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Welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. A couple things before we begin. I have two new podcasts that I would love for you to check out. It's the same type of stories, but one with a crackling campfire background and one with more of a dark, eerie background. Scary stories in fire and scary stories in the dark. The links to each of them are in the description to this episode. Please check them out and give them a follow. It would really mean a lot. And if you're not following this podcast yet, please do that as well so you get reminded when a new episode comes out every single night. Also, if you haven't subscribed yet, you can get rid of all of the ads for $2.99 a month and be automatically entered to win every single giveaway that I do every month. Just $2.99. No more ads. All the giveaways. I want to say thank you for being here and I really hope you enjoy this episode. I am from Aotearoa, New Zealand. We do have the odd missing person or scary case, but it's otherwise safe here and not much happens. I mean that in a way that as a 19 year old girl I feel comfortable to walk the streets at night or go on hikes alone because it is pretty safe and everyone looks out for one another generally. This happened in the summer of 2019. My boyfriend and I were headed out on a picnic date to a spot we had visited before plenty of times, Karakariki Track. It's at the end of a very long windy rural farm road off the state highway. So you drive for like 15 to 20 minutes from the main road down a long farm stretch and at the end is a large cul de sac and the surrounding massive farm. The owners of the farm have left the land kind of open to the public as a reserve because there are native trees and other things because about a 15 minute walk from the cul de sac car park there is a small waterfall you can swim in. The track is really popular as it's one of the closest swimming spots to the nearest city, Hamilton, and it's really scenic. You cross footbridges, pass by creek beds, etc. The farmers still go through every now and then to do their farm work and there are fenced off areas that the public can't enter as they still actively work the land. This particular day my boyfriend and I were super happy because it was empty in the parking lot and it was a super hot summer summer's day so that was really rare. The farmer was crossing the cows through the gate on a quad as we arrived and he smiled and waved at us. He's an older man and we had spoke before as we were regular visitors. So we set off towards the waterfall. We crossed one foot bridge and passed through a big paddock of cows. The track is quite narrow and the creek is right off the edges so you have to be careful. We saw the waterfall, decided against swimming as we had no towels and headed back toward the car park. Now on our way back, we decided to go down a little bit of a steep gravel off ramp on the track that led to a more private tree covered area right by the creek. Here is where it starts. We were kissing and whatnot. I was laying on my stomach reading a book and my boyfriend was sitting up playing on his phone and he was rubbing my back and playing with my hair. We were there for about 10 minutes before I turned and glanced up the gravel path and way up even further on a hill through one of the farmers gates, I saw a big man on a quad bike who I did not recognize as one of the farmers as there is only the one old couple who work the land. He was just sitting there staring at my boyfriend and I and I don't even want to think about how long he had been there before I noticed. I told my boyfriend and as soon as the guy saw we were both looking at him, he opened the gate and started heading down. Now both of us immediately got up to leave as we did not want to have a conversation with a farmer about us getting freaky on his land, which is what we both assumed would happen. But it was so much worse. This guy came down the gravel track and ran his quad right through the creek. He left it there running in the water and got off. He was talking to himself, saying things along the lines of ah, I messed up the engine over and over before he even got near us. My boyfriend and I were gathering our things to leave at this point and he starts to head towards us. He didn't even make small talk, which was really strange because he went straight into saying have you guys seen any fish? I'm looking for some fish to kill. My boyfriend tells the guy that there's no fish in the creek as it's fresh water and he's probably best off to catch some eel. And this sends him into a fit and he starts saying I don't want no eel, I want to kill some fish. Fish. I had made it a point to not look at the guy in the eyes as I didn't want to draw the conversation towards myself because I was already extremely freaked out and I didn't want him to notice that my boyfriend is much more of the calm and strong one when it comes to stuff like this. But for a second I did look at the guy and I thought he looked like his face was slightly deformed, possible Bell's palsy. As I work in aged care and I have seen it a bit and it looked similar. I bent down to tie my shoe and when I was standing back up, that's when I saw the weapon on the man's waist. Listen to me close now. This is my first and last time in my entire life I have ever seen a real life weapon. It is incredibly hard to get one in New Zealand. It's especially after the regulations following the incident in Christchurch. And not only that, he had one weapon on his belt and was waving another one around in his hand while he talked to my boyfriend about wanting to kill some fish. He was aiming it down to the creek every now and again and then swinging it around on his finger. My boyfriend gave me this stern look and stern is the best word for it because the look spoke a million things to me in the moment and he nodded his head towards the gravel hill leading back to the track. I grabbed the two bags we had fake, checked my phone and told the man that our family were waiting for us back at the car park. He completely ignored what I had said and instead said that's a cool hat you've got on. Or something about my hat that was completely irrelevant. So I dismissed myself and said goodbye and made my way to the hill. In my mind, I did not want to look back and see my boyfriend be hurt and then have a weapon pointed at my head. I knew that our best bet was me getting up this hill onto the narrow path he couldn't ride his quad down and sprinting to the farmer's house. As I'm walking up the hill, this guy says to my boyfriend, that's a really pretty girl you got there. And it was like all the intentions of his I didn't want to believe or confirmed. I felt like I would die. My boyfriend though, said a quick thank you, we'll be off now and headed up the hill with me. The guy kept talking on like the conversation hadn't ended even as we headed away and and he stood there weapon in hand, watching us leave. As soon as we were around the corner we sprinted all the way back to the car park where we hadn't noticed before There were over 10 empty shells laying on the ground. We had run into two girls in bathing suits just arriving at the spot as we did and informed them about everything. They got in their cars and left immediately. We tried to go to the farmer's house to ask if he knew the guy as we had never seen him on the land before but they were not home. As for the weapon, it's still so freaky to me as I had never seen one before. Not a big deal I know, but it looked quite old and rusty and when we discussed the incident on the way home, my boyfriend suggested that they were probably handed down to him from someone else. This incident has stuck with me for the past few years and my boyfriend and I have not been able to return to the spot. Which sucks cause that's where we had our first date and it was a really sentimental place for us. I had to drive past the road leading to the track for like a year as I commuted between towns and it always made me feel sick. I could have lost my life or my partner that day and I'm always extremely grateful that my boyfriend is the man that he is and was able to steer the guy away from us for us to leave and to communicate to me through movement to tell me what to do in my freaked out state. He told me after that that he was ready to die if he had to because knowing the guy had been watching us beforehand and complimented me in the way that he did was clear that he could have had some skin scary intentions. It's also made me way more fearful now to travel in the bush alone, which I have done my whole life. Last night I was laying in bed reading a little before I went to sleep. I think it's important to clarify that I live on the outskirts of my town, still in town but definitely on the edge off the highway that leads out of town and into about a 15 mile long stretch of lots of country, woods, fields, a few residences, but mostly open highway. So other than the other tenants in my actual apartment building, it's normally very quiet in my area. My building is a square with four apartments and for each of us our door simply faces out into the open. There's no lobby or foyer or anything. My door in particular looks out into a large field that goes up a hill. I don't remember the exact time, but sometime between 1 and 2am Someone randomly started banging on my door which would freak me out in the broad daylight, but especially in the middle of the night. I nervously went to ask who it was and this guy with the deep voice claimed he was a police officer and that I needed to let him in. That's what he said I needed to let me in, not that I needed to open the door. Luckily, I watch and listen to a lot of true crime stuff, so I got pretty suspicious real quick. I got near instant alarm bells because he couldn't tell me why I needed to let him in, what I supposedly did, and he never asked what my name was. He also didn't really sound like a police officer, if you know what I mean. Obviously I was feeling creeped out, So I called 911 to confirm that there was actually an officer at my address and they said said there wasn't. At this point I am freaking out and I kind of call out through the door that I'm on the phone with the police and the guy just kinda bangs on my door one more time, then stops making all noise, I presume because he ran off. They dispatched two cars to my apartment and the officers took a good look around. Unfortunately, the guy was long gone by the time they got here and I never saw him. So I don't have a description of him or anything. But the cops said two things to make me feel better. One, they would post more patrols in my area over Halloween weekend. And two, it was most likely a Halloween prank because the bar down the street from my apartment had had a party and it was just closed not too long before. Always trust your instincts and remember that if you have any doubts about someone claiming to be a police officer, call 911 and confirm that they are who they say they are. Dispatch and the officers who came tonight told me you will not get in trouble for making sure the person talking to you is actually an officer. This also applies to situations where it's nighttime and dark, so you can't really see for sure if it's a real cop car behind them or not. If you see flashing lights behind you on a back road or a dark area at night, put on your hazard lights and call 911 first to make sure it's actually a police car. You won't get in trouble. Better safe than sorry. Okay, so I will preface this by saying that these events happened exactly 20 years ago, pretty much to the day. I will also mention that this could come across as anticlimactic as it does not end with a dead body or an imprisonment. It is, however, true and accurate as I remember it. So it was not long before my ninth birthday. I was a shy, introverted kid who only had a few friends. Therefore I was eager to impress them A few friends are better than none, right? This story involves my closet friend at the time whose name was Damon. Being so shy, I would never turn up to any parties or social events. I just couldn't face it. But it worried me that this would eventually cause me to lose my few friendships. You can imagine my horror when my dad picked me up from the school gates and Damon's mother picked him up at the same time and asks me on the spot. Damon and his brother are going to caravan park this weekend. Would you like to come? For those unfamiliar a caravan holiday is the UK is just a cheap couple of days in a huge field full of trailers with tacky nearby entertainment and amusements on the spot. And terrified of being rude, I accepted. And come Friday evening I was sat in the car in the back in between Damon and his little brother Lucas who was two years younger than us. It was only a short car ride, but all this felt felt so uncomfortable and unfamiliar to me floating through the dark back streets I hadn't seen before as wind and rain lashed the windshield while the wipers did all they could to keep up. When we arrived it was already late. We watched some stuff on TV and went to bed. I had one of those brick Nokia phones that you could play Snake on that I promised I would text my dad on to let him know I was okay, which I did. The strong gale swayed the caravan that night as I fell into an uneasy sleep. The next day we hit the shops to spend our pocket money and then in the afternoon we went to the quote unquote entertainment with Damon and Lucas parents. It was just awful. Live acting with clowns and such things. I may have been eight but I wasn't a baby. So then later on at around 8pm the adult entertainment comes on a comedian of some sort and me and Damon and Lucas are absolutely bored stiff. Me and Damon decided we just want to head back to the caravan, watch some south park and look at our cool new stuff we bought. Earlier that day I saw Damon ask his parents who are happily drinking away and chatting to other parents and as a child it seemed swapping life stories. Eventually they gave Damon the keys to the caravan which was about a five minute walk away but instructed us to take Lucas too. We took the keys and headed out. We walked for about two minutes in the cold and dark, mindlessly chatting about our eyeball rings we bought earlier at the gift shop and saying how they automatically give you a super hard punch. Just stupid 8 year old chat when we notice that in between two caravans there was a white van. I know cliche. It had its back doors wide open. I thought nothing of it. Maybe someone had just got here and was unloading his stuff. Wrong. As we walk by the van, a man emerges from the blackness and approaches us very slowly. This was not a normal walk. I remember it being like how you would walk in the dark. Being very careful not to step on anything. Strangely, we still weren't too worried until he actually spoke. He stared at us for a few seconds but did not smile or physically acknowledge us. Then he blurts out an enthusiastic alright boys, can one of you strong lads help me shift this heavy box into the back of my van? I hurt my back now. Back then, stranger danger wasn't as commonly spoke about as it is today. But I absolutely knew this was not right. His walk, his voice, his eyes. I had a million thoughts in about 10 seconds. What can I do? Call my dad. He's miles away from here. Scream for help. There's no one in these caravans. They are all at the entertainment. Fight this guy. Yeah, right. I thought things could couldn't get any worse. I was wrong. As me and Damon stood frozen, his younger brother naively says, yeah, okay, I'm strong. And starts marching towards this guy's van, which was only about 15ft away from us. I will never forget his horrid face when he saw Lucas walking towards him. It was like a spider that had caught a fly. I heard Damon let out a broken screech. Lucas, no. It is at this point I am ashamed to say that I continued walking the way we were originally meant to go. And fast. I couldn't watch this. What if he murdered Lucas in front of me? What if he came and grabbed me? The only thing I could think to do was walk quickly and try to find someone, anyone who could help. About 10 seconds later, Damon and Lucas came sprinting up behind me and shouted, run. And ran. We did. Oh, how we ran. I don't know how Damon got Lucas away. I don't know if the man chased us. I don't know what he wanted with us. But I have a few ideas. As we approach the caravan, I begin to feel semi rational again. As we catch our breath. I can remember saying to Damon, why couldn't we just run back to the entertainment area to get your parents? And Damon replied, what? And run towards him? It was a good point. But I was too busy trying not to cry to say anything else as Damon fumbled around with the keys at the caravan door. For some reason or another, the keys just did not Work. We tried all of them, turning them in all directions, pushing and pulling and hoping and praying. I can clearly picture in my mind being stood there on that dark night with Damon and Lucas, the key halfway hanging out of the lock. The fear and the confusion. But most of all, I remember Damon looking straight at me after turning bright red with puffy eyes and bursting into tears because he had realized what I would then realize seconds later. We had to go back. Strangely, Lucas was the only one not crying. I think he was too young to understand the danger that we were truly in. After deciding that we were in just as much danger standing there as we would be going back, we headed back towards Damon's parents. I have never ran that fast in the 20 years since then and I dare say that Damon would say the same. About halfway there we hear the most disgusting primal wail you can imagine. It was about five seconds long and it sounded like a mixture of anger and pain. We never stopped, just made brief eye contact and kept going. Had the man killed someone or was this man screaming because he knew that we had gotten away? We would never know. We burst through the entertainment area doors and sprinted towards Damon's parents who were blissfully unaware of the horrors that had just occurred. I remember his mother staring at us wide eyed with her mouth open and we burst into floods of tears, half because of the trauma and half because of the relief. I felt so warm and safe. We tried to explain in babble and gibberish, but I am not sure we got our point across. The next morning I asked to go straight home. I don't truly understand what happened that night. I don't know who he was, what he wanted or why he screamed. But like I said, I have my theories. But no one was killed that night in the caravan park and nobody else was around to scream. To understand my story, you sort of have to know a tiny bit about trespassing laws in our country. In that we don't have any. So long as you're respectful and non destructive, you can walk over any hills you like and in my case, camp on any beach of your choosing. So long as once you leave the area is how you found it. I used to love camping. When I was little, our family would go multiple times a year with a large group of my parents, friends and their kids. On average There were maybe 10 of us at a time, which was a bit of a logistical challenge since we always headed out to this one really remote beach on the coast. Actually, we weren't the only ones. There's always Yachts bobbing just off the short with people in them and other campers lining up and down the beach. Most of them also had children or teenagers, so it wasn't a wild party scene. It was very much an informal family holiday spot. There was even a small building with toilets and showers installed nearby, even though this was in the middle of nowhere. I guess the local council must have figured it out and got sick of people peeing behind bushes. We took a trip up in spring 2011. I am really bad with time, but I know this because I got my dog in winter 2010 after picking her out that November from the shelter as a birthday gift from me to me as I paid her adoption fee. Let me tell you a little bit about my Parmesan. Parmesan came to me as a six month old puppy who had been rescued from a dog fighting situation. We are not entirely sure what breed she is exactly, but my best guess is a lurcher staffie mix. She is a wonderfully well tempered dog with people and most dogs, but you absolutely do not threaten her. She'll have you. So by the time of this camping trip I had had Parmesan for a few months. She had never come camping with us before, but as far as my family are concerned, dogs go on camping trips. So when we all piled into the car she came too. Unusually though, none of the family friends could make it so it was only me, my sister, my dad and my mom. I wasn't that attached to the other kids. I would rather play with my dog and I'd still have my sister. The drive took about six hours and because we had left a bit later, although I don't remember why we had left later than normal. We arrived at sunset, not a good time to be building a tent, but we had expected to arrive to other campers already set up and the beach illuminated by campfires. The beach was empty in spite of this, my parents started taking stuff out and trying to build the tent. They asked us to fetch some of the lighter bags from the boot of the car while they sat pointing a flashlight at the sand to see properly. I rolled down the window of the car for Parmesan before getting out. It was pretty hot for that time of year and I wanted her to have some fresh air. Always got to be looking out for my furry little homie as we're fumbling about in the dark on a beach in the middle of nowhere. It's pretty spooky. The only road that led to this beach was circular and had a bridge over the Water, meaning you could basically circle around the beach like a big O shape if you felt like it. I wasn't really paying any attention to the road. I was complaining that I was tired as kids are. After maybe 15 minutes of my dad trying to nail the tent into the sand, my mom is asking him had he seen that car drive around. It's been a few times now. My dad kind of shrugged her off. He's sort of like that. I don't know if he said anything back to her, but after a few more minutes, a car pulled up next to ours on the road and someone got out. It was maybe 15 or 20ft from the cars to where we were and the light was pretty low except for the torches. We weren't expecting to see anyone else out here at this point. And I think my mom said it must be the security. I don't know why a random beach would have security. I think what she meant was the wildlife Trust or something, as they do occasionally come down to do their nosy checkups. The guy was walking pretty unevenly. He must have been intoxicated because he had that stagger to him. There was absolutely no way this guy was sober. Cool, a junkie. Not an unusual find, but it's rare to see them in the wild. As he walked into flashlight range, we realized he was carrying a large knife, maybe 15 inches. Although I was small at the time, so maybe my sense of scale was off. I don't like my dad, but credit to him, once he saw this, he got up immediately holding onto the camping mallet and put us all behind him. The man began to shout wildly at us that we cannot camp here and he was just letting us know. My dad tried to initially be a bit low key with the guy and told him that was fine, we would leave. But this didn't work. He kept coming closer to us. So my dad started shouting and the man shouted back. My sister and I were crying. I remember shaking. I was utterly terrified, as I'm sure anyone would be in that situation. It really did seem like this guy and my dad were going to fight. And I'm going to be honest, I didn't fancy my dad's chances. While it's grim to consider, I am absolutely convinced this man would have killed my dad and possibly us as well once he was done, as I don't think my mother would have had the common sense to run with us. I love her, but she has always put my dad and her relationship with him above us. This isn't how it went down. A Bolt from the black like a wolf descending on its prey. Took us all by surprise. Most of all the man with the knife. In that moment, Parmesan was the apex predator. Large canines represent in nature. She got him good by the arm and clamped down hard, ripping his jacket and shredding the skin underneath. He dropped the knife as it was in the arm. She bit, he kicked her, he punched her and eventually got her off. He grabbed the knife from the sand and ran back to his car and drove off. Parmesan did not follow. She stayed with us, her mouth covered in blood. As quickly as we could, we all gathered our things and all got back in the car, all pretty shook up by the incident. I looked Parmesan over. She was okay, but the car's window was much more open than I had left it. We think what happened was when the shouting started, she must have put her paws up on the gap I'd left behind her. As it was an old car and had those rolly down windows and not electric. We think she must have been able to hit it with her paws to force it down enough to squeeze out. This is not the end of my story. We were all pretty scared, and since we had the dog with us, we couldn't book a hotel for the night. My parents decided to just drive home so we could all feel safe. But first we had to drive into the nearest town for gas as we were kind of low. I spent that time trying to clean up Parmesan. I had always loved dogs, but what she had just done blew my mind. As we drove into town, we came across a gas station, but it looked closed. My dad drove up closer to get a better look and stuck his head out the window to get a better look at the sign. My mom asked him what on earth he was doing and he told her he was trying to see when it opens. My heart sank. Parked in the corner behind a van, so we hadn't seen him at first, was the man with the knife. He was sitting on the back of his car, using some tissue paper to clean up his arm. It looked pretty bad. Without stopping to refuel or look anywhere else in town, my dad drove us right out of there. He decided to go to the next town over. But the next town over was 60 miles away. He didn't have that much gas. We realized as we began driving we were going to run out. That's fine. Dad said we had aaa. They would come tow us home or at least get us somewhere acceptable for the night. Better than staying in the last town after driving for maybe five minutes, lights flash us from behind another car. The same car the man had been driving. It was him following us. The next half hour was one of the worst half hours of my life. I had a complete and utter breakdown, as did everyone really. I could tell my parents were trying to keep it under wraps so it wouldn't upset us. But we were not that little. We were both double digits. We knew how dangerous this situation was. My dad turned off the radio and the man followed us for 55 miles before he peeled away onto another road. Our fuel meter was on the big red E for the last 10 miles. We were driving on fumes. I don't really believe in God, but if he does exist, this seemed like one of his miracles. Once we got there, we drove into a gas station and refilled to a full tank before driving the rest of the way home. My sister and I slept in the car after that, I only woke up once. We made it all the way home, just grateful that nothing worse had happened. After that, after getting some sleep, my mom phoned the non emergency line for the police and reported what happened. They never got back to us after that, but apparently the woman she spoke to said they may wish to in the future as he matched the description given of a suspect wanted in relation to a murder charge. No idea if he actually was that guy or just a random psycho. As I said, they never got back to us. So what's the deal? Takeaway other than crazy man on the beach? Well, for me it's that I love Parmesan. I love dogs. She's still with us now, old as the hills and twice as grizzled as one of my mom's friends likes to joke. I don't know why she did what she did that day. I could not tell you what her thought process was. What I do know is that this poor dog was born into an environment where they abused and neglected her, only to be rescued and taken to a shelter where her mother and siblings all found homes before her. Despite how badly people had treated her, when I took her home, she forgave but not forgot. I think the saying is, I never trust a person who doesn't like a dog. But I always trust a dog when they don't like a person. They have a very good understanding of human body language and I think she must have understood how dangerous this guy was. If you're able to please adopt, you might find yourself in a situation like mine someday. Hopefully not. I promise you, if you're willing to save a four legged friend's life. They will pay you back tenfold if they're able to without a thought for their own safety. I paid $78 for Parmesan's adoption fee, which is a lot when you're a kid, but it chills me to my bones knowing if I hadn't been so insistent on getting a dog, I might be dead. The Worst thing I Ever bought off the market Hands down. This coffee machine I bought using Facebook Marketplace. The thing was an absolute steal, so I expected it to have a few flaws or whatever, but man, it was barely functioning by the time UPS delivered it to my house. Yet still it was made in Italy and it would do for making my coffee for the time being. But over the next couple of days I started to hear something weird going on in the machine. A kind of low ticking noise that I had never heard any other coffee machine make before. I could have just called a repair guy, but I figured I would just buy a new one come next paycheck. So I just ignored the problem and figured I would throw the coffee machine in the trash once the new one arrived. Then one morning I am making coffee when I could have sworn I saw something moving on the top of the machine. I just put it down to a sleepy brain and drank my coffee. But the thought kept bothering me as I went about my morning. So I finally decided to actually take a look inside the machine. It took me a little while, but I finally got the outer casing off. Yet when I pulled it off to reveal the machine's guts, I screamed. I swear I could have cracked the kitchen windows. Inside the coffee machine was the biggest nest of cockroaches I have ever seen in my life. To this day, the little buggers absolutely disgust me. And seeing so many of them in something I had been using to drink my coffee. The thought makes me want to throw up. Even after all this time. As soon as I screamed and dropped the lid onto the kitchen counter next to the machine, they all got spooked and scattered in every direction. Just a storm of skittering legs that I swear had me literally traumatized for like a week afterward, I just bailed. My husband had to deal with pretty much everything, but you can bet that I was infinitely grateful for it. Getting roach eggs in the house meant that we needed to have the whole kitchen fumigated, but it was a small price to pay to get those evil little things out of my kitchen. Still, with the few hundred that we had to spend on exterminators turned out to be the most expensive coffee machine I ever bought. Don't try to cheap it out, people, because sometimes you get what you pay for with a nest of cockroaches thrown in as a creepy crawly freebie. I feel like every neighborhood has a family of absolute psychos. Almost everyone I have spoken to about this sort of thing seems to remember one group of absolute wrongings, be it from their childhoods or from their current lives. And if there's one thing I have learned from their collective memories and stories, it's that whenever there's a family like that around, it's only a matter of time before something comes to a head or something finally boils over. And that's exactly what happened with the psycho family that lived in the neighborhood when I was a kid. The only thing is, most of the people I have spoken to said the breaking point came with some kind of family argument or confrontation with neighbors spilled out into the streets outside. Police were called, arrests were made. Usually a For Sale sign or two went up in the aftermath. But I almost wish my story was that simple or ended that relatively amicably, because what happened in my case is something that haunts me to this day, with possibilities and ramifications that I find genuinely terrifying. I grew up in 70s Britain in a pretty small town in a place called Wiltshire. We were quite a small community. Everyone knew everyone and consequently everyone knew everyone's business too. There was this one boy called Lewis and he was the only child of the Prestige family. A very peculiar family name if ever there was one. But that's not the reason I'll never forget it. The Prestige family were peculiar by name and peculiar by nature too. But then peculiar seems like entirely the wrong word to use. Peculiar makes you think of something quaint and adorably abnormal. But there was nothing adorable about the Prestige family. They were just weird. Scarily weird too. I think one of my earliest memories of Lewis is during an assembly in primary school. It's about 8 in the morning. All the kids in the school are sat in the main hall and it's deathly quiet, apart from our headmaster making announcements and the soft sobs of young Lewis. He did not stop crying for the entire assembly. And it didn't just remain this quiet weeping either. His tears built in pitch and intensity until he was wailing so loud that a teacher had to remove him altogether. I remember feeling really sorry for him, but as time went on it was just something you sort of got used to. They were the weird family in our town, and since they didn't get into any serious confrontations outside of their own family unit, people just sort of let them be. The next serious incident I remember was years later in secondary school when the schoolyard suddenly became abuzz with people gossiping over something. People were crowding around the school gates looking at something, some of them laughing, some of them just gawping at the sight of a lad dressed entirely in his school uniform except for one crucial piece of it, his trousers. It turned out to be Louis. From what I heard, he had been basically pushed out of the car by, we assumed, to be his dad, and rumors went flying around that Lewis hadn't been quite ready to leave the house when his dad was ready to take him to school that morning. Instead of waiting for him to put on his school trousers, Lewis's dad just drug him to the car and took him to school with no pants on, basically to teach him a lesson to be ready on time. I'm not entirely sure how true the reasoning was, but I do know that I witnessed Louis having to walk into school in nothing but his school jumper, his shoes and his underwear with my own eyes. I am also not entirely sure how Louis was still allowed to live with his evidently abusive parents either. Again, rumors went around that they had had a visit from social workers, but this I believe, because for a while there seemed to be little in the way of serious incidents coming out of the Prestige household. Obviously the visit from child welfare services had been enough to shake them up into changing their ways. Or so it seemed now. All this came to a head when I was 15, maybe just over a year before we all left secondary school and bid farewell to compulsory education for good.