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Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. I'm excited to let you all know that I got my hands on a Nintendo Switch 2, the Mario Kart World Bundle, and I'm giving it away to one of my podcast supporters on June 4. I stood in line for about seven hours to ensure that I got one. So I'm pretty excited to tell you that I actually did get one by the skin of my teeth. Honestly, only my podcast members are in this pool. It's a small group. You actually have a shot to win. In order to win, all you have to do is sign up for a $2.99 a month membership to support my podcast. Keep in mind that all of the ads will go away. You'll be able to listen completely interruption free and you will enter automatically. By doing that, the winner will be announced September 1st. Click the link in the description to join. Now get rid of all of the ads. Enjoy the podcast with absolutely no interruptions and you might just have a Nintendo Switch 2 sent to your doorstep. And with that said, I really hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off. Terms apply. You know that one friend who somehow knows everything about money? Yeah. Now imagine they live in your phone. Say hey to Experian, your big financial friend. It's the app that helps you check your FICO score, find ways to save, and basically feel like a financial genius. And guess what? It's totally free. So go on, download the Experian app. Trust me, having a BFF like this is a total game changer. Rated T for teen. Each year, thousands of adults lose their shred. It's an epidemic simply known as shred loss. But it doesn't have to be this way. Because rekindling your shred is as easy as playing the new Tony hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4. With new parks, cross platform, multiplayer and sick new game modes, we can put an end to shred loss everywhere. Hit the new Tony hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and show the world that the shred's not dead. Get Tony hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 available now to start this story, I should mention my occupation. I am a 30 year old female journeyman electrician. I often work alone and in people's homes. So needless to say, I often find myself in rather interesting situations. I am 5 2£125. I am very aware of my limitations when it comes to physically dangerous situations. I served in the military so I have a rudimentary knowledge of hand to hand combat and I'm adept for trained and licensed to carry certain tools of self defense. I also have experience as a paramedic in a major city. Needless to say, I feel as prepared as someone my size and gender could possibly be for most situations. However, this situation triggered a visceral response so I thought I would share my experience with who I refer to as the man with the mannequin legs. In the interest of privacy and simplicity, I will refer to him simply as John Doe. It's a Friday, approximately a year ago. The time was 19:30 or 7:30pm for you. Not using a 24 time clock, I received a dispatch to an apartment complex several towns over. The dispatch was for a loss of power to a condo unit in one of the older lower income buildings. There are certain homes and buildings I go into which automatically trigger a certain amount of caution. Upon seeing the building I had a gut feeling already that I would proceed with an air of caution. I immediately texted both my office manager, my boyfriend and my mother my GPS location with a message saying this is where I am. His name is John Doe. This is his address and unit number. If you don't hear from me every 20 minutes until I tell you I have left, please call me first. If I don't answer, please call the police. When I rang the bell, a gruff voice of a man who smokes far too many cigarettes forcefully inquires as to who is there. I answer, stating that I'm the electrician that was dispatched. He hits the buzzer and lets me in. I walk up the stairs and the first thing to hit me is the smell of the building. A building full of unwashed bodies, unemptied wet ashtrays and stale alcohol. He opened his door and the smell intensified. He wore grubby, unkempt, ill fitting clothing stained with fluids bodily or food in origin. His face thin and gaunt, unshaven with dark heavy bags under his eyes. Entering the door I notice a small table that was stacked with empty beer cans toting the King of Beers. A plastic whiskey bottle went thunk off the toe of my steel toe boots and skidded across the floor. I look up at him, though on the skinny side, he was tall. I ask him for details regarding the loss of power and he explains that some things work while others don't. I won't bore you with the details, but in the end I had to see the panel. He leads me to his bedroom as I pick my way across a sea of discarded items. We pass the kitchen, the sink stacked high with plates, unwashed with rotting food precariously balanced atop one another like a perverse game of Jenga. Stepping over clothing, garbage and discarded alcohol containers, burn marks in the carpet from someone nodding off and dropping a lit cigarette, I enter his bedroom. A mattress with a tattered blanket and no sheets or pillows sits in the center. The furniture is all secondhand and distressed, broken in places, water stained as if it was saved from some some unknown curb which was not sold during the estate sale. The top half of a naked dirty mannequin, appearing as if it were stolen from an abandoned storefront of a long dead store, lays in the bed. I trip over something as I'm making my way around the bed. Looking down, I see two things that make me take pause. The more alarming of the two happened to be a set of legs from the mannequin carelessly hacked from the top half with what looks to be a very dull hacksaw, lines drawn at the natural human joints, though it was a hard molded plastic. I also see a dimly flashing red light coming from the ankle of my creepy host. It's a Department of Corrections GPS ankle monitor. I have to turn my back on him to make the repairs, which makes my hair stand on end. He watches me smoking a cigarette and sneaking to the living room often to take a swig from a brown paper bag. I make a few temporary repairs and tell him I'll have to come back to finish the rest of it. I take payment and leave. He watches me walk to my truck, following me to the apartment, landing into the main front door. I am almost running now and I jump into my work truck and lock the doors. I finally breathe. I finally feel safe until I see him in my mirror, staring back at me from the rear section of my truck. Not threatening, just staring. I leave without finishing my paperwork and go a few blocks down. I stop and start shaking as the adrenaline slowly leaves my system. I reassure my family that I am safe and tell my boss that I cannot go back to that address. He offers to send me back with another person person and my heart drops. I look for a reason not to. I quickly google John Doe and find out exactly why he was wearing an ankle monitor. He had just got out of prison. John Doe served two years in state prison after stalking a woman. When she threatened to report him, he broke into her home, demanded her to disrobe. When she refused, he told her he would kill her and threaten to dismember her. My heart leapt into my chest as I realized what this man may have truly been capable of. With the evidence of the mannequin staring me in the face, it appears his fantasy is alive and well. Needless to say, my company never sent any technician back to the man with the mannequin legs and I ended up with nothing more than a story. A story that shows no matter how prepared you may be for a situation, you never know exactly who you are dealing with I was in high school when this all happened. This was back in 2016 and I had recently started walking home from school. I didn't live too far. It was only around a 20 to 30 minute walk depending on how much I wanted to go home that day. The school day had just ended and this was my fifth or sixth time walking home. I decided that I would go the long route instead of the shorter one that I normally take. Little did I know what I was walking into after getting out of the parking lot. There was a long road that led to a neighborhood just behind the school. On one side of the road there was the baseball field and on the other was a small factory looking place place. Usually I would follow this road down into the neighborhood and cut through there until I reached the main road where I'd be roughly 15 minutes away from home. So I climbed up the side of the hill between the back road and the factory place and began my walk through. There were multiple buildings on each side of the path I was walking on. I had headphones on because it's what I usually did when I walked home. Only this time since the only cars that would pose a throw threat if any, would come from where I can see them. So instead of having one side in, I had both sides in blaring loud enough to drown out any noise surrounding me. It was a joyful walk for the most part. I kept swapping between staring at the sky and the trees behind some of the smaller sized buildings. It was the middle of spring and I live in Michigan so I appreciate the small breeze and greenery when it finally rolls around. I had walked past one of the buildings but it seemed off compared to the rest of them. This one had no windows and the outside of it was worn down like someone had been chipping away at it for a while with a chisel. I brushed it off like it was nothing and continued on walking. However, during the time that it took for the song I was currently listening to to swap to the next, I heard an extremely loud scream. Scream. I took my headphones off and let them rest around my neck. I stood confused for a few seconds, wondering if I was imagining things or if it was part of the song. After those few seconds, another scream filled my ears, only much louder than the one before. Now, if you ever hear something like this when you're walking somewhere, I advise you to stop what you're doing, find out where you're at, and called 911 to report it. Being the curious person I was, and given I didn't have much to do that day, I decided to check it out and see if everything was okay. The screams sounded almost staged, but I couldn't be sure without checking it out for myself. I walked up to the building so I could look through the holes in the door. It looked old and had a fair bit of rust around it, so it was an average peephole, but more of a rusted away you need to replace this door kind of hole. I looked inside and what I saw made my stomach turn faster than I ever thought it could. Inside was a man. He was wearing all black and a mask that you probably could buy at a party store if I had to guess. There was also a woman who was on the floor. She had bruises and blood stains on her shirt. The man was holding a hammer that had blood covering the tip of it. I cannot go into detail of what I saw next, but it was the most disturbing thing I have ever seen. I had the sudden urge to throw up. I backed away from the door and threw up. Only nothing came out because I hadn't eaten much that day. A few seconds after that, I heard the sound of the man's shoes practically stomping on the floor inside the building and they were getting closer. I gathered my composure quickly and started to pull out my phone when the door swung open and the man stepped out. I pretended that I had been recording the entire thing to hopefully scare the guy into letting me live. If I told him, I wouldn't tell anyone if he would let me go. He proceeded to slam the door shut. After a few minutes of us standing there staring at each other without muttering a single word, my heart was beating so fast that I was beginning to be distracted by it as well as the fear that this could be my last Moment after he slammed the door and went back inside. I took off running and immediately called 911. They stayed on the line with me until I got far enough away to feel safe telling them my location. A couple cop cars showed up roughly six to seven minutes later and I pointed them to the building. There were four of them. When they came back, nobody else was with them. The man had taken off during the short amount of time time he had and must have taken the woman with him. They found some hair and blood on the floor, but other than that, it was as if the two were never there to begin with. The police never found the guy and I never saw any reports or articles about a missing woman or a woman that was killed. After that day, I never walked home again. I always either rode the bus or had one of my parents pick me up about half a year year after that. I eventually transferred to an alternative high school that was much farther away from those buildings than my old school. I was 16 at the time and I am currently 20 going on 21 in August and this incident has been with me ever since. I have always been skeptical about situations around me, but after that I was never even close to the same again. This happened to me and my sister in April of 2020. My sister at the time was 13 and I was 14. My sister also has the tendency to overreact in a situation and makes it worse than it already could be. This information will make sense later in the story. It was about 6pm at night and our mom had gone to see her friends and wouldn't be back until very late. Our older sister was at our dad's, so the only people that were home were me, my sister and our little brother, who was 10 at the time. My sister and I decided to take our dog on a walk around the primary school down the road from our house. Let me tell you what the school looks like. Like for a better picture, we live in Australia, so the school was a very typical public Australian school. It has two main ovals and many separate buildings for classrooms. It's not just one big building, it's many buildings kind of all over the place. We walked through the school to get to the oval so that we could let our dog run around. We were there for about 15 minutes when my sister gasped and grabbed my shoulder. Dude, I think I just saw someone, she said. I saw her eyes dart around the area desperately searching for the figure she saw. It was probably just a cleaner. If they ask what we're doing, we'll just tell them the Truth. We were letting our dog run around. I said calmly. Like I said, my sister has a tendency to overreact so I didn't take what she said with too much seriousness, but this was a big mistake. We continued to chill, looking at our phones, occasionally looking up to watch where our dog was. It was nearly 6:30 when I decided we should head home. I looked up to find our dog to see him staring at the building behind me. I stood up and looked around and saw that there was nothing unusual. I made an annoyed face and turned back around. We better get going before it gets dark. I said grabbing our dog's lead and calling him over. I attached him to his lead and began leading him towards the exit. When my sister grabbed me again, I sighed. What? I said in annoyance. I turned around and saw her face of terror and she said don't look now, but there's a man over there hiding behind the building. My stomach stomach dropped. I didn't know if she was joking around with me. I didn't want to look in fear if he was there, notice and start coming towards us. Let's just go. I said slowly and began to walk past the building and hopefully out of sight of the man. But as soon as we were we sprinted all the way back home and practically broke the door handle trying to get in. We collapsed on the floor in exhaustion. Was there actually a guy there? I asked between breaths. Yes, he was hiding behind the building. Like I said, my sister responded. I then had a weird instinct in my gut that told me to lock up the house, so that's what I did. I quickly darted around the house and locked every door and possible entry as well as pull down all the curtains over the windows so that no one could sneak in. I sat on the couch and turned to my sister and said, do you think maybe he was a teach? I got cut off by a knock on our front door. Our eyes widened and our mouths hung open. It couldn't have been our mom since she wasn't supposed to be back until at least 11 o' clock and even if she was early, she had a key or if she didn't for some reason she would have called out. She wouldn't have knocked and it wasn't our older sister because we didn't hear a car pull up outside, which we definitely would have and she also would have called out. Another knock came from the door. This time the person on the other side spoke. Hello, I have mail for you. My mouth dropped wider. Their voice didn't belong to anyone we knew and it was rasp and husky, like they had lost their voice. It was then that our brother came out of his room and said loudly, who's at the door? Both me and my sister cringed on how loud it was, knowing whoever was at the door definitely heard him. The person at the door spoke again. Yeah, open the door. I have something for you. Our brother looked at us in confusion and we both shook our head and told him to get down. He crawled on the ground and tried to ask what was going on. I put my finger over my mouth and motioned for us to go to the kitchen. We all crawled our way to the kitchen and huddled in the corner. What do we do? My sister shakily asked. My brother at this point was crying from confusion and fright and me, being the oldest, felt I was in charge and had to decide what to do. I didn't think I could call the police because we weren't sure what this person's intentions were. All of a sudden we heard the back door handle jiggle. I whipped my head towards it and put my hand over my mouth in shock. Our town was usually very safe, so for this to be happening was absolutely terrifying. I looked to grab my phone to call the police, but I couldn't find it. I then realized I left it on the couch. The bad thing about this was to get to the living room you have to pass the back door and the back door has a glass window at the top allowing anyone to see in. I turned my head towards my sister and quietly asked, do you have your phone? My stomach dropped when she replied, no, it's on the charger by the tv. I breathed in deeply and crawled slowly towards the back door. The handle was still jiggling, almost like they were trying to unlock it. Luckily, the back door has a double lock, so I wasn't worried about that. I peered my head cautiously around the corner to look at the back door and that's when I saw him. His hair was matted and shoulder length. His eyes were dark and bloodshot and his skin was pale, pale and yellow. He saw me and begin to bang against the door, desperately trying to get in. I quickly got up and ran to the couch and grabbed my phone and dialed triple zero. I told the operator that someone was attempting to break in and it was then that the man started yelling gibberish. The operator heard this and asked for our address so that he could send someone out. It was then that I heard a big crack. It was the door. He was ramming himself into it and the door was caving in. Quicker than I had ever moved before. I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed my sister and brother and ran with them to the bathroom and locked the door and told them to get down. I scolded myself for not grabbing some sort of weapon before I locked us in with no exit. If this man manages to get in, then we heard this scariest sound, the door breaking in completely. He was in the house. He was still yelling and now running around the house opening every door searching for us. Luckily, about two minutes after this we heard police sirens and the man's yelling ceased. We hear him quickly run out of the house and then we hear the police shouting at him to get on the ground and another police officer enters the house and calls out for us. I slowly open the door and peer out to a female police officer looking around. I walk towards her shakily and start breaking down in front of her. I usually don't like the police, but on this occasion I could never be more grateful for them. I hate to think what if we didn't go to the bathroom or if I looked towards him when we were at the school. Living with schizophrenia isn't easy, especially when you're not getting relief from some of your symptoms. It can be hard when you're still dealing with symptoms like hearing voices or seeing things that aren't there, and negative symptoms like feeling unmotivated or avoiding social situations. If this sounds familiar, it might be time to talk to your healthcare provider and explore a different kind of schizophrenia treatment. Discover your possibilities@treatingscz.com KFC presents a story about the pursuit of flavor when Colonel Sanders learned there was no such thing as a free lunch, he went to the kitchen and made one to prove people wrong. That's why Rewards members can get a free bucket on us. Eight pieces of the Colonel's classic Fried chicken or Juicy Original Recipe Tenders the Colonel lived so we could Chicken Get a Free bucket on us when you spend $15 in the KFC app or only available on KFC.com or in the app for participating stores through KFC Rewards Account with minimum $15 online purchase before taxes, tips and fees. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states it was 2011 and I was fresh out of the Navy. I had decided to Move back home to the family farm with my folks in Michigan until I could get established on my own. However, this was right after the market crash of 2008 and it took longer than anticipated to get back on my feet. So I ended up living with them for a while longer than originally planned and my mother had grown accustomed to having me around to help with mowing the lawn, raking the leaves and shoveling snow. So she specifically asked me to stay and help and so I agreed. Unfortunately, the farmhouse my parents owned and had been in the family for generations burned down and so they moved into town and were renting. They found a nice house for a reasonable amount and signed a lease. I initially moved with them, but now there was no more farm to take care of, so I started looking for a new place to live. My mother again insisted on me staying with them and after discussing it with my significant other, it was decided that I would stay with the folks in order to save up money for the future. After living in the same house for a few years, we found out that the owner had mortgaged the house to heaven and back back and it was being foreclosed on. Me and the folks found yet another house and lived there until the owner decided he wanted to retire from being a landlord and so sold it off, meaning no renewed lease and therefore they had to find a new place to live again. We ended up stuck in a little house in a bad neighborhood which had no front porch light. I was again considering leaving for a more stable living condition, but at this point my long term girlfriend had become my fiance and I really needed to save up money for our future wedding and so I stayed. Several things happened around that little house on the bad street that eventually scared my parents to buying a new house. Some of these events were just the result of living in a bad neighborhood. For example, there was a house down the street that the cops raided a few times in the year that we live lived on that street because they were running a brothel. A church on the street got broken into and robbed more than once. A house burned down by an arsonist. A woman was dragged out of her home by the sheriff after the homeowner reported her for lack of rental payments. A guy across the street was being arrested almost weekly for domestic violence. Another up the street got raided a couple times for selling drugs. All sorts of sorts of other crazy and drama on that street. But none of those things are really what convinced my parents to buy a new place and move. The following are those events Shortly after moving into the new place My parents went out to spend some time with friends one night and I was at home talking with my fiance over Skype as she was in Ireland at the time. It was a warm summer's evening in early September and the little house had no air conditioning conditioning, so I had the front door open to let air in through the screen door and my bedroom door open so I wasn't roasting alive. From where I was sitting at my PC in my bedroom, I had a straight shot view out of my bedroom door to the front door. As my fiance and I talked, I heard what sounded like the latch to the front screen door. I looked toward the door but saw nothing. Assuming it was the wind rattling the screen door, I continued my conversation. Then I heard it again and I watched the door for a moment to see if I could see the branches of the trees or the leaves blowing and swaying in the wind. There was no wind, so when I heard the latch jiggling a third time, I got up and went to investigate. And as I walked outside there was a man walking off the side of the porch and away from the house. I called after him asking if I there was something he needed, but he ignored me completely. As this was happening, my parents were arriving home and saw the man crossing our driveway at an angle that made it obvious he had been on our porch with me standing on the porch calling after him. He walked into the neighbor's house and disappeared from sight. My dad turned to me and asked what's happening? What did the guy want? I proceeded to tell him about how I kept hearing the latch on the screen door and when I attempted to investigate I found this guy on our porch and bailing as quickly as possible and when I asked what he needed he ignored me and ran off. My dad then walked over to the neighbors to ask about the odd behavior. He wouldn't come to the door at first, but when he finally did he claimed he was just looking to bum some cigarettes. My dad handed him a few, then asked why he hadn't just knocked and if he needed cigarettes. Why did he run when asked what he wanted? I should note here that my dad had accidentally left an almost full pack on his porch chair and it hadn't been bothered. So naturally we didn't believe him and instead of answering my dad's questions he just ran off into the house somewhere. My dad then found himself talking to an older couple and found out through the old couple that they own to the house next door and that the weird guy was their son who had just gotten out of prison for theft related crimes. He got caught about six weeks later breaking into another neighbor's house. The homeowner called the cops and he was found to have violated his parole and was sent back to jail. But that's not the end of the story. Shortly after, the man next door tried to sneak into the house while I was still there, we we started having an issue where someone had tried to get into the back door. We would come home from grocery shopping or something and the back gate would be open and the screen door on the back door would be swinging in the breeze. This went on for a while until one day we came home, found the back gate open again. And when we went to close the back screen door, there were tool marks on the door jamb like someone had been trying to jimmy the door open. We found a small pry bar in the tall grass next to the back porch and we realized that the only reason to leave it there was if the culprit had dropped it while running away as quickly as possible. Say for example, if he needed to beat a hasty retreat over the back fence as the residents pulled up. At this point my dad had had enough of the guy who had been next door whoever was trying to get in through the back door, and so he decided some cat cameras would be useful and started to price things. He ended up getting some trail cams that could be plugged in to recharge, were motion activated as trail cams usually are, and could be easily mounted. He put one up facing towards the back door where the camera could see through the window in the back door, and he mounted the other where it could see out the front door. These cameras were about to prove they were worth it. We had been in the place a few months now and it was early March and we had had snow overnight. I awoke to find four inches in the driveway. So I shoveled the snow out of the driveway real quick before heading off to work. My dad woke up about an hour later and also left for work, leaving my mother home alone. According to her, sometime during mid morning she was surprised by a knock at the door and when she answered there was a man there stuck around 57 with a goatee, offering snow removal services. My mother looked at the driveway and found it devoid of snow. When she looked back at the guy, he looked like he was trying to peer around her into the house. She shut him down, telling him that she clearly didn't need snow removal and closed the door in his face. As she did, she heard him kick the screen door as if he was attempting to put his foot in the door as he insisted that he could do snow removal for just a nominal fee. She ignored him and he eventually wandered off. She told me and my dad about it later, but there just wasn't much to the story. Some idiot offered snow removal to people who didn't need it. Not exactly the Amityville horror. So we kind of just brushed it off. A few weeks later in early April, my parents went on a cruise for my mother's birthday, leaving me alone in the house. I had been in the house alone for a few days when some guy showed up at around 8:30pm Pitch Black Night outside saying that he was from the gas company that provided our gas company with natural gas and he needed to come in and see our gas bills to make sure we were not being overcharged. I was immediately wary of the man as he matched the description my mother had given me about the snow removal guy a month earlier and it was 8:30pm the gas company closed at 5. It was possible people would be doing overtime, but for three and a half hours after closing, going door to door in the cold Michigan spring, it seemed unlikely. He was wearing an ID on a lanyard around his neck, but he kept his hands over the actual ID and he flashed it at me so fast that I couldn't really see it. To be honest, what I did see looked like that back of a Topps baseball card with the player's stats. Then he actually tried to push past me into the house but I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him back while telling him no. At the same time he insisted that he was just making sure that we weren't being cheated and then pointed to the only other house on the street with no front porch light and said he had just come from a over there and that he had managed to cut over 10% of their gas bills. I cut him off and told him that not only was it late, but it did not go over my head that his best and only example of his work was the only other poorly lit house with no front porch light. That I found it very suspicious that he actually expected me to show him private financial information on the gas bill, nor did I believe the gas company would have people out so he late. I told him he needed to leave and he responded by trying to push past me again, again telling me it was fine and he was just there to help. I pushed him back again, more aggressively this time and almost push him backward off the porch, firmly telling him no, I wasn't going to show him anything and that he needed to leave now. I told him that it was not okay that he repeatedly tried to enter enter the home without permission, nor was it fine that he repeatedly demanded to see private financial information. Then I looked him in the eyes and as confidently as possible told him that this intrusion felt more to me like he was casing the house for a burglary and I would be calling the cops immediately after closing the door. And then I warned him that I was former military and that I was armed and that if I saw him around my house again, that I would act upon accordingly. Now, I am not a psycho. I had no real want to hurt anybody. But I needed him to know that I had the means, capability and willingness to defend myself and the home if necessary. He slowly walked off the porch as I closed the door and he started down the street. I watched him through the windows walk right past all the well lit houses of my neighbors. As he walked away, it occurred to me that he should have some sort of company vehicle. If he really was from the gas company as he claimed, there should be some sort of service truck or company car with a logo or rental tags. So I went out onto the front porch and looked up and down the street to find one. There was nothing. However, as I looked back toward him, he was signaling at someone who came from behind some bushes on a side street near the house, literally less than 10 yards away way. The guy was taller and skinnier than his friend, like sickly and frail, skinny, but somehow he still had an aura of danger about him. The first guy made me feel slightly uneasy, but this guy made me feel chilled to the core. And he wore an oversized hooded sweater that in the darkness completely hid his facial features, giving him a look like the Grim Reaper. He kept pointing at the house and his body language kept getting more and more forceful. I could tell he wanted to come back to the house for whatever reason, but the first guy didn't. And I couldn't help but wonder what their plan was that the accomplice wanted so much to complete. What would have happened if I had actually let this guy into the house? At this point, I followed through with my promise and pulled out my phone and called the police non emergency line and reported him. I was on the phone with the officer taking my statement when the fake gas guy and his friend turned and started pointing at the house. That's when they realized I was still watching them from the porch and the first guy began to run down the street. However, his accomplice just stood and looked in my direction as I spoke to the officer. I don't know how I know this as I couldn't see his face with that giant hood up in the dark of the night, but I could tell he was staring at me and as I watched him I realized I couldn't look away from him. I felt like I had just entered a battle of wills and if I looked away it would end badly for me. So I just stood there and watched him with chills dancing up and down my spine. After what felt like a small eternity but what had to have been only several seconds of this staring contest, he looked away slowly and nonchalantly made his way back down the street to catch up with the fake gas guy. I realized I had been holding my breath and let out a long sigh. The officer was asking me if I was still on the line and it occurred to me that I had just dropped off mid conversation with the person on the other end. My knees felt weak and I needed to sit down so I went inside and locked the door. The police promised to send a patrolman around and take a look for anything suspicious suspicious and told me to call back if they came back. I hung up the phone. I was alone in a bad neighborhood with a couple of random guys casing the house, one of which was clearly not right in the head. I went to bed with my weapon on my desk, ready to go just in case I was woken up from a fitful sleep by my phone a couple hours later. The patrolman had caught the guys pulling the same shtick at another house with no porch light down the street. The creepy one was hiding around the corner of the house when the patrol car pulled up. I had to go in the next day to confirm they were the same people. While I never got a clear look at the accomplice's face, I was able to identify the person who knocked on my door. I read up on them in the paper a little while later. Apparently they were looking for victims to rob, or so they claimed. The accomplice apparently had several large knives on him when he was arrested, hidden underneath his giant hoodie, leading police to believe he at least had other plans than just burglary when confronted with these questions. They took plea deals in exchange for confessions. The one with the knives got his parole revoked and found himself back in jail with an extra couple years tacked onto his original sentence. The door knocker got 30 days in the county jail, 100 days community service, $1,000 fine, and one year probation. When my parents got back from their cruise. I told them what happened and my mother rushed over to the trail cams she found early March and the pictures of the snow removal guy and then went to the next day in question and found pictures of the gas company guy. They were the same guy near as we can figure because my dad and I worked long hours and were typically gone most of the day. The only person they had ever seen leaving and entering the house was my mother who was a tiny old lady so they assumed she lived alone. Then when he showed up late at night a couple weeks later and instead of a lonely old lady there was a 63 military vet telling him no you're not not coming in and it bungled up whatever they were planning. I'll tell you what though, there was something about the accomplice that scared me. Maybe it was because he was hiding in the bushes the whole time me and his friend were having our exchange, or the fact that he kept his face hidden by an oversized hood, but before he ever even noticed me standing there I could feel the danger emanating off him like warning bells going off in my head and it felt like he just loathed my entire being and wanted me to suffer for simply existing. The way he stared at me from under the dark shadows of his hood was almost inhuman. I took some time off work, used up some of my savings and went to Europe to see my fiance. I just needed to get away from that house for a while. While I was in Europe, my parents quickly bought up a house on the very edge of town town away from bad neighborhoods and moved into it When I got back from vacation. I asked them why they decided to buy all of a sudden and they just told me that they never wanted to rent again after that house. It was summer of 2007 and my best friend and his girlfriend suggested that I get a date and we all go to some local hot pots which are natural hot springs located deep in a nearby canyon not too far from where we lived in Utah. Supposedly these hot pots were awesome, super quick and easy to get to, just a short hike from where you park your car off the main road running through the canyon. It must have been around 7pm that day when we parked the truck in Spanish Fork Canyon and set off on the trail that led to the natural hot springs. I don't know where my friend got his bad information, but it was definitely not a super quick and easy hike to the hot pots, more like a difficult hike that took over an hour on a very narrow path where we had to walk single File the whole time and occasionally over some treacherous spots where one bad step would send you cascading down the mountain. It seemed like it would never end and we would never get to those hot springs. But after wearing ourselves out and not being adequately prepared, we finally made it. The sun was setting as we finally reached the clearing where the natural pools were dug out from the ground. It was later than we expected, but we figured it would be fun to soak in the hot water underneath the stars. We were so deep in the canyon at this point that the stars in the sky were brighter than any other time I have ever seen them in my life. No light pollution at all. We had probably been there for about 30 minutes and had the entire area to ourselves, just having a great time, telling jokes and making each other laugh. The only light was from the stars and the only sounds were from us. The quiet was almost eerie. Suddenly we started to hear twigs snapping in the direction we came from. There was only one way in and out from the hot pots. That super narrow trail that we hiked in on, which ended at the pools. Soon we could make out the outline of a figure in the dark. Someone with a flashlight coming down the trailhead to the pools that we were swimming in. I was in a great mood up to this point and since this person's arrival had taken us all by surprise, I yelled out to them once I was confident that they would be able to hear me to try and break the ice from any awkwardness and also partly as a defense mechanism from the nervousness I was feeling all of a sudden. Hey, you here to join the party? Silence. The person keeps watching, walking towards us and doesn't say a word. Immediately alarm bells are going off in my head. My gut is telling me that something is not right here. I try to ignore how I'm feeling and make a joke to our group about that person being a weirdo for not answering. But now everyone is on edge. As the person begins to get closer, we can start to make out a little more than what we have been able to see before. It's definitely a man, above average size, dressed head to toe in black. This guy was wearing a hoodie and long pants in the middle of the summer in Utah. Who does that? We notice he's also wearing a black backpack. Before he gets to the clearing and turns off his flashlight, he continues walking towards us. Now there are half a dozen hot pots scattered around this clearing. There is no one else around except us. He has his pick of any one of them to swim in. But no. He walks directly towards ours and sits down about six feet from where we were soaking. My friend has a lantern, so he hops up to the side of the pool and grabs it and turns it on. Wait, what was this stranger just doing before we turned the lantern on? Was he ruffling through his bag looking for something? One of us says something to him. Once again, no response. My friend temporarily turns off the lantern. I assume it's because the battery is low and he doesn't want to wear it out. But once the light is out, the stranger in black unzips his backpack again and starts frantically looking through it again. My friend immediately turns turns the lantern back on. The stranger quickly stops and zips the backpack back up, acting like nothing is happening. My friend notices that the stranger appears to be Hispanic and so he greets him in Spanish. This clearly takes the stranger off guard and he mumbles a response. My friend asks how he's doing. What is he up to tonight? Did he come for a swim? At least that's what I assume from his time home. I don't speak Spanish, so I don't know exactly what the stranger's responses were, but they were very brief and not friendly. After asking a few more questions to the guy, my friend turns to me and our dates in the pool and says very quietly but dead serious, we need to go right now. Immediately, we start getting out of the pool and drying off with our towels. The stranger asks my friend a question in Spanish, something like, oh, where are you guys going so quickly? And I surmise my friend is playing it off very calmly and like it's no big deal. Again, he turns to us as we're getting our things together and putting on our shoes. Maybe not going as fast as we could. We do not have time. Grab your stuff, we're going now. We don't ask questions. We grab our things and start practically running towards the trailhead as a group. As we look back, we see the stranger in black getting his things together, getting up and starting to follow us. At this point, there is no illusion of what is happening. This guy has bad intentions and is chasing after us on this narrow trail back to our vehicle. We know we've got an hour or more ahead of us us until we're back to the safety of our vehicle and we don't have anything to defend ourselves with at all. We're still wet. We got a head start on him, which was a big help. I took the lantern and took the lead of the group. We got into a single file line and locked hands with each other, knowing that we needed to keep moving as fast as we could, but not too fast or we could literally fall to our deaths. The girls were behind me with my friend at the back who was giving us updates as to where the stranger in black was and telling us to move faster. He picked up the biggest, sharpest rock he could find and was prepared to attack this guy if he had to. I'm sure you can imagine the emotions that were running through all of us at that time. The girls are sobbing, trying to keep pace with me up front. I am yelling back to them, watch out for this, watch out for that. As we are making our way in the darkness as fast as we can. I am telling myself to stay calm so I don't scare the girls any more than they already are, while also feeling an overwhelming sense of dread that I don't want to die so young. I am only 19. After what feels like an eternity, we finally see the main canyon road and our truck. We all run towards it as my friend unlocks it and we all get inside. We are all in shock at this point and just start shaking uncontrollably. I tell my friend to start the truck and start driving so that we can get out of there and never come back. I asked my friend, the one who was speaking Spanish to the stranger, why did you tell us to get out of there so quickly? My friend answered that he purposely had been turning the lantern on and off because he noticed when he did, the stranger was searching in his bag for something and when it came back on, the stranger closed it up fast and acted like he hadn't just been looking for something. That was when he tried speaking in Spanish to get a feel for what was going on with the guy. My friend said that he was asking the stranger some questions in Spanish like where are your friends? And the stranger answered, no friends and other short answers to basic questions that gave my friend the absolute creeps. Once the stranger asked my friend something about the girls who were with us. That was when he told us that we needed to get out of there. Apparently he was able to see the stranger following us almost the entire way out of the trail, but dropped off towards the end when he couldn't keep pace with us. What was that stranger doing in the middle of the dark canyon by himself, dressed all in black? What did he have in his bag that he was trying to get to that he didn't want us to see? And what would have happened to us if he would have caught up to our Group on the trail that night I am a 27 year old man from Dallas, Texas and as far back as I can remember I have always had some sort of weird intuition about things, places, etc. My mom even says as a kid I used to sleepwalk. She would tuck me into bed, go through the bathroom to my sister's room. Hers and my bedroom were connected through the bathroom at that time it was. She said that when she would get to the stairs there I would be just standing there staring at her, very unaware of anything. Other times she said she would wake up and I would be standing next to her bed just staring at her. But that's just a little backstory. When I was 24, I'm 27 now. I had just gotten into a relationship with my now ex boyfriend who is still my best friend. We had been at my place check chilling and hanging out having a great time and he had gotten up to use the bathroom while I stayed on the couch trying to find something else to watch. And while he was in the bathroom I suddenly started noticing the lights begin to flicker. Now to any normal person this is no big deal really. And it wasn't really to me at first either. That is until I began to hear what sounded like my mother's voice calling my name from what sounded like outside my front door coming up the stairs. I looked at my phone and saw that it was 12:30 at night and started to panic a little about what she could possibly be coming to tell me so late. So I got off the couch to let her in before she could knock. But when I opened the door she wasn't there. She wasn't coming up the stairs. I went to the outside balcony and her car wasn't even outside. My boyfriend came out of the bathroom and asked me what I was doing with with the door open and I told him I thought I heard my mom. He responded confused. This late. We both chuckled and sat back on the couch to watch a movie. But I remember I wasn't feeling comfortable anymore. It was about 2am when my boyfriend and I decided to call it a night. I walked him out the door, kissed him good night, and before he walked down to his car he turned and looked at me sort of puzzled and said be safe. Now this may not seem weird or eerie, but the thing about it was I was at my home. We usually would only tell each other when we were leaving the other's house and driving home and the way he said it as if he was absolutely terrified that this was the last time that we would see each other. I told him I will watched him get into his car and drive away. I went back into my apartment and immediately went to my room to go to bed. I laid down and turned on an episode of Golden Girls. I began to feel myself drifting off to sleep and eventually just fell asleep. While I was sleeping I kept feeling like someone was entering my room. I kept sensing my bedroom door opening and closing and someone just hovering watching me. I found myself not being able to wake up and see what was actually going on, but also knowing it wasn't an episode of sleep paralysis which I have also experienced. The final time I sensed my door opening, a figure popped into my head and was standing in my room. At first I couldn't make it out, but then my mind cleared and it was Scar from the Lion King. At least the head was scarce. He was wearing a black suit and had human legs and glowing red eyes. He stood in my doorway. He flicked out one of his claws on his paw like you do a switchblade in an old movie and I remember it being a really loud flick. He licked his lips and said, rest now young one. After that I just remember being awoken by my phone ringing. It was my mom. I answered, groggy and still half asleep to her asking are you okay? Something told me to call and check on you. I sat up and realized it was daylight outside. I looked down at the phone and also saw that it was 12:30 in the afternoon. I rubbed my eyes and said I was fine, just trouble sleeping. I then asked had she come by my place last night at all? And she said I was going to, but I decided to head home instead. How did you know? I lied and told her I didn't, just asked. Now call me paranoid or crazy, but as soon as I moved out of that apartment, I had actually forgotten about this whole ordeal until my ex asked me recently, do you remember that time your mom came over at like midnight? It actually sent chills down my spine when the whole night came flooding back to me. Scar has only come back twice since I have moved and sometimes randomly I can still hear the flick of his nail. Lion King nightmares. They are the worst. I live in a rather rural area, the kind of place where you both know what to expect and don't know what to expect. People here tend to be latched onto the older way of thinking and living and I'm all for that. That being said, it is easy to assume that nothing much happens here, at least nothing that would really raise any red flags. The thing is about five years years ago, something abnormal did happen. Five years ago, I thought I was going to lose my life due to a case of wrong place, wrong time in the parking lot of an all you can eat buffet. I was in middle school at the time and was having one of the worst school years yet. Luck didn't seem to be on my side, so of course this day wouldn't be any different. My family, grandpa, mom and little sister sister had gone to church that morning and had taken my friend and her younger sister as well. Once it was over, my mom decided that we would treat ourselves to an early lunch and headed over to a local all you can eat buffet. It was a humble place and the atmosphere of the farm around it was peaceful. It lulled you into a sense of security. We were waiting in the lobby area, sitting on a bench, when two women came in. They both seemed to be in their 40s. The taller woman was obviously the leader of the two and the shorter woman seemed to hang back letting the other do the talking, chiming in here and there. The taller woman was gushing over how adorable my sister was to her. She was in elementary school at the time and kept saying how she looked like a princess. We thought she was just an overly expressive and nice woman and left it at that. As we walked to our table and got settled in. Fast forward and we are eating dessert. I had gotten my usual, that being a mixed vanilla and chocolate ice cream topped off with Oreo bits, caramel and two marshmallows covered in chocolate from the chocolate fountain. Yes, I know I kind of went overboard, but whatever. I was a kid. I was about 3, 4 of the way done with my dish when the two ladies suddenly appeared appeared at our table. I immediately thought it was odd that they deliberately searched us out in there but kept eating. The lead woman got to talking about herself and revealed she was a church official. She claimed to work in a sort of crisis center at her church located in Delaware. Her friend, I cannot remember whether she actually told anything about herself, but if she did, none of us can recall it. They then told my mom and grandpa that they had a gift for my sister and I admit I was kind of jealous upon hearing that of course she was getting a gift. The woman pulled some letters out of her purse and showed them to my mom and sister. She told us that she was pen pals of the sort with Princess Kate. I later would learn from my mom that the letters were basically automatic replies, not actual letters from Kate herself. So nothing special really. It's like the equivalent of getting the answering machine to a secretary in the mall, but nonetheless, my mom went along with it. Then, to my surprise, the woman said she had a gift for me. But unlike the gift from my sister, which had been in her purse, she said mine was in her car. Red flags immediately went up in my head. There was no way I was going with this random lady alone out to her car. My mom, to this day I have no idea what she was thinking, told her that I could go so long as my grandpa went with me. My grandpa gave my mom a what are you talking about? Why should we go with them? Look and turn to me. I hesitated, but we walked out with the two women. At this point, knowing the head will woman was a church official, I figured she was going to give me a Bible or something. My grandpa, in his late 50s, seemed uneasy and stuck close to me. As we approached the car, I saw that it was in fact not a car at all. It was a van. A white van. Cliche, I know, but it's the truth. We followed the two women over and the leader walked over to the passenger side. We were right behind her, but had failed to notice. The other woman lagged behind and placed herself between us and the exit between the van and the other car. The lead woman was in front of us, meaning we were boxed in, no way out. The leader unlocked her doors and pulled open the sliding door, ducking inside. My grandpa seemed to tense up, his eyes darting around. He had noticed the other woman was blocking us off and was on edge. He had a bad feeling about this and was fully prepared to fight these women to save me if need be. Then something that I never would have dreamed of happened. The woman, after rummaging around in her van, emerged wielding a sword. And not some fake prop sword that you get at party city or something. A legit sword glinting in the gray autumn light, its hilt adorned with details and jewels. I just about crapped my pants. I thought this was the end. I was going to die by the blade of some psychotic church official in the parking lot of a rural buffet. My grandpa's eyes went wide and I saw his hands clenched into fists and he prepared to knock this woman out. This seemed to go in slow motion, taking forever, but was only a few seconds. And then, as my life flashed before my eyes, this woman asked us what our names were. The sword was still in her hand, but she didn't swing it at us. I was terrified, thinking this woman was the kind of killer who likes to know her victim's name before doing the deed, I told her my name. She then performed a small ceremony, reciting some religious statements and lowered the blade to take touch both of my shoulders one at a time. She then brought it down to my head and raised it, bringing it in front of herself straight into the air and proclaimed me Sir, Insert my name a knight of God. She asked the same of my grandpa and after getting his name did the same for him. She told us that she hoped we liked our gifts and still shell shocked, we thanked her and my grandpa and I left the two women. We speed walked inside, found our table and proceeded to fill my mom in on what just happened. She didn't believe us at first, but we soon convinced her. My grandpa and I both scolded her for making us go out with these women. My grandpa was especially angry. If that woman had other intentions with that sword, we would both be dead. The women didn't come back over to us and oddly enough we didn't see them when leaving. We never saw those women again and suffice it to say, I'm glad they weirded me out and I just hoped they went back to Delaware where they belonged. Maybe they could knight other random strangers along the way. It's been half a decade now since my grandpa and I were proclaimed knights. My close friends sometimes refer to me as sir, which I find funny. I never let my mom live that down either, prodding her about it whenever I get the chance. All in good fun of course. It's also a fantastic story to tell people and get them interested in you. And no one I have met has been able to top me when we get to sharing now, one last thing has always lingered in the back of my mind, something that still unsettles me today. This day. About two weeks prior to this event, there had been some beheadings a few states over that had made the news. It makes me wonder, could it have been those two women? Was I kned by a Murderer? On the morning of March 20, 2021, I saw a post online stating that the Boeing X37B Orbital Test Vehicle would be visible in the night sky over the northern United States and southern Canada. I have never really been that interested in space, to be honest, but I do enjoy stargazing from time to time and it was a clear night, so I decided to head out into the hills to try and catch a glimpse of the craft. I tried to convince my boyfriend to come with me, but he was too busy playing Fortnite or whatever shooter game was popular at the time. I threw an old lawn chair into the back of my new Toyota tacoma and drove 15 minutes outside of town to where I knew there was a lookout. It was at the end of a long dead end dirt road that went up the backside of a ski hill and came out into a large open area that overlooked part of the resort, but more importantly gave an incredible view of the stars. I was hoping that no one else would be up there since it was the closest thing we had to a lover's lane where teenagers would go to fool around in their parents cars. Fortunately, I got lucky that night as the little parking area was completely deserted. I set up my lawn chair on the grass a few feet away from my truck and gazed up at the beautiful night sky sky. Even with the almost full moon lighting up the night, there was an incredible amount of stars visible. It was almost overwhelming, especially considering I really had no idea what I was even looking for. I was assuming that I wouldn't actually be able to see the craft itself and that it would just be some moving lights in the sky, but I didn't know for sure. Every plane passing overhead gave me a little rush I think, until I realized what it was. Finally, 8:45pm rolled around exactly when the post online said it would appear and there it was coming over the horizon from the west, this glowing orb of light moving quickly across the night sky. It had a faint ring around it, kind of like the full moon often gets on a clear night, and I knew right away it had to be the craft. I tried to snap a few pictures, but of course phone cameras can never capture the true beauty of the night. After about five minutes it had disappeared off to the east and I was getting cold. So I decided to head home and packed up my chair and got back into my truck. A funny thing about the new Toyota Tacomas is that they come with a GoPro mount on the windshield just to the right of the rear view mirror. I guess Toyota finally noticed that these trucks are almost extended exclusively purchased by outdoor adventure seekers. I am no exception to that and sometimes liked to record footage of my drives on scenic back roads on my way to and from a mountain biking trail to add to the video. Often times though, this meant that I would get home and leave the camera on my windshield. Well, this time apparently was no exception because as I got back in the truck I noticed the camera sitting there next to my mirror and laughed to myself that I had done it again. Then I noticed something strange. The camera was on and the little red recording light was blinking. Normally if I left my GoPro in the truck or even unattended somewhere in the house, the battery would just die. And I definitely didn't turn the camera on, so this was really weird. I was curious, though, as to whether or not the camera picked up anything, since it was a rather bright night out and my truck was pointed in roughly the right direction that it might have picked up the craft coming over the horizon. I pulled up the GoPro app on my phone to have a look at the footage and was expecting to see some of the drive there, but the video started with the truck already parked at the lookout. I wasn't in the shot, sitting in my lawn chair, so it was pretty much just a shot of the sky. I saw briefly what I believed to be the craft in the corner of the video, but it was hard to tell on such a small screen with terrible video quality due to the low light conditions. I was about to turn the video off when I noticed movement off to the right. A large dark shape that I couldn't quite make out was moving towards the truck. As it got closer, I could see it more clearly as it was above the horizon on the video, so it was silhouetted against the bright night sky. It was a huge animal. Based on its height, it had to have been at least 8ft tall on its hind legs. I couldn't tell if it was horns or ears protruding from its head, but it definitely had something on top. It turned its head and I caught a flash of red in its eyes as it did, and then it disappeared from the video. That was all I could take. I started the trail and peeled out down the dirt road, sending gravel everywhere as I went. I had been sitting out there, mere feet away from this creature, without even knowing it was there. I kept expecting it to leap out of the trees any second and flip my truck with its massive arms or something, but it didn't. Every little shadow my headlights cast on the trees made me jump. Thinking it was the animal, I just couldn't get that image of its silhouette out of my mind. I made it to the main road and flew back towards town, doing well above the speed limit. And when I got back to the house, my heart felt like it was going to explode. My boyfriend was obviously quite concerned when he saw me walk into the house in tears and asked me what was wrong. I could barely string a sentence together and told him to have a look at the video. I handed him my GoPro and my phone and he tried to get it to work but couldn't. He pulled the SD card out and put it into his laptop. And while he was doing that, I calmed down enough to somewhat describe what had happened. To my dismay, when he tried to pull up the video, the footage was all corrupted. Some skiing footage from the winter still left on. That card was fine, but the one clip I needed to prove my story was gone. My boyfriend said it was probably just a a bear, since they have been known to walk on their hind legs and showed me several videos of bears doing just that. Even that's not exactly a comforting thought, but unfortunately I don't think it was a bear anyway. All the videos he showed me of bears walking on two legs looked almost comical since they really do look more like a human in a bear suit than a real bear. The way they move is rather clumsy, in stark contrast to the very smooth and methodical movements of the beast that I had seen. The silhouette also didn't look the same, but without the video footage to directly compare and only my panicked memory to go on, who knows what it truly was? All I know is I definitely will not be venturing out into the woods alone at night ever again. I firmly believe that no technical error with my GoPro could have possibly turned it on at that exact right moment to capture the beast, and that whatever the beast was, it must have had something to do with the camera turning on. And I also believe it had something to do with the corrupt footage. It didn't want me to be able to prove its existence, but it definitely wanted me to see it and to know that it was watching me, possibly as a warning not to trespass on its territory again. I am a mail carrier here in California. A big part of my job is delivering Amazon packages and as you can imagine, my workload has increased significantly during the last year or so. As per usual, this has increased the number of strange encounters I have had. My current route for the past six months led me through multiple subdivisions of large, beautiful homes, like swimming pools with hot tubs in every backyard. Given the past year, I have noticed people, mainly older folk, have really taken to coming outside to talk to me across their yards. I don't mind at all, but try to keep it short so I don't fall behind on deliveries. One of my favorite residents is an older lady who I will call Mrs. Lythgoe for the sake of this story. She must be well into her 70s and loves to chat about everything going on in the neighborhood. It's not unusual for her to report back that so and so has left their lawn unattended for two months or that they have strange visitors at odd hours. I usually just nod and smile. The house across the street from Mrs. Lythgoe was only listed for sale for a few days when it was purchased really quickly. Shortly thereafter, my true truck began to fill up with Amazon packages for Whoever lived there. Mrs. Lythgoe noticed right away and told me a week later that the packages would stay in their pile until nighttime and then will have disappeared by morning. This didn't seem strange to me at the time. Mrs. Lythgoe became further concerned and began telling me that there always seemed to be a lot of screaming coming from the house later in the evening. I hadn't heard anything, but my deliveries were always earlier in the morning. My first strange encounter was dropping off a stack of packages. I had loaded my arms way higher than I'm supposed to and was waddling up the path. I felt my foot hit something hard and thought I felt it break. I set the stack down and to my horror realized I had kicked a bag of garbage that had fallen open. Sticking out of the top was a jar with what looked like blood inside. It was leaking onto the hot stone path and as soon as I had stopped, the smell was unbearable. I also noticed that there was a creepy doll in the bag. I quickly finished my delivery and got out of there. I thought about calling the police, but honestly I was afraid to. So I talked myself out of it. Mrs. Lithgow approached me a few weeks later, later telling me that she had finally met the homeowner after the whole bottle incident. I was pretty interested to know who lived there. Mrs. Lithgow said it was a petite pink haired woman who said she was living there with her autistic charge. Mrs. Lithgow thought it was so strange that this young woman lived there alone with this other person, but no one was ever seen coming or going. I chalked it up to the virus and went on with my day. Mrs. Lythgoe, however, did not. The next day she came racing to the side of the road. I had to remind her to stay six feet away, but she was shouting that there had been an incident. Apparently the woman living in the house and the man she cared for had been spotted outside in the backyard. Kids were playing a few houses down and came running in yelling that the autistic man had threatened to kill them. After yelling at them, do you know who I am? I'll admit I wanted to know more but didn't have the time to ask questions. Another time she told me that pink smoke had billowed out of the house and two people came running out screaming. After that I didn't see Mrs. Lithgow as she had left town to visit one of her kids. The house stayed quiet and I continued to leave stacks and stacks of packages there. I began to notice that the names on the packages were often different. Lots of times just being fat goblin quote unquote and other weird things. I once ran into two electricians leaving the house. As I passed them, one of them said that house is full of cat feces. Full of it. When my route was slightly old altered so their address was. Later in the day I also started to hear the yelling that I think Mrs. Lithgow had been referring to. It definitely was a grown man and he was constantly yelling almost incoherent things like me cause crying. At first I thought he might have been yelling at me, but several times I noticed he was yelling before I even approached the house. I thought maybe it was linked to his diagnosis. Honestly, none of these occurrences were that weird to me given some of the other experiences I have had. A few weeks ago I had to deliver a package that required a signature. I had never actually seen anyone there myself, but I knocked anyways. I heard a small shriek and shuffling about. Concerned, I walked toward the side of the house but still in front of and yelled, uh, hello. I need a signature for a package here. The shuffling continued. I went back to the front door to knock one last time and to leave a note letting them know where they could pick it up. I suddenly heard loud and fast stomping from inside the house. I peeked into the glass of the door to see if someone was coming. It was a stocky man dressed in a spandex suit from head to toe. He was holding some kind of weapon and waved it in the air. I stepped back in shock. I froze just for a second long enough to hear him yell, you're not safe here. That was enough to get me moving again. I turned and began to run. As I raced down the driveway and back into my truck, I could now fully see the man holding his weapon yelling I kill. I took off. I called my supervisor immediately but was told there is nothing we can do about it because technically I was on his property and he never directly threatened me. I still think I should have called the police. I began leaving the packages at the end of their driveway and have not heard or seen anyone in that house again. It was early April and I had just gotten home from a long day of shopping. I decided to get some dinner and watch videos on my phone for A while. A couple hours passed and I decided I was bored and asked my parents if I could go on a walk. By this time it was almost 7:30pm and it was starting to get dark outside. But I thought why not since it would be a short walk. I grabbed my phone and headed down the stairs and out the door. I decided I would walk up a hill near my house, certain that I would be back down before it was pitch black outside. This hill had a one lane road going up it with close to four foot tall grass on the side. Halfway up the hill I realized I had underestimated how dark it was going to get because by this time I could barely see 10ft in front of me because after all a phone flashlight isn't very far ranged. I reached the top of the hill and looked at my phone for a minute, realizing it was at 20%. I turned to start back down the hill. But as I did I saw a person walking with a flashlight up the hill. The person started waving the flashlight flashlight around in circles. I thought the person might be trying to get my attention so I waited at the top for them to catch up to me. But as they got closer I realized the mistake I had made. Now I am not the type of person to judge, but this person was really scary looking. They had frizzy dark hair, a heavy coat on. Mind you, it was close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit outside and long baggy pants. But what freaked me out the most was the sound they were making. They made a weird humming sound, but it sounded like they had their tongue on the roof of their mouth. It was a low sound. I was getting really nervous at this point so I decided I wasn't going to wait for them. I started walking along the road again hoping I could find another road to walk onto. My plan was to find another road and then sprint home. After they got up the hill and I could see them again, they screamed at me. It wasn't a word though, just gibberish. I started walking faster because at this point it was totally pitch black outside besides this person's light. And I could barely see because I turned my phone off to preserve the battery life. Finally I saw a trail going into a patch of trees. I ran towards it. The person must have seen me start running because they picked up their pace. I was being chased. The trail started going downhill and I could see some dim streetlights at the bottom. The person kept running after me only to get faster as the trail headed down. After about five seconds of running, I hear the person grunt loudly only to realize they had fallen, their flashlight rolled down the hill. I didn't care. I just ran until I got back on a road. I eventually made it back home and told my parents what had happened. They scolded me and called me selfish because I didn't see if the person needed my help. But what they failed to realize is if they really needed help, they would have said something instead of chasing me. Now I refuse to walk alone at night and I hide highly recommend that you don't either. You never know who you might meet on a dark road. The following events happened to my father in the late 60s when he was about 7 or 8 years old. I have changed changed the names for privacy Growing up in a rural Canadian town to a poor family, my father, Dean and his siblings never had much in the way of entertainment. Often left unsupervised were all too frequently left to their own devices, giving them ample opportunity to indulge in interesting and sometimes dangerous activities. After accumulating several injuries this way, rather than putting their foot down, Dean's parents chose a more hands off approach. The children's misadventures became all too easy to ignore completely. On a warm summer evening, the sun still burning high in the sky, Dean found himself wandering the neighborhood with three of his good friends who lived nearby. Spending most of the day roughhousing and pulling pranks. The group of kids decided their fun just wasn't over yet and brainstormed on where to play next. One of Dean's friends, Thomas, suggested they go play in the local quarry, as there were plenty of boulders and sand dunes to climb on. Being a year or so older than the other boys, Thomas's ideas always seemed like good ones, and so they all headed out to the big pit. Upon arriving at the quarry, dunes upon dunes of sand loomed over them and the group of kids headed straight for the tallest one. They all took turns climbing up and sliding down through the sand. They were having what seemed like innocent fun and had no idea their fun was about to quickly come to a terrifying end. Atop the dune, Thomas readied himself to slide down to his friends waiting below. Dean and the other two boys, Will and Jason, sat on the lower part of the dune, cheering on Thomas. But as he began to slide, their cheers turned into screams of horror. With Thomas came an avalanche of heavy sand, engulfing the three boys entirely. Unable to stop, Thomas rode the wave of sand to the bottom of the dune and quickly realized that his friends were all buried alive in its wake. Frantically, Thomas started digging through the sand. A minute passed before he could hear a faint voice from beneath the dirt. He clawed and clawed Claude until he eventually uncovered Dean. Out of breath and pale as a ghost. Having been sat higher up on the dune than his two friends, Dean had been fairly close to the surface. After the avalanche, the two continued to dig randomly, not knowing where or how deep Will and Jason were in the pile of sand. Realizing the severity of the situation, they knew they needed help. They separated, each running home as fast as they they could. Dean burst through the door of his house yelling to his parents that his friends were buried in the quarry and that he desperately needed help digging them out. Covered head to toe in sand and obviously distressed, his parents took one look at him and shook their heads. Rather than help and concern, he got a lecture. They didn't believe his story at all. He continued to beg them for help but to no avail. He eventually getting impatient, Dean fled the house to head back to the quarry, hoping that Thomas's parents hadn't been so ignorant. He arrived shortly to find Thomas, his parents and several neighbors digging furiously through the sand. After several minutes the boys bodies were found amongst the sand, completely limp. It was too late. Ambulances came and officers got details from Dean and Thomas. The two surviving boys never spoke again after the accident. Dean was never given any of the support or resources he needed to deal with the traumatic events that day. He lost his best friends in an instant and has never truly found closure. This story will be told from the point of view of my old roommate. This event happened shortly after we moved out and went our separate ways and still gives me chills to this day. I began moving into my new one bedroom apartment with my boyfriend the day after the old lease ended. My apartment was small in size and on the bottom floor there was a window in the bedroom that faces the outside walkway and the front door to our apartment. I spent the whole day carrying boxes from my boyfriend's truck to the apartment. I noticed a dirty looking man in a rusty beat up red Toyota staring at us while we moved each box. He looked about 40, had round glasses with a very thin frame. His hair was stringy and thinning at the top and looked as if it had once been white but yellowed due to the lack of cleanliness. I wouldn't have given his gaze much thought except he had been sitting in his car for nearly two hours now. Not waiting for anyone it seemed, just staring at us, moving his head to keep his gaze. As we moved from the truck to our building. I told my boyfriend and he just shrugged it off, telling me that maybe he was just a neighbor trying to see who moved in. We just ignored the man and finished unloading boxes before settling in for the night. Fast forward to the next night. My boyfriend and I had unpacked most of the kitchen, so we were having a late dinner and ended up drinking some wine. It was about 12:30am and we were just talking and hanging out when we heard a slight tap on the window. It was strange. It wasn't as if someone were knocking on it, but more like as if some someone had accidentally hit it with an object of some sort. I peeked through the blinds to find nothing but darkness outside. Without giving it a second thought, my boyfriend and I finished our dinner and wine, turned out the lights and went to bed. We awoke around 2am to a soft knock on the door. My boyfriend, very tired and very irritated, got up from bed to go check the peephole to see. To see who could possibly be trying to reach us at such an hour. He looked through the peephole to find a man standing outside the door, staring directly into the peephole. He sneakily made his way back to our room, carefully trying not to make any sound so whoever it was outside couldn't hear movement within the apartment. He went up to me and shook my leg a little bit, whispering that there was some creepy old man outside the door just staring at it. I awoke immediately and slowly went to the window to see who it was. The blinds were raised about only an inch or so, so I tried to identify the man using the small sliver of window that was exposed. I saw a hand tapping on the window, tapping as if he was patiently waiting for someone to open the door for him. I froze in fear and waited. We heard the man turn around and leave. My boyfriend checked the front door to confirm that he wasn't outside the door anymore as I was terrified to even peek out the window. We were so bugged out that we didn't end up sleeping much for the rest of the night. The next day we were really anxious and worried about the situation, so we spoke with our front office and tried to explain what had happened. The front office basically said that maybe someone thought they were at the right apartment apartment building and that it was just a mistake or a misunderstanding. It wasn't that big of a deal and we needed to just not worry about it. They said that if it happened again, to try to identify the person or talk to them to see what they wanted. Great advice, right? Later that night, we left the front porch light on to feel a little bit more safe. We locked all the doors and windows and cuddled in bed with the lights off while watching some TV show on low volume. Eventually we drifted off to sleep. I awoke around 2:20am to my boyfriend tapping on me whispering he's back. Wide eyed with fear. I let out a small gasp. My boyfriend handed me a weapon and said don't use this unless you need to and left the room. I was completely terrified, confused and worried at this point and decided to try to see who this creep was. I once again looked through the small sliver of window that was showing but could only see their bottom half. I made my way to the front door where my boyfriend was, his face glued to the peephole. I asked if I could take a look and instantly I could make out who it was. I saw the yellowed thinning hair and the glasses. It was the same man that was watching us move in a few days ago. I took a step back and began to silently freak out. We heard the man knock gently again on the door. He leaned in real close to the peephole, startling my boyfriend and causing him to let out a small gasp. The man leaned back, turned around and immediately walked upstairs. We waited. We never saw him come back down. We never heard movement in the upstairs apartment either. Frightened, we went back to bed and didn't sleep until the sun came up. As soon as the office opened, we went in to report the incident and one of the leasing managers looked distressed. She went on to tell us that this was the fifth report on similar incidents made by multiple tenants throughout the apartment complex. She told us that they were looking into it it to find out who this person was. For about a week we heard nothing and no one came to the door. During the dark hours of the night. We began to get back to our normal routine and paid no mind to the weirdness that we had experienced. About three weeks after that last incident we received a call from the front office. Apparently there was a disturbed tenant that lived in the complex and they always had really random and weird weird complaints about him. He was an older man, apparently had some issues in his past. They were calling to let us know that he was the one who had been randomly knocking on doors and sneaking around multiple buildings in the complex. They said that he had been evicted due to his behavior and that we wouldn't have to deal with him again. They apologized and then hung up and that was that. We never heard weird noises in the night or saw his car in a parking lot. After that we continued to live out the rest of our lease and eventually moved out to a nicer apartment complex across town. It always stuck with me. I always got skittish during the nights and would check the windows multiple times before bed. I think the strangest thing to me was that the building we lived in wasn't even remotely close to the one that he apparently resided in. He had watched us move in in and decided that's who we wanted to creep on in the middle of the night. If there's one thing that I learned, it's to listen to what that gut feeling inside is telling you. Always be aware of your surroundings and be careful with who is paying attention when you are not. I was in the police force in the West Midlands UK for 10 years, mainly as a neighborhood officer and patrolled either on foot or car during one particular night shift. During the winter, myself and a female officer were conducting marked car patrols in a neighborhood which traditionally was susceptible to burglary during the run up to Christmas. During this shift we heard an open call on the radio from police control stating that emergency services had received a panicked phone call from an address in the area we were patrolling, reporting about a possible intruder and was asking for all officers available to make their way to that address immediately. Being the only officers in the area, me and my colleague made our way on blues and twos to the address. We arrived literally in minutes. The house the call had come from was large and old, probably early 1900s. Upon knocking on the door, we were answered by three girls in their mid to late teens and clearly utterly terrified, all speaking at once and making no sense. We had to calm them down and I asked the oldest to explain herself. She stated that they were hearing very loud footsteps coming from their attic and that this had been going on for around 10 minutes while the eldest sister was showing me the attic entrance and explaining to me that nobody ever uses their attic. That's when all of us heard a very heavy and distinctive set of noises that sounded like footsteps above us. These footsteps sounded like someone walking from one side to the other, purposely as if stomping to get our attention. I actually remember the first thought in my head was whoever is up there is big nonsense, of course, because you never know. It was just the first silly thought in my head. Now the three sisters started screaming and crying. My colleague asked the girls to go downstairs while I pulled the access ladder down leading to the attic. Trying to stay as calm as I could, but with my adrenaline obviously going wild, I shined my torch upward into the attic Shouting Police. No reply. Police. Come down now. Again, no reply. I had no choice. I had to go up and investigate. With my colleague right behind me, I crept up into the attic slowly, not knowing at all what to expect and not knowing who I was going to find. With just the top half of my head through the attic entrance hatch, I shined my torch in a circular motion around the attic. There was nobody. I crept up the access ladder slowly, my main fear being that I was going to get hit in the head. As I ascended, the attic was utterly empty and pitch black and clearly had not been used in a long time, if at all. Me and my colleague entered the attic very slowly. At 6 foot 2, walking around was hard and I had to do so almost crouched. Absolutely nobody was up there. We both searched for some evidence of any presence. There was nothing. No sign of any entry or escape. But me, my colleague and the three girls all heard those footsteps very loud and very distinct. On the write up of this log, my colleague just wrote no trace and closed it. I reassured the girls that there was nobody up there and they asked me to explain what the footsteps were, which I didn't know how to answer. I just said that old houses sometimes can make these kinds of sounds and that I experienced this before. Of course that was bs. I just didn't want them to be frightened. I didn't know what other advice to give other than call a priest. But of course I couldn't say that. I don't know what caused those sounds, but who knows. One thing I have learned from my time in the police, the living are far more frightening than the prospect of any ghost. It was a hot summer day. The humid air covered my body like a wet blanket. As the powerful rays of sun landed on my shirtless body, I could hear the mild soothing sound of chimes that were gently played by the ocean breeze. As I looked down at the path in front of me, I counted dozens of stuff small seashells scattered within the sands of the beach. Looking out at the horizon, I could see the ocean tide working its way down the shore, exposing the small patches of reef that were hidden by the sea. During the day, while enjoying the peace and tranquility of the moment, my mind was full of excitement for the night to come. Growing up, my family had a decades long tradition of hitching up the travel trailer once a year and taking a two week long vacation vacation to Puerto Penasco, Mexico. Puerto Penasco, mostly known as Rocky Point to vacationers and tourists, is a small beach town in the northeastern point of the Gulf of California. Most people would have no idea that such a tranquil oceanfront destination is only a few hours drive from Phoenix, Arizona's capital city. To this day, I vividly remember the trips from the back of our family suburban. I would look out the window and watch the landscape change from Arizona's high desert of pines, juniper trees and rolling valley meadows to a gradually more and more barren desert. By the time you get to the Rocky Point, all you can see in the distance are rolling sand dunes with scattered desert plants and saguaro cactus. To anyone traveling there for the first time, the barren atmosphere can leave you wondering why you are even there and why anyone would ever recommend Rocky Point as one's vacation destination. But once you enter town, you realize why the place comes so highly recommended. Rows and rows of outdoor booths line both sides of the main street. Vendors try to sell you clothes, knickknacks, decorations and furniture, all of which have the flair and cultural undertones of Mexico's rich history, perhaps the greatest of all the best food that will ever pass your lips. I have always had a love for Mexican food, but sitting at a breezy beachfront restaurant looking out at the anchored fishing boats that supplied the very shrimp in your tacos, words simply do not do it justice. Rocky Point, Mexico, is simply but a destination of peace, tranquility and unparalleled recovery for the weary soul. Looking back, perhaps the surreal atmosphere combined with my childhood naivety left me with the feeling that nothing bad could ever happen in this wonderful oasis. One fateful night, however, would change my attitude for years to come. Being in my early teens, mischievousness was simply baked into my DNA. My brother and I, along with some friends, would frequently spend our evenings on the secluded low tide beach, lighting off fireworks we purchased from local vendors. Some fireworks were relatively harmless, such as Roman candles and bottle rockets. Other fireworks had a much bigger kick and were known to be loud enough to set off alarms for cars distantly parked within the beachfront trailer park. One evening we had just lit off the last of our fireworks and started scheming on what other antics we could employ to keep keep ourselves entertained. One friend had a crazy idea of taking a nighttime swim in the ocean. These were known to be very calm waters, small waves with no major currents. Before we knew it, we had stripped down to our swimming trunks and headed in. The beaches in Rocky Point taper at a very shallow angle. Even after going out into open waters a quarter of a mile, I could still still stand on the bottom to keep my head above water. At Some point, we decided it was time to head back. At this time of night, our only source of light on the waters were the stars as well as a mostly full moon. On a night like this, the visibility is surprisingly good with the water reflecting the moon's light in all directions. Despite the relatively good visibility, seeing under the water was simply impossible. As I looked down my body to see that the water line was now about the height of my mid waist, I had a bit of an uneasy feeling. It was not until that moment it occurred to me that if something were under the water with me, I would have no way of knowing it. Little did I know that my fear of the unknown was going to get much, much worse. As we waded through the water, working our way back to SH shore, something bumped into the back of my legs hard enough to almost take my legs out from under me. I jolted forward, turning to look down at the waters behind me. I felt a tingling sensation run up my spine and my hair stood up on end. As I saw a light colored blur disappear into the dark murky waters. My heart began to pound so hard the sound of my own heartbeat nearly drowned out the sound of my friends splashing and fooling around just in front of me. I felt a slight sense of relief as I saw the head of my brother pop out of the water ahead of me. Apparently swimming under the water as he often enjoyed doing, I called out to him, micah, did you bump into me? What? He replied. When you were swimming underwater, did you bump into me? I asked again with a slight cracking in my voice. I don't know, maybe. He replied with a bit of a confused tone in his voice. After nearly defecating myself in fear, I felt enough sense of relief to make it back to shore without much fuss. I did not even tell my brother or the friends with us just what had happened or what I saw. As scary as that incident was, the real fear came later when I mulled over the experience in my head. At the time, I thought it was likely my brother who hit my legs while swimming past me under the water, but that did not add up. When I turned to see the light blur disappear into the darkness, it vanished off to the side while my brother popped up in front of me. What is more, my brother popped out of the water at least 20ft away and there was only a second between the event and him appearing above the water. There is simply no way he covered so much ground in such a short time. The reality hit me like a ton of bricks. Something was in that water with Me? Something big and strong enough to nearly knock me down. What was it? A shark? A dolphin? A sea lion? That is the scariest part. I will never know and it haunts me to this very day. Since my experience, I have never found myself afraid to get into the water. But one thing is for sure, when you are in the water, you are in someone else's world. While attacks from sharks and other marine animals is relatively rare, you simply do not know what lurks beneath you. And it is that unknown that truly terrifies me. To set the scene, I was a young boy about 4 or 5 years old. My family and I were living in a creepy house in the town of Fort Erie in Canada. There were various encounters in this house that I recall, but I will only tell you a couple for now. The first encounter took place in my room late at night. To paint a picture of what my room looked like. It was a normal sized room with lightly painted walls. Doorway straight in front of my bed and off to the side there was an attic crawl space door which always gave me a creepy feeling playing in my room. I decided to get up and go see my mother. For some reason, as I walked back to my room, I distinctly remember the TV playing that signature eerie music. Music from a horror movie scene where someone was being murdered. As I walked up the stairs, I could still hear that music faintly from the tv. As I stepped into my room, the room lit up super bright. At the same time, the eerie music from the TV amplified in my room, the light bulb exploded and the music stopped. I ran down the stairs screaming to my mother. She comforted me like a great mother would. Then we went upstairs stairs and she convinced me that it was nothing. Remember this. Deep down I knew something was not right and I always got that feeling of being watched in my room. The second encounter took place some months later and would cause me to stop sleeping or even going into my room. It was late and I was in bed as I had school in the morning, soundly sleeping. I imagine I do not recall anything before this event. I cannot remember why I woke up, but it was probably an eerie feeling or something. Either way, I awoke. As I opened my eyes, I noticed a figure standing over me. Thinking it was my mother, I wiped my eyes and asked what she wanted. There was no reply. I looked at the figure and noticed it was not my mother at all, but some older woman just smiling at me. Frozen with fear, I managed to let out a scream for my mother. My parents in a frenzy, flicked on the light as they came in to see what was wrong, and as they did, the figure disappeared, never to be seen again. I told them there was an old lady in my room. My father laughed and said go to bed and my mother asked what she looked like. So I described the My mother calmed me down, but I eventually asked to sleep in their room. She said okay, and from that day on I never went near that room and even started sleeping in the same room as my sister who was a baby. Years later, my mother and I were talking about events in the Fort Erie house with friends. She then told me that the description I gave of the woman sounded like her grandmother. I know my stories sound unbelievable and I have had trouble believing it myself, but as I got older I have had more experiences with various other spirits at different locations. I should also mention that my family is very in tune with the spirit realm. My mother also informed my sister and I that her grandmother was a Hungarian gypsy. Even now as I tell this story I am getting shivers up my neck and I feel like there is something unexplained around me. When I was about eight years old, my dad moved after my parents divorce to a nice neighborhood with two of his friends. My mom had full custody of us, but she was pretty lenient about letting us stay with him, so over the summer we would go back and forth each week. I had an older brother who was 9 and a younger sister who was 6, but all of the kids in the neighborhood were closer to my sister's age so I usually hung out with them. Our closest friend was a girl named Riley and our favorite thing to do was hang around this old tower like thing that sat at the very edge of the some woods. The man who owned it was old and sweet and usually didn't care that we hung around it. Sometimes he would even let us go inside to look at all of the chimes that went off every hour. One day my sister and I were at Riley's house when we all decided to pay a visit to the tower like usual. When we got there we sat on the steps of it and talked, occasionally chasing each other around or messing with our bikes. But eventually we all three decided we were bored. I have an idea, Riley said we should go play in the woods. Under most circumstances this would have sounded like a wonderful idea to me, but the wooded area behind the tower was filled with poison ivy. My sister was on board, but I tried to explain to them both that we couldn't because of the ivy. In Instead of just agreeing, Riley told us that we could go back to her house and put on long pants and hoodies to protect ourselves. My sister was still completely on board, so I eventually gave in and we went back to her house to get changed. When we arrived back at the tower, we made our way into the woods and for the first hour or so it was fine. There was in fact a lot of poison ivy, but the long pants kept it off our bare legs, so we paid it no attention. As we got deeper and deeper, something stuck out to me. There in the middle of the woods was a house. It wasn't old or anything. It actually looked very well kept. The only strange part was the fact that there was no road leading to it. Sure, there was a thin dirt path that led to one of the neighborhoods close by, but it was hard to imagine any any car would ever make it down. Being the stupid kids we were, Riley insisted that we get closer to it and snoop around. My sister and I saw no problem with this, and one by one we inched our way to the mysterious house. It didn't seem like anyone was home because there were no lights on and no one outside. The strangest thing though, was that the garage was wide open. Inside were parked two large John Deere tractors just sitting there next to each other. Before I could even protest, my sister ran into the garage and began roaming around. Reluctantly, Riley and I followed and soon enough we were all three completely inside, just snooping. After only a few minutes, the loud sound of metal grinding filled the room and I jolted my head back to the garage door, which was currently close closing. My sister and Riley began screaming and crying, but we were all too frozen in place to try and even make it out. It was now pitch black inside and I could hear the sound of someone speaking quietly outside. The voice sounded like it belonged to a man, but I couldn't tell what he was saying or pinpoint where exactly he was. I gave myself only a few seconds to panic before my older sister instincts kicked in and I did my best to shush Riley and my sister. I looked around and noticed there was another door at the back of the garage that led outside and we got on all fours and began crawling towards it as quietly as we could. Thankfully, it was unlocked and I threw it open before we all sprinted out and continued into the woods, not wanting to get caught by whoever had locked us in. After the house was out of sight, we all stopped. Stopped to take a breath and immediately Riley started tearing into my sister, yelling at her and calling her mean names. I told Riley to leave her alone, but she ignored me and continued until my sister was crying again. Soon enough I started yelling at Riley and after I got a few insults out, I took my sister's hand and stormed off back toward the tower, not caring if Riley was following or not. By the time we made it back out of the woods, I immediately got on my bike and pedaled toward the end of the street. My sister and I sat there for a moment to make sure that Riley came out too, but about 10 minutes passed and she hadn't shown up. I figured she was just being slow and told my sister it was time to go home. When we got home, I was so freaked out that I asked my dad if he could take us to my mom's house early. We didn't come back to my dad's for another week and when we did, we decided to go over to Riley's to see if she was still mad at us. When we got there, Riley's mom answered the door and told us to get off her property and never come back. We asked her why and she said the last time you guys hung out with Riley, she wasn't seen for hours. When she finally came out of the woods, she was so scared, scared she wouldn't even speak. She's been having nightmares all week and won't tell me what happened. I spoke to your father and he told me nothing bad happened, but I don't believe him. You two are never allowed to hang out with her again. And then closed the door in our faces. I am 19 now and my sister nor I ever spoke to Riley again. And to this day I don't know what happened to her in those woods. She couldn't have gotten lost. Lost, considering it was a straight shot from where we were back to the tower. But honestly, I have always been too afraid to ask, fearing that whoever tried to trap us in their garage had somehow gotten a hold of her. A few days ago I was telling my roommate about this tower and the story of Riley when he told me he was curious what it looked like. I opened Google Earth and typed in my dad's old address and then followed down the street street till I found it. He then asked me to show him the house in the woods, but as I zoomed out and scrolled up, I saw that there was no house shown. It was like it didn't even exist. You could still see the dirt path, but it led to nothing. My father moved out of there before I even turned nine and I had never been back to investigate. I really hope Riley is doing better though. After receiving my bachelor's degree. I wanted to take some time to see the world before settling down in a career. I ended up taking a job as an English teacher in South Korea. I love the adventure of being alone in an entirely different culture on the other side of the world. However, as a young woman, I received a lot of unwanted attention from the men there who tended to fetishize foreign women and disrespect boundaries. However, I was strong, trained in martial arts, and was pretty comfortable in my ability to defend myself, so I didn't let it get to me. One night, however, I had a close call. I was heading home from work after dark, walking the several blocks home to my apartment. This night, however, something was different. I soon became aware of footsteps behind me that followed me the entire way. It could just be a coincidence, I thought. There were always a lot of people on the sidewalks anyway, but this just felt off. I made it to my apartment, which was on the third floor of a small building above a Chinese restaurant. There were only about nine apartments total in the building, so the fact that the footsteps continued to follow me as I entered the building and climbed the stairs made it less likely that this was a coincidence. Whatever, I thought, if the guy wants trouble, he's going to find it. I continued up to my apartment, unlocked it it, and went in. I didn't bother locking it because, as I always did, I was only coming in to change into my tennis shoes and get my dog to take her out for a walk. My dog was a rather large Alaskan malamute. Like me, she stood out like a sore thumb in this city because most everyone else only owned cute little toy breeds with their fur dyed bright colors. When I walked Hiori, people often let out a scream and ran to the other side of the street. Anyway, upon entering my apartment, I removed my work shoes, got Hiori, and went back to the door to put on my sneakers. As I bent down to pull them on, I leaned against the door for balance and fell through as the man who had been following me was opening it. Not expecting me to stumble out with a monster dog, the man looked shocked and frightened. He grabbed his keys out of his pocket, went over to my neighbor's door, and pretended to be fumbling with them to open it. I gave him a look as if to say, yeah, right, locked my door, and took Hiori down the steps outside. Once I made it outside, I crossed the street and hid behind a car. Sure enough, within seconds, the man supposedly my neighbor emerged from the the building, looked around for a while, and then left. He had clearly spotted me walking home and saw his opportunity to follow me and break in and attack me. Had I not leaned against the door at that moment, he would have burst in and attempted to proceed with his plans. This incident shook me, but I never let it or the others before or since then stop me from doing what I want to do or go where I I please. I just go prepared, ready to take action the next time a man makes a bad decision. Hey guys, have you heard of Gold Belly? It's this amazing site where they ship the most iconic famous foods from restaurants across the country anywhere nationwide. I've never found a more perfect gift than food. 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