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This episode is brought to you by Prime Obsession is in session and this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off Campus Elle every year. After the Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point and more slow burns, second Chances chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on prime with Plan B Emergency Contraception, we're in control of our future. It's backup birth control you take after unprotected sex that helps prevent pregnancy before it starts. It works by temporarily delaying ovulation and it won't impact your future fertility. Plan B is available in all 50 US states at all major retailers near you, with no ID, prescription or age requirement needed. Together, we've got this. Follow Plan B on Insta at Plan B One step to Learn more Use
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as Directed hey, before this episode begins, I just want to let everyone know that my film that I've been producing for the last two years, Gale Yellow Brick Road, is now streaming on Chilling. So if you weren't able to go see it in theaters a couple months ago, no worries. Click the link in the description to this video or just search Chilling in your app store and you can watch Gale Yellow Brick Road tonight at home. I really hope you enjoy. Please leave an honest rating and review on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. Thanks again. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you'd like to hear more stories like these with a different background sound, please check the description to check out my other two podcasts. And if you want to get rid of all of the ads, you can subscribe for just $2.99 a month. Last thing I really appreciate you being here and I'd really love if you would follow the podcast and come back again soon. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy. My name is Brayden. I am a 6 foot 3 guy and I weighed around 180 lbs. 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 were 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 poop prints that looked like handprints. And at the top of the hill, within view of our camp, we saw a line of 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 247 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 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 kinda 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 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 Kaitlin looks in the same direction and looks horrified as he was walking through the snow bags 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 5, 7 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 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. 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 8ish 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. 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 pay attention up the kid and they were apprehended just as I got to the school. The caller was 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. 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. 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, 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, 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 plus years old and has a hard time even lifting a coffee 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, uh, 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 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 way 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 the is 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 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 and 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 on 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 as 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. 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 part 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 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 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, how, 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 port 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 road with the usual welcome to inscription. It lay visible just below the spare room window. Sitting there was the diminutive figure of a 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. 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. 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. 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 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 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. 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 had walked 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 Samantha. 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. 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 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. Fine. 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 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 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 nurse's 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. I found 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 remember 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 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've 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.