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- [00:00]
Narrator
The Colonels cooked up a new $10 bucket of the day just for you. Monday 24 nuggets for $10 Tuesday 8 piece fried chicken for $10 Wednesday 10 wings for $10 Thursday 8 tenders for $10 Friday 24 nuggets for. Oh, you guessed it, didn't you? $10 the $10 bucket of the day deal every weekday only at KFC. It's finger licking. Good prices and participation variable supplies. Last amount available on third party ordering platforms.
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- [01:27]
Narrator
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. I wasn't as scared as I should have been, but my fear gene is broken and I had been drinking so we Have a lake less than an hour from home. And my daughter's friend had never been camping, so we decided to do a quick overnight there. We mom and daughter, 18 then Camp A lot and like the solitude. So we often try to find the most remote places. No campsite or anything, just drive up and find a space. So we found this nice little peninsula big enough for about three campsites. And it being Sunday, we were hoping the other two groups would leave. They did eventually, and we had the place very much to ourselves. As the night goes on, we have a nice fire, sing, laugh, I'm drinking wine, we're making s'. Mores. Everything is perfect until we go to sleep. About an hour in, the girls are bugging me to wake up because it's raining and we need to put the COVID on the tent. It was a huge tent, so all hands were needed. By now the wind is blowing and we're struggling. But we finally get it covered and it's back to sleep. We go until a motorcycle, more specifically a dirt bike at about 2am just riding circles around the peninsula. Mind you, this is literally a small enough area that only three large tents plus three cars would fit. And there's nothing else nearby, bushes and the lake. There would be no reason to be there as it was obvious we were alone. Up, down, around and stop, never cutting the engine. I just want to sleep. So I go to the front of the tent and unzip it. I look outside and see him just staring. So I climb out of the tent and stare back. It's dark and I can't tell if this creep can even see me. So I go back in the tent, frustrated. The girls ask what he's doing and when I tell them, they get really frightened. I tell them I'm gonna go give him a piece of my mind. They are terrified, demand that I don't leave the tent. So I settle back in and wait up around circle, engine rev, idle, over and over. This guy goes on for at least another hour. I've had it down, up, around with all that annoying blatting motocross sound blasting by our tent, back and forth and stop. I look out, he's staring again. I'm about to go stomping over to go tell him off when I get the tingles all down my spine. He was facing directly towards our tent, saying nothing, just still and staring. I realize I have no weapons, no way to protect the girls. And he's between us and the car. I wait. I'm outside the tent, but I haven't made a move forward because now instinct and logic have the better of me, and I realized that an aggressive approach is probably the wrong move. I stay stock still just like the rider, for what felt like an eternity, both of us staring. Must have been 20 minutes I stood there. And then, just like that, he took off. Drove off the peninsula and out of earshot and never came back. To this day, I'll never know what that was about or if I did the right thing. I can only say I'm glad I never confronted him. My gut just told me no. As for my daughter and I I think I need to buy a weapon if we're going to camp alone like this. An acquaintance of mine who happened to have been a cop once told me this little tale he experienced several years ago.
- [06:55]
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- [07:29]
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You could say that again.
- [07:30]
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- [07:39]
Narrator
Now we party.
- [07:41]
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- [07:43]
Narrator
Wow. I am clearing the rest of the day.
- [07:45]
Advertiser
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- [08:20]
Narrator
Back then he was a deputy and still new to the patrol scene. Since he was new to it, he got called often to more simple tasks. Tasks that made the more experienced deputies jobs easier. One night the deputy got a request over his radio to sit on a suicide scene. The victim was still inside the home and they needed the deputy to sit and guard the main entry to the home until the coroner got there to take the body. They didn't want any relatives or anyone else to enter the scene and mess up evidence. Basically that was a standard procedure. So the deputy got to the home of the suicide victim and confirmed with the cops already on the scene that he was there to wait for the coroner. It was the middle of the night, so the deputy grabbed his flip phone out of the patrol car and settled on the front porch to play some snake. All was totally quiet around him after everyone else left. All the deputy could hear were the occasional sounds of distant barking dogs and the faint sounds of the sparse highway traffic. The silence did indeed make him a little nervous, especially considering what lie only a few feet away and invisible to him only because of a wall. So it was only natural that his instincts had his ears on high alert. So he was startled when he suddenly thought he heard a rustling sound seemingly coming from inside the house behind him. All he could do was sit there and wait and listen int. A few minutes went by though and he didn't hear anything else, so he just figured he probably heard the house settling or something. Over half an hour went by and the deputy was starting to get a little drowsy staring at snake on his small flip phone. So he flipped it shut and sat back for a few minutes to relax. But then suddenly there was that sound again, which seemed louder this time. A strange rustling sound like maybe rustling papers, he thought to himself, puzzled as he sat there and listened hard. He heard it again and that time he was sure it was coming from inside the house behind him where the victim was. At that point, the deputy admits he was pretty scared. He didn't want to call for backup until he was sure there was someone inside the house, but he also didn't want to go inside the dark, creepy death scene by himself to investigate either. So he stood up and waited once again for any noise while resting his hand on the weapon in his belt. Then the deputy drew his weapon as a loud sound from behind him caused him to spin around and face a large window by the front door covered by vertical hanging blinds. As he turned around to face the window, an explosion of movement disturbed the vertical blinds. The deputy did admit to me in telling of this story that he did in fact definitely jump and scream as most anyone would. The deputy's vision quickly cleared and he stared at the face on the other side of the window, definitely not expecting to see that particular face staring back at him. The deputy screamed and went wide eyed. The face staring back at him made a startled sound and went wide eyed as well. Then for a quiet moment, man and feline eyed each other before both turning away, feeling stupid. I guessed the victim had a pet cat, which ended up most likely going to a relative of the victims. The deputy admitted to me after telling me this story that he felt it was one of the scariest instances he had ever had in his entire career. Okay, so a little bit of backstory for this. My great grandmother's second husband was apparently a total sadist who systematically abused her grandchildren for many, many years in pretty much every way you can imagine. These grandchildren happened to be my dad and his sisters and it had a horrendous effect on them, as you can probably imagine. It was also totally unknown to anyone but them until quite a while after he died, which coincidentally was around the same time I was born. So as I said, the abuse had a really harsh effect on my family's collective psyche and it made them vigilant to the point of paranoia when it came to protecting me from a similar fate. As a result, I was basically never allowed to play outside without strict supervision, and I most certainly was never allowed to go to sleepovers at my friends houses when I was a kid. Anyway, this story takes place back in the early 90s when I was about 7 or 8 years old. My family was living down in Florida just when the holidays were about to roll around. We were a very close family for reasons I already stated, so my Nana lived with us right up until the day she passed. She helped out around the house and with a lot of child care stuff, so whenever I was home due to school holidays or whatever, she would always look after me whenever my mom and dad had to work. I adored her with all my heart. She was just about the best Nana that anyone could ever wish for. And she was tough as an old boot too. So this particular year I was lucky enough to have gotten the one thing I really, really wanted. Santa to bring me. A brand new pair of roller skates. I was obsessed with them and from the moment I got them I was itching to practice so I could get good enough to start going really fast or nail some tricks on them. One afternoon I'm zooming up and down the sidewalk outside our house, getting better and better with each passing hour while Nana is sitting on the porch and keeping a close eye on me in between bouts of reading a magazine or a book or something. Then at one point the phone rings and Nana basically has no choice but to duck inside to answer it since it might have been my mom or dad saying they needed to stay late at work or something. I don't know, something important. Anyway, I'm guessing she dithered on calling me inside, knowing I would kick up a fuss if I had to stop skating even for a minute, so she must have figured that she could probably duck inside and answer the phone without it being too much of a risk. But as she did, she kept the main door open so she could still see me through the screen door. It took a minute or two for her to get back from the call, but nothing went down during that time, so I figured that gave her a little peace of mind that she didn't have to worry about me all the time. When she gets back, she goes back to reading her thing while I was hard at work, learning to spin on the spot or whatever trick I had my heart set on learning. Then after maybe another 45 minutes or so, she calls to me that it was time for a lemonade break and that we had to go inside. I remember begging her with everything I had to just please, please, please let me skate for just a little while longer. I managed to bargain with her somehow, telling her I'd skate just a few more minutes, but also swearing that I would come inside as soon as she made the lemonade. No ifs or buts. She kinda skipped scowls at me for a second, probably silently cursing the fact that she couldn't quite say no to me whenever I begged her like that, but she eventually agreed before going inside to get the lemonade ready. But when she did, she tells me to sing as loud as I can so she can hear me from the kitchen and know that I was still there. So I did as I was told and warbled all the Boyz II Men lyrics I knew while I continued to skate up and down. Then maybe only a few minutes goes by and I look up to see this big old van turn onto our street. It starts cruising along all slow, almost looking like they were lost or looking for something. But I mean, I didn't pay it any mind. I was a kid, naive, and besides, I was too busy being happy with my skates to really consider any danger it might pose. And on top of that, I was with my tough old Nana and nothing could ever hurt me so long as she was around. Or at least that's what I thought. So as it rolls up alongside me and slows to a stop, I just carry on trying my very best to twirl on the spot with my skates. In fact, knowing me, I probably tried to show off a little, given I had an impromptu audience. The next thing I know, the passenger side of the van opens and a very, very tall man steps out. I know everyone is tall when you have yet to hit 10 years old, but this guy probably towered over all the other grown ups. He was around too. He was skinny to boot. He looked like a scarecrow and a skeleton's love child or something, just all gangly limbs with a shock of salt and pepper hair messily strown across his scalp. He approaches me and asks me which way the highway is and I just pointed back down the street. I am not even sure that was the right direction, but I sure as heck wanted to be helpful to a stranger. I remember he smiled and thanked me and it was only then that I started to get nervous. It was his teeth. They were all discolored and crooked. I think most kids associate monsters with their teeth. Maybe most adults do too. I know I certainly do and seeing that guy's teeth put the fear of God into me. But I tried to stay polite when he asked me how my Christmas went, showing him my new skates when he asked me what Santa had brought me that year. It was then that he told me that Santa had been extra generous to him and his family that year and had brought his daughter so many presents that she didn't even want all of them. Now my family has always been close knit, loving and generous with their money. They just never had a lot of it. So holidays for us were always pretty sparse affairs. Which is why when the scarecrow man told me his daughter got so much that she didn't even want some of her presents, I couldn't quite believe my ears. And when he actually offered me a Barbie themed dollhouse, one I actually really did want, I almost forgot about how nervous I was of him. It wasn't enough to completely shake the fear out of me though, so when he told me he had it in the back of the van asking me if I'd like to come take a look, I just started skating away from him, shaking my head silently. But instead of just shrugging it off and getting back into his van, he starts to follow me back towards my parents place asking if it was where I lived, if my parents were home, that kind of stuff. We hadn't had any stranger danger lessons in school, so it was only out of pure instinct that I unlatched the gate to my parents place and began to wail for my Nana. No sooner had I let out the second cry, then my Nana appears with this big old cast iron pan in her hand and comes tearing up the path towards me and what I know now to be my potential abductor and she's screaming bloody murder as she does so. I didn't see this at the time, but from what my mom told me years later at my Nana's funeral, this guy takes one look at Nana, fills his britches, and just bugs the heck out of there as she chases his van up the street. I do remember seeing her swinging that pan around and telling him to come back so she could beat him black and blue. And as much as her display of furiousness freaked me out, I was just grateful she could be twice as scary as Scarecrow man had been. The way my mom tells it, Nana had tried to get the van's tag number, only to find it didn't have one. The guy was a predator through and through and had obviously been prepping and gearing up to kidnap someone for whatever reason that may be. Next thing I know, the cops are at our house, my dad has come home early from work, and I am having to tell people over and over again what the guy looked like while they write things down and ask me a zillion questions about the color of the van, the guy's clothes, like, every little detail you could possibly think of. Needless to say, I didn't get to go out on my skates again for the rest of the holidays. So, like I mentioned, this whole story came up at my Nana's funeral when we were telling tales about her. And the one really freaky thing about the whole incident, and something I didn't know until years and years after, was that when me and Nana described the Scarecrow man to the cops, they both shot each other a look like holy crap. Before telling Nana and my dad that we had pretty much just described another one of their perps to them to a T. We had described a guy that had made several other attempts at kidnapping kids in broad daylight over the holiday period, A guy they were desperate to get their hands on because they knew it was just a matter of time before his luck turned and he managed to trick a kid into getting into the van, knowing I could well have been dead before my 10th birthday. Having endured unimaginable torment before, I was finally put out of my misery.
- [22:42]
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- [23:14]
Narrator
Oh yeah, it's a World cup holder.
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Narrator
World cup holder for the world. Fits every car, holds every cup.
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- [23:23]
Narrator
Carvana made it. They buy and sell cars, so they made a car cup holder.
- [23:28]
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- [23:29]
Narrator
Got any good cups lately?
- [23:30]
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I used to. I just couldn't figure out where in the world to put them.
- [23:33]
Narrator
The World Cup Holder brought to you by Carvana. Proud sponsors of the World cup holder, sign up today to win yours@cup-holder226.com not authorized or endorsed by FIFA. Not a real product for parody and various purposes only. Makes my skin crawl even to this day. Near Central California, there's an old mining community that you've probably heard of called the Motherlode. It's an area of California that was a large part of the Gold rush. That is where this story takes place. On the way out of town down a long road, almost like a stretch of highway, you suddenly veer off to the right and go down a rough older road. Less than a quarter mile down, the road dead ends into a circle parking area with a gate at the end which is kept locked by the city. If you were to go past the gate, you would end up at a popular lake. In my area when you park at the end, you are basically surrounded on one side by steep hills dotted with poison oak and tall pine and oak trees. The other side is a steep downhill slope to the lake. So basically you are in a bowl. We were told that if we were to go up to the left, up the steep hill, that there would be an old mine long abandoned by the miners that the county didn't close. About 250ft up the steep hill, we found the old mine almost hidden in a slight divot in the hillside that you wouldn't see unless you walked right up on it. To get into the mine you had to climb down a slight slope into the ground and go over some medium sized rocks on the ground, leftovers from when they blasted into the mountain. The mine itself was about 7ft tall and 6ft wide, which formed a tunnel that was about 250ft into the mountain. The mine had rough rock walls with a colorful vein running along the left wall. This vein is said to indicate the presence of gold by its ribbons of colors. The tunnel followed along that vein, taking at least two turns with a couple of short dead ended offshoots. As you got deeper into the mine, you had to step carefully to avoid mud, which is what the old ore cart trail tracks were handy for. Ore carts hauled blasted rocks out of the mine on like many railroad tracks. Once you were inside the mine, it was completely and utterly dark and silent, except for the sounds of the wind howling and dripping water. We took our time walking into the dark tunnel until we eventually reached the tunnel's end, a wall of solid rock. Disappointed, we started. On the way back to the entrance, my buddy decided to stop near the entrance to chip some sample rock from the vein in the wall. He promised to be quick, so I just stood and waited for him. I maybe stood there for a couple of minutes before I heard the first strange sound. It sounded like a small pile of rocks toppling over, echoing up the shaft towards us. I tried to tell my buddy what I just heard, but he didn't hear me, so I just let it go. Not even two minutes later, I heard it again. This time closer. This time I got his attention to tell him what I just heard, but he just thought I was being paranoid. He said, you're just hearing an echo from me. I tried to take his word for it, but again, not even two minutes later, there it was again. That time the sound came with a feeling of panic and fear. That was when I literally just said, you only have to be faster than your slowest friend. Then I just took off running over the rocks and out of the mine. When he came out a few minutes later, he said he walked back to the end and didn't see any fallen rocks. I didn't go back there until a few years later with another buddy of mine. Same as before, up the steep hill we went, the mine looked exactly as it did before, front to back with no signs of a cave in. Just as my other buddy had done before. My buddy just had to stop on the way out to chip away at that vein winding along the left wall. As I was standing there waiting, I heard another strange scary sound. But that time it sounded like a rattle, and we both heard it. The only way we could describe it was it sounded just like a baby rattle. We both froze and looked at each other, puzzled and anxious, illuminated in each other's headlamps. Not even a couple minutes later, we both heard it again. The sound of a baby rattle. We both grew up here, so we knew it wasn't a rattlesnake or anything, which are common here. When we heard it the third time, the creepy feeling came right back to me and I just ran out of there as fast as I could. Practically tripping on the rocks on the way out. I haven't gone back since. I can't describe it. Something about that old mine just came with a bad, scary feeling and both people that went there with me felt it as well. On the morning after Thanksgiving of 2003, the snow covered winter wonderland that was the Horn Creek Conference center in Westcliffe, Colorado made for a peaceful and serene setting. But that peace was to be shattered when the naked corpse of a young woman was found lying frozen in the snow just outside one of the guest cabins. The young woman's name was Natalie drissel. Natalie was 20 years old when she was found dead, having grown in her native Missouri, then moving to the state of Florida to attend college. During the summer of 2003, Natalie had taken a job working at the Horn Creek Conference center during a Christian summer camp event that was being held there. It was here that she met her boyfriend who had a full time job there, and it was during the Thanksgiving break of 2003 that she decided to make the journey back up to Colorado to visit him, with the couple opting to stay in separate guest cabins for the duration of their trip. Given the pious nature of their location, the couple spent Thanksgiving together taking romantic walks around the snow covered campgrounds hand in hand. Afterwards, Natalie's boyfriend dropped her off back at the cabin shortly after midnight of Friday, November 28th so that she could get some rest. But the next morning the boyfriend went back to the very same cabin to check up on her, yet found she wasn't there. He looked around a little and was disturbed to find footprints in the snow leading away from the cabin, ones that had obviously been made by someone's bare feet. Given the shape and size, this must have sent him into a panic, wondering what could have frightened his girlfriend so much that she fled into the freezing night in nothing but her bare feet. He followed the tracks for a short while into a wooded area around 200 yards from the camp's conference building before finding her body lying in the Snow at around 8:50am But Natalie wasn't just barefoot, she was completely naked. Her exposed arms and legs were all scratched up and bruised, and by the time her boyfriend found her body, rigor mortis had set in. She was completely stiff like a wax model, and it must have been extremely traumatizing for him to see someone he loved so dearly in such a terrible state. Custer County Sheriff Fred Jobe said there was only a single set of prints that had led them to Natalie's body, meaning she had not been pursued by anyone in the moments before her death. He also said that the pattern of her footprints appeared to be erratic as she had been wandering through the area in the days before she had collapsed. It was also judged that, given the state of rigor mortis she was in, that she had actually died very soon after being dropped off back at the cabin, maybe only 15 to 20 minutes after the boyfriend had departed. An autopsy was performed over at the El Paso County Coroner's office on November 30, with the conclusion being that Natalie appeared to have been in a completely healthy state before she had died. Given that there were pine needles in her hair, with dirt and abrasions on her face and shoulder, and coupled with a chaotic patterning among her footprints, it appeared that Natalie had actually run into one or two trees as she fled her cabin. Evidence of such injuries included, among other things, linear scratches on her forehead, cheeks, neck, chest, abdomen, and legs, small contusions just above the trachea on her right cheek and to the right of her chin, and purple contusions on her left forearm, hand, and wrist. Other than evidence of injuries which the coroner believed were consistent with running through trees and brushes, she had no visible external injuries. It is also interesting to note that the autopsy showed that there were no internal injuries to her brain, so we can safely rule out there being some kind of hemorrhage or tumor being to blame for Natalie's strange behavior. While the autopsy did not determine the cause of death, Sheriff Jobe said, they've ruled out anything criminal. It's just really, really weird. But we're still hoping to find out something more conclusive. Lee Roybal, officer in charge of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, also commented on the unusual nature of Natalie's death, saying, it's the strangest thing you've ever seen. Although there could be no definitive answers as to why or how Natalie had died, the coroner was forced to conclude that she had ultimately died from a phenomenon known as as excited delirium. She had absolutely no traces of narcotics or alcohol in her system when she died, and despite not being able to give a concrete conclusion that she had died of excited delirium, listed six main factors that had caused him to reach such a decision. The first and main point being that she had been found completely naked, having not been obviously pursued by anyone. There were also no internal injuries at all, so no obvious way of telling how she had died. There was also the complete lack of narcotics in her system, so there was no way a drug could be to blame for the erratic state she was in that evening. There was also the possibility that given she was a recent arrival to a relatively high altitude from sea level Florida, that a lack of oxygen in her brain could be to blame for the delirium. On top of all this, there was an elevated amount of glucose in her urine. As has been stated, there could be no concrete conclusions as to how Natalie had died, but there was much rumor and speculation in the days that followed. For example, there was a great deal of attention paid to her boyfriend, given that he was a natural suspect, having been the past person to see Natalie alive as well as the person who found her corpse first. Yet Natalie's family did not and still do not believe that her boyfriend had anything to do with her untimely death. There was also a great amount of conjecture regarding a supposed eating disorder that Natalie had been dealing with and that the cardiac arrest she suffered was a direct result of malnutrition. Given the mysterious circumstances and a plethora of different theories put forward to explain Natalie's death, it is almost impossible to decide on a definitive explanation as to how or why she passed away. What's clear is that she had absolutely no history of mental illness, had no history of drug use, and was in perfect health right up until that Thanksgiving weekend. Yet suddenly she appears to have had some kind of psychotic break for no obvious reason at all. One moment her boyfriend was dropping her back at the guest cabin and she was perfectly normal, the next she was stripped naked and she was sprinting through the snow covered woods in the dark at such a speed that she collided with tree trunks as she ran. With the whole episode ending and her dropping dead just a few hundred yards away from where she was staying, we have to admit the situation is truly and terrifyingly bizarre. With the information at hand raising many more questions than answers. Although the coroner gave the explanation of excited delirium, it has proved to be a controversial diagnosis. The condition known as excited delirium is not recognized by the World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric association or the American Medical association, and therefore not listed a medical condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The UK independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody suggest that the syndrome should be termed Sudden death and restraint Syndrome in order to enhance clarity. Examples of deaths due to the condition are found primarily in restraint or attempted restraint situations, while medical preconditions and symptoms attributed to the syndrome are far more varied. In which case can we even place any credence in such an explanation? And if we dismiss it entirely, we are left with a gaping hole in Natalie's story and trying to explain just how she lost her life. But still, is it possible that Natalie encountered someone or something in or around that cabin that gave her such a fright that it could have triggered a highly panicked state that could have been confused with so called excited delirium? And if so, just what was it that she encountered? Could it have been some kind of twilight creeper who posed such a terrifying threat that Natalie abandoned all reason and logic, deciding it was better to run naked into the snow in order to escape such a threat? Or perhaps it was something far worse, a large, wild, aggressive animal perhaps that wasn't about to display the same kind of subtlety and was about to smash its way into the cabin to devour her. It's unclear what caused such a state of fear that night, but one thing is clear in abundance that we will never know exactly what happened to Natalie Drissel and that we'll have to accept that here we are walking the earth knowing that at any moment we too could simply fall down dead from some mysterious ailment that leaves our loved ones as baffled as they are heartbroken. I was 22 and lived in my parents house while they had left South Africa to work abroad. My grandmother moved in with me to help out as I was a single mother while still studying in university. In the end we helped each other because she was also on oxygen due to chronic lung disease. Growing up in South Africa, we are taught from a very young age that it's important to make sure all doors are locked and windows are closed at night. Being a very private person, I would always have my curtains closed. People can be extremely nosy here. Well, one night after a long day of studies and simply being a mom, we locked all the doors and shut the windows, pulling all the curtains closed to settle in for the night. Now my son was not a great sleeper and would often wake up throughout the night after dozing off. Later that evening he woke me up asking for his bottle and I decided to check the time. Slightly blinded by the tears TV's light, I sat up rubbing my eyes. 10pm Something wasn't right. I felt like we weren't alone. As I peered through the doorway into the passage, I could have sworn I saw a dark shadow almost crawling across the tiled floor. I'm imagining things. I must be shrugging it off. I pass my son his bottle. Still, I swear I'm hearing sounds like someone coming up the stairs this time, but that's in the opposite direction. The railing creaks and I'm about to get out of my bed to check when a face peaks around the corner of my bedroom door. Gran, is that you? Expecting her to be needing help with something. So I reach for my phone to create light. As I had already switched the TV off again, a man storms into my room and grabs my phone before I can hide it. I'm in so much shock, yet I know exactly what is going on at that moment. Take whatever you want. Please just don't hurt us, I say calmly. He puts his index from finger to his lips.
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Shh.
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He's just standing there as though he is waiting and watching. Guard. Then suddenly three other men rush in and asked question after question. Where's the safe? Where's the weapons? Where's this and that? They were all armed and I had no idea what they had planned for us. I just couldn't keep up trying to answer all their questions. Why would I, a single mother in a house with her child and grandmother, have a weapon? In all honesty, I have never even owned one. They took everything and then insisted on taking my car keys. I tried telling them I couldn't remember where I had put them but they stuck a weapon in my 2 year old son's face and asked again, where are the keys? So I told them where I thought I'd left them. After going through all my things, taking what they wanted and were then ready to leave, I'm presuming they were throwing everything into my car for the getaway. The one guy chose to stick around in my room a little longer. Give me a kiss, he whispered. Oh no. I was shouting in my mind, still trying to stay composed. He put out his hand and took mine. Then the others called for him and as he pulled away I dug my nails into his hand and scratched. If I was going to do anything, I was going to get DNA off one of them. If no one could see what was going on in my home, I would find a way to get justice. Don't scream, they said and ran down the stairs. I ran down after them and screamed as loud as I could for help from the neighbors as they sped off in my car. Standing outside in the pitch black, calling for anyone to help us and yet no one heard. It felt like hours had passed. No phones, no laptops, no means of contact. They took everything and I couldn't even call my parents. To this day these men have never been caught and I wonder if I had my curtains open, perhaps someone might have seen people were still awake. I am now 35 and since that night, I refuse to go to sleep without my curtains open and at least one light on. This happened in 2004. I was a new college graduate starting my career in healthcare at a hospital two hours away from where I grew up. The hospital I worked at was huge. A level one trauma center. I work in a highly specialized area. There were only two other people at the hospital with my licensure. That's important because we spent a lot of time working alone in our department and had to stagger our shifts for coverage. I had the early shift. I arrived at 5:45 in the morning. Staff parking was several city blocks away from the hospital and they sent a shuttle to pick employees up. The lot was surrounded by an urban forest. The city tried to leave as much green space and trees as possible. There was nothing else near the parking lot at the time. Since I arrived so early, the shuttle service had to be called when I arrived. The call button was located at the shuttle stop, meaning you had to leave your car to communicate with the dispatch. I was always creeped out because even though there were parked cars, there were never any employees in the lot at the time I came in. The overnight shift didn't change until 7am a few weeks after I started working there. I had settled into the shuttle routine and gotten more comfortable. At this time, cell phone service was spotty at best, and I didn't own a smartphone, so it wasn't very reliable. One afternoon when I returned to my car, I found a note left on my windshield. It read, hot and sweet you are. I glanced around and didn't see anyone. I was perplexed, but not really frightened. Another week passed. I forgot about the note until one afternoon I returned to my car and found a flower in the windshield wiper and another note. This one. I really love your dimples. I could make you smile. What the heck? I had just moved to this town and didn't have any friends beyond the other two people in my department. I didn't know anyone else. I did feel creeped out this time and began feeling like I was being watched or something. Early in the mornings, I would park as close to the shuttle stop as possible, buzz the dispatch, and then wait in my car with the doors locked. I often imagined I heard shuffling noises like shoes scraping through the gravel, and I couldn't see all the way to the dark corners of the lot. When I returned to my car in the afternoons, I carried my pepper spray just in case. I told my co workers about the notes and they told me I should tell security I felt a little silly but I made a report. Security said they would keep an eye out, whatever that meant. I stopped parking in that lot, opting instead to find parking on the street nearer to the hospital where there were other people around. Things went fine for the next few weeks until one day I got another note. This time it was on my car one morning outside my apartment building. In the same scribbly handwriting. It simply read don't be shy. I was so confused. What did this person want? Obviously they were following me and now they knew where I lived and probably knew I lived alone. I contacted the police. There wasn't much they could do, but they did make some safety recommendations and said they would patrol the neighborhood more often. I took a self defense class and was hyper aware of my surroundings. It was worse not knowing who I was dealing with. A few weeks later a woman was found assaulted and murdered in the trees behind the employee parking lot. They caught the guy a couple days later. I recognized him. He was a contract painter who had been working in my area. The hospital had been remodeling our department and this painter would come in early around 6:30am I made coffee every morning in the break room and he would come in to get a cup. We made small talk a few times but never any red flags. Then it came back to me. Sometimes he would call me Dimples. I shivered. Good morning Dimples. I was shocked that he had literally been right under my nose for weeks. I had been totally alone with him on many occasions and I never suspected anything. I don't know for certain that he was the one leaving the notes, but they stopped after he was arrested. Anyway, stay safe out there guys and gals. On December 14, 2014, a teenage Pandora
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Yes. Good.
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Boys exploring the woods are on the back roads of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, around 30ft from the nearest path. It is a quiet, rarely traveled area where the nearest tarmac road is just under a mile away, one that cuts through a residential area that hosts only around a dozen or so homes with minimal traffic, little more than a locally known shortcut to and from Route 989. The young lad is in a world of his own, enjoying the peace and tranquility of nature, completely unaware of what he is about to stumble across. He only spots what he is about to discover because it looks extremely out of place, even among the death and decay of the Pennsylvania winter. The thing has a distinct air of morbidity about it. When he recognizes what it is, he turns on his heels and runs screaming from the woods, tears in his eyes, his heart racing in his chest. Because what he had discovered that gray December day was a severed head. Only this wasn't the disembodied head of a newly murdered person. This particular head had been embalmed, preserved. When the police finally arrived hours later, they discovered that the eyes of the severed head were shut, but the mouth was wide open. They intensively searched the surrounding area for any signs of the body it had once been attached to, but found nothing. The head was so well preserved that its face was still definitively recognizable. But a subsequent facial reconstruction yielded no clues to the owner's identity. Forensic examiners estimated that it had been there for between one week and a month, just lying there among the fallen leaves, waiting to be discovered. If the gray hairs that covered her scalp were anything to go by, it was thought that the owner of the severed head was anything from 50 to 80 years of age. An anatomy professor turned forensic artist by the name of Michel Vitali examined the head in excruciating detail by request of the local police department. After hours upon hours of study, she came to a shocking conclusion. That whoever had severed the head had done so with the skill of an expert pathologist, that they must have had some kind of anatomical training to have completed the task with such precision. A conclusion shockingly reminiscent of the world famous 19th century serial killer, Jack the Ripper. When we lifted the skin flap at the nape of the neck, we could see that the whole purpose of that was to access the key joint that would preserve both the head and the vertebral column. She told local news reporters during a horrifying interview. This is not anybody going with a kitchen knife or anything remotely like that. It was well done and it was placed perfectly. She was dismembered professionally. Another piece of evidence that supported the theory that whoever had severed the head had done so with professional skill. Skill was the use of what are known as eye caps, a common mortician's tool. These are devices that reassemble contact lenses and are worn in a chillingly similar way. They slip between the eyeball and the eyelid of the deceased person and are complete with small ridges or spikes that main the natural curvature of the eye whilst holding the eyelids shut. The pathologists who examined the embalmed head removed these eye caps and found that the person's eyeballs had been removed, but also made a disturbing discovery. The eyeballs had been replaced with small red rubber bouncy balls, the kind a child might play with. Whoever had done such a thing obviously had a sick sense of humor and was undoubtedly a very dangerously disturbed individual. After the initial forensic analysis, the embalmed head was sent over to Salt Lake City based ISO Forensics who undertook isotope testing on it. For those unfamiliar with the technique, isotopes are particles that can be found in the human body that come from drinking water that can be traced back to a particular geographical location. When the results of the isotope test testing came back, investigators were able to conclude that the woman had spent the previous several months being something of a nomad, Having lived or at least stayed in areas including West Virginia, western Maryland, southern Pennsylvania and even as far as eastern Ohio and New York State. Yet despite there being evidence to the owner of the severed head having lived in so many places, there was little to show that she had ever lived in Beaver county during time leading up to her death or discovered. However, the use of embalming fluid meant that determining the exact time of death was almost impossible. It also made DNA matching next to impossible as the fluid destroyed nucleotide bonds that enabled such analysis to be undertaken. The small amount that was obtained was so damaged that it could not be matched to any other samples in the national database. But much to the relief of those involved with the analysis, it was discovered that there was no criminal element to her death that the cardiac arrest was the most likely explanation for her demise. This was due to toxicology tests that had shown that there were trace amounts of lidocaine and atropine in her system, which are both varieties of medication that are used to treat irregular heart issues. Most likely a cardiac arrest, but not completely confirmed. One homicide detective was said to have been extremely skeptical that the owner of the embalmed head had died of natural causes, having seen far too many cases in which the possessiveness of the killer was displayed in their willingness to tamper and toy with the body of their quarry. When interviewed by journalists, Beaver County Coroner Terry Tatilovich Rossi said, could it have been someone with a great deal of anatomical knowledge? Yes. Could it have been someone who is just peculiar or bizarre? The answer to that question is also yes. We just don't know at this point. Michael o', Brien, the borough police chief, claimed the embalmed head was found so far off the road that it was entirely possible that it could have been simply thrown from a passing car. It was also determined that the scent and flavor of the embalming fluid would have made the flesh very unappealing to scavenger animals, so there was little chance it had been dropped by some hungry fox. The placement was deliberate. Someone had wanted it to be found sooner or later. A number of funeral homes that associated with the Pennsylvania Funeral Directors association were contacted with police. Pleas for information and details of the bizarre case were even shared at a National Funeral Directors association conference. But unsurprisingly, no one could shed any light of the gruesome situation. Every theory, with the exception of grave robbery, had been dismissed, with many agreeing that the most likely explanation is that the owner of the embalmed head had been a victim of the black market trade that deals in the illegal acquisition of human remains, either for professional or recreational purposes. There's a black market on body parts, and that market is pretty extensive, beaver County District Attorney Anthony was reported to have said. Detectives have repeatedly stated that they believed the head may have been removed from the corpse of a natural caused death by what's known as a body broker, an individual or firm who purchases and sells cadavers or remains. One solid reason that this line of investigation is thought to be the most plausible is because the black market cadaver industry had been linked to similar abuses in the past. Due to the plethora of firms where you can purchase human remains, any attempt to discover where the severed head came from is, according to Professor Michel Vitaly, extremely hard to track. If the owner of the severed head is to ever be identified, it would almost certainly require the assistance of a dentist. The forensic investigation discovered that the owner of the severed head had work done on every single tooth, one of them as many as seven times on one of the three teeth that had been pulled. Forensic dentists discovered a filling compound that wasn't available to dentists before 2004, indicating that the woman must have died after that particular year. So far, analysis of the woman's dental work had produced no leads. But with a forensic facial reconstruction, investigators still hope that someone someday will be able to identify the woman and give her name back. Almost six years later, we are still no closer to discovering the identity of whoever owned the embalmed head or that of the sick individual who had severed or stolen it by replacing the eyeballs with red rubber balls. It might well remain a total mystery who exactly placed the head in the woods out in Pennsylvania. But perhaps the real question is do we really want to know the whole story behind it, or are we most likely able to sleep easier remaining in blissful ignorance? I live in Belgium and am currently 21 years old. These events took place when I was around 8 to 12 years old. My grandparents used to live in an older home in the countryside not too far from the city. At first glance, this house was amazing. It had a yard surrounding the entirety of the property and me and my cousins used to play there a lot. It had a fishing pond with koi fish in the back, a huge walnut tree on the side, and lots of space to play around in. Lots of our family parties took place in this house and we visited with my parents every Wednesday for lunch to eat my grandmother's amazing pancakes. It was an older home and we used to sleep over there quite frequently. I don't remember much of my nights there, but there were some things that always creeped me out about this house. To paint a picture, the house had two entrances, one in the front, which I never witnessed anyone using, and the door in the back that came into the kitchen. In the kitchen you had an open doorway going into the living room right in front of the back door entrance and on the right a long hallway all the way. At the end of the hallway was the playroom, a room full of toys and games where we used to spend most of the time during family parties when we weren't playing in the yard. My grandparents bedrooms were on the ground floor right next to the wooden stairs. The first floor had two guest rooms, one right to the left of the stairs with one regular bed and a Bunk, bed and one all the way to the right of the stairs with a king sized bed. You also had a bathroom diagonally of the stairs and in the guest room to the left you had a door that led into a small room. To start off this story we'll talk about the small room in the back of the guest room. This door was always locked. My grandfather used to tell us this room should not under any circumstance be entered without his permission and I have only seen the inside once when he went to grab some old things from my father. When I was still a child, me and my sister used to sleep in this guest room whenever we would sleep over and most nights were uneventful. Though for a reason I can't seem to explain, this house always gave me the creeps. At first I thought it was because it's such an old home and I've always been a person with a vivid imagination. However after a while it became apparent my intuition wasn't as far off as I thought it was. Many things took place in this house and I will try to keep it as chronological as possible. The first thing I remember being relatively freaked out by was when my grandparents cat Tom died. After a long relaxing life. I was laying on the couch with him and petting him as I used to do so many times during my stays. He was a cuddly and fat cat, truly a beauty, but at this point he was as old if not older than I was. As I was petting him I put my hand on his stomach while watching TV and subconsciously matched my breathing to his. This is when I noticed I was getting light headed trying to keep up with his breathing. It was as if he was hyperventilating. Concerned, I told my grandmother something was wrong with Tom. I explained what I noticed and she assured me she would take him to the vet. I slept over that night and woke up early in the morning. When I came downstairs I walked through the long hallway going into the kitchen for breakfast as my grandparents always made sure we had something to eat when we woke up. As I was walking I saw both my grandparents to the bathroom to my left, right before the door to the kitchen. They were squatting down and I went in to see what was happening. To my surprise they looked at me concerned and I glanced over at what they were doing. It was Tom. He was in a basket not moving. My first thought would have been that he was sleeping like he always did, but judging by the look on my grandparents faces I figured out quickly what had happened. Tom had died during the night of course, I realized this could be a freaky coincidence, but looking back, I don't know if it was. The reason I say this is because this is when the scary things started to happen. Not long after, I started to see a woman in a white dress in the corner of my eyes walking into the bathroom Tom died in when I would be passing the hallway. I was a scared child, so I never had the guts to walk in after her to see if I just imagined it. I would just run to someone as fast as I could in order to feel safe and I knew no one would believe me. I never mentioned it to anyone, not even my sister who used to sleep over with me and is only two years older. I didn't want to seem paranoid or like I had been crying for attention or something. I started running down this hallway as fast as I could whenever no one was around to see me as I was scared, scared of it. By now, I slept over less because I no longer felt comfortable in this house and made sure to always have someone around when I was there. However, there would be times when we'd have no choice but to sleep over, or when I would forget for a split second how scared I was and agreed to sleep over. My grandparents are amazing people and I love them with all my heart. If they asked me to sleep over, saying no would be close to impossible for me. My sister and I slept in the guest room with the locked door. We would often sleep in the bunk beds together. I didn't feel very scared with her. I have always felt like she was protecting me as a child and even now as a young adult. On a few occasions, as my sister would be fast asleep, I would hear sounds coming from the room behind the locked door. I remember once I thought someone tried opening it from the other side and it scared the bejesus out of me. I just went under the covers as I always did in order to feel safe. I think everyone has at some point. Often I would fall asleep afterward with no more sounds or scares. Some time had passed between my nightly stays at my grandparents and for the first time in a few weeks, I decided to sleep over again. My sister wasn't with me this time. I was going to be spending the night alone, which in hindsight creeped me out, reminding myself of what had happened in the past. I thought I would sleep in the other guest room that night. My grandparents, though surprised, happily readied the big bed for me to sleep in. Night came around and I was relaxed in bed, trying to fall asleep. As I was drifting to sleep. I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I heard tapping on the window behind the closed blinds. This room was on the side of the big tree in the yard. So I shook it off, thinking it was a branch hitting the window and closed my eyes again. However, the tapping continued. One tap, two, three, silence. A few seconds passed. One tap, two, three,. I started to get skeptical. Why would a branch hit the window at a set pattern? It didn't make sense. If it was the wind that caused the branch to move, wouldn't it be random? I stood up, pushed aside the curtain to look outside and saw nothing. At first, for a second I felt relieved nothing was on the other side. But then I realized. The tree. It's a few meters or a few feet from the window. There is no branch that would be able to hit it even with a good amount of wind. I couldn't make sense of it. So I looked around for anything that would cause this noise. Nothing would be able to hit this window so high up. Not to mention the intervals of the taps. It was too regular. It had to be done on purpose. I got scared. I ran back to my bed and hid under the covers again. But not even a minute later, the tapping started again. At this point I was crying. The more taps I heard, the louder I became. Until I started yelling stop. As loud as I could. My grandparents ran upstairs and came into the room super concerned the tapping had stopped. They saw how upset said I was, hugging me and asking me what happened. I said something was outside my window, but to no one's surprise, there was nothing there. My grandfather decided it would be better if I slept with him tonight. And my grandmother decided to sleep in this room. After calming down, I slept peacefully. In the morning, they tried asking me again what had happened. I told them something scared me by tapping on the window. And as I initially figured, they said it must have been the tree outside. Too ashamed of myself, I just agreed with them, ready to forget it ever happened. Fast forward a few months. I hadn't slept over at the house for quite a while and it was time for me and my sister to spend another night there. At this point, I kind of forgot how scary it could be. And to no surprise, that seemed to be my downfall. As a side note, I have always been an insomniac, spending hours falling asleep sometimes. Never once in my stays have I heard my grandparents bedroom door at the bottom of the stairs open after they went to bed in the middle of the night. It must have been around 1am I woke up to the sound of footsteps coming up the wooden creaking stairs that stopped at the top. The open door to the bedroom was immediately to the left of these stairs, so whoever was walking up had to take one more step towards the doorway to be visible from where I was laying. My sister snoring in the top bunk didn't seem to be bothered by this, but I was scared out of my mind. My grandparents would at least show themselves to us to look in to check in on us. But there was no one in the doorway. No more sounds. We always kept the light on in the hallway so anyone that would even try to peek in would be obvious. But there was no. No such thing. It felt like an eternity, but after a few minutes I started to calm down, blaming my vivid imagination and decided to go back to sleep. A few hours afterward I woke up again, this time with a full bladder. Being half asleep, I forgot what transpired earlier and gladly stood up to go to the bathroom. I did my thing, washed my hands and walked out of the bathroom. As I was walking towards the room, I noticed from the corner of my eyes my sister in the mirror above the sink, looking back at me from the reflection. I remember thinking I just hadn't seen her pass me as I was washing my hands or something and went back to my room. To my horror, I saw my sister on the top bunk, sleeping like a baby. Then it hit me what had transpired earlier. My heart sank. I threw the door shut and locked the door, terrified like a deer that had just seen a tiger in the distance. I just stood there, not knowing whether I should wake someone, scream whatever I had to do to get rid of this pit I had in my stomach. I couldn't fathom what had happened on this night. I just sat at the door for what felt like hours, trying to make sense of it. Once the sun started coming up, I felt less scared. I was so tired I just decided to lay in my bed. I couldn't sleep though. And in the early morning I heard my grandparents door open and decided to go downstairs. I needed company. Conscious company. At least I didn't tell anyone again. Not until a few years later I never slept there again. I didn't feel safe there anymore and to me sleeping there was like having a nightmare. I found excuse after excuse me, excuse not to stay until my grandparents finally moved out. The house was getting too expensive for them and it was too much to keep it clean and in a good state. So they moved to a small house not too far from my uncle to be able to spend more time with their children and grandchildren. They are happy there and live quite comfortably. I slept over there once, luckily without any problems. But deep down I am always on edge being alone in the home of my grandparents and never feel truly comfortable there. I loved that old house. Our family made a lot of memories there and it was super fun to play in and around the home with my cousins. But never in my life would I want to spend another night in that godforsaken place.