details about hearing or seeing anything, just something. She then looks at us and says that many guests have reported that they heard an unseen woman crying in the front closet of that suite. We looked at each other in alarm and what I already knew was reconfirmed. We had two more nights there where I slept with a closed closet and didn't experience anything strange as a result. But along with my obsession session for horror, I knew beyond all possible doubt that the spirit world is real. My fright was far overshadowed by my joy of finally finding the thing I spent so long looking for. Every summer for the past few years, a group of friends and I have traveled from our homes in Liverpool in the UK to Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland. Dumfries and Galloway is home to the largest continuous forest in the whole of the United Kingdom. Galloway Forest Park. It's about as wild as it gets for the UT uk, with some parts of the woods being so dense and overgrown that it's clear no one has stepped foot in them for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. Our yearly visits brought us peace, clarity and a respect for nature. But last year's trip ended in one of the most horrifying and distressing incidents of my entire life. One that completely changed the way I see the world and the way I consider the human mind. Year in, year out, we would take an overnight coach up across the border, then hike out to a place called Lochaber. The loch is a private fishing lake supposedly reserved for members of a local fishing club who ensure that the waters are chock full of fish for them to catch. Which makes it oh so easy for us to pull a quick in and out raid to catch enough of the smaller roughy fish for our dinner. I'm serious. 45 minutes and we're golden. And take it from any fisherman, that is lightning speed for a half decent catch. But last year we decided we were tired of the same old digs and set our gazes further afield. A map told us that there was a similarly deep Loch about 30 miles east known as Loch D. We figured it would be a perfect fishing spot, and we were right. Sure, it wasn't as quick fire as the private member's lake, but it came with considerably less guilt. Everything was going perfect. That was, until the second night, when, in the middle of a campfire drinking session, one of my buddies jumped out of his seat and recoiled. Recoiled from the fire. Who is that? He asked, sort of calmly at first. Nothing more than cautious confusion. Who's who? Who's who? Someone replied lazily. Someone moving through the trees back there. He was pointing into the trees directly behind my back. I actually gave a hoot of sarcastic laughter at first, thinking he was trying to scare us. But the moment it became obvious that he was not messing around, a jolt of fear went through me and I too leapt out of my seat, spun around and shined my torch into the darkness. You could feel the tension among us rising as we desperately looked around for who we might have been talking about. Torch beams darted across across the trees, inspecting every trunk or thicket of bushes, but there was nothing. No sign of the person my friend had seen. Hello. Someone called out, immediately shushed by the rest of us. No one wanted to give away our position, but at the same time, we needed to know if there was anyone out there watching us. But again, nothing. Just silence. I think you've had a bit too much to drink, mate. I remember saying to the guy who supposedly seen a figure walking through the trees. I'm fine. I've barely touched that bells I brought. I swear I saw someone just then. Like who? Someone asked. Man? Woman? Young? Old? What? I. I don't know, he replied shakily. But they were big. Really big. Only big thing around here is your bloody imagination, mate. Now go and get your head down. It's been a long day. And it had, thanks to the overnight coach. No one really sleeps on the journey up to Scotland. I mean, they closed their eyes, put some chill music through their earphones, but they never really sleep. So everyone ends up being pretty wrecked by the end of the first night. The next morning, we felt even worse. The first night after such a long journey is usually one where we sleep like the dead. But not that night. None of us could quite relax, not with the possibility of having someone stalking us in the backs of our minds. Thankfully, we were only planning to fish that day, as we were really not in the mood for anything else, given how bloody exhausted we were. After breakfast, we marched down to the loch with our fishing gear. It's a gorgeous area, a crisp blue lake ringed by hills. It's not unusual to get some really nice sunny days up in Scotland too, especially during the summer. But that day, the sky was this horrible, grimy gray, like the sun had barely risen at all. I was tired, half soaked from the drizzle, barely even excited to be fishing for my dinner. I actually hoped for something exciting to happen. And for my sins, my wish came true. Look. One of us shouted. Over there. Other side of the loch. Oh, my gosh. Can you see that thing? It was the same lad that had seen someone or something walking through the trees where we were terrified. One sighting could have been his eyes playing tricks on him. Another couldn't possibly be a mistake. There, he said, pointing. Just on the other side. It came out of the trees for a moment and then disappeared again. Please tell me you saw that. Mate, calm down. It's probably just. I know what I saw and we need to get out of these bloody woods right now, he said, grabbing up his fishing gear in a panic. I remember him rushing off back to camp, one of the lads following him still trying to calm him down, but it was impossible. He was manic, scared half to death by whatever had briefly emerged from the woods on the other side. Of the loch. I asked the other boys if they had seen anything. Each shook their head. None had any idea what he was talking about, but that didn't mean that we weren't just as freaked out over his outburst. We were supposed to stay for seven full nights, but that second one was our last. We had managed to talk the lad who was panicking down, convince him to stay a few nights more at the very least. We'd come all this way, and I wasn't about to let one of us just leave because they had a wee scare or something. But it didn't end there, either. In the middle of the night, the lad that had been seeing something burst out of his tent, waking each of us up before asking, can you hear that? There was silence. Dead silence, I mean. I strained my ears, trying to hear what had him so spooked, but I heard nothing. Just the rustling, rustling of a few sleeping bags as confused blokes sat up awake. He was scratching at his own ears, gritting his teeth, rocking back and forth in the dirt as the sound seemed to completely overwhelm him. That's the exact moment I realized, I think the same moment everyone else picked up on it, too, that there was no north noise. There was no monster. It was all in his head. He was experiencing a psychotic break, and it was all in his head.