Brayden (0:00)

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And with that said, I really hope you enjoy this episode. My name is Brayden. I am a 6 foot 3 guy and I weighed around 180 pounds during high school. I was pretty shy and only stuck to a small group of friends. That was just a small piece of information that will make sense when we dive into this story. It was around 11:30 at night. I was tired and about to fall asleep to the screaming next door to my room. My sister was having a sleepover and my parents were asleep. As I was doing my nightly routine of falling asleep to Twitch, a barrage of girls barreled into my room. The girls immediately went to the window. Some background info before we continue with the story. My window is located on the side of the house, so that means that my window looks right to the neighbor's house and I can see the side gate leading to the backyard so the girls at the window can see the gate in the neighbor's house. I felt that something was off when the girls were staring out the window for a total of 30 seconds to a minute. This next thing that happened chilled me to the bone. I heard a knocking on the window followed by a man saying in a quiet whisper, hey, let me in. When I heard this, I immediately got that sharp feeling in my chest. The feeling of fear and excitement. I got up from my bed, not knowing what I was going to face on the other side of the window. I pushed my way past the group of girls to find myself facing the window. I peeled back the curtains to find a short man he looked up at me with great terror and in somewhat disbelief. When I was looking into his eyes, his pupils were huge. He was definitely on something. But I remember seeing this guy around school, so I wasn't too afraid when I saw him. And it didn't seem like he had a weapon of any sort. But then I noticed something. There were two men standing behind him in the background. They looked to be seniors that went to my school, and I think I was a sophomore or a freshman at the time. So I knew they could easily overpower me even though I am a big guy. The rest wasn't a big deal. I told them to get off my property and they walked off. This is where the story gets interesting. After I told them to get off my property, I went back to my usual routine of watching Twitch. About 20 minutes later, I got that sudden urge of curiosity to check and make sure they were gone for good. But of course, this wouldn't be a story if there was something that I didn't see. The first thing I noticed out of place was the gate. The gate was wide open. I was probably thinking a thousand different things at that time, but here was my thought process. My main thought was that they could have entered the backyard and entered the house already, because it's been 20 minutes and a lot can happen in 20 minutes. My second thought was, what if they just opened the gate to scare me? They could have easily just opened and unlocked the gate just to scare me. My third thought was, what if they are peeking into the girl's room? I know that seems kind of random, but hear me out. My sister's room is located towards the back of the house. And if you look out the window, you can see the entire backyard. In that split second of looking at the gate. I immediately ran out of my room and down the hall to the kitchen. I checked the back door to make sure it was locked, and thankfully it was. Then I ran to my sister's room. And I am not kidding, the light was on and the blinds were open. I know most of you know, but for those of you that don't, when you have a light on in the house, it's pitch black outside. You can't see anything outside, but the people outside can see inside clearly. Basically creating a see through mirror with a window. So I told the girls in a quiet but concerned tone, the gate is wide open. They all shifted their gaze towards the window looking out to the backyard. I immediately turned off the light to reveal who was on the other side of the window. And sure enough, they were standing right there looking in. Right when I turned off the light. They scattered into the darkness of my backyard. I left the room to check the back door again. Nobody was there. Thankfully. I waited near the back door for what felt like hours, but was probably only about five minutes. I finally gathered the courage to go out into the backyard and face these guys who are most likely still there. I told the girls I was going to go check the backyard. One of the girls wanted to go with me. I was fine with it because I needed all the help I could get. So we went outside to go check the backyard and surprisingly we found nothing. I was thinking that maybe they thought we had called the cops. But I didn't want anybody else, including my parents, to get involved with the situation. So I closed the gate and went back inside. I went from very sleepy to not being able to go to sleep at all. The next morning, the girls told me everything that happened last night while hanging out in the pool. Apparently he got our location from the SNAP map. One of the girls mentioned how close they were together because the guy that I knew from school was visiting a friend's house from across the street to smoke. The guy got the bright idea to come over to my house and probably try to get some with one of the girls. In the end, the guy was deeply sorry about the entire incident. He said that he was on something and asked us to tell nobody about it. I still haven't told my parents about this incident and I don't plan on telling them anytime soon. This is my first time actually talking about this to someone who wasn't there as it still freaks me out whenever I go to sleep. So this happened several years ago, back when I was like 16 and still in the Boy Scouts. One year they were holding what they called National Youth Leadership Training. NYLT for short. My troop decided to send me up for training seeing that I was the kind of youth authority figure for my friends in the troop. Well, it seemed interesting. So I figured what the heck, I'll go for it. Big mistake. I later found out that the training was going to be at the summer camp that I frequented. For anonymity's sake, I will leave out its name. All I will say is it is in the High Sierras mountain range of California and like a 15 to 25 minute hike from a creepy old logging camp from way back in the day. If I remember correctly, it was supposedly an old camp from a company called Pickering Lumber Company. Either way, clearly no one had used it for anything extensive for years. Seeing as the buildings were all rotted wood and the nails and railroad spikes used were ancient and looked to be handmade. The camp itself wasn't anything unusual outside of the occasional odd experience. People would report things like hearing the sounds of an old steampunk train every so often, even though the railroad had been decommissioned long before the summer camp even existed. So all in all, it was a lot of fun getting to know the group to which I had been paired for the training activities. At the end of the week, when we had our last activity, that's when the truly traumatizing thing happened that prevents me from getting decent sleep to this day. I'll start with the event itself, the four of us. I'll call the others by fake names, given that I can't remember them. So we have James, Alex, Sam and myself. The staff running the training gave us some food for the night, flashlights and a GPS tracker along with a set of coordinates. They then set us off in the late evening and said to set up camp, stay there for the night before breaking camp and returning. Nothing too stressful seeing as I was relatively familiar with these woods, at least during the day as at night it would change and I always felt like I was being watched from just around the next tree. So remember that GPS tracker they gave us? Absolute garbage. The thing died on us like halfway there. After it started leading us in circles back the way we came off course, it messed up in just about every way you could imagine. Frustrated beyond belief, tired and hungry at what was probably around 8 or 9 at night, we decided we would just set up camp in the next open spot we came across, eat our food and sleep before making our way back in daylight. So we came to a bit of a clearing on the side of a hill, had our dinner of terribly watered down soup, gathered some sticks and stones in a sort of large U with the opening pointing down the hill to keep the wind off of us while we were sleeping. Even though none of us had ever seen or heard of bears or mountain lions in the area, we decided to sleep in shifts, just in case. Never hurts to be cautious. So during my second shift, probably sometime between 12am and 3am, as I was laying on my sleeping bag looking at the moon and stars, something further down the hill caught my attention. It sounded like a stick breaking on the ground. Rather than shining my flashlight and ruining my night adjusted vision, I decided to just kind of look without moving too much in its direction, seeing as I was tired and didn't want to get up. Then probably about 50 or 60ft down the hill, I saw the large silhouette and glowing green eyes of an animal slowly creeping towards us. Now I know the standard prey animals of deer in the area generally didn't move like that. So I grabbed my knife and my flashlight from the hill and woke the other three up as silently as I could, as I didn't want the thing to jump on us before we were ready. As they were waking up, they looked in the direction I motioned and they generally whispered something along the lines of what is that? Then it was probably no more than 10 to 15ft away when we jumped up with our flashlights, knives, and the tallest one, James, throwing a rock at the thing as soon as my light showed us what had been stalking us. To this day, I still don't know what exactly I saw that night, but even so, it was terrifying. I will describe it as best as I am able. This animal was completely hairless and white as printer paper. This thing, while not very tall, on all fours, maybe only coming up to stomach or chest height. I didn't see any ears that I could tell. It had the muzzle of a dog, completely black eyes. When not in the dark, its chest had the same strange outward shape of a canine, but its stomach looked almost human, if far too small. The animal had those weird hind leg knees that dogs have when they are bent at two places. Its arms looked human, but the arms and legs were elongated oddly, while its feet were incredibly thin and the toes and fingers each were thinner and longer than normal and tapered off into large claws. The rock that James threw as soon as he saw this thing struck it hard on the side of its head. It lifted itself onto its hind legs, easily dwarfing us before shrieking at us and darting off back down the hill. For hours afterwards, this thing circled us, avoiding the light, taunting us, making muffled coughing sounds. Occasionally this thing made a noise, high pitched, distorted voice, sounding like it was trying to repeat what it had heard us say earlier on the hike. Then I heard it try to mimic my voice from earlier when I was complaining about the malfunctioning gps. Then it said the thing that most disturbed me. This thing calmly said, come out and play. Then the thing was gone. The next morning, we looked for some sort of evidence that this thing existed and that we didn't just have some weird group hallucination. We saw a few prints that looked like handprints. And at the top of the hill, within view of our camp, we saw a line of stairs, stacked rocks pointing off deeper into the woods. And sitting at the top was the rock that James had thrown. Ready to get out of there. We went and broke camp when I noticed we were about 2 or 300ft from an old logging camp cabin that the camp counselors called Rosie's Cabin. This freaked me out, seeing as for years all Scouts had been banned from going anywhere near the cabin. After we got back and decided to never speak of it again, I wanted to do a bit more digging to see if anyone else had even heard about it. So a few weeks later, I'm back at the camp for summer camp and I do some digging and ask a few of the older counselors about the cabin. Supposedly, as they told me, without hearing my story several years ago, they went in there when they were planning on expanding the camp to the old logging camp and found what they could only describe as a nest made out of a shredded mattress, leaves, and bits of bones from squirrels and birds. To see what would happen, they destroyed the nest, and the next day it was back to the way it was before. Then I asked if anyone had seen what made the nest, and they said that I should go ask the climbing counselor, as he had seen something odd up there a few years back. Supposedly, the climbing counselor a few years ago had planned to build a climbing tower at the abandoned camp, but never finished it because one night when he was nearly done, he decided to sleep on top of it and finish the tower the next morning. He said he was awoken later that night to something circling the tower on the ground. And at one point, the counselor said, this thing looked directly up at him with its glowing pale green eyes, sadly. I wish I could tell all of you I know what it is that I saw out there in those woods. I have no idea what it was that seemed to be hunting us when we were children that night. And I dread the idea that one day, if I have children and if they want to be Scouts, that they will go back to this same place to face the same beast that I once did. I live in a small town in Canada. Most everyone knows each other, but that doesn't mean the community is the most safe. There are tons of addicts and alcoholics roaming the streets, and if you don't live in one of the safer parts of town, there's a good chance you could be robbed or worse. A kid a few years back had his pot laced and died of an overdose within 20 minutes. So, yeah, not the best place to live. When I was in eighth grade and I was a pretty lonely kid, I only had two friends that I spent 24, seven with and with these dear friends of mine, we decided at a sleepover that we would go get slushies at 10pm on a winter night. Not our smartest decision, but we were dumb 13 year olds who wanted adventure. The shop that sold sleep slushies was no more than a 15 minute walk across a football field behind our school, so we figured we would be fine. Oh boy were we wrong. As we were walking towards the football field, there's a hill that you have to walk over to get to it. So there we were walking about to get to the field when we spot a guy, maybe high school age with a bag that had blueberry design all over it. He seemed lost but we just kind of smiled and continued walking. He stared at us as we walked along, but we didn't think much of it. We were used to creeps staring as we all dressed very alternative and had pretty bright colored hair. But as we kept walking and were just a few feet into the football field, he started following us again. We didn't think much of it. Small town. The spot was where people usually went as it was smack center of the town and people had fun back there all the time. So we continue on. Halfway through the guy walking across the football field, he just stopped and kept staring at us. At this point we are freaked out but still trying to keep things light hearted. So I take out my phone and start recording with the flash on as it was very dark outside. We are just joking around as I'm recording when suddenly my friend who we'll call Clara looks behind us and whispers oh my gosh, she's following us again. My other friend who we'll call Caitlin, looks in the same direction and looks horrified as he was walking through the snow, bag still in hand, smiling at us. At this point we are just trying to look casual and not panic as we all knew if we gave away that we knew he was following us, it would probably change from a follow to a full out chase if you catch my drift. This goes on for a while as we're trying to get to the shop for our slushies. The guy would follow us for a while, stop to not look suspicious, wait about 3 seconds and start following us again. We were all terrified. Three middle school kids, the biggest of us being five, seven and in the middle of a sketchy town at 10pm I was so sure I was never going to see the light of day again once we eventually arrive at the stupid shop. One of my classmates, Cindy was there in her friend's car intoxicated with some sort of substance. Wasn't sure which one. When I told her the situation and begged for a ride back to our friend's place, she basically laughed and said, don't get kidnapped. Wow. Thanks. We got our stupid slushies and started to head back to our friend's house, deciding to walk on the side of the busy street rather than across the field. Again, I was holding on to Kaitlin's arm as I was crying from fear and she was a lot braver than I was. I felt like she was protecting me. Clara was behind us when she suddenly flops onto the concrete and starts to sob and is covering her head saying he's still following us. He's still following us. Kaitlin and I tried to shush her and continue on walking, but she wouldn't budge. Eventually, Kaitlin and I basically had to piggyback her until she stopped crying. It was a horrendous scene. We eventually made it back to the house around 11 o', clock, deciding to go to bed with the doors and windows locked. Now you would expect expect this to be the end of the story, but sadly, it wasn't. The following Monday, my dad was driving me to my local pool. We stopped for a pedestrian. Guess who it was. The blueberry bag guy. He turned to look at me through the front windshield and gave me the same creepy smile that he gave my friends and I this last weekend. This episode is brought to you by JCPenney. And if you've been to JCPenney recently. Yes, JCPenney, you'll know it's becoming the way to find good clothes for prices that still make sense. They've got hidden gems for everyone and every budget, with deals and rewards that actually make a dent. If you already shop JCPenney, you feel like you know a secret. But if not, it's time to ask. Wait, am I sleeping on jcpenney shop jcpenney.com yes, JCPenney. 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. I knew that working in a mental hospital built in the 1800s would be scary. That is one of the reasons I applied. Apart from my want to care for people, there was a new hospital built on the same grounds just after I started and all the patients had been moved down there so the old building stood empty. I would park next to the entrance of the old hospital because I loved looking at the architecture, especially when walking to my car after my shift. I worked second shift and by the time I would gather my things and walk out to my car, it would be midnight. Usually I would leave my things in my car and go walk around the old building looking for anything. One night I found what I was looking for. I walked up the mossy stone steps that led to the huge wooden doors of the main building. I thought about how much I missed walking through those heavy doors with the stained glass windows. Since everyone had moved to the new building. Rumor was that the doors had been locked and chained shut. I did my usual route, walking outside the ground floor windows, looking into the ones where the lights had been left on. These windows were small, just a bit bigger than your usual basement window and were situated on the main hall. On the side of this ward, however, were huge windows looking out at the farmlands. You could see into the hall and could see where the rooms were, but there were no windows in the rooms. I made my way towards the old adolescent unit, thinking of a story I read in a book about this hospital. The book was written by a retired nurse who had worked third shift here her entire career. The story was about two adolescent twins that had been admitted to the hospital and had died within minutes of each other with no explanation. As I was about to turn around and head back, I heard what sounded like laughter. I looked around, thinking maybe it was someone walking to their car or driving past, but I did not see anyone. I shrugged it off and kept walking back to the main steps. I took a deep breath in, filling my lungs with the night air. I could smell the rain that had been falling not on an hour prior, as well as the old building smell of the hospital. It was quiet and peaceful. I could hear the traffic from the road out front, the water splashing on the road as the cars drove out. I made it to the steps and turned around at the top of them to admire the building one last time before heading home. The fog was coming down over the big white dome that stood at the center of the hospital. The big ancient oaks that stood out front gave the place a very homey touch and reminded everyone that we were in the mountains of North Carolina. Carolina. I was looking at how tall the windows were on the second and third floor when I thought I saw a shadow pass by a light in my peripheral vision. I turned my head to see who it was and realized that the movement had come from a window on the adolescent ward. I stared a while longer seeing if there was an animal or a person, but I saw nothing. I took a few steps closer and was stopped in my tracks when I saw a very tall, fast shadow pass by a light in the hallway. My breath left my body and my hair stood on end. My heart felt like it dropped into my stomach. I closed my eyes and took another deep breath. When I opened them, the shadow was now standing in the window looking at me. Suddenly a voice called out, hey, some man. I jumped and spun around expecting to be attacked by something, but I was met with the friendly face of my co worker Josh. I greeted him and he seemed to notice that I was surprised. Looking for ghosts again? He asked. Yeah, just doing my nightly routine. Hey, do you know if the doors to the main building are locked? I asked trying to calm myself down. Josh set his coffee cup on the hood of his car and walked to the bottom of the steps. The main doors are locked, but there is a way to get in. If you go around back to the medical wing, there's a small wooden door that's kept locked. I don't know why and you didn't hear that from me, he said as he looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was within earshot. Oh, are there still people who work inside? I was hoping that he would tell me yes so that I could say my earlier experience was an actual person in the window, but I was not so lucky. Josh backed up a few steps toward his car and said no. When we moved, we moved everything. I think we are not allowed in there at all. Now the door in the back is left open for the facility maintenance manager to go in and check the meter box every week since the power is still on. I thanked Josh and told him to have a safe drive home. As he pulled out of the parking lot, I turned back to the old building. I looked at the window where the shadow had been before and made the decision to just forget about it. I walked down the steps to my car as it started to drizzle rain. I started my car and headed out of the parking lot, but I found myself turning in the direction to the back of the hospital. I thought I might as well at least look for this door that was left open. I had walked all around the hospital a dozen times and had never seen a door left open. I pulled up to the spot Josh had mentioned and to my disbelief, I saw a door with a cinder block keeping it ajar. There was not light coming from the door, but I could see that it was open. I put my car in park and sat there for a few minutes, trying to decide if I was crazy enough to go in. After a few more minutes, I grabbed my pen light and my cell phone as well as my work keys and walked to the door. As I was approaching the door, I turned my pen light on and realized that while convenient for checking pupil dilation after a head injury, it was useless as a flashlight. I kept it on anyway because it made me feel safer. I put my keys between my fingers to serve as a weapon, like how Wolverine has claws that come out of his knuckles. When I got to the door, I could smell the familiar smell of the old building. It was welcoming and it really made me miss working there. The new building just did not have the same feel to it. I took another breath and put my hand on the door handle. I froze. What was I going in there to find? Did I really want to do this? Should I call Josh and have him come back to go with me? I moved away from the door and shook my head. I had to do this. I considered myself a huge fan of paranormal activity. I watched all the creepy scary movies, went to all the haunted houses, and listened to podcasts about walking through abandoned hospitals late at night. I had to find out what was going on down in that adolescent ward. I went to the back door and flung it open. As soon as I stepped inside, I pointed my pen light up at the ceiling so it would illuminate more. It allowed me to see about 4ft in front of me, clear as day. Anything beyond that was fog. I found myself in the back of the medical ward where they used to bring the trash out from. I looked to my left to see a door labeled Meter Box with another cinder block wedged in it. At least the maintenance guy didn't have to go far. I made my way to the front of the unit, not wasting any time reminiscing on old days spent on this ward. I hated working the medical ward because of one patient that was awfully hard to deal with. I went to open the door to get off the unit when I remembered that it had to have a key. Every door in this facility had to always remain locked to keep the patients inside. It seems cruel, but until you work in psych, you just don't know. They had taken our skeleton key when we moved to prevent us from getting in here. But the ward keys were different from the ones that let you in the building. I took my keys out of my hand and found my ward key. I stuck it in the door and it turned with a satisfying click, signaling that it was unlocked. It opened with a big pull and it made the most awful noise you could imagine hearing inside an abandoned asylum late at night. The hair on my arms raised and a cold chill went down my spine. I decided to leave the door open so I wouldn't have to unlock it again. After all, there were no patients to keep in sight anymore. I knew that I needed to walk up the main hall, by the front door in the main building and down the stairs to get where I had seen the shadow. I made my way to the main building, leaving the doors unlocked and wedged open. Lights were left on from when we moved out and I was grateful for that. I rounded the corner to the main doors where I could see out to where I'd been standing earlier. I turned to my left where the huge spiral staircase was. It was made from cherry wood, painted white and my fish favorite part of the old building. This staircase led to the geriatric wards on the second floor and then the all male wards on the third floor. Behind this staircase was a small door leading to another set of steps that led you to the lower level of the hospital, the adolescent ward. The stairs creaked and groaned as they always had, but under these circumstances it was terrifying. I stepped off the stairs staircase and walked up to the door labeled Ward H. Elopement Risk KEEP door locked at all times. I went to put my key in the door and noticed that the door was ajar. I pulled at the handle and it opened right up. The lights left on made it easy to see the entire hallway all the way up to the nurses station, which was pitch black. There never was good lighting in there anyway. I walked in with a naive amount of courage, started talking to the shadow I had seen. After a few hellos, I decided to walk down to where I had witnessed whatever it was. I had to round another corner to get to the exact window, and as I did, I got extremely cold. I felt my heart drop to my stomach again and my goosebumps returned. I stood there looking at the window about 30ft in front of me. I took a few deep breaths and called out again. Nothing. I gained some more courage and decided to walk up. Every step my feet felt heavier and heavier. My breath shuddered and my heart rate was increasing. I could feel my hands shaking. I stood in front of the Window. Looking around, my eyes landed on the door that was across from the window. The name tag on this door read Tip. I remembered this patient well. Tip was a nickname given at admission because he would walk on his tiptoes all day long. He was taken home by his family not long after we moved into the new hospital. I opened the door slowly, then just stood there. I felt eyes on me, but not from in the room. From behind me. I swallowed hard and slowly turned to look over my shoulder. My hand gripped my keys tightly in preparation to swing at whatever was behind me. But when I looked, I saw nothing. My shoulders relaxed as I let out a sigh of relief. But this relaxation would be short lived. As I turned back to the door, I hear laughter. The same laughter as before, except this time it was closer. A lot closer. My body went cold. I turned my head toward the direction of the sound where a floodlight was illuminating. Just 10ft from where I stood, I saw the shadow at the end of the hall. The hall I had just walked down, looking out the window like it was doing before. It then turned toward me and in an instant lunged in my direction. I swung a perfect right hook, but hit nothing. The shadow passed right through me, and as I spun around to see where it went, the door to Tip's room slammed shut. I ran as fast as I could through the hospital the same way that I came in. All the way back down to the medical unit. When I got to the door that led outside, I kicked the cinder block away from the door and slammed it shut. My back against the door, I slid down until I was sitting on the concrete platform. I stayed there a few minutes, thinking about what had just happened. I thought about saying something to the facility police or maybe the maintenance manager. But I decided that I might get myself in trouble. I wasn't supposed to be in there. That's why they had taken our skeleton key. I decided I had better not tell anyone about what I did or saw. The drive home was filled with emotion and recollection of the event. I don't remember how many times I checked my backseat. I pulled into the driveway around 1:30 and just sat in my car. I had went looking for something paranormal and I had gotten more than I bargained for. Seeing the shadow in the window was not enough for me. I had to go investigate and prove to myself that I was brave and a true fan of the paranormal. I still take those late night walks around the hospital. I have even poked around the adolescent ward a few more times. What I learned from that night was that I don't quit, and my fight or flight response is to fight. But that doesn't work on ghosts. That night was the scariest moment of my life. This is a personal account. Though I cannot deny that the whole subject of the supernatural has interested me since my early life. It has nonetheless been more than 30 years, and I have kept my peace about the one encounter that I had. Whatever the explanation, it is only with distance of many years that I feel comfortable enough to put it into words. What I saw, though doubtless in the description it will appear less than the sum of its parts. The palpable dread of that memory, however, is beyond my skill to relate. I had a vision of something wretched, something foul. It took the form of a human, though it wasn't human and possibly never was. This happened in the summer of 1986, when I was five years old. We lived at that time near the village of Swords in North County Dublin, Ireland, at the edge of a housing estate called River Valley. Our house was the last house on a cul de sac that was set into this slight hillside so that from the upper windows we had a wide view of the land around. At that time the village and estate was surrounded by field fields, though it has since all been developed. The forest road that led up to the village was lined with great trees, beech, poplar, and pine. They looked like towers from my bedroom window, and a sheep field lay across the road from the side of the house. I have pleasant childhood memories of bright sunshine and warm breezes looking down on the lambs and ewes in that field from my side garden. My mother, with ghoulish humor, named one of the herd Mint Sauce. Visible also from my window through the trees and the undergrowth along the forest road was an old disused blacksmith's forge. I don't doubt that this too has long since disappeared. Perhaps every childhood has its own haunted place. It was the local rumor that this old forge was badly haunted. A girl from my road called Janet used to offer up a dubious tale that some school friends on a dare one evening were driven shrieking from the place, having heard a deep growl while one of them was witnessing the phantom of a woman, or rather an invisible form in an old fashioned print frock, hovering in the loft of an adjacent barn. So much for the local legend. I never went near that forge, and what I saw, I don't think has much to do with it. Then again, what do I really know? What I saw I saw from my window of the spare room just beside my own at the front of the house. My grandmother used to sleep here when she would be over from her own house in Cabra in the city. It was the end of summer and my family had just returned from a holiday. The Isle of Man. And on a childish flight of fancy I crept from my bed into the spare room. I looked out onto the darkened neighborhood. Shadows danced in the lighted porches of the houses and colored flashes came from the direction of Dublin Airport across the fields. Then I looked down and saw it on the rock. There was a neighborhood marking stone at the entrance to the estate, just at the junction to the forest right road with the usual welcome to inscription. It lay visible just below the spare room window. Sitting there was the diminutive figure of an old woman in an ancient dress. She wore a plaid cloak with an immense collar of shaggy fur, like the hair of a yak. Despite her apparent great age, her hair hung long and greasy black down from under her ragged cap. Cap. One deathly white hand was clasped over a large brooch. On her cloak. The figure seemed to glow in its own light against the darkness around. I saw no one else about. Her face was abominable. She was shockingly pale. She had a heavy brow and terrible raging eyes. They weren't the eyes of a human. More like a wild beast. Beast. Most disturbing, however, was my realization that those eyes had been fixed in a stare up at me from before. I had even raised my head over the windowsill. Whatever she was, she had been aware of me before I of her. It was a nightmarish sight, a vision of wickedness. But I was not sleeping. I remember the malevolence of the expression on that awful face. It induced a sickening feeling, and I felt like vomiting, but I was unable to move. Then the form of the little woman appeared to be growing steadily larger until she swelled well beyond the stature of a normal human being. She also appeared to rise in the air above her seat. Then a trickle of crimson passed down over my eyes and the spell was broken. I collapsed down from the sill and hurried back to my own room. Later that night I dared to glance out my window, but of course there was nothing to see. I never saw anything of that weird woman again, and I have been greatly glad of it. We moved the year after, and that was that. But I have never talked about or inquired further concerning this all through these long years. So this all just happened On Memorial Day, 2021, in the biggest little city in the world. I will be using other names in this story out of respect for who they are But I will use my own name because I'm okay with it. My name is Harlem. And on Memorial Day I went to my second job as a housekeeping supervisor. Basically, I am in charge of checking the rooms when they are cleaned before the guests can check in and use them. I also am in charge of kicking people out at 11am oh yeah, it's always fun to knock on someone's door telling them they need to go or they will be charged another day. Some people are so rude. But that's just the way some people are wired, I guess. Anyway, so we have only six checks out that day. This hotel is very small, mind you. And I made my rounds to all the rooms to see if they are vacant or if I had to be the jerk that tells them they need to go. And last on my list was room 339. I knock on the door saying housekeeping room check. There is no answer. I knock a second time saying the same thing. No answer again. So the third time I say housekeeping entering room and slid my card in the door slot, it flashed green and I slowly opened the door. To my surprise, the door only barely budged and I could see the door latch was latched from the other side. This means someone had to be in the room and have had locked it. I took a peep through the small opening and saw some bags of merchandise on the table and some dishes in the sink. I then called out the tenant's name. We will call him Russ. Russ, it's housekeeping. No response again. I try calling out his name and I get nothing. Let me also say that when I tried to open the door I was hit with really cold ac. Colder than normal. It gave me goosebumps immediately. I walked down to the front desk to see the manager. We'll call her Sam. And I gave her my report on the rooms. She then says to me, are you kidding? Russ had his door latched. I was confused by this comment comment, thinking to myself, well Sam, people do that stuff all the time, so what's the big deal? She turns to me with this look in her eyes as if someone just hit her in the Cheerios and says Karen, who is the other supervisor and we shall call her. Karen went to his room yesterday around 11 to tell him to check out and he told her he needed till 12. But when she came back the door was latched. I thought about this for a minute thinking to myself so this guy is either really paranoid or there is something very wrong here. She then darts off towards the maintenance room and Then grabs this tool that looks like a curved meat fork and tells me to go with her up to the room. When we arrived, she announced herself as the manager coming into the room, slid the card to open the door and called his name. She then explains to me that the tool she had was a tool that would actually pop open the bolt lock on the other side so we could enter. In order to do this, you need to have the tool in place through the crack to fit around the latch, pull the door towards you to slam it shut, and then at the same time push the tool forward. I hope that made sense. Anyway, my manager is like 60 years old and has a hard time even lifting a coffee cup cup. So I just had a feeling she wouldn't have the strength to do this. I offered to try it as it had been about 34 minutes of her trying to get it. She says to me, no, Harlem, I'm the manager. I'm the one that does this power trip much. Jeez. I was blown away by that comment and her utter sassiness with that she was giving up. So I offered another way to open the latch by using TW twine. She agreed to try it. So we went to the maintenance room and looked for some. All we found was thick string that I knew was too thick to get this lock open. But of course she said she would make it work. I rolled my eyes. There we are back up to the room again and I explained to her how to do it so the latch would pop. Of course she wouldn't let me show her because she was on a power trip I guess. So she tried for about 17 minutes and failed once again, not letting me try though I knew it wasn't going to work being that thick. She then scoffs and takes off. I'm standing there wondering what the heck, where did she go again being hit with that ice cold AC through the crack. She comes running back about seven minutes later and has that tool again. And I'm thinking, good, she's finally going to let me try. Well, I was wrong. She tried and failed again for a good 10 more minutes. Finally I was so frustrated with the whole situation, I grabbed the tool out of her hand and yelled, look, I don't care about your power trip right now. You can't open this door. I'm gonna try. She glares angrily at me but stands aside. I put the tool in at an angle going downward about halfway and then I slide that in slow. I take the door handle and slam it shut towards me and shove the tool in the rest of the way, I heard a click and she pushes open the door and dashes inside. So the way the rooms are set up, the first area is a small kitchenette which is next to the bedroom. As you're walking forward, it's all one room, no walls. Except to the right there's a bathroom. She scrambles to the bed and tells me he's not here. Well, clearly he's not in that room. But anyway, I look to my right to see the bathroom door closed. So let me tell you, up to this point, I have went over scenarios in my head about what could have happened to this guy. As I reached and pulled the doorknob, chills and shivers went down my spine. And as I opened that door, I saw a sight I have never seen before in my life. The gruesome body of the late 40s man was laying face down on the tile next to the toilet with a huge jagged knife laying next to him. Sam is screaming like a lunatic, yelling that he has been murdered. Oh my gosh, she can't believe this. She turns around and pukes all over the kitchen sink in the other room. Here I am looking down on this lifeless body and of course I am always the type to analyze everything. I could see clearly that this man was not murdered, nor did he die unexpectedly. He had done it to himself. Under his left hand. You could see the biggest gash going from just the bottom of his hand down about halfway on the inside of his arm. There was flesh seeping out of the area and blood that was dry. I quickly got on my phone to call 911 and as I'm talking to let's call her, Lucy, the operator, she asks me a series of questions about the victim, which I answer them for. Her side note, she had even asked me to give mouth to mouth to the victim, in which I refused on the grounds that I said, he's dead, ma'. Am. I can see that just by looking at him, mouth to mouth won't bring him back. Plus, I am not comfortable giving mouth to mouth to a corpse that's way over the top to me and gross as Lucy keeps talking to me. Suddenly the hotel door flies open and there are two paramedics rushing in with a stretcher. This whole time, by the way, I kept hearing the old AOL sound, you've got mail coming from the opened laptop that was on the bed. Didn't think anything of it at that point point in time, but use it later. In a theory the paramedics are asking both of us the same questions as Lucy was in which we answered. The male paramedic told us that they will take it from there, but the police are on their way and would need to talk to us. Before leaving this room, I noticed a few things beside the laptop with the notifications every 30 seconds. The peephole was covered with tissue. There were no clothes anywhere in the room and this guy was there for a week. The bed was not even slept in, just the open laptop that was plugged into the wall and a photo on the dresser that had a picture of a young dude. And the TV was turned up so loud with some kind of what looked like a home movie. As I am back downstairs in the office, I'm thinking in my head what everything means. Yeah, Again, I analyze everything and always pay close attention to detail. I have my own idea of what I think happened to this man. At this point, the police, detective and coroner have all arrived and I am writing my statement for the detective. Let's call her Anderson. She asks me to write down everything that happened in detail. As I'm writing that, she leans over to ask me if I had any thoughts and what might have happened. I stopped writing and looked up at her and took this time to tell her I believe this guy did it himself. Between 11am and 12pm yesterday, Karen was the last person to see him alive. I believe he was about to do it, but then heard a knock at 11 o'. Clock. He opened the door. It was Karen telling him he had to check out. This interrupted him. Karen came back at 12 and the door was latched and the peephole covered. I think that at that time or very shortly after he took his life, Karen didn't go back to check on him after 12 because at that hotel they extend you for another day most of the time. And I guess he was a regular who stayed there a few times a year. I believe that he turned down the AC to the coolest setting because the body would decomp at a slower rate with less smell. I believe that the man in the photo of the young dude might have been his son or friend or family member that he wanted to say goodbye to. And the TV turned up loud as well as closing the bathroom door to drown out the sound of him screaming as he did it. I believe that he was kneeling maybe to pray or something when he did that, seeing as how there wasn't any blood coming from his head. If he had been standing, he would have smashed his head on the tile and bathtub and asked for being naked. Well, some People believe that the only way to leave this life is the same way that you came into it. Maybe a purity thing. I am not really sure and I do believe it was planned because he didn't have any toiletries with him or clothes. And lastly, the AOL mail notification on the laptop I believe was because this guy typed a suicide note and probably emailed it and people read it trying to get in touch with him. I told her I also ruled out murder because of the fact that the door was latched from the inside and the room was up on the third floor. Not to mention the windows only open about 25% of the way simply to keep people from jumping out. The detective looked at me with a mysterious look and said, well, I think you should be doing my job. You surely are onto something, Harlem. She said she would keep me informed and that the case was ongoing until the coroner made his final decision. She asked me if I needed anything and I said no, that I was fine. I walked out of the break room where she had been questioning me and Sam came up to me and asked if I was okay. I told her yes, but that I wanted the rest of the day off. She agreed. I'll probably never know what really happened to Russ and again, everything I said about how it might have happened is just my thoughts. If anyone else has any thoughts, please share them. I'd appreciate it. Lastly, and I will leave off on this. The way I feel right now inside, I can't explain. And I couldn't sleep last night because I have all these thoughts in my head about what happened, not to mention the gruesome scene I witnessed. I know in time things will be easier, but for a while I will have shivers when I have to open up a bathroom door in the hotel. Again, thank you all for listening and to Russ, I hope you found peace that it seems you so desperately needed. When I was 17 years old in 2005, I lived in a quiet village where nothing ever happened. At least that's what we thought. I had just gotten my license and I was excited to meet up with my older boyfriend in the city on the weekend. It was the first time I was able to drive my car alone since getting my license, so the occasion was a celebration of sorts. I live in Wisconsin, so the distance between nowhere land and city isn't a great distance. 40 miles to Milwaukee. The highway to the major cities is a hop, skip and a jump. Shortly after leaving the village, I noticed a white car on the side of the road, which wouldn't be uncommon for the area except for it being summertime. During winter here it is always a common courtesy to stop and see if they need help, but since it wasn't dangerous season I normally wouldn't think twice about it. However, there was an eightish year old boy walking away from the car. We were at least a mile away from civilization, 14 miles to the nearest city and I stopped to see what I could do to help. I had expected that he was with a grandparent or something that couldn't walk that sort of distance back to town for help. This was in a time when having a cell phone wasn't that common yet in the young and the old being 2005 I pulled over next to the boy and asked him what was going on. He told me he was on his way to the only car repair shop in town which was at least 3 miles away from where we were. I said that was a very long way to walk and I offered him a ride. He was hesitant and I told him I'm a student to the high school a mile away. I would let him hold my cell phone and my ID until we got there if he felt afraid and he could easily dial 911 without me being able to stop him and we were only a three minute drive from where he was going. I said we should talk to the person in the car first and the boy seemed to panic. First red flag. No, it's fine, just go. I was like okay. I was just a kid myself and my local address was clearly on my id. He looked at my ID for a minute and got into my car. He seemed at ease with holding my phone and my ID. This was a time before you could dial 911 without a passcode to a phone. So I gave him my passcode and he seemed to feel even better when he could get into my phone. I told him not to check my boyfriend's messages because he was too young. With the times and neighborhood we were around that was reasonable to me. I didn't suspect anything. Then the car that was pulled over that couldn't move suddenly screeched out of its spot and raced after me with its blinker on insisting that I pull over. I looked over at the kid in my passenger seat with an eyebrow raised again. The child was about 8 years old. He was shaking with fear next to me. The man in the car behind us pulled over, got out and slammed his car door behind him in a rage as he strutted up to my window. This was odd to me since they were supposed to be broken down and the kid looked extremely afraid when he walked up. I rolled my window down just enough so I could hear him. And the child I had picked up was a danger to himself and others. And I was in danger sitting next to him while driving. He could have killed me. I was afraid because I hadn't expected a broken down car to chase me. And I was having a hard time believing what he was saying. I turned to the boy next to me. After I rolled up the window in the guy's face. I said, do you know this man? Is what he is saying true? I'm sorry, but you need to be honest because I'm scared. The fear in my eyes. I think the kid misunderstood. He must have thought I was afraid of him. I wasn't afraid of him. I was afraid of the man outside my window. The boy said no, that he was lying. The situation wasn't sitting with me. Something seemed really off. And with how aggressive the man outside my window was. I really was afraid he would hurt me if I rolled the window down far enough. The kid said that he would be okay and got out of the car and went with him. The look of dread on his face haunts my dreams to this day. It still didn't set well with me that he got into the man's car and they drove away towards the city. City. I called my date and told him I would be very late and went to the school as fast as my car could take me. With a license plate in mind. I talked to the liaison officer at my school. After I ran into the building screaming his name like a banshee. I told him about the kid and he said before I had even gotten there someone had dialed 911 about my stopping to pick up the kid. And they were apprehended just as I got to the school. The caller was suspended. Suspicious of me too, which scared my liaison officer. I was the school's biggest goody two shoes despite being the only Goth. I gave my statement right there. I was told to never ever stop for a child again lest I were to be suspected of abduction. And he said I was still in the wrong. I shouldn't have gotten involved. What if the man had a weapon? But the man in the car went to jail and the boy was brought safely back home. Home. He couldn't give me any details on the case except that the man was apprehended and questioned and the boy was brought home. And that's all I was ever told. I am not sure what crime I might have stopped that day. But that day I know I did play a part in saving that kid from something. I am so glad I stopped my car. I am a high school teacher in an urbanized province in the Southeast Asian country. I say urbanized because while this city is as modern as can be, you know, cars, televisions, computers, WI fi, all of the comforts that we associate with the modern world, it was still considered a province in that it is not in a metropolitan area. The school itself is quite urbanized in that there are CCTV cameras in all classrooms installed for the safety of students, teachers and all staff. The classrooms are also fully air conditioned, which is a plus in my country because we live near the equator. But this quite technologically advanced building is surrounded by trees, long rolling farms, a creek, things that one might associate with the province. Like I said, it was quite an urbanized city. I enjoyed teaching there because while everything is quite modern, the students still retain the quaint politeness and courtesy that develops in kids who are raised in the province. But I am not telling this story because of how I enjoyed every day of my stay there. Way back in 2014 I have two periods with the 8th grade class in room 31 4. The first one was at 12:20, the second at 2:40. I was rushing to room 314 where I will be teaching my 12:20pm class, which is after lunch. The stairwell is situated between 3:05 and 3, so you can imagine the long hallway that I have to rush through to get to my class. I was already five minutes late, so the hallways are pretty empty save for a few students rushing to their rooms. Room 314 is the last classroom in the hallway and beyond that is a set of stairs used only as an emergency exit. Since students tend to be late for classes after lunch, I have a rule that if I enter the room before them, they will be considered tardy. I reached room 314, entered the room and started my class. We were having a debate that day and it was the first time that I get to sit down during this class. I sat down at the back and listened as my students performed. A few minutes later the door opened and my student, let's call him Kyle, entered the room and smiled bashfully. I jokingly scowled at him and tapped my watch, letting him know that he's already late. Of course, I am not really going to give him a tardy deduction. It's his first warning anyway. The session went on without incident and when the time is up, I reminded them of our skit later on for our 2:40 class in my country. The students stay in their classrooms with the same classmates or what we call sections, and the teachers are the ones transferring room per room. Come 2:40. I was back in room 314 giving my final reminders before we start the skit. When we were about to begin, one of my students, let's call her Erica, told me that their group cannot perform because the lead actor is absent. I didn't notice any vacant chairs. I said, who's absent? Erica replied, it's Kyle. I was mildly surprised since I just saw Kyle earlier, but I just asked Erica, did he need to leave early? Was he sick? Erica answered, no, he's been absent the whole day. I didn't push the issue, told them they can present me next time. But I was so sure I saw Kyle earlier. So after class I went to the admin office to ask the security desk if I can watch the CCTV footage from room 31 4. 12:20pm the security officer gave me a strange look and clarified if I wanted to see room 314. The reason I'm asking, said the security officer, is that we thought it was very strange. Every single feed from all 40 plus rooms in the building is working except for room 314. And around the time that you mentioned, that's when I started to feel that maybe something paranormal just happened. In my late 20s I got hired on as an overnight security guard at a defunct beef plant slaughterhouse that had been shut down the year before. There were always two guards on duty. There was a lot of equipment, vehicles and supplies left that made it a metal scrapper's dream. So the guards would make the rounds of the property to keep an eye on things. One goes west and around the property, the other goes east. Then we would switch. We would occasionally meet up near or at the back gate to chat for a few minutes, relay pertinent information and have a quick cigarette. A lot of things would happen that couldn't be readily explained, like rocks being thrown from the empty catwalks and in the cattle pens, bangs, taps and scraping sound from buildings that we had already checked, cleared and made sure were locked. We usually just blamed it on old metal contorting with temperature changes. But one night terrified me and the other guard on duty. I had just started my shift around 11pm I radioed the other guard who was already on a round to let him know that I was headed out down the east side. He confirmed his location to be on the west side side of the plant. Now a full walk of the perimeter of the plant, not including Stops to check locked doors and such takes about 45 minutes. So I know that it will be at least 30 minutes until we pass each other near the back gate. As I am walking the east side, I have a clear view of the back gate. I stopped to check the locks on the doors I passed. I am about 10 minutes to the back gate and I can see the other guard standing there, his back to me, smoking a cigarette. I thought, dang, he's booking it tonight. So I checked one more door before heading to meet him. But when I turned around, there was no one there. I was a little disappointed that he hadn't waited for me as was usual. It was just kind of a routine for all the guards. So I radioed him and asked if he was all right or if I had irritated him or something and why he didn't wait for me at the gate. There was silence for a few seconds before he comes back with, what are you talking about? I'm in the cattle pens. I won't be at the gate for another 15 minutes. He had apparently been chatting with a police officer parked in the staging lot doing some paperwork. So he was late on his round. No, no. I saw him at the back gate, Saw his guard hat, signature, security jacket and slacks, cigarette in hand, standing, looking at the back gate. I look over at the cattle pens just to make sure he wasn't screwing with me. Being the only female guard at that location, it wasn't unheard of for the guys to razz me from time to time. He's on the radio asking me what is going on. I see him pop up. As he climbs up one of the cattle fences to check my location, he flashes his light. He is right in the middle of the pens, a good 10 minutes from the gate if he were to run it. I had seen him at the gate, then looked away for maybe a minute and a half. No way he could get that far that quick. So I radio him that there's someone in the property inside the fence plants. We go into lockdown mode, checking every inch of the property for the next two hours. We find no one. All gates are locked, all doors are secure. We are both shaken and unnerved. You hear things, feel things, maybe see a fleeting shadow around the plant. But this was the first time anyone had seen a full, solid flight figure. Or at least it was the first time anyone had admitted it. I have experienced a handful of paranormal experiences, but only this one sticks out as truly chilling and one that I still have no explanation for other than the belief that it was something demonic or an evil spirit at the very least. It was at a friend of my brother's house where my brother had left some of his things and asked if I could pick them up for him since he currently was out of state. Being the loyal brother, I went to get them, but decided to bring a few of my friends with me since I had already made plans with them and figured this would only take a second. While we were there, Roy, my brother's friend, kept telling us that there were demons in his house, and I chalked it up to him just being a little nuts in combination with him trying to scare us. But the first strange occurrence happened when I picked up my brother's things. Among my brother's things was his old Bible. Curious as to what notes he may have written in it, I opened it up, but quickly discovered that every other page in the 1000 page Bible was stuck together with what looked like pieces of double sided tape. Although it startled me, I still did not believe it was something supernatural and rationalized that Roy went to this extreme measure to convince us of his story. But what happened next confirmed it. One of my friends, Mike, had to take a call from his then fiance, now wife. During this time, I saw him come back inside, walk across the room and into the hall without looking at us. Since this was a house he was not familiar with, I thought it extremely odd that he didn't say anything or ask where the bathroom was, for example. So I called out to him. No response. I walked out into the hall where he went into and it was just darkness. I called out to him again, no response. At this point it felt like the temperature in my blood dropped 10 degrees and I could have sworn the classic cliche of the door closing behind you was starting to happen. I propped the door with my hand before it closed and promptly went outside to find Mike still on the phone. I asked him if he had just come inside to use the bathroom or something and he said no, I've been on the phone, I don't even know where the bathroom is. As he saw the look on my face, he asked what's wrong? And I simply just told him that we needed to leave. I later explained everything to him on the car ride, at which point he clearly denied that he ever did such a thing and felt very uncomfortable. Knowing the story, we both agreed to never visit that house again. Before I start this story, a little background on me. I am a female who just finished my associate's degree and starting to work on my bachelor's degree. It was the spring of 2010 and I chose a university that was an hour and a half away from where I lived. It had the major and minor I was looking for. On certain days I went to school, while the other two days I worked. This semester, for some reason, I decided to include classes on my work days. One day I decided to stay the night in town instead of going home and returning the next morning. I would later regret this choice. To stay in this one hotel, I drove to this roadside place and checked in. I left to go have dinner at the school and then off to Walmart that was right across the street to pick up a set of fresh clothes for tomorrow. I then returned to my room so I could start to study for a test that I had the next day. A quick layout of my hotel room when you enter, the door to your left is the back bathroom. Glass sliding doors are straight ahead of you. The TV was on the wall to the right with the bed and table and the chairs right next to the bed. Small lamps near the bed are attached to the wall. I put my stuff down, got out my books to start studying for the test. I went to go sit down at the table when I noticed that the floor underneath had a soggy feeling. I thought that's strange. Did they have a water leak or something? I put it out of my mind for a little bit while I was looking over my notes and watching a little tv. I had looked at my watch, saw that it was getting late and decided to stop so I could take a shower and go to bed. The floor underneath me still had that same feeling. I looked at the bottom of my foot to see what it could be. Nothing was there and my foot foot wasn't even wet so I tried to put it out of my mind again, went to take my shower and then came back to get in bed. I turned off the TV and the lights and tried to go to sleep. I don't know if it was just a few minutes or an hour, but I heard voices that sounded like they were right on top of me. A man and a woman. I sat straight up in bed looking around to see who was in there. No one. I turned the light on next to me and turned the TV back on within a few minutes. My eyes were getting so heavy that I turned off the TV but kept the light on and went to bed. When my alarm went off in the morning, I went to turn off my alarm and looked down on the side of the bed and I saw blood going down right where my head had been. I jumped up out of bed so fast and was checking the side of my head for anything. There was nothing. Nothing was wrong. The floor under the table felt even more soggy than the night before. I checked my feet again thinking this time I might find blood or something. Still nothing. I got all of my stuff together and got out of there quickly. My classmates told me that I looked like hell and asked how much sleep did I get. I told them not much and explained to them what it had happened that night. Of course they didn't believe me and said that I must have still been dreaming. I know I wasn't dreaming or half awake. It happened. I don't know what happened, but it did. I have never been back to that place and I left that school shortly after that I live in a small rural community in the eastern us. It's a nice little town. Because of my work in the medical field I have met some interesting folks. I am also familiar with law enforcement and emergency personnel. Small town life is not as dull and uneventful as people think, especially since everybody knows somebody who knows somebody. I have a lot of stories to share, but since this one just happened, I'll start here because it's still very recent and the investigation is ongoing. I have to be vague with some details, but I needed to tell someone. I'm single and live alone due to a stalker. I have moved twice but that's another story for another time time. However, it is relevant for this story for multiple reasons. The first reason being that I have a dog for the sake of protection as well as have motion sensors and outdoor security cameras. The second reason being the location of my home which is literally down the street from the fire department. I can see it from my living room window and a couple of blocks from the police station. However next to the fire department department as the road department which is basically a parking lot where they park their road equipment and empty garbage trucks at night and on weekends. Oddly, it doesn't have a security camera. Small town life I suppose. My house sits on a hill with a good view of that side of the street due to the incline, the large trees in the front yard and the half cornfield on the property next to me. Most people on the street below wouldn't notice me in the backyard unless they were actively looking. However, I can see the street clearly. This incident happened Saturday evening. The county was holding the annual Independence Day spiel with a community barbecue, music, fireworks, etc. I did not attend because it's just not my thing. Plus I have a dog and the sound of fireworks could be traumatizing. Before the big show, I took the dog out to relieve herself in the backyard. There was still at least an hour of daylight, but the entire neighborhood was pretty quiet because most everyone was at the fairgrounds or various other holiday events. So when an unfamiliar large white pickup truck drove slowly down the street, I noticed it must have turned around at the end of the street because I saw it again, again moving in the opposite direction only about 20 seconds later. This time it turned into the parking lot of the road department. Now, people have been known to toss things into the empty garbage trucks, usually at night to avoid getting caught because they don't want to or are unable to make the trip to the landfill themselves. Usually it's things like furniture or broken equipment, but I didn't see any of those things in the back of this truck. The driver was a somewhat stocky guy of average height. He took three large black trash bags from the bed of his truck and tossed them one by one into the hopper of the garbage truck. Then he left. Now, I swear I am not one of those meddling rear window types who always thinks activity is so suspicious and that their neighbors are up to no good. But something about this didn't sit right with me. Normally when I see people tossing their garbage into the trucks and leaving, I don't bother reporting it because it's relatively harmless. But this time I had a gut feeling. So I called the police. If anything, they could get the guy for illegally dumping trash from a barbecue or whatever while I am on the floor phone with dispatch. I put my dog inside to cut down on distractions while the officers investigate. A few minutes later, an officer arrived and I crossed the street to meet him, gave him a description of the events and pointed out which of the trucks the man had tossed the bags. He found the bags, he took photos. He put on gloves and told me to stay back. The bags were tied in a knot at the the top, and it took him a minute to untie one because of the gloves and how tight the knot was. But eventually he got it open, looked inside for a few seconds, then twisted it closed and took a few steps back. Crap. He hissed under his breath. What? I asked. It's a body. I felt sick. I could tell he felt sick too. I saw him grow pale. His hand was trembling when he held the radio. Even his voice was shaking as he gave the code to dispatch. The dispatcher sounded confused when she asked him to repeat it. Within 10 minutes, the county sheriff was on the scene. Even he looked sick at the contents of the bag. The Coroner arrived about 10 minutes after that and the first officer was walked me back to the house along with another one who arrived at the same time as the coroner. Though I showed the first cop via the app on my phone when I described the events initially, I now showed them the video on a larger screen. The camera caught footage of the truck as it drove by both times, as well as pulling into the parking lot, though unfortunately not a clear view of the license plate or of the man tossing the bags out the frame. We watched the footage over and over, pausing frames, the officers taking notes. Ultimately, they requested this footage as well as a copy of the files from the past week to see if the truck had been in the area before. I have also been saving footage until the road department installs their own camera this week because this is still fresh. I don't know many more details. I know the body was in pieces, but I don't know the age of the victim, the gender, the cause of death. Any of that information hasn't been released to the public. I don't know if the coroner has even been able to identify the body yet. A police cruiser has been parked at the fire department next door for constant surveillance in case the guy comes back. The guy who dumped the the body was likely a local. How else would he know he could dump there? He probably thought that it would get buried in other people's illegal trash accumulated over the holiday weekend and the sanitation crew wouldn't have bothered to investigate. When I think about how this guy lives in my community, it makes me feel physically ill to think that he had clearly scouted the area for a dump site, that it may not have been the first time this had happened, that this could happen again. If I hadn't called in, if I hadn't been in the backyard at that exact moment, or if I had ignored that gut feeling, the victim would have never been found, may never find potential justice, their loved ones may never have closure. In fact, there's a possibility that it just might happen again to another poor soul. I hope it's not me. Oh please, please don't let it be me. I think it's time I moved again. Third time's a charm. I used to be a nurse at a mental institution, which meant that I had to deal with people who keep freaking out or were just straight up delusional. I didn't have a car yet, so I either went home by taxi or walking. But I mostly stick to walking home as getting a taxi just Wastes money. One night I left and started walking home. I always liked walking by myself since it so much more peaceful than the place I work at. I was only minutes away from my home when I noticed a silhouette of a person standing over the street lamp. I stopped for a second before continuing my walk home. However, the closer I got, the more I could see the person clearly. It was an overweight woman with pale skin and long straight blonde hair. She also looked a bit towering. There were two things that were completely off about her. The first thing was that she was not wearing any clothes and only wearing black rain boots. The second thing was the mask she wore. It resembled a cat and looked like it was made out of porcelain. I stopped again and looked at this weird woman. Why is she standing here, no clothes in the cold darkness night? Why is she wearing a cat mask? Uncomfortable, I decided to cross the road onto the other side of the street. I don't know what I was thinking making that decision. I looked back at the woman and noticed that she was now looking in my direction, still standing under the light. I look away and start walking, but a little fast. That's when I heard speeding footsteps behind me. I looked back into my shock. The woman was now sprinting at me with something in her right hand. It looked like some kind of knife in my sneakers. I immediately ran as fast as I could. I was so terrified that I wasn't going in the direction of my home anymore. Without looking behind me. I can hear her almost catching up to me despite her being very overweight. I was running for my life for about three minutes until I lost lost her. Or so I thought when I heard her footsteps coming again. I luckily found a large bush to hide in as soon as the woman stopped where I was at. Then she began sniffing. I know it sounds weird, but that's exactly what she was doing. She kept doing it for almost a second before giving up and walking away along with letting out an annoyed growl. I stayed in the bush until the coast was clear. I contacted my friend to pick me up and drive me home, but kept what just happened a secret after that. That was the first and last time I ever saw her. I would always think of theories of who she was. She could either be high on something or was just completely insane. It is something that I will never this happened in summer 2008. I think I was at a sleepover birthday party at my friend's house. That is going to require some explanation. I live in rural western Pennsylvania. All you need to know about that side of the state is that if you you aren't living in Pittsburgh and Erie, you're probably living in an oil town that went bust decades ago. Oh, and you're probably isolated in a forest somewhere too. My family did okay in spite of the economically depressed area we lived in. Now. My friend had money. His family weren't Wall street investors or anything, but in a town like mine it was noticeable. He had a big house, a huge yard, a tree house, a trampoline, big screen TVs everywhere, and every video game console ever. You might think I was only friends with this kid because of the stuff he had, but honestly that isn't true. He's probably in the top five nicest people I ever met. His family was also amazing. They took me in for a while while my mom was and the hospital once. I still keep in touch with them. So rich guy, good guy, etc. He had a lot of friends. His birthday parties were pretty legendary among kids in our town. Usually they involved one of those closed canopy tents outside with movie projectors inside, along with a soft serve ice cream machine and slushy machine. The party in 20002008 was a little more low key. There were a few less people than normal and there weren't any tents or projectors. We played video games for the first part of the night and then started to play flashlight tag when it got dark. I know that the rules to flashlight tag can vary depending on who's playing. My friends and I used to play it like group hide and seek. The hiders would go hide in the dark, sometimes alone and sometimes together. If there was a great spot, the seekers got the flashlights and also some cool walkie talkies. As I said before, the yard we played in was huge and there were a lot of places to hide. The first hour or so was pretty uneventful. We mostly hid around the treehouse as well as climbing some of the trees inside the yard itself. The only thing we had to worry about was when a cop car drove by. Obviously we weren't doing anything illegal, but we just didn't want to explain why we were sneaking around a house at night at 11 o' clock with flashlights. My friend's yard ends in some pretty thick woods. My own house, which is a couple miles down the road, has some wooded areas around it as well, but not like this. After you leave my friend's backyard, there is about 15 to 20 miles of wilderness before the next town. He does have neighbors on one side and all of this is going to become important in A little bit. On this particular time, I was one of the seekers. My group and I were waiting in the house for the other group to hide. We were mostly drinking slushies and messing around. We had just come out of the house and started our search when we heard a lot of yelling. Suddenly the entire other group came rushing back to the house. They went inside and my group, really confused at this point, followed them in. It took a few minutes for everyone to calm down and explain what was happening. Their story went like this. That round, they all decided to hide back in the woods. Since we hadn't been back there yet, they had gone a number of paces inside but were still inside of the house. Looking farther inside the wood woods, they caught sight of a figure at the edge of their vision. It took them a little while to figure out what they were looking at in the dark. They thought it might be a tree or a deer or something, but they kept focusing on it. When they were sure that the shape was human, they started yelling and sprinting back to the house. When everyone was finally inside and mostly settled down, I was freaking out along with some other boys. A few of the people in my group group, including my friend who was throwing the party, was skeptical. They were pretty sure that the other group was just trying to scare us. In fact, my friend was almost angry about it. He was going to march off to the woods to check the situation out himself. They stopped him and said that they should only go back to check as a group or to wake up his parents who were asleep upstairs. Most of the people who hadn't gone into the the woods actually found this to be pretty fun. In a weird way, it was like being in a thriller movie. Plus, we were in a low crime neighborhood and there were enough of us that one unarmed person shouldn't have bothered us. Even if it was a hoax, it would be a fun scare. We came up with a plan to investigate the woods. The majority of the guys decided to go back into the woods with flashlights and walkie talk talkies. They also planned to bring my friend's dog, but that didn't work out. The dog was a golden retriever collie mix and was the furthest thing from a guard dog unless you feared being licked to death. He also got most of his exercise by fetching tennis balls in the big yard, so he was not used to being led on a leash. I waited at the house with another scaredy cat kid with the other walkie talkie ready to wake up my friend's parents or call the Cops. I wasn't taking the situation very well, but didn't really show it. I tend to seem pretty calm on the outside when I'm usually a nervous wreck on the inside. I at least attempted to calm the other scaredy cat down. After a few minutes and some excited chatter on the walkie talkie, the investigators returned in a similar state as the original first group. There were a lot of shouting and it took a few minutes to get the story straight. This is what happened to them. They had gone to the edge of the woods like the original first group had done. It took a few minutes of searching since the figure had been spotted in a thicker brush that wasn't easy to reach. One of the kids had swung his flashlight around until he caught sight of something before yelling and running back to the house. Some of the other boys who had gotten the same glimpse inside the flashlight beam behaved similarly. They confirmed that they had seen a person. He was mostly obscured behind a small tree. The features that they could make out from the brief moment were that of a male who was on the taller side with long hair. One of the boys who had seen him thought he might be wearing some light flannel. Apparently he had made no move to approach, approached them and it just cocked his head out a little to stare them down from behind the tree. It was at this point that my friend's mom finally came downstairs after all the commotion. We explained this situation to her afterward. She locked all the doors and told us to stay inside and to tell her if we saw anything else. She explained that the part of the woods we were going into was probably not their land anyway. They just had the closest house to it. Needless to say, I did not sleep well that night. We were situated on air mattresses in my friend's game room. The really frightened kid actually took to sleeping underneath one. Just before sunrise. I finally drifted off for a few hours. When I came to, everyone else was awake and eating pancakes on the patio. My friends mom was with them. She had checked the woods that morning and had not seen anything amiss. We were all a little on edge, but things were pretty normal. Besides that. When my parents came to pick me up, I was reminded of the fact that I only lived about two miles from my friend's house. It was a walk that took 10 minutes or less. Even at home, I struggled to sleep for a while. I just kept thinking of how easy, easy it would be for the man in the woods to show up in my yard. Fast forward a couple of weeks later and I am playing Video games at my friend's house. Again, I bring up the subject, but he was very dismissive of was strange, but he was really pretty short with me. It was like he wanted me to drop it. None of his behavior fits his normal personality at all. He did come with a short explanation though. Apparently one of his neighbors had a son a few years older than us. He was tall with long hair. My friend explained that he could be a jerk and was pretty weird. The way he said weird may have indicated some mental condition. My friend's explanation was that this kid had seen us playing and hid in the woods to scare us. That did make me feel a little better at first. It did seem reasonable on the surface, and there's a good chance that's actually what happened. However, there are a few things that don't sit right with me. In my experience, when someone is trying to scare you, there's a haha got ya moment at the end. Like most people want to reveal that the whole thing was good natured or they just want to show you how dumb you look over nothing. Back when we had our sleepover intense, one of my friend's older brothers would rustle the outside before popping in to see if he had scared us. This person in the woods did nothing like that. He may have just been trying to scare us and went all in on the whole thing, wherein his only pleasure was knowing that he had scarred us for life. Or if this kid really did have problems, maybe he just didn't understand how pranks typically went. His Explanation this explanation also brought back an old memory of mine. I had been going to my friend's house for close to 10 years. At that point in one of the early years, I remember playing a game with my friend and one of his neighbors who lived across the street. Both my friend and the neighbor had crabapple trees in their yards. We played a game of basically dodgeball with moldy apples thrown across the road. The game ended when the neighbor, who was a few years old, chucked a crab apple at my friend's head as hard as he could. It absolutely nailed my friend and he was on the ground crying. I brought him inside where his parents asked me what was wrong. I told them about the game and the neighbor kid. When he had finished crying, his parents scolded him and said that they had warned him about this. They just said the neighbor kid was not nice. For the record, he did have long hair, but this was a number of years prior to the incident. Now, I don't know if this was the neighbor that my friend had pinned the blame on. Which brings me to some other disturbing things. My friend never gave me the suspect's name, even when I pressed him on it. More unsettling was the fact that my friend was not among the kids who had actually seen the guy directly. This was just his explanation for what happened. I don't think my friend was actually trying to cover anything. I think he was just worried that I wouldn't want to come to his house anymore if I didn't feel safe. That was the last time I had a sleepover at my friend's house. That wasn't really because of the incident, but because we were entering high school and overnight parties started meaning something else entirely. My friend's explanation does seem plausible, and that makes a pretty creepy story on its own. The alternatives are even more frightening. I don't even want to think about what kind of guys go stalk teenagers in the woods in the middle of the night. Back when I was very young, I lived in a town called Perrysburg in Ohio. We lived in a quaint little brick house along a relatively busy road in the center of town. It was nice. Our neighbors were nice and helpful. Our yard was small but fun to play in, and the house itself was rustic and cozy. It was also definitely haunted, and I, of course, had to be the one to discover this. When I was about 4, I had a very strange experience in that old house at night. It was a very creepy and loud house where floorboards randomly creaked and all of the cozy little corners suddenly turned pitch black. I often had trouble sleeping and had to lay on the left side of my bed, almost leaning towards the nearby window in order to get a wink of sleep. Occasionally, suddenly our quiet and shy cat would jump on my bed and curl up next to me, which always helped. I would feel the mattress indent, almost as if my parents sat down next to me. One particular night, my body simply would not let me sleep, so I crawled over towards the window and waited for the cat to jump up and sleep by my side. Luckily, I didn't have to wait long as I I soon felt the bed sink down next to my right leg. I closed my eyes, happy that I'd be asleep soon, but then I was snapped out of my relaxed state by a sound to my left, a light footstep. I was petrified. I squeezed my eyes shut even harder and hoped that our small town and shy cat would bravely protect me from whatever intruder, ghost or demon that was about to show itself. Of course, that was just wishful thinking. There was silence now and my mind ran wild thinking about what I'd seen when I opened my eyes. But when I eventually did I just saw my cat who nervously meowed at me and stared up at the bedside. That only made me more scared as I realized that the bed was still indented near my leg. There was no way my mom or dad was sitting there this whole time and the cat was nowhere near the spot. Quickly looking up I saw nothing. Nothing except a strange crater in the bed as if someone was in fact sitting there. That was enough for me and I scooped up the cat and ran straight for my parents room upstairs. I tried to explain what happened but with no culprit and my limited four year old grammar I really had nothing useful to say to them. But they still let me sleep alongside them until I calmed down. The next day they asked me what could have done that. I don't think I found out until a little later. A few months later I was spending a Saturday morning on the couch upstairs, wrapped up in a blanket and watching tv. Our second floor floor looked like that of a log cabin. The slanted ceiling, the floor and a majority of the furniture were all made entirely of wood. The staircase near the couch I was sitting on even had an ornate wood railing complete with decorated little poles that were spread far enough apart that our fat cat would somehow find a way to get stuck between them on a few different occasions. On this particular day I was just watching a movie movie when I had a random urge to look towards the staircase. There in the gap between the two poles, I saw a shadowy face peeking through, somehow barely lit by the light pouring in through the window by the stairs. It looked like a relatively young girl with long hair and big childish eyes. At first I didn't think it was real and stared at it for a short while to make sure I wasn't seeing seeing things. Once I knew that what I was looking at was real, I became a bit unsettled by its unblinking stare. The real fear kicked in when I realized that there were no shadowy hands holding onto the rails because the figure was standing from where the stairs were at their lowest point. That meant that this little girl would have had to have been about 9ft tall. The only thing I can compare that thought to to is that scene from Creation where the little girl Annabelle, twitches and contorts into the towering, horrifying version of herself. With my route of escape blocked off by this girl, her stare unbroken, I resorted to hiding underneath my thin blanket. I closed my eyes and waited in fear, hoping that I wouldn't see anything out of the ordinary when I opened them. This was all a bad idea as after I eventually looked back up, I saw through the thin sheet the same figure, but this time it was towering over me, right next to the couch. I screamed so loud that my parents were up the stairs in about three seconds. They calmed me down and told me that there wasn't anything there. I tried to convince them that there was, but they just wouldn't believe me. We moved out of that house about a year after this event, but it wasn't for any reason related to this story. My mom later told me that my aunt experienced the same strange things when she stayed the night in that house. She said that she saw and felt that same unexplained indentation in her bed and she sometimes saw a strange figure out of the corner of her eye. I also learned that the house was one of those that was frequently put back on the market. New owners would move in, get spooked, or have a streak of bad luck and move out. Our family owned it the longest and I still take the half hour drive to Perrysburg just to see it once in a while. It looks exactly the same and it still gives me a shiver down my spine every time I drive by it. I grew up in a small southern town. When I was a kid back in the 70s and 80s, it was normal to ride our bikes everywhere, wade in nearby creeks, and play deep in the woods. Where we lived there were hundreds of acres. There were several spots we really enjoyed playing where odd shaped trees grew, grapevines hung over bank edges, or where clearings gave way to the joys of sunshine and wind. One of our favorite spots was relatively small with several crooked trees we could bounce on. It's hard to describe if you aren't familiar with wooded areas. This area was like a very small valley. It gets very hot in the south, so a valley with towering trees also gave us some good shelter from the hot summer sun. My sister and I have been playing quite a while and were getting hungry. She went to the house, which wasn't far away at all, to make some sandwiches for us. I watched as she walked off. As I stood thinking about clearing away some unwanted branches, I got a very odd feeling. I noticed it had gotten very quiet, which sent a chill down my spine. Then I saw something. I saw a shadow of someone that was standing on the top of the hill behind me. At first I considered that it could be the owner of the property, who was a kind elderly Gentleman. But he wasn't this tall, nor this slim. And he would have spoken to me. Now, as a 10 year old, I had learned that if I closed my eyes upon seeing a scary thing, it would be gone when I opened them. Maybe this sounds odd, but when I did this, either what I saw would become explainable or simply would be gone and filled away as a figment of my large imagination. I closed and opened my eyes. The shadow remained. My heart was racing. I was frozen. Again, I closed and opened my eyes. The shadow remained. I noticed it moved its arm slightly. I continued to close and open my eyes, but this shadow was very real. I felt it stare. I have no doubt whoever it was was watching me. After what seemed like forever, I heard my sister walking back. I watched her as she made her way to me with sandwiches in hand. She was talking, but when she saw me, she stopped and asked what was wrong. I looked again to the shadow, but it was gone. I was no longer frozen and told her we needed to go home. I started running. My sister was so afraid she dropped our sandwiches as we got to our yard. I told her what I had just seen. Even as a 10 year old, I was very practical and very skeptical. I decided to go back the next day at the same time and study shadows from that hill. My sister came with me, though she was afraid. I had her stand on the hill and stood where I had stood the day before. But my sister's shadow was normal. I tried several things, but I couldn't explain away the shadow. It was very tall. I estimated the person to have been at least least 7ft. I have seen a lot of strange things in my life. I can find logical explanations for most of them. But I know the shadow I saw was real. I never saw it again, but I will never forget it. About two years ago, something happened to me in the middle of the night. That's still the strangest experience I've ever had. It's actually happened to me twice, making me sure that it wasn't a dream or a weird coincidence. I woke up in the early hours of the morning to use the bathroom. A usual nightly occurrence. I don't think I've ever slept the whole night undisturbed before. But then again, I'm sure many others can say the same. But on this particular night, I went to use the bathroom and nothing out of the ordinary happened. I could hear my mom snoring in the room next to me. She slept in that room because my dad's snoring kept her awake. Ironically enough, her Snoring kept me awake. Still, once I had finished in the bathroom, I went back to my room and checked my phone to see what time it was. I groaned as I knew I only had a few more hours until I had to be up for work. This thought always made it difficult to relax and fall back asleep. Still, I rolled over in my bed and faced the wall of my room, closing my eyes in an attempt to doze off again. It was difficult as I'm a very light sleeper and the slightest noise wakes me up. The fact that I could hear my mom snoring irritated me and I was tempted to make a noise to get her to stop. I decided against it, hoping that she would stop on her own, as she sometimes did. About 10 minutes went by and my mom had stopped snoring, but despite this, my brain just wouldn't shut down. It was buzzing with thoughts of work and plans for the day ahead. I was still in the same position in my bed, rolled up in my blanket as I had been for the last 10 minutes. I tried to focus on the blackness in my eyes and think of crickets chirping and fireflies glowing in a forest. Thoughts that often helped me to relax. But then these thoughts were instantly wiped from my mind as I felt a set of fingers tucking in the blanket that was wrapped around me. I froze. Had I fallen asleep after all and was dreaming this? Had my mom or dad come into my room to check on me for some unknown reason? No. I would have heard my door open, which is less than 2ft away from my bed, and the noise would have easily woken me up if I had been asleep. Plus, my mom had started snoring again. My eyes opened and I blinked, still feeling those fingers gently tucking me in. As if this wasn't bizarre enough, as the fingers were tucking me in in, they were also tickling me. I swear that's what it felt like. I was actually being tickled by someone that wasn't my mom or dad. No one else lived in the house. Someone completely unknown was touching me. The feeling wasn't enough to make me laugh out loud, but enough to make the muscles in my face work to make me smile. The tickling stopped around 10 seconds later. Later, I breathed deeply and my face relaxed as I moved my arms slightly. Finding that I was no longer frozen, I slowly turned over in my bed. It was dark, but there was no outline of anything in my room that I didn't recognize. No figure hovering over my bed, no pair of eyes staring at me through the blackness, no threatening presence of any kind. My eyes darted all over my room and I eventually sat up and turned on the light. I even looked in my wardrobe and behind the dresser. Nothing. I then opened my bedroom door and could distinctly hear the snores of my mom and dad in their rooms. What had just happened? To say I was just tickled by a ghost sounded completely insane. I tried to rationalize what had happened. Maybe I really wanted to was in the early stages of falling asleep and my subconscious had somehow seeped into my reality. Perhaps the muscles in my sides were spasming. Maybe I would have believed any of these rational explanations if the exact same thing hadn't happened a few months later. Again, I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and I couldn't get back to sleep. I was facing the wall of my room room again, willing myself to drift off. And once again, not long after, I felt myself being tucked in and tickled in exactly the same place. This time though, I actually breathed a quiet laugh and somehow managed to turn my head almost instantly. Nothing. Again. I honestly don't know if these experiences were real, but the fact the exact same same thing happened twice and they say things come in threes. Even after two years, every time I roll over in bed and face the wall, I am half expecting to feel those unknown fingers tickling me again. As a goth, I truly love any spooky and have read dozens of books about the supernatural in my spare time. But despite this, I had usually considered myself a skeptic more than a believer. But what happened to me has made me consider the possibility of departed loved ones with a sense of humor watching over us. This story happened about three years ago when I was 16. I used to hang out with a couple of guys that lived in my neighborhood and also attended my high school. At the time, I definitely would not consider them friends at all, just people. I hung around after school hours and during school hours. One Friday night, one of the people from the group of friends, let's just call him Andre, was telling me about this abandoned and possibly dangerous apartment complex psychiatric hospital about 10 minutes from our town. Apparently the complex used to house extra patients from the psychiatric facility that was previously built on their grounds. Andre was mentioning that him and I, along with about two others, should go check the place out. I was at first extremely hesitant, not only for the obvious reason, but because I didn't really know who Andre and the other two people really were. I've only seen Andre about two or three times in school throughout the year and have only said what's up to him. Once I found it a little weird that all of the people he could have been interested in going with he chose to text me. I ended up saying what the heck as I was extremely bored, but also curious myself to see what this abandoned area brings as it was notorious throughout our county and area. Andre himself and the two others were already at my house with him. Five minutes of me agreeing, I bought a flashlight along with decent running shoes. It was about 11:30pm at this time. The car ride to the abandoned complex was extremely annoying. As I previously stated earlier in the story, I didn't really click with Andre and his close friends like that, and they often said and did things that were extremely inappropriate and childish, which made me feel some type of way. I just wanted to go in with them for maybe 10 minutes and go home and go to bed. All four of us boldly entered the rusty and old fence that was still barely standing outside the actual building. I'm not going to lie. At this point I was strongly regretting the stupid decision I had made tonight. As we opened the fence, I had immediately picked up on a rather strong and unpleasant smell that I cannot describe in one words, but not necessarily of anything crazy like a dead body. It just smelled wasted, unlively, like this place hadn't been touched in decades. I looked up at the first building itself and got shivers down my spine. The way the moon was shining and the old rusty bricks of the place revealed almost a sinister look and vibe. I looked at Andre just to see his childish self smiling and asking who wanted to go first. I told him he should go first and he did. All three of us followed as we had to open an extremely loud door to get into the stairwell that led upstairs to a very long and narrow hallway. As I looked down the hallway, I noticed that all the doors on each side were closed except for one all the way at the very end on the left side that was clearly wide open and dark inside. We all suggested that it would be best for us to each go our separate ways with exploring, which sounds extremely foolish, but that's what we were at the time. I immediately wanted to walk through the hallway with my flashlight, but decided to go up one more floor. The others each went into different rooms and found nothing too exciting. Old rusty paperwork, computers that didn't work, etc. As I was making my way to the floor above us, I noticed things on the walls. Things like graffiti and writing, along with very disturbing messages. Things like sadness and sorrow and death. At this point I realized how unnerved I was, but decided to keep going as I felt I was too deep in to turn back. When I reached the top of the stairs, I realized that it was literally the same exact layout of the previous hallway below. And again all the way down on the right side there was one single door open. I decided I was too curious of why this one door was open and the rest of the others were completely shut. The door was about 40 yards to where I was standing and I started to make my way over to that side. Each door has a reasonably sized glass window. Some were circle shaped and some were square. What I was seeing through each window was extremely disturbing. It just reminded me of a war zone, like there was some type of havoc. There were mysterious liquids smeared all over the walls and broken glass almost everywhere I stepped. At this point, I had been in the middle of the hallway on that floor for about five minutes when I decided to look once more at the open door and realized that it was now closed. I was taken back by this and was deciding what to do when I saw a silhouette of a man appear from the dark corner straight across the door. I flinched and shined my flashlight and the man who was now about 20 yards away from where I was standing. Andre. I called. As my eyes adjusted to my flashlight, I realized that who I was shining my light at was not Andre at all. Instead it was some dirty and crazed looking older man, maybe in his 40s or 50s. He had long dark and dirty hair and seemed to be wearing nothing but flip flops. He had deep cuts on his body and his stomach area. His glare shot right through me and my flashlight. My first instinct was to say hello, but then realized that whoever this person was was not at all in the right state of mind to be in here with no clothes on. At almost midnight, I turned and sprinted back down the other end of the hallway and down the stairs. As I reached the first floor, I came to a heart wrenching room. Realization that the three other people I had come in with were now gone and I was the only one in the entire complex along with the mysterious crazed man. I ran throughout the whole way we had come from, fearing I would see him again. Every turn, every corner thinking he would appear. When I had made it outside past the gate, I saw Andre's car about two blocks down from the place in a more residential area. I walked up to the car and yanked open the left side back door. Infuriated that they would do something like leave me by myself in a place like that. I had found Andre and the other two in the car, passed out drunk. I shook Andre up and what was his excuse? They had got bored in exploring and forgot to call me to let me know they were leaving. I have learned something from the this experience, and it is to never do risky things at all, let alone with people you aren't exactly friends with. I don't know anything about what was going on that night, why that man was in a place like this by himself with no clothes on. And I don't want to find out either. It's. It's.