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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. When my friend and I met the woman we now refer to as the Banshee, it was about 10 o' clock at night. We were walking back from a milk tea place and we were maybe at mile five of a six mile total round trip almost home. We were walking on a long stretch of sidewalk next to a wide road that is busy during the day but almost empty at night. A little Background My hiking buddy and I sometimes go for long walks through town at night when we can't get out to trails. During the day it's dark, but our routes go through a fairly safe blend of residential and shopping areas. Usually we head to some sort of late night restaurant or food truck. We walk, stop for food or drink, and then head back. We wear glowing vests that are battery powered and reflective stuff to make sure traffic sees us because we have had some too close encounters with distracted drivers. We have also had a few encounters with strange people. She didn't start making strange noises at first. It was a long stretch of straight sidewalk and we had seen her coming for a long time before she started. No one else was out walking along the road at this hour. There were plenty of street lights. She would appear under the lights, then disappear in some shadow of bushes and trees and reappear again under the lights. We were glowing in our vests in addition to the streetlights, so she had to have seen us coming. I figured she worked at one of the shops or restaurants nearby and was getting done with closing up. I figured she was just trying to get home just like we were, until she started making these random noises. The first sound like an odd hacking noise, like she was attempting to clear her throat as noisily as possible. But this was just a warm up. The sound changed to something like a cross between a crow cawing and a small dog's bark, rendering it now as hard but the closest thing might be. So we kept walking towards her, watching and listening, thinking perhaps she has a disability or some other issue. She looked decently dressed and she walked steadily and deliberately, not like someone on something. If not for her noises, she seemed completely normal. Then she made these loud but low pitched groaning sounds. Something like. It had us briefly making zombie movie references. Joking a bit, but we speculated if she was maybe talking to someone on earbuds or making an attempt at singing something. But it got weirder as she added some higher pitched screechy sounds. Something like an angry cockatoo might make. At this point she's less than two blocks away and she's rotating through these bizarre sounds with short pauses of silence between. She looked like someone's cute little grandma. She didn't look like anything you would expect to see making those sounds. She's wearing an old fashioned thick skirt, a cardigan and clunky looking shoes, carrying a single cloth shopping bag. Her hair is short, curly old lady perm. She looks adorable. She sounds insane. She's getting closer. Her bizarre noises are getting more unsettling and I realize I can't see what she's clutching in her other hand. The one that doesn't have a shopping bag. She looks harmless, but the sounds are too weird. My buddy looked at me and asked time to cross. Echoing my own thoughts. We didn't want a confrontation with this woman. I nodded. But just before we step out into the road, the ladies seemed to have the same idea. She suddenly veered off the sidewalk and went into the road, making a steady diagonal line towards the other side. There was no traffic on the road at this point, so I wasn't worried. I relaxed a bit, continuing on. I figured she was avoiding us, just like we were about to avoid her. But just as we started to pass her, she suddenly screamed and rushed at us from the middle of the road. Her mouth was wide open as she charged at us, just shrieking. We stepped quickly apart and her abrupt rush took her right between us. Just shriek. Wailing. That horrible sound. It sounded like it would hurt her throat. Banshee. Like is the only word I have for it. We were several feet apart, both braced for her to come back and do something but instead she veered again and went down the sidewalk the way she had originally been going. As she walked away, she kept looking back at us and keeping up short bursts of the shrieking banshee noise, stopping to take breaths. As she got further away from us, she started caw barking at us again. We stood there for a while, just silently watching until she was a good long ways off down the sidewalk with her very strange crow barks fading into the distance. I still have no idea what was wrong with her. Did our lights somehow trigger an episode? I hope she's okay. She seemed to know where she was going. This all started four years ago. I was 14 at the time. I hadn't heard of any sleep paralysis before this event. I had nightmares on and off as a kid, so it wasn't unusual for me to wake up from a bad dream back then. I didn't know what to do when I was scared, so I would knock on the wall connected to my parents bedroom until they came in to check on me a little background. I had just taken the top bunk off of me and my older brother's bunk bed so my bed had a fence on the short sides. I went to bed around 1am I was mid dream when it switched script and became a nightmare I would never forget. In my dream I was walking home from school. The street out front had no traffic, which seemed odd because it was the only way to get off the highway into our town. Halfway home I heard some footsteps echoing mine. It seemed like whoever was following was very close. I picked up my pace a little to try and get away from the person. Of course my 14 year old brain took a scene out of a cheesy horror movie and I ended up tripping over my shoelaces. The footsteps began getting closer and a figure emerged. I tried to get a good look at whoever it was, but they were so conveniently standing in front of a street lamp so I couldn't see very well. At this point I I had woken up. My heart was racing harder than I had ever felt. I have bradycaria, a type of arrhythmia. That means my resting heart rate is slower than it should be. So it was very unusual for me to feel like my heart was beating out of my chest. My whole body felt like it had been submerged in dry concrete. The only thing I could move was my eyes. I was hearing this deep growl like breathing over my frantic breathless self. After what felt like hours listening to someone else in my room, I heard my bed springs compress whatever was in There with me was getting closer. I closed my eyes hoping it would just go away. This thing was close enough. I felt its hands caress my covered legs. I could feel the heat off of its body. It moved up towards my head, avoiding my body completely. My body sunk into the bed with every move it made. I panicked. I thought maybe it's an intruder and I'm frozen in fear. Maybe they're going to kill me. My instinct of fight or flight kicked in and I opened my eyes wanting to look my potential killer in the face. I was greeted by bright white eyes and a crooked white smile. Its body looked misshapen, almost anorexic. I became full of fear. I wanted to scream for my parents but I couldn't muster enough strength to make a sound. It lowered itself to my face. It didn't say anything, just sat there breathing. I remember starting to cry when it scurried off my bed and straight into my closet. This thing turned around with its glowing face and black distorted body and put its claw like fingers up to its mouth, shushing me. It turned and disappeared into the dark shadow my hanging clothes made. As soon as it was out of sight I regained feeling and cried out for help. My dad came busting into my room. I explained what had happened and he told me it was just a dream. Go back to sleep. I nodded and waited for him to exit my room. I turned my light on and stayed up for the remainder of the night. I am now 18 and since this event this thing has come back only to make my good days bad. Most of the time it just sits on my fence staring at me with its creepy smile. I wish it would just leave me alone. One night I was getting ready to leave my girlfriend's house and the most frightening thing happened to me in recent date. A little backstory is needed for context. I I am 19 years old and I am unable to get a license to carry as the age is 21 in my state which I have been wanting to lately for self defense. My girlfriend lives a little over 30 minutes away and I usually hang out with her after work. It was about 11pm When I was heading out and she had a super small driveway so I need to park my car on the opposite side of the road. Usually it's just me parked on the other side of the road but this black SUV was parked in front of me. I didn't think much of it though and hopped inside my car. As soon as I turned the engine on, the car in front of me turned their lights on. After I pulled out and started driving. They did the same and began tailgating me. The car followed me all the way onto the highway. I tried to speed away from them, but they wouldn't give up. If I switched lanes to pass someone, they switched lanes too. If I went back to the right lane, so did they. Eventually, I tried slowing down to let them go by me. Instead, they turned their high beams on for the rest of the highway. I was stuck with their high beams flashing in my eyes and them driving right behind me. When my exit came to get off, they got off with me. Keep in mind, I live in a very small town. This is when I started getting very paranoid. I decided I was going to take a different route home. A long, illogical and convoluted route with many back roads and neighborhoods. I turned left off the exit and got onto the main road which took me to a set of lights. Instead of going straight like I normally do to another set of lights in the middle of town, I took a right onto a back road that leads to numerous neighborhoods and ends. When you get to the secondary main road in our town, they were still right behind me. Before I reached the main road, I took a left which took me to another back road. Again, they turned with me. I took a right which took me to a neighborhood road and they followed with me. I was done using my turn signals at this point as I was sure they were following me. The end of that neighborhood leads you back to the main road that we would have been on if I had just stayed straight at the set of lights like I normally do. No doubt in my mind this person was following me with bad intentions. After taking a quick ride onto the main road, I took another right which led me down on another back road. I haven't seen a single car on the road since. I got to my town and the car was now split, speeding up to catch up to me. A fork in the road was coming up and I took a last minute left turn to try and lose them. They began revving their engine behind me as I remembered that the police department of my town was only a minute away. After taking a right turn at yet another fork in the road, it took me to a secondary main road in our town that I had mentioned before. With one more left turn, I was coming right up to the police station and I turned into it, watching as the car continued by me right to the set of traffic lights that they would have gone to if they had stayed straight. After we turned off the highway. There's no other reason why they would have tailgated me with their high beams on through all those back roads just to go the same place they would have gone if they stayed on the main road. After hanging out in the police department for about 10 minutes to make sure they left, I contemplated filing a police report, but what would I say? I had no description other than a black SUV that most likely wasn't even from my town. I can only think of the worst that might have happened if I led them all the way home. I advise everyone to get some sort of self defense in their car, especially if you drive at night. Like me, I have always loved listening to spooky stories. This blood curdling experience shocked me beyond my wit's end. To preface, I am a Hindu and we hold gatherings for certain gods, with the most popular of these gatherings being the October Durga Pua. Although there are many plays and musical performances from fellow Hindus and sometimes popular Indian bands, being the pessimistic teens we were, we looked into many other avenues of fun. The gathering was held in a high school which the organizers rent annually for the weekend. It was a breezy Friday night and me and my two friends Mihir and Adi had decided to venture around the school as we knew the most of it after a previous incident that happened in the band room where a group of boys from the gathering vandalized it. You would think the doors to the rest of the school would be locked, but no. We found an unlocked door leading straight into one of those big main staircases where students coming from the lower level usually traverse to the upper and vice versa. We made our way down a hallway of lockers until we made it to the school school's gymnasium entrance, adorning a banner with a picture of the mascot and one of those bogus school spirit phrases. The lights to the gymnasium, to our surprise, were still on. We were sitting there cracking jokes, drinking coke and blasting Tyler the Creator without a care for the fact that one of the police officers or custodians might hear us laughing away. About 20 minutes passed and until we heard the loud creak and bang of one of those big metal doors, the creek caught us off guard immediately silencing any conversation we were having. We stared blankly at each other and turned towards the door where we had heard the sound. Thinking that we were going to be in deep crap if we didn't book it out of there, we quickly picked up our drinks and snuck out of our little lounge of solitude as stealthily as you could considering the basketball court court elicited a squeak from the Friction between it and our rubber soles. What happened next turned our blood into ice water, making it a pit in our stomachs. We had been situated near one of the corners instead of the middle of the court as to have a quick escape should someone come into the gym as we were running into the locker rooms, as the exit in there would create more distance between us and what we thought to be a school police officer. We turned back to see a man dressed in all black, wearing the school's mascot's helmet, which was a knight, and holding a metal pole. I looked back to the unnerving sight of that man muttering to my friends. What is that? Go, go, go. Both my friends looked back for a second, and I guess the adrenaline instantly kicked in as they doubled their speed. We ran through the corridors, and the whole time we were able to hear the sound of a metal object, which I am guessing was the sword the man carried, scraping against the marble floors. That eerie screeching sound followed us for what felt like an eternity, until we made it outside to where the back parking lot and dumpsters were situated. We took a breather to discuss what happened. Mikhir, who was pale as a ghost. Most, seemed to have seen the man close behind us in flashes, stating that he had these stains on him, as if he had wiped his nose on his jacket, and that his head was slightly cocked to the left. We were all gathering our thoughts when we heard a man's deep, breathy, but muffled voice from inside the school. Heathens from the religion of the east, show yourselves to me before the devil shows himself to you. Right then and there, we knew this dude was some sacrilegious nutjob whose only goal was to cause us harm simply due to the fact that our religion was different. He then said, I watched as you three little servants of Satan wandered far from the pack. Now I have you where I want you. That was enough for us to sprint out of there there immediately, knowing we didn't want to bring this dude closer to the kids who were hanging out in the front, who were unbeknownst to the psycho that awaited them should they come to the back. I surmised that we hide in the woods next to the school to lose him. I had watched enough scary stories to know that sitting in a brush was probably a bad idea, but what other choice did I have? I had no idea what kind of harm he meant to do us, and I wasn't gonna stick around to find out. We ducked into a set of bushes and waited for that man to come around which he eventually did, allowing us to get a better look at him. Ody was somehow keeping his cool, which helped us as well, making us all quiet and only able to hear the scraping of that metal on the cold grass. We could see his clothes were worn out and filthy. His hands looked rather rumpled and burnt with skin resembling that of a sickly man on his deathbed. His hair went halfway down his back and seemed to be slick with grease that had been left unwashed for many years. Ironically enough, he let out this devilish blood curdling gargle of a groan that made my body go numb. He slowly looked around for about five more minutes before walking off across the baseball field and into the far reaches of the forest. We ran straight back inside, all shaken from the occurrence to see that everyone had gone into the auditorium to watch the band that was playing that night. We decided not to tell anyone, not even our friends, instead opting to discuss amongst ourselves. I have decided that the best way to share this story was with fellow being single, scared enthusiasts such as myself. To this day none of us know what happened to the man and there have been no further sightings to our knowledge. I was living with my parents and sister in Brisbane, Australia at at the time 2008, which means I was 19 years old. I remember my dad had just gotten Foxtel cable TV in Australia, but only the TV in the lounge room could use the cable box and I really wanted to somehow get the cable in my room without paying $99 or whatever for a new box. So dad one day went out and bought an AV transmitter receiver. It was basically a two piece bit of hardware where you would plug this tiny box into the cable TV in the lounge room and it would transmit a video signal to the receiver connected to the TV in my room. So one Saturday I decided to connect it. My younger sister, 16 at the time, was the only other person home at the time upstairs in her room. My room was downstairs. I opened the box and connected it up up. At first I was going back and forth trying to get the cables right, trying to get the channel right, etc. But no luck until I finally got something. I remember just sitting there and something started fuzzing in. This is where things started to feel like a horror movie. I remember thinking oh here we go and waiting to see the picture come in clear clearly as it started fuzzing in. I remembered that this whole time the cable set top box wasn't even on and that's why it wasn't working this whole time but then why was I getting a signal? It seemed to all hit me at once as I realized the box was off. The picture fuzzed in and I saw a bed. I freaked out as at first I thought it was my bed. I had recently seen Saw 2 and remembered that scene where she turns on the TV and it's a camera filming her in her apartment. That was the first thing I thought of. I sprinted upstairs to my sister, absolutely terrified. I told her to come down and take a look. She came down and we both realized it wasn't my bed. We didn't know whose bed bet it was or how I was getting the signal. Obviously it was the AV receiver picking up a camera signal. But we were just so confused as to who or what it was for. Eventually my parents came home and we concluded that it would have to have been a neighbor or someone living close by for us to be receiving the signal. We waited around until about 6pm and then someone came into the room. My dad recognized it as one of our neighbors. We still didn't know what the camera was for, but we assumed it had something to do with fidelity. Either his wife or he had set it up to watch the other and see if they were cheating. Either this or it was the tape themselves doing stuff. We entertained the idea that he was a murderer and would film himself murdering people in his room. But just to freak each other out. We'd always make jokes about how one night we'll turn it on and it'll just be his face with clown makeup staring at the camera waving and then him walking out of the bedroom with a knife. This never happened, but what did happen was still very creepy. We connected to this signal for over a week. But after a few days, the novelty kind of wore off. We felt a bit weird watching it and just resigned to the explanation that it was to catch his wife cheating. Until one day we turned it on and realized what we had discovered. Our neighbors were having a bunch of renovations done to their house. During weekdays they would be out and there would be workers at the place pretty much all day. It had been like this for over a month. We started watching the feed and saw a man walk into their room. It was the plumber that had been there regularly for the renovations. We didn't think anything of it until he started opening drawers. I called out to my mom, the only person home at the time, and we started watching it. He started getting the wife's underpants and sniffing them, doing all that really creepy stuff. Stuff. At first we were like, oh, My gosh, how embarrassing. He's being filmed. Will the neighbor see this? But then what happened next was truly terrifying. He slowly walked over to the camera and looked right down into the lens. We were convinced that he knew we were watching. My mom immediately called, called dad. I kept watching. He started fiddling with it and then put it back down. I told my mom that I don't think he knew we were watching, but he's definitely the guy that put the camera there. My dad came home and by this time the plumber had left, much to my mom's pleading. My dad went over to the neighbors to tell them what we saw. My mom wanted to completely stay out of it and was terrified, understandably. When we told the neighbors, they had no idea what we were talking about. They allowed my dad to go up to their room and what he found that was holding the camera was an installed device in the wall that was designed to monitor water usage, which was completely normal at the time. As Brisbane had been hit with a drought recently and there were lots of water issues. Restrictions, I think still is the plumber had installed this into the wall, but had fitted a camera behind it in the wall to watch the bed. Immediately they called the police, who came over and conducted an investigation. For the next week or so, we didn't hear much about it. I spent most of this time just telling my friends, showing them pictures. But truthfully, my whole family was scared. And every night it was just very creepy thinking that we could have stuff like that hidden in our house. Chances are we don't. But it was still really scary. After a couple of weeks. My mom was speaking to the wife next door and asked what happened with it. The wife said that the police found out that he would at nights come to our street and sit in his car, which had really tinted windows, and watched them on his laptop. When my mom told me this, I got the biggest shivers. The reason was, besides the obvious creepy guy sitting in his car watching people through a hidden camera, was because on multiple nights when I had driven home late for my girlfriends or walked home drunk after a night out, I remember seeing a station wagon always about 30, 30 meters down the street from our house. It was never there during the day, always at night. I would always walk past it and look at my reflection in the windows, assuming no one was inside. I was always so confused by whose car it was, but literally never thought it was anything. It still scares me so much that it was this creepy plumber sitting in there on a laptop watching a hidden camera stream the Neighbors next to my house. This is something that happened to me five or so years ago. I was fresh out of university with my degree in international development. I wanted to help underserved communities develop meaningful projects and see more of the world. I was young, I was naive, eager to get started. I took one of the first jobs that offered me a position. It wasn't something I necessarily wanted to do, but it was adjacent to my interests and more importantly, took me to a place I had never been before. I loved everything. When I arrived, it was beautiful, sunny and green. My new co workers, all local staff, were amazing and so kind. My boss invited me to play soccer on Sundays with his family. My fellow project coordinator would go out dancing with me on the weekends. My roommate, a fellow expat working in development as well, was a fun and special bunky woman I adored. I felt so blessed. Then one day it changed. I was walking downtown with a friend. There was a vegetable and fruit market that had great fresh produce directly from the farmers. Growing was about a 20 minute bus ride from my apartment. So not close, but not incredibly far either. My friend and I loaded up and began walking over to a quiet corner to call a cab to help us haul our goods back. Then I heard it. A man shouting my address. It took me a second to realize he was shouting my address. I turned around to see a man hanging out of his car, slowly crawling along the road with us. My friend recognized my address too. She turned to me and asked, do you know him? I had never seen him before. He kept shouting, yeah, you. You're living in the back house on the second floor, right? That made it even worse. I lived on a big suburban lot with two houses. One in the front where my landlady and her family lived, and the second in the back. The second house was split into two apartments. Apartments the bottom floor housed two students while I lived on the second floor with my roommate. You couldn't see the second house from the road, much less the stairway that led to the second floor. My heart was pounding. I wanted to shout back at the guy, but I was scared. I was a 22 year old woman living in a foreign country and I didn't want to draw attention. I didn't know how he would react. So we walked. My friend tried to comfort me, saying that maybe he knew my landlady's family. I was probably the only redhead in the whole country. He could be a neighbor I hadn't met. The encounter didn't leave me. It stayed in my mind. A week or so passed and I stopped glancing behind my back whenever a car came by. I started to feel secure. Then he showed up again. I was walking home from work. It was getting dark. My office was a 15 to 20 minute stroll from my apartment, perfect as a quick way to stretch my legs. I was halfway home when I felt someone watching me. Then the slow crawl of a car pulling up beside me. I knew it was him without looking. Hey, he said, leaning out of his window, one hand on the wheel. Why, you shy? I ignored him and kept walking. There was no one around. It was getting dark. Come on, he said. Let me give you a ride. I know where you live. Not Raven. Reassuring. I started to feel my chest tighten. I wanted to call someone but didn't know what he would do if I reached for my phone. I was practically jogging now, but he just sped up to match my pace. Listen. And now he was angry, his voice hard. You don't just ignore a man like that. I wondered what I would do if he stopped the car. He looked fit, young. He could probably catch me. He could hurt me. So I did something that in retrospect seemed absolutely bizarre. I yelled at him wildly, rapidly. I did it in my first language, not what they spoke in this country. Not a language he would ever have heard, probably. I screamed curse words and threats, anything I could think of. I will never forget the confused fury on his face. But he did slow down, letting me run ahead. I could see a woman at a bus stop in the intersection ahead. If I got to her, maybe she would help. Maybe he would be scared off. By the time I got to the woman, he was gone. I kept walking home, looking behind me with every step. I told my roommate about what had happened. She told me not to bother reporting it to the police since they were corrupt and wouldn't do anything. When I told my boss, he told me the same. He said he had a baseball bat and that he would come whenever I called. I saw the man again two weeks later. He was sitting in his car parked in front of the gates to my apartment. I had been about to take out the truck trash, but retreated before he could see me. I told my landlady, and when she went over to confront him, he drove off. This continued for weeks, not every day, but once or twice a week. He was always there, waiting. I took cabs to and from work. I never traveled alone. I barely slept, waiting for him to break in and kill me. My last weekend abroad he almost did. I went out drinking with a group of my friends, four of us in total. We Were celebrating the end of my contract and I was happy to go home in a few days. I couldn't wait to see my family. I couldn't wait to put an ocean between me and the man. We had beers at a local bar, a 5 to 10 minute walk walk max from my apartment. When it started to get late, around 1am we tried to get a cab, but it was impossible. The roads were jammed and people were everywhere outside. Cabs couldn't even get to us. So we thought, even though others warned us not to, let's walk home. It would be faster than calling a cab. We'll be fine. We're a group of four. No one will hassle us. We got halfway there when we had to cross a main road. There were no street lights, not that kind of place. The road was absolutely empty. Not a single car in sight. We crossed the road a few more minutes, but then we were backlit with the bright headlights of a car coming up. We glanced back, a cop car car, two men in the front. And I knew, even though I couldn't see from the bright lights in my eyes, he was driving. He was a cop. The Jeep slowed, as I knew it would. He rolled down the window to drawl, hey miss. Nice night, yeah. My friends immediately knew who he was. I could see how nervous they were were we were alone on a dark, empty street in the middle of the night. They were cops, so they were armed. No one would intervene. Probably too dangerous. You girls need a ride? He leered, his friend, who I could see now was grinning hugely. My last few days, I thought, and this is is how it ends. We sped up our pace. I don't know what our plan was other than to get away. Then I heard one of the doors of the Jeep open as the passenger jumped out. I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life. Although I didn't dare turn back to see. We were at the turn to my street now. Two minutes more to get to safety. The car was right behind us. Whoever had gotten out of the car was right behind us. Two of my friends were ahead now, while another clutched my hand and dragged me along. Then, out of nowhere, another car appeared. They were coming from the opposite direction, illuminating us all. When they slowed to see what was going on. I have never been so grateful. It was an older couple and they looked concerned. I think they knew something very bad was about to happen. I heard, not saw, the car door swing open. I almost got hit as they sped past us in a hurry. The other car stayed Watching, they offered to escort us home, driving alongside just in case. But I knew he wouldn't come back. Not tonight. I still took a cab with my friends to their place for the night. We took my roommate with us just in case. Nothing happened after that. My last two days were uneventful, although I couldn't shake the feeling that he might show up at any given moment. Driving to the airport, all packed up and ready to go home, my cab got pulled over by a cop. My stomach dropped. I couldn't breathe. It wasn't him, although it could have been. It wasn't until I got on the plane, until I landed in my home country, that I finally felt that terror leave me. I still get nervous when cars drive up behind me, when men roll down their windows to shout at me. It's never him, but still, you never know. It was April of 2019. I was with my now ex boyfriend at the time when this event occurred. His name was Richard and my name is Abigail. We were hanging out at my house. It was around 5:30pm when we began to get hungry for dinner. So Richard and I decided to ask my mother, Olivia, if we could go to the Chinese restaurant up the road from my house. To which my mother said we could go. So Richard and I grabbed our hoodies since it was now beginning to rain and we began to walk to the restaurant. It is important at this point that I mention that when we were walking, Richard was walking on the left side of the road and I was walking on the right side of the road. I know, not very gentlemanlike. Anyway, this minor detail will come in handy later on in the story. While walking to our destination, Richard and I talked. After about 10 minutes of walking, we reached the viaduct right by the restaurant. So we began to walk under it since we had to. After we passed it, Richard suddenly had a look of fear on his face. Face. I looked up at him and then behind us to see this man behind us. The man appeared to be on his cell phone and he kept staring at Richard and I. I asked Richard, what's wrong? To which Richard responded, something about that man seems off. I don't know exactly what it is. I shrugged it off thinking that it was just Richard being paranoid. We continued walking. When the man hung up his cell phone and began to start following Richard and I. Richard kept turning around and he tapped on me. I was confused and startled at the same time and asked what's wrong? What's going on? As Richard moved away from the right side to now in front of him. He responded with don't say anything, be quiet, just stay in front of me and whatever you do, do not look back. Just keep going forward. Go. As he speed walked behind me with his right hand on my right shoulder, I responded with okay, okay and increased my walking speed and began to panic even more. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Richard look back so I decided to look back out of curiosity. I was able to get a better view of the man who now had his hoodie up. He appeared to be about 545 6, had a bull cut, square forehead, slanted dark brown eyes, had a black right eye as well, prominent nose, thin black mustache. He looked hunchback, had a mean look, had a very dirty face and was wearing a dirty blue Nike hoodie with dirty beige cargo pants and dark brown work worker boots stained with mud. I instantly felt fear jolt my whole body and began to feel like I was going to have a panic attack when I saw the man reach into his right hoodie sleeve and push a large object about 4 to 6 inches up his sleeve. Richard and I both saw that it was a large kitchen knife. I turned around super fast and was shaking. At this point I grabbed my phone which was inside my hoodie and went to turn it on and it would not turn on. My phone was dead due to a battery problem I had. Richard's phone was dead as well. Richard and I wound up taking a detour to the restaurant and lost the man in the process. We went to dinner but unfortunately we were a little bit too short on money. As a result, Richard and I discussed what we were going to do and we had decided that Richard should go to my house to get some extra cash for my mom, which the waiter was okay with since he knew us both. It is important at this point to mention that my mom didn't drive at the time due to some health conditions that she was dealing with. I texted my mother to let her know what happened and she was okay with it and was going to wait for Richard while I stayed at the restaurant. About 10 minutes goes by and Richard arrives back on his bicycle. He looked afraid as he entered the restaurant so I asked him what was wrong and we went to go pay the waiter a few dollars we owed. Richard said we should stay here a few extra minutes. I was confused and responded with why. Richard responded and said that when he was returning from my house he hurried since he knew the man saw us heading to the restaurant. When Richard reached the viaduct he saw the same man under the viaduct. The man was faced towards the Freeway on his phone again and smoking a cigarette. Richard and the man made eye contact as Richard rode by. The man looked furious that I wasn't on the back of Richard's bike on the pegs and began cussing to himself and went back onto his cell phone. I got really freaked out and asked Richard, how are we going to get back home? Since the viaduct passage was the easiest and fastest way to my house, so we decided to take the longer way home. After we waited in the restaurant for about 10 minutes, we did not see the man again. After that incident, we reported to the police and we never heard back from them. A few girls I know in my area had similar experiences occur to them with a man who matched my exact description. I have had a couple of experiences both weird and paranormal. When I was around 3 to 5 years of age growing up I was a really timid and skin scared child. I would never leave my mother's arms and would cry if she even went to the bathroom. Not to mention the fact that my two older sisters would try to scare me a lot as it was their way of joking around. Anyways, before I moved to Australia, I lived in South Asia and we used to live in these flats, apartments that were really old but pretty lively. There was a lot of young families in our flat flats that had children that were around me and my sister's ages. We often spent most of our time playing with them. So one day my sisters, three of our other friends and I were running up and down these flights of stairs playing tag. We all stopped on a certain floor that one of my friends used to live on. She was quite older than us too, around 13 or 14. We were all arguing about who's it and who got tagged until suddenly we get interrupted by a short old man. He had a really hunched back and disgusting teeth that were rotting away. He held his arms out in front of him and it looked like he was holding ripped up pieces of paper in his hands. Can I play with you children? He asked us in a weird way like he put on a high pitched voice. My friend who lived on this floor replied uh, no. We were starting to get weirded out at this moment and I remember my heart was beating super fast. Why not let me play. You guys run and I'll catch you. He replied as if he was sulking. I, I have to ask my mom, our oldest friend replied. Right after she said that she whispered to all of us to run with her to her apartment. As we were running to her door, he started following us. But luckily her apartment floor wasn't far away and the door was open. We all got in there and our mom asked us what was wrong as we all looked scared. Our friend told her what happened and surprisingly her mom didn't seem worried about it or anything. However, I was really shaken up by that experience. We waited a few minutes inside her apartment until we were sure that the old man was gone. I was seriously so scared, I begged our friend to carry me to our floor which was right above hers. My sisters are five and four years older than me, so they couldn't really carry me back. Another experience I wanted to share is a paranormal one. So the layout of our apartment was a bit weird. Our bathroom, which was a really weird bathroom, had two other rooms inside it. One room for the toilet, which was just a cubicle sized room, and another room for the shower. The shower room was big and outside those rooms was our sink and the washing machine. So basically it was a toilet, shower, laundry room, all in one. Anyway, one day it's just me, my mom and my two sisters in the apartment. I was playing with my sister Holly in our room and we were giving each other makeovers. As she's doing my makeup, she messes up and tells me to go wash my face so she can redo it. I go into the bathroom only to the sink to wash my face. I already know that my other sister Heather was in the toilet doing her business and the shower room was empty. I could hear my mom in her room talking to our relatives over the phone. As I'm washing my face, I started getting this weird feeling like I was being stared at. I continued washing my face until I looked up and saw my face in the mirror to see if I got all the makeup off. It was then that I noticed through the mirror that our shower room's door was cracked open. I looked behind behind me and I see this tall naked woman peeking through the crack at me. I still remember her so vividly. Her brown eyes were glaring back at me. She was all wet as if she had just taken a shower. Even though I couldn't see much through the crack of the door, I could tell she was wet and not wearing clothes. And honestly, this woman kind of resembled my mother, but at the same time she didn't. This woman who was glaring at me through the door looked evil and she looked angry. My heart was beating fast at this point and I remember letting out a nervous laughter. I don't know why, but I was just really confused and for some reason let out a small laugh. I could hear Heather in the toilet finishing up her business and that's just where my fight or flight senses kicked in. I ran out of that bathroom into my mom's room to tell her what happened, but she was on the phone and told me to go away. So I went to Holly and told her about what just happened. She didn't believe me and said that it could have been Heather. As she said that, Heather walked into the room and asked what we were talking about. Holly asked if she was trying to scare me and Heather replied no, I was in the toilet this whole time. While sounding really annoyed at the fact that Holly accused her of trying to scare me. I told Holly how the person I saw looked like our mom. She for some reason looked really offended about what I just said. She grabbed my arm and took me to our bathroom to show me nothing was there and she was right. When we looked in the shower room it was empty but the floor and walls were wet. I pointed that out to Holly, but she just said one of us must have taken a shower earlier even though I think we both knew that none of us had taken one before this incident happened. Honestly I would have just chalked it up to one of my sisters trying to scare me since they did that a lot. But the person I saw in the shower room was a woman and she was tall. Shortly after that my dad decided we should move to Australia. After that shower lady incident I had a few more strange experiences happen to me, but as I grew up they just stopped happening. It was the year 12 2018. My best friend and I were getting more adventurous as our senior year continued. We would stay out late smoking and walking around various neighborhoods or High riding two young 18 year old girls. My best friend Julia is about 5 foot 5, brown hair, blue eyes. Then me being 5 foot 9, blonde hair, blue eyes. Most would think that we were absolutely stupid for doing some of the reckless things we did. Yet we did not care. We craved the adrenaline and we were both a bit disturbed due to some trauma we experienced as individuals. Fear did not exist at this time as we had been through enough scary situations to be numb to the idea of fear now. At the time, it was close to the end of the school year and honestly our parents stopped paying attention to us. Most nights I was home alone and my best friend and I were left to do whatever we wanted. Most days and nights that is when the idea of urban exploration became our new favorite thing to do. We explored all over our town in New Jersey and surrounding towns. Although we could not find A building that was daring enough for us thrill seekers. After searching YouTube for couple days, that is when I found it. The holy grail of abandoned buildings. Near us, only 30 minutes from us into Pennsylvania, was an old abandoned school that was home to delinquent children. After doing some personal research on the school, I came to find out that the school was closed due to a fire. Although after visiting the school a couple of times, something told me several way more sinister things happened on the grounds of the school. There were about 25 buildings, so it took more than six times searching to really get the absolute full experience this school had to offer. On campus was a security guard who drove around in a blacked out jeep. He never would leave his car. Only once did he catch us, although he just told us to leave. Again, never leaving his car. I still wonder if he had the same feeling about the place as we did and that he had found sanctuary never leaving his car. Since there were so many times we visited, I am only going to highlight the most terrifying moments we experienced. Of course, from least to most blood curdling. To give you the ambience of what we were facing, I will tell you this. To get into the campus, you needed to cut through the trees and bushes with thorns on them. Always wear pants when exploring. After you get through the brush, hopefully unscathed, you are greeted by several decaying buildings, the smell of mold and nature kind of all hit you at once. Absolutely everything there is overgrown and seriously falling apart. Graffiti is pretty much plastered everywhere. Besides the physical look, the gut wrenching feeling you get when you walk foot on this property, that alone will make you want to turn back and never set foot there again. Something about this place seriously is wrong and you feel as though you should not be there. Something I came to personally learn about this place is every time you come back things seem to get more and more out of place and utter otherworldly. Walking into these buildings, most windows are boarded up so you can only see using the small light on your phone. Other than that, it is pitch black. The first truly terrifying moment I had on this campus had to be finding the blood chilling room where it looked as though it was an old dentist office or something medical. I am not sure why it was there or what they really did there, but when I walked in I got this strange feeling of death. Scattered in the pitch black room. All I could see was open syringes covering the floor, a dentist chair that had dried red substance resembling blood all over it, and everything else in the room untouched. As my best Friend and I explored this small dark room. We began to hear footsteps coming from down the dark corridor. Trying to rationalize the noise, we automatically assumed it was the security guard and ran the opposite direction back out the small window we came from in the other room. Upon reaching outside, we hid behind some coverage and waited quite a bit of time. We did not hear the noise again, nor did anyone come out the next high we came. We decided to try to find the building that contained an old game room in it. Since we explored most of the buildings, we figured out which one it most likely was. Searching the perimeter for any way and checking doors. We could not find a way in. Circling back, I found an old dirty window which looked as if it opened to a dark cement basement. Being the confident kid we were, I jumped through it almost immediately. Now the first thing we saw as we walked out of the closet window was a wide open basement. With further analysis, we realized just how scary this basement was. The only thing down here besides it being absolutely freezing in mid May was the old worn fireplace. Written above the fireplace was something demonic or like demon worshippers had written on it. Several pentagrams were graffitied. Looking towards the middle of the floor was red paint of a pentagram, very big smack dab in the middle of the floor. Candle wax was everywhere and it was accompanied by a strange smell. With the sense of existential dread suffocating the room, we darted towards the steps at the back of the room. We did not step foot in that basement ever again. The second to last time visiting the campus, we decided to be even more ballsy and explore at night. It was roughly 12 at night, maybe slightly later, and again it was simply just my friend Julia and I. Besides it being dark approaching the school, my blood ran cold. Everything in my body was telling me to run the other way and to not set foot back at this campus yet again. I ignored my gut instinct and we began our journey through the woods to make it into the campus. Tonight was different. I decided to actually document our journey as if we were on Ghost Hunter or some other paranormal show. The whole time I was recording. I would go back and forth from me to see what I was seeing as me and Julia began walking through the pitch black using only her phone light. Visibility was dim. We could only see about 7ft in front of us. The rest of this campus had been like it was not even there. Just utter blackness surrounded us. I was laughing and talking to my audience on my Instagram story, boasting about the trip as if it made me the coolest person ever to risk my life just to see some buildings filled with asbestos, mold and possibly homeless people. Just as I turned the camera to face Julia and sort of interviewed her about her current experience is when I saw what made my heart stop and my jaw drop. I froze in the position I was in, just holding the camera, pointing in Julia's direction. As Julia looked past my camera camera, almost questioning why I got so quiet, she saw my face. The viewers at home could only see Julia's expression. It had said more to the people at home than either of us could explain. Seeing how absolutely horrified I was and how my face had turned the lightest shade it could. She let out a scream and grabbed my arm, pulling me into a different direction. I felt as if I was not no longer present and adrenaline had taken over my body. My legs were moving, yet it felt like I was not controlling them. We jumped and hid behind a tree as Julia pleaded with me to tell her what I had seen. For a couple of minutes, I just sat there trying to process what I had just seen. I did not want to believe anything scary and paranormal could be real. It felt like a true scary movie came to life. When I regained my ability to talk again, I told her exactly what I saw. When I tell you, you most likely will not believe me, for it is so utterly insane, it's almost laughable. That image will never leave my memory, for it is burned in forever. Standing right behind Julia, just in the shot of my camera, was a black figure. With a closer look, I remember not believing what I saw and experiencing what felt like paralysis as I was stuck staring at this figure standing only three feet behind my best friend. A man on a large horse from what I could make out. No detail to him at all, like he had literally been a shadow, just a blacked out figure. The worst part was his large, broad body seemed as if it had no head. I know it sounds crazy, but trust me, it absolutely was. I had heard stories of the Headless Horseman as a kid, yet I never expected to see anything like that in my waking hours of the day. After telling my best friend what I had seen, we hightailed it back to Jersey and decided to do some more research and see if anyone had any similar experiences or the same one. As we searched, I found countless stories that made my bones hurt about this place and what other urban explorers had experienced. One in particular made me literally almost faint. To be brief, this guy who had been really into exploring, found this place years back and decided, like us, he wanted to keep Coming back and see everything the campus had to offer. He explained how every single time he came back, weirder and weirder things happened to him. Which to my knowledge was exactly how I felt. But what he said next made my soul sink into the floor. He explained the last time he decided to go was at night. He explained how in front of the red house, he had been chased out by a head headless horseman. My stomach sank. I went right back to the live video I had taken and watched it back. The part in which Julia looks at my horrified face. Directly in the background sat the old decaying red house half burnt down. My jaw dropped. We did not visit this place for a couple of weeks. I would love to say I learned my lesson and this is the end of the story. I would be lying. After a couple of weeks had passed, our urge to visit the campus grew to an insane level. Almost as if something was pulling us back. Like we had strings attached to our bodies. Being the reckless kids we were, we decided 12 was not scary enough. Let's go at the Devil's Hour. 3. 8. Now, as we walk towards the woods, we need to cut through a thick fog that appears out of nowhere. If you think that was not enough to scare us away, you are right. I led the pack and proceeded towards a gap in the trees. As I am about 10ft ahead of my two friends, I notice some movement coming from the trees. We were not alone. Thinking who else might be out? At 3am, I started shifting backwards, alerting my friends. As I slowly backpedaled. Just as my friends looked in my direction, a deer came running right towards us. Right before it reached me, it stopped dead in its tracks two feet away. This was like no deer I had ever seen. Again, I felt myself with short term paralysis as I felt like I was staring directly into the devil's eyes. The mist completely surrounds the deer like an animal, to the point I could not even see its feet. That's when I noticed its peculiar eyes glowing a weird yellow red color. None of this seemed normal. That's when I noticed my friends booking it towards the street. Not wanting to be alone with this creature, I ran as fast as I could and eventually caught up with them. None of us wanted to admit how truly spooked we were. So we decided to try and find another entrance. Walking down the side road that followed next to the campus, we began to keep walking straight, occasionally looking for another opening. We then decided that at the end of the road, the campus had a church that sat in an open field. Thinking it was the safest way in. We kept waiting. Walking down this road at 3:30am now with absolutely no street lights, it felt like we had been walking forever and small talk was at the minimum due to all of us low key being scared out of our wits. That is when we heard it. We were almost to the church. It was about a quarter mile away from us. The sound of a chainsaw rang in all of our ears, sending chills down our spine. A chainsaw has a very distinct sound. Yet in order to keep them faithful to the mission, I said hey, maybe it's just a generator. Assuming they agreed with me, I proceeded walking towards the strange noise. Suddenly the sound of speeding footsteps broke my concentration. Only they were headed away from me rapidly rather than towards me. This is when the fear really hit me. My friends were so far away from me, panic began to set in. I was only brave if I had my friends there easing my anxiety. The second I noticed them running, my heart sunk. The chainsaw grew louder and more aggressive. I am downright sweating at this point. Finally instinct kicks in in and I bolt towards my friends, somehow catching up with them immediately. We all decided to go home since it felt like the campus was doing everything in its power to keep us out. To this day I am not sure what was lurking past those trees, but I am not willing to ever go back and find out. Just remember, if you decide to go urban exploring, never go alone and always follow your gut for you never know what your animal instincts could be protecting you from.