Scary Stories For A Rainy Night - Ep. 407 - Ghost House

Summary

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Scary Stories For A Rainy Night – Ep. 407 – Ghost House

Scary Stories and Rain Podcast | Host: Being Scared
Date: June 18, 2026
[Content begins at 02:28]

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Episode Overview

This atmospheric episode delivers a selection of eerie true stories—from paranormal childhood encounters in a haunted English inn, to chilling tales of unexplained presence, brushes with real-world horrors, urban legends, and infamous unsolved mysteries. Each story is told in the signature calm narration, set against a gentle rainfall, creating an unsettling yet soothing experience tailored for nighttime listening or sleepless hours.

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Key Story Summaries & Insights

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I. The Haunted Crown Inn (English Countryside)

[02:28 – 10:47]

• Childhood Haunting:
  A now-adult narrator recalls living as a child in the Crown Inn, a historic, murder-rumor-shrouded Victorian pub in the English countryside.
  • "As an adult I am very skeptical about ghosts and the paranormal … But as a 7 year old child in the early 90s, I remember seeing and witnessing stuff which a rational mind would conclude to be impossible." (Narrator, 02:28)
• Paranormal Activity:
  The narrator and his dog both witness objects moving, furniture levitating, and doors slamming—experiences corroborated by other family members.
  • Memorable moment: The Labrador Jake reacts in terror to a levitating table, urinating in fright (03:54).
• The Face in the Wall:
  The most harrowing memory is of a masculine face—“no larger than an American football”—emerging from a bare bedroom wall, staring sorrowful and distant, then swiveling to glare at the narrator with a grotesque “psychopathic grin.” The face slides downward out of sight, presumably under the bed (06:46, 09:46).
  • “A concoction of extreme delight and anger at the same time … It was horrifying to behold, to say the least.” (Narrator, 08:38)
• Aftermath & Reflection:
  The narrator considers the possibility of sleep paralysis, but doubts it fits. Despite modern skepticism, he is unsettled to this day:
  • “I simply can't rule out that something else was awake with me in the room that night.” (Narrator, 10:47)

Notable Quote:

“The face was contorted with such an intense expression, a concoction of extreme delight and anger at the same time.” (08:38)

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II. The Ants: A Gruesome Real-Life Horror

[11:53 – 15:52]

• RV Park Disturbance:
  Narrator retells a friend’s experience in a tightly-knit RV community, where an ant infestation leads to a shocking discovery.
• Foreshadowing:
  Unusual ant trails are traced to a neighbor's RV; after no response, a note is left for the resident.
• Macabre Discovery:
  Days later, the man's son uses his spare key to discover his father's decomposing body, covered in ants; the community reels in horror.
• Lingering Imagery:
  The omnipresent ants are described as more frightening than even the fatal MRSA infection, for their silent, relentless invasion.

Notable Quote:

“The ants were truly the most horrific part to me.” (Narrator, 15:52)

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III. The Breaths in Nana’s House

[16:07 – 19:23]

• Restless Sleep:
  A boy, prone to nocturnal anxiety, recounts a night spent at his grandmother's home, made eerie since the passing of his grandfather.
• Unexplained Presence:
  While lying on the floor beside his grandmother’s bed, he distinctly hears two separate breathing patterns: his nana asleep and a loud, unknown breather just beyond the cracked door.
  • “I can hear a completely separate inhale and exhale. It sounded as though someone was standing right outside the bedroom door, breathing loudly.” (Co-Narrator, 18:01)
• Aftermath:
  In the morning, the narrator asks if anyone else had been over—his nana firmly says no. Unsettled, he never receives an explanation.

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IV. The Creeper in the Woods

[21:11 – 25:35]

• College Camping Tale:
  Six friends enjoy a nighttime fire in the woods when heavy, bipedal footsteps (not animals) halt their merriment.
• Interaction:
  A man’s eerie voice calls from the woods: “Hey, where are you guys going?” (Narrator, 23:14)
• Shadowy Figures:
  As they flee, some in the group spot “multiple tall silhouettes” near the treeline—possibly not a supernatural danger, but sinister humans lurking.
  • “In retrospect, it could have been some guys just playing games out in the woods, but … it was probably some sort of gang or cult.” (Co-Narrator, 25:21)

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V. The Disappearance of Timothy Pitzen

[25:35 – 36:55]

• True Crime Mystery:
  The intricate, unsolved disappearance of Timothy Pitzen in 2011 is recounted—his mother Amy removes him from school for a supposed 'family emergency,' takes him on a two-day trip to zoos and resorts, and is later found dead by suicide, leaving a cryptic note:
  • "Timothy would never be found … but … he was safe with people who would care for him." (Narrator, 31:18)
• Key Investigation Details:
  • Amy’s movements are tracked by police, but Timothy vanishes without trace; only a tricky trail of locations and ambiguous evidence remains.
  • Years later, a man falsely claims to be Timothy, only for DNA to disprove the hoax and dash hopes.
• Chilling Reflection:
  • “Timothy Pittson remains missing to this day and there have been no sightings … It is entirely possible that he is still out there somewhere in the United States.” (Narrator, 36:43)

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VI. The Night Shift and Schizo Susan

[36:55 – 44:07]

• Fast Food Terror:
  A college student working McDonald’s overnight encounters a mysterious customer, “Schizo Susan”, who nightly screams at invisible backseat passengers and orders food for more than herself.
• Confrontation and Aftermath:
  When the narrator finally questions her, Susan unleashes a 30-second, ear-splitting scream—which breaks the microphone system—and then abruptly disappears forever.
  • “She let out a banshee scream. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life.” (Co-Narrator, 41:36)
• Reflection:
  The incident leaves the narrator unnerved, and he hopes Susan ultimately received help for her obvious suffering.

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VII. Donner Party: Hunger in the Snow

[44:07 – 58:45]

• Historical Horror:
  The infamous case of the Donner-Reed party’s westward journey and the appalling winter ordeal in the Sierra Nevada is retold in tense, graphic detail.
• Descent into Cannibalism:
  • “Group began to eat flesh from Dolan's body … taking care to ensure nobody would have to eat his or her relatives.” (Narrator, 53:25)
• Survival vs. Humanity:
  The episode notes not just starvation, but the group’s moral collapse, betrayals, and violence—even murder for food.
• Dark Legacy:
  Contemporary news often downplayed the cannibalism, while local legend and macabre tourism grew in its wake.

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VIII. Home Office Intruder

[58:45 – 62:13]

• Modern Unease:
  A remote worker living in an old Victorian house experiences increasingly disturbing noises—first written off, then rationalized, until the day he discovers a stranger eating in his kitchen.
  • “It had proved all my worst fears right—there was some kind of danger in my house.” (Co-Narrator, 62:28)
• Aftermath:
  The experience terrifies him enough to quit, opting for the mundanity of a coffee shop job for peace of mind.

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IX. Urban Exploration & the Ghost Estate

[64:28 – 67:45]

• Teenage Hideaway:
  A group of friends uses abandoned, asbestos-ridden apartment blocks for secret gatherings, until a winter night when they sense, then nearly confront, an unknown entity in the floor above them.
• Chill of the Unknown:
  Despite fleeting evidence—footsteps, the vanishing loaf of bread—they never prove who or what haunts the ruins, but the specter lingers in memory.

Notable Quote:

“Sometimes your gut just tells you everything you need to know about a certain sound or a shape in the darkness. That's how the human race has survived for so long … There really is such a thing as a sixth sense.” (Co-Narrator, 65:44)

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X. The Christmas Day Lawson Family Massacre

[67:45 – End]

• Historic Tragedy:
  The tale of Charlie Lawson, who, on Christmas Day 1929, murdered his wife and six of his seven children before killing himself, possibly due to illness, injury, or a dark secret.
• Iconic Aftermath:
  With widespread press and a house that became a macabre tourist attraction, the murder would inspire dark music and folklore across generations.
• Haunting Verse (Bluegrass Ballad):
  “They say he killed his wife at first while the little ones did cry Please, Papa, won't you spare our lives it is so hard to die.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “A concoction of extreme delight and anger at the same time. It was horrifying to behold, to say the least.”
  (Ghost Face: Haunted Crown Inn, 08:38)

• “She let out a banshee scream. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life.”
  (Schizo Susan, 41:36)

• “Sometimes your gut just tells you everything you need to know about a certain sound or a shape in the darkness. That's how the human race has survived ...”
  (Urban explorer on sixth sense, 65:44)

• Sad Reflection on Unsolved Mystery:
  “Timothy Pittson remains missing to this day … So it is entirely possible that he is still out there somewhere in the United States.” (36:43)

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Important Timestamps

• Haunted Crown Inn Childhood: 02:28 – 10:47
• Ants & the RV Park: 11:53 – 15:52
• Nana’s Breathing Guest: 16:07 – 19:23
• The Woods and the Voice: 21:11 – 25:35
• Timothy Pitzen Mystery: 25:35 – 36:55
• McDonald's Night Shift & Schizo Susan: 36:55 – 44:07
• Donner Party: 44:07 – 58:45
• Home Office Intruder: 58:45 – 62:13
• Urban Exploration/Ghost Flats: 64:28 – 67:45
• Christmas Lawson Massacre: 67:45 – End

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Tone & Language

• Calm, reflective, often first-person narration lends authenticity and dread.
• Eerie, soothing, and matter-of-fact—invoking both comfort and chills.
• Occasional macabre humor and dry understatement.

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Closing Thoughts

Ep. 407 masterfully delivers an array of atmospheric, thought-provoking tales—melding personal memoir, urban and rural legend, and true crime into a compelling tapestry of midnight chills. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, the lingering sense of something just beyond the rain-drenched dark is inescapable.

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Transcript

[Narrator]

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[Narrator]

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[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

Hey, welcome back to the podcast.

[Narrator]

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 2.99amonth. 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.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

I hope you enjoy.

[Narrator]

As a young child I had a very active imagination. As an adult I am very skeptical about ghosts and the paranormal.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

But as a 7 year old child

[Narrator]

in the early 90s I remember seeing and witnessing Stuff which a rational mind would conclude to be impossible. Regardless, I remember such events. In some instances, I was with other individuals who too shared my experiences of these paranormal sightings, who also have profound memories of them to this day. In the 90s, my family owned a small village publishing called the Crown Inn, the establishment is situated in the English countryside. Like many public houses in England, the Crown Inn was very old and at the center of many tragic stories, including murder. I would spend many hours exploring the Victorian building whilst my brother played with

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

his friends in the village.

[Narrator]

And when my parents worked, I would often spend a lot of time by

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

myself in the upstairs flat.

[Narrator]

And during these times I recall witnessing objects flying across the room, furniture hovering, feet off the ground, and other such occurrences. I would convince myself that these were just simply hallucinations or my excitable imagination.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

However, the family dog would also react

[Narrator]

to these unexplained events. On one occasion, Jake, my black Labrador, bolted out of the bedroom with his tail between his legs. When a table lifted off the ground, he ran to the bottom of the stairs and urinated all over the carpet. During this time, I was sure that we were not alone in the pub. I will detail one particular night that sits vividly in my mind, which I catch myself pondering about to this day. It was late at night, the pub was closed down and everybody in the

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

building was in bed asleep.

[Narrator]

At this time I shared a bedroom with my brother and also shared a double bed. I remember waking up in the dark and silent room. Only a slight bit of light spilled through the window from the street, very faintly illuminating items around me. I first focused on my brother, who was sound asleep just a few feet to my left. Still laying on my back. I turned my head the other way and as I was about to close my eyes, something caught my attention. On the wall to my right hand side, adjacent to the bed and slightly raised towards the ceiling, was something I couldn't at all comprehend. There were no pictures, paintings or any items hanging from this particular wall. And apart from the window, the wall was completely bare. Except of course, this strange thing. Being intrigued of this item fully aroused my attention and I must have gazed at this object for what felt to be a few minutes. The item was almost egg shaped, no larger than an American football. Then I felt my heart starting to beat faster and a cold sensation ran down the length of my spine. As I started to slowly understand what I was looking at, the light reflected off the object to make out what

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

appeared to be a cheekbone.

[Narrator]

As soon as I recognized this I could make out a masculine jawline, an ear, a nose, and a mouth. I was completely frozen when it was evident I was staring at somebody's face. No other part of the body was visible apart from the facial features. Peering what seemed to be through the wall, the face was slightly turned away from me as if its attention was drawn to something at the foot of the bed. Through my fear, I did my best to remain completely motionless, still staring at this face, studying this insane image in front of me.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

I recall its eyes were casually looking

[Narrator]

away from me as if in deep thought, almost sorrowful.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

The bed made a slight noise as

[Narrator]

I unintentionally shifted my weight on the mattress.

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[Narrator]

in a jolting reflex motion, turned straight towards me as if it had been rudely disturbed, its wide open eyes staring directly into mine in every sense of the word.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

I was utterly petrified. It sounds peculiar to describe, but the

[Narrator]

face was contorted with such an intense expression, a concoction of extreme delight and anger at the same time. It was horrifying to behold, to say the least. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, I couldn't scream as this horrifying thing gazed deep into my Eyes no more than a couple feet away from me, desperately wishing for this crazy event to stop. We both faced each other in the dark for a few moments. It then did something which makes the hair stick up on the back of my neck. Even to this day. The face almost composed itself for a second until slowly revealing a psychopathic grin, a horrible distorted smile before slowly descending down the wall. I helplessly watched as the face moved down towards the ground, never breaking eye contact until it was completely out of my sight. I thought my heart was going to explode inside my chest as I laid there witnessing the face disappear.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

It's under the bed. It's under the bed.

[Narrator]

The thought screaming in my mind. I tried to move my arms and legs, but I couldn't. Almost as if I was paralyzed. I tried and tried again, desperately trying to get myself out of the room. In one last final attempt, my arms broke free followed by my legs. I stood up in the bed and darted across the mattress, over my brother and out of the room, never once looking behind me. I ran directly into my parents room, screaming all the way there, waking up the whole pub, including Jake, the family dog. My mom consoled me for a while and for the rest of the night I stayed in my parents bed. It took a few nights before I built up the courage to go back into that room again. With an adult's mind, it would be a fair conclusion that I likely suffered from sleep paralysis, which is something I do suffer with time to time as an adult. With those who are unfamiliar with this condition, it is where you become temporarily

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

paralyzed just before falling asleep or waking

[Narrator]

up on rare occasions. Individuals also claim to have hallucinations during these episodes, expressing seeing ghosts or demons. I'm slightly skeptical of this because I hadn't knowingly suffered from sleep paralysis until I was in my teens and although it's happened to me a handful of times, I have never hallucinated episodes in bed like this never happened to me again. And with everything else that I experienced in that building for the 10 years we lived there, I simply can't rule out that something else was awake with me in the room that night. The other day I remember this one little story that happened to one of my friend's old neighbors. His old neighbor lived in a really small RV park. Anyway, he liked to go back there

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

to visit her a lot since they were pretty close.

[Narrator]

I was his ride at the time, so I would usually end up hanging out there with them. The small RV park was located right off a main road and a highway that led directly into One of our small historic townships. The park was shaded by mostly tall oak trees, so it was often nice and breezy in the hot summers since it was such a small neighborhood. In the RV park, everyone had no choice but to know everyone. While we were hanging out there one day, my friend's former neighbor and her other neighbor started commenting on the facts that there were tons of ants. That was unusual to them since they lived there for years and never had that problem before. Eventually, after dealing with the ants being absolutely everywhere for a couple days, my friend's old neighbor decided to go outside and try to track the ant trails to see where they may be coming from. She ended up tracking them to an RV that was one space away from hers. There she found several trails of them both going into and coming from this man's rv. Everyone in the little neighborhood knew that the man who lived in that RV was somewhat of a hoarder and he was not clean at all. So she knocked on his door a few times, but he didn't seem to be there.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

So she decided to tape a note

[Narrator]

to his door for when he got home. In the note, she asks that he please have his son maybe pick up some ant traps and also to have him maybe clean up a little. The man who lived there was quite weak and ill with mrsa. I believe MRSA is a disease that can be passed through bodily fluids and such, and I also believe it is eventually fatal. Thankfully, though, he had his son around to do his errands and some other things to help care for him.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

A couple days after she had left

[Narrator]

the note on his door, she got a knock on her door and it was the man's son. What he had to say was the grossest and most horrifying thing I have heard. What had happened was that when the man's son came by to take his dad to an appointment, he knocked but didn't get an answer. As he was waiting for his dad to answer the door, he realized he hadn't heard from him in almost a week. I guess his dad usually called him

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

at least every other day or so.

[Narrator]

Since his dad wasn't answering him, his son went to go grab the spare key that his dad had given to him previously. When he let himself into his dad's rv, he made a morbid and terrifying discovery. He found his dad's decomposing body still in his bed, totally covered in ants. He ran out of there and it didn't take long for a neighbor to find him sobbing next to his vehicle. Within minutes, the whole Small community had heard the gruesome news.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

As it just so happened, I had

[Narrator]

taken my friend over there for us to all hang out again on the day his old neighbor had heard the terrible news. We didn't even get a chance to sit down before she was already telling us about it. As she was telling us about all the ants on his body. I just couldn't help but to think about how ants come into your house, crawl all over your sinks, counters and dishes, and even in your food. So for whatever reason, the ants were truly the most horrific part to me. After all, MRSA can be passed through bodily fluids. We didn't go back there for a while after hearing that. When we did though, they were still in the process of trying to move the RV out of there. And that was after a man in a full hazmat suit spent days cleaning it out. The whole thing just kind of freaked

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

us all out though.

[Narrator]

Especially the ants.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

When I was a young boy, I always had a lot of trouble falling asleep at night. I would lie awake, my mind racing with anxiety. It would get so bad that I would carry my pillow and blanket around the house and see if I could maybe sleep better in the living room or sometimes even on my parents bedroom floor. Looking back, this is pretty embarrassing, but there's a reason I mention it Every so often. I would stay at my Nana's house with my younger brother. It was a three story duplex in one of those gated seniors communities that spring up in residential areas surrounding hospitals. When I was 8, my grandfather passed away from cancer at the hospital right around the corner. Since then, my Nana has always lived alone. Even still, I remember enjoying spending time there. Eating lots of food, playing video games, watching lots of VHS taped shows about alien encounters and ghostly hauntings. That's where I got my thrills. That being said, I have always considered myself skeptical to the paranormal. However, something happened one of those nights at my Nana's house that to this day, over a decade later, I still cannot explain. On this particular night, it was only me staying over at Nana's house. The upstairs floor of her three story duplex consisted of two bedrooms, a large master bedroom, and right across the hallway was another smaller bedroom. Most nights when I stayed over with my younger brother, we would both sleep in the smaller bedroom. But there was always something a little creepy about that bedroom. And on the night I decided I won't be sleeping alone in that room. Instead I'll just take a pillow and blanket and sleep on the floor in my Nana's master bedroom. My family was used to my strange sleeping habits, so it was no problem. I made my bed on the floor in between the door and the queen sized bed, that furnished master bedroom and swiftly fell asleep. I woke up tossing and turning in the middle of the night. It must have been in the very early a.m. hours. The room was very dark. To my right is the large bed where my Nana lay sleeping. To my left is the bedroom door, left ajar only slightly. I can hear my Nana sleeping in her bed. The soft inhale and exhale of someone in a deep sleep. And then a troubling realization takes hold of me. I notice that hers isn't the only pattern of breathing that I can hear. To my left, in the direction of the hallway and the room directly across the hall, I can hear a completely separate inhale and exhale. It sounded as though someone was standing right outside the bedroom door, breathing loudly. I can remember thinking to myself, am I just imagining this or am I hearing myself? I remember holding my breath and listening and then guaranteed myself that I was hearing two different people breathing.

[Narrator]

It was easy to tell because the

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

breathing sounds were on opposite sides of me. It continued for at least a full minute and the more I paid attention to it, the more terrified I became in the moment. I pulled my blanket over my head and convinced myself that maybe for some reason one of my other relatives had shown up and needed to crash in her guest bedroom. Somehow I eventually fell back asleep. The next morning, sitting down at a stack of pancakes, I asked my Nana if anyone had been over last night. She told me no and asked me why. I asked, but I couldn't bring myself to tell her what I had experienced the night before. Being in a gated community, she would have had to buzz through any visitors that arrived. That's the one and only time I've ever experienced something that I just cannot explain. I'm only 23 and I'm a very social person, so I've seen a lot of things and I've encountered many strange people. But this experience may have been one of the most frightening and unsettling encounters of my life. This happened in the late summer dark of 2021. It was mid September, so the school year had just started. I was a senior in college and my group of friends and I decided we wanted to go camping. Not overnight camping. We just wanted to go out in the warm night and sit around a fire in the woods, make s', mores, chill and maybe have some drinks. One of my friends, who was a girl, Landry, had come up with the

[Narrator]

idea to do this after classes were

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

over that Friday, Landry brought some of her friends, Gracie and Lily. I asked my two roommates, Wyatt and Marshall, if they wanted to come. They both agreed. So there were six of us in total. Three girls and three boys. We were all just college friends having a good old time. We had all been out there for maybe 30 minutes when I heard footsteps in the woods. As soon as I heard the footsteps, everyone else must have heard them too. All of the talking around the campfire turned to silence. I think the reason it startled everyone was because of two reasons. One, because the footsteps were heavy and it was unmistakably something much larger than a small game animal like a squirrel or a rabbit. And two, because it was clearly not a deer or another four legged animal. Two, because of the frequency of the footsteps. The footsteps were hitting the leaves one at a time.

[Narrator]

If it was a deer, there would

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

be simultaneous thuds on the ground indicating a creature with four legs. Given the way the leaves were crunching one step at a time, it couldn't be anything but something large that was traveling on two legs. Suddenly, there was a thud on the ground about 30 yards away from us, as if whatever was moving through the woods had fallen. The footsteps had now stopped. We knew whatever it was had to still be in the woods near us, just stagnant. Needless to say, we all had our guard up now. The strong, unsettling feeling of being watched soon got the best of us.

[Narrator]

So we all agreed to just take

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

our things and quickly leave. As soon as we all started to get up, we heard a voice from the woods in that same direction yell in a creepy, friendly tone. It was a man's voice, and he said something along the lines of, hey,

[Narrator]

where are you guys going?

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

The girls immediately started running back to the truck without getting their stuff, which was maybe 100 yards away. I wasn't really scared, but I definitely knew something wasn't right. Wyatt was obviously flustered, but he was trying to hide it. He grabbed his stuff and started to walk back without saying a word. Meanwhile, Marshall called back to whoever was in the woods. He said something along the lines of,

[Narrator]

what do you mean?

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

Or something stupid like that. We were the only two people still within earshot of the man in the woods. Now Marshall was toying with danger, and we both knew it. The man replied with something along the lines of, I'm stuck in the woods and I need help. Marshall was kind of being a jerk and said something like, how could you be stuck in the woods? Did you get caught in a bear trap. After there was no answer, Marshall said that he had got him. Marshall and I grabbed the girl's stuff and started toward the truck. I remember walking back thinking that Marshall is an idiot for doing that. As Marshall and I were approaching the truck, I looked at my phone and had some missed calls from Landry. I found out why as soon as we got back in the truck. When Wyatt and the girls simultaneously started trying to tell me and Marshall about how they saw multiple tall silhouettes walking near the tree line and the moonlight, they explained how the shadow outlines were walking in the direction of where we had set up camp. We obviously didn't think they were lying. After the exchange Marshall just had with the guy in the woods immediately following, we promptly booked it out of that place. In retrospect, it could have been some guys just playing games out in the woods, but more realistically, it was probably some sort of gang or cult or something like that. I'm just glad we were so lucky to get out of there when we did. Or who knows what could have happened.

[Narrator]

In 2004, in the sleepy Chicago suburb of Aurora, Illinois, Amy Pittson would give birth to her firstborn son. After some deliberation, she and her husband, James, would name the boy Timothy.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

The first six years of the boy's

[Narrator]

life were happy and uneventful, and we

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

have every reason to believe that he

[Narrator]

was loved and well looked after by his two young parents. He had an extensive collection of relatives that he visited regularly who cared for the boy just as much as his own parents did. But Timothy and his family were headed towards a tragedy that would confound and puzzle all that became familiar with it, a mystery that would remain unsolved even to this day. On the morning of May 11, 2011, James Pittson woke up, made breakfast for himself and his son, and then drove the boy to his kindergarten class over at Greenman Elementary School on West Galena Boulevard before he headed to work. But for some reason, a short while later, just after 8am Amy Pittson arrived at the school, telling a member of the teaching staff that there was a family emergency and that she needed to take Timothy out of school for the day. Timothy's kindergarten teacher naturally obliged his mother, letting the young boy out of class to accompany her wherever she was headed,

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

after wishing her the best with whatever

[Narrator]

emergency she was dealing with. However, instead of dealing with this apparent family emergency, Amy Pitson's whereabouts are unknown until around 10am that same morning when she arrived at a vehicle repair shop in Aurora. A friendly Employee of the shop then drove Pittson and her son over to the nearby Brookfield Zoo, where the pair then spent the remainder of the morning and the early afternoon relaxing and exploring the various animal exhibits that were on display there. At around 3pm, Amy and her son

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

arrived back at the vehicle repair shop

[Narrator]

collecting her car before driving over to the Key Lime Cove Resort in the small town of Gurney, over in Lake county, which is known for its large water park as well as being a subsidiary of Six Flags. After taking Timothy around the water park, Amy and her son spent the night at the resort, leaving early the next morning before driving over state lines to Wisconsin. Here they checked into Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin dells at around 10am, both being recorded on CCTV cameras. But since then, neither hide nor hair of Timothy Pittson has been seen anywhere. For all intents and purposes, the young man had vanished into thin air. Around lunchtime the following day on May 13, Amy Pitson made a series of phone calls to some of her relatives, including her brother in law and her mother. She assured them that they were not to worry, how she and Timothy were both safe, safe and well, and that neither of them were in any danger. These relatives would later confirm that Timothy was indeed present with his mother at the time of these calls, since he could be heard in the background complaining that he was hungry. In the investigation that followed, cell phone records showed that the calls were made from an area close to Sterling in Vernon County, Wisconsin, and that the pair were apparently on the move again via Route 40. Yet contrary to what one might expect, Amy Pittson did not contact her husband, the one person you might assume she would call to inform of her and her son's whereabouts. James had been frantic with worry ever since the evening of May 11, when he had returned home to find the house empty and had subsequently heard the news that his wife had taken Timothy out of school. On the evening of May 13, Amy Pittson was recorded on the security cameras of a Winnebago family dollar store. She was alone when she purchased a notebook, some stationery and some envelopes. She was still all on her own when she was sighted at a branch of Sullivan's Food, also in Winnebago, Wisconsin, where she apparently visited the pharmacy counter before swiftly leaving. She was not spotted again until just past 11 that night, when she had apparently returned to Illinois, checking into a room at the Rockford Inn in the city of Rockford. The following day, in the early afternoon of May 14, a member of the housekeeping staff at the inn visited the room that Amy Pittson was staying in with the intention of cleaning the room. There was no do not disturb sign present on the door handle, and when the housekeeper knocked, there was no reply from inside the room. So, against her better judgment, she unlocked the room and walked inside. There, to her absolute horror, she found Amy Pitson lying face up on the sheets that were soaked with blood. Pitson had taken an overdose of powerful antihistamines before slashing her own wrists. She had also apparently left a note on a nearby dresser stating that she was well and truly sorry for the mess she had caused, but that Timothy would never be found. However, the note was quick to reassure those that read it that Timothy was, in fact, safe with people who would

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

care for him, but that it would

[Narrator]

be pointless to look for him, since his new guardians had hidden him away and would never give him up. After being called, police quickly arrived on the scene to shut off the hotel room for forensic examination. They located the knife that Amy Pittson used, and a close inspection of her car found traces of what appeared to be an alarming amount of her son's blood. Yet upon analysis, only Amy's blood was to be found on the knife at the scene. To the relief of investigators, close relatives of the Pittsons revealed that in the run up to Timothy's disappearance, He had suffered a rather large nosebleed in the car, and this was why so many trace particles could be found inside the vehicle. Amy Pittson's cell phone was nowhere to be found at the scene of her death, but it was later found in a grassy verge on the edge of Route 78, evidently tossed out of the window of her moving vehicle as she returned to Illinois. But analysis of her cell phone records shed no further light on what she had done, nor why she had done it. And there were no clues regarding her son's whereabouts to be found. Furthermore, the analysis of Amy's vehicle revealed that at some point, she had been parked in a grassy area. There were traces of clay embedded in the vehicle's tires, which investigators surmised had come from a place with a stream or a river nearby. Thus, it was highly possible that Amy had driven into a rural area, possibly off the road, in order to hand Timothy over to his new keepers. Pittson has since made it abundantly clear that he believed that his son is still very much alive. And In August of 2018, the since canceled law enforcement TV show Live PD showed their viewers some digitally generated age progression images showing what Timothy might look like at age 13. The guest on that episode of the show was Angeline Hartman of the national center for Missing and Exploited Children, who urged members of the public to come forward with any and all information that might help police locate Timothy. But none of the calls that were made as a result came came to anything at all. However, less than a year later, calls were made to police in Northern Kentucky that brought a phenomenal amount of hope to those who wished for Timothy's return, but also revealed an unfathomable mystery and an unimaginable evil. On 3rd April 2019, citizens in the city of Newport called local police to inform them that a teenage boy was wandering in nearby streets, apparently in a daze after having run across a bridge on the Ohio River. Police soon located the young man, who was shaken, distraught and exhausted, and who

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

required a great deal of consoling before

[Narrator]

he could even bring himself to speak. Police asked the teenager for his name and his reply shook them to their core. Timothy, he stammered. T Timothy Pittson.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

The boy was rushed to Louisville, Kentucky's

[Narrator]

largest city, where he was interviewed by detectives regarding his apparent disappearance eight years previously. He said he couldn't remember a thing, that the most he could recall was escaping a house in neighboring Ohio before running across the river bridge. But DNA tests would reveal something that was devastatingly disappointing to James Pitson, who was indescribably overjoyed at the sudden breakthrough in the case. The boy was not Timothy Pitson. The entire story was an intricate lie fabricated by then 23 year old Brian Michael Reaney. Reaney has been released from Belmont Correctional Institution in Ohio just shy of a month. Prior to his terrible claims, he had served just 14 months on charges of burglary and vandalism resulting from acts committed in Medina County.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

Sgt.

[Narrator]

Bill Rowley, spokesman for Aurora police, later released a statement saying, although we are disappointed that this turned out to be a hoax, we remain diligent in our search for Timothy as our missing persons case remains unsolved. One cannot possibly imagine what would have possessed Brian Michael Reni to tell such a heinous and evil lie. It is possible that he had seen an episode of Live PD or somehow heard of Timothy's disappearance whilst incarcerated and wished to hit back at a world that he viewed with what must be a remarkable degree of contempt. But either way, Timothy Pittson remains missing to this day and there have been no sightings of the boy since the day he suddenly disappeared at the hands of his mother. However, no bodies have been found, not even a drop of blood that wasn't easily explainable. So it is entirely possible that he is still out there somewhere in the United States. He just waiting to be found.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

When I was in college I worked the night shift one summer vacation. I was 19 years old and an average looking female. I wasn't enthused about having to work a job over the summer, but it was the only way I was going to be able to the Colonels cooked

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[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

variable Supplies Last amount available on snacks

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[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

Chosen Foods or Tuition Working Night shift was probably the weirdest experience of my life. It was at the McDonald's drive thru. I still remember my first first night on the job. This lady came in and was talking to someone while she was waiting for us to take her order. She sounded extremely upset and she was screaming at the top of her lungs. It sounded like it was directed at someone in the backseat. I immediately assumed that she was abusing her children. I'm a psychology major so I naturally pick up on stuff like that. She ordered three Big Macs and three large Cokes. My intuition has been wrong. When she pulled up to pay for her meal she was completely alone. I was honestly a little startled. Why would this lady be here ordering this much food and screaming in her car if she was alone? I couldn't wrap my head around the situation. She was otherwise polite. She was nice as she spoke to me and paid for her food and left. She even told me to have a good night. She had been the only customer we had in a probably 45 minute window and after she left I saw some of my co workers laughing at me. I asked what's so funny? And he told me that it was my first encounter with Schizo Susan. They told me that she regularly did stuff like this and always showed up at all hours of the night to order seemingly too much food. She was always yelling at people in her car but there was never anyone actually in her car. They didn't actually know her name, so they just started calling her Schizo Susan. They told me that there were occasional nights when she was the only customer to come through the drive thru at all. I found it extremely unnerving. I immediately started wondering what was wrong with this woman. About a week went by. She came in every night just like they said. And in between speaking to me to order her food and picking up her food, she was always yelling at someone. I couldn't take it anymore. I had to know what was up. So I formulated a plan. I was just going to ask her who she was speaking to. You know, play it off like I thought she was talking to me. It was the best I could come up with without seeming abrasive. I remember it being a Friday night when I decided I was going to do it. I had chickened out a couple of times, but I figured that since I don't work the weekends, may as well try something new to end my last

[Narrator]

shift for the week.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

Well, the night that I did it, I listened in to her screaming for a few more seconds than I normally did. You see, I can listen to what people are saying through the McDonald's speaker without them necessarily knowing that I'm listening. If I don't say anything, they would never know. I normally never did this because it's kind of frowned upon. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of rule against it. But I listened for maybe 20 or 30 seconds. I listened for long enough to know that she was yelling at someone named Darian. When she was in the middle of saying something, I interrupted her and said, I'm sorry, ma', am, were you speaking to me? She just replied, no. Crap, I thought to myself. I knew that I had to try something else. I asked her if Darian would be ordering with her. Then she went silent. It wasn't an entire minute, but she didn't say anything. After the second time of asking her if she was still there, she let out a banshee scream. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life. It really hurt my ears. The McDonald's microphone system is already pretty loud, but when someone screams into it, trust me when I say that it is the most unbearable thing you have ever experienced. I was also surprised at how long she screamed. She had one deep, loud, guttural scream going for like 30 entire seconds. In the moment, though, I was scared for my life. I also got really worried that I was going to lose my job. I felt really guilty for asking, like it was my fault. For setting her off. In retrospect, I don't think I really did anything horrible to her. Literally just asked her if the person whose name she was screaming just a minute ago was also going to be ordering food. She didn't actually say anything. When she screamed. It was just kind of a violent and guttural screaming. I was really taken aback there for a minute. How the heck do you even respond to that? I asked her her if she wanted to continue placing her order and that's when she just drove away. She really floored it and drove way faster than she should have. And as she drove by, I saw her face looking at me through the window. It must have been only a split second that I could see her, but I got that one really good look at her. She looked extremely distressed. And as if things couldn't get any weirder, the microphone system stopped working correctly the rest of the night. I think she screamed loud enough to break something in it. That was hands down the weirdest thing to ever happen to me throughout any jobs I've ever worked. And this weird lady just disappeared. After that, she stopped coming to McDonald's altogether. I asked some of my other co workers how long she had been stopping by for her nightly visits and they

[Narrator]

all said that it was for as

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

long as they can remember, which probably meant at least a year. I felt somewhat guilty for pissing this lady off so bad, but I think

[Narrator]

it is safe to say she probably

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

needs some serious mental help. I haven't worked at McDonald's in a long time and I don't ever plan on working fast food again. I just hope that wherever that lady ended up, she got the help that she so desperately and obviously needed. During the mid19th century, the United States saw a sharp rise in the number of people who chose to leave their homes in the east to resettle in the California or the newly acquired Oregon territories. For many, a new life in California meant freedom from financial servitude or freedom to practice their own particular brand of Christianity without judgment from their peers back East. Others were attracted to the West's new and exciting economic opportunities or inspired by the idea of Manifest Destiny. But for one group of migrants, their pursuit of the American dream would quickly turn into a nightmare. One characterized by isolated mountain passes, freezing cold, and stomach twisting hunger. In the spring of 1842, a wagon train that was almost 500 strong headed out from Independence, Missouri, seeking to follow an established trail that would lead them to the promised land of California. Taking their place at the rear of the wagon train was a group of nine wagons containing 32 members of the Reed and Donner families. The family patriarch, George Donner, had spent time in a number of eastern states before finally making the decision to move his family west. At first, heavy traffic on the trails leading eastward as well as the large number of other travelers meant that the journey is relatively easy. Traveling in the summer months could be hot and tiresome, but it paled in comparison with how difficult navigation during the winter would be. It was essential that the wagon train make as much ground as possible while it was still possible, for winter was coming and it would not be merciful. By the end of September 1842, an attempt at a shortcut had gone terribly wrong for the Donner Reed families seeking to overtake the Sierra Nevada mountains before the winter arrived, they had successfully traversed the Great Salt Lake desert. But complications meant that they had in fact slowed themselves down by about a month. Lack of water in the harsh dry desert had driven the party to near madness and caused casualties. Among its essential accompaniment of oxen and other cattle. Tensions among the party members were reaching breaking points. In the following month of October, many of wagons that made up the original party had gone their separate ways, either pushing on towards California or making their way back eastward. In the group that remained, two wagons became entangled and a man by the name of John Snyder attempted to remedy the situation. He lacked patience and soon began mercilessly whipping one of the oxen. Soon James Reed, the oldest and most senior member of the Reed family, attempted to intervene to stop the beating. But Snyder reacted furiously to the intervention and turned the whip in his hand towards Reed. A physical altercation ensued, one that was only ended when James Reed took out a long steel bowie knife and plunged it into Snyder's chest. Despite Reed's explanation of self defense, the party members convened to decide his punishment. United States laws were not applicable west of the Continental divide in what was then Mexican territory, and wagon trains often dispensed their own justice. Some suggested that Reid should hang for his crimes, but it was eventually decided that he should merely be banished from the wagon train, but on pain of death, should he attempt to return. What was once a happy adventure into the west had become a vicious fight for survival. Grass was becoming scarce and the animals were steadily weakening. To relieve the animals load, everyone was expected to walk. The trials that the Donner party had so far endured resulted in splintered groups, each looking out for themselves and distrustful of the others. In one incident of abject cruelty, an elderly man was ejected from the wagon he was reliant on for transport, being told that he had to walk or die. A few days later, the elderly man sat next to a stream, his feet so swollen they had split open. Some members of the party begged the others to wait for him, to show mercy to the party's weakest members. But the others refused, thinking only of themselves. The old man was not seen again in the following weeks. Attacks from the local Paiute Indian tribe were responsible for the party losing almost 40 of their cattle. This is extremely shocking for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Paiute tribe had first appeared friendly to the migrants, sharing supplies with them and even directing them onto trails that would take them westward. But at some point, the relationship had soured, and the people, known for their respect and reverence of the natural world, appeared to have no problem slaughtering the wagon train's animal accompaniment in an attempt to slow down or even stop the party dead in their tracks. With nearly all the cattle gone, one particular party member stopped to bury his wagon for safekeeping. Two of his number stayed with him to help, but they returned without him, reporting they had been attacked by Paiutes, murdered and scalped. By the end of October, the party was forced to make camp around Truckee Lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. Three widely separated cabins of pine logs served as their homes, with dirt flood floors and poorly constructed flat roofs that leaked when it rained. Of the 60 at Truckee Lake, 19 were men over 18 years old, 12 were women, and 29 were children, 6 of whom were toddlers or younger. Very little food remained in their supplies, and the oxen began to die. Their carcasses were frozen and stacked. Truckee Lake was not yet iced over, but the pioneers were unfamiliar with catching lake trout. The most experienced hunter among them killed a bear, but had little luck after that. Margaret Reed promised to pay double when they got to California for the use of three oxen from other families. She was charged $25, normally the cost of two healthy oxen for the carcass of a single ox that had starved to death. The mood in the camp was beyond tense. People were only looking out for themselves by this point. But an incoming blizzard would be the straw that broke the mule's back. During the height of the snowstorm, a man named Patrick Dolan began to rant deliriously, stripped off his clothes and ran into the woods. He returned shortly afterwards and died a few hours later. Not long after, some of the group began to eat flesh from Dolan's body. The next morning, the group stripped the muscle and organs from Dolan's body, then dried them to store for the days ahead, taking care to ensure nobody would have to eat his or her relatives. As the days went by, more and more of the party succumbed to their desperate hunger and made the decision to consume human flesh. Some were determined to continue hunting and fishing, only turning to cannibalism when there was no other option. But it appeared some preferred the taste of human flesh and eschewed the long and tiring hunting trips in favor of consuming those who died of disease and malnutrition. At one point, a scouting party looking for the most efficient way ahead came across two Miwok Indians named Luis and Salvador. They had once been party members but had attempted to move on when the supplies had run low. At the time they were discovered, they had not eaten anything for nine whole days and were dangerously undernourished and weakened as a result. However, instead of attempting to rescue and save the lives of their Indian friends, one of the scouting party simply shot them there and then before carving off chunks of their flesh with a hunting knife. On January 12, the group stumbled into a Miwok camp, looking so deteriorated that the camp's inhabitants initially fled, fearing them to be the spirits of undead souls who wandered the snow capped mountain range. Once it was clear that they were in fact the survivors of a disastrous expedition, the Miwoks gave them what they had to eat. Acorns, grass and pine nuts, completely unaware that the group had murdered and eaten two starving members of their tribe. They were shaken, starving, and had arguably sold their souls to stay alive. But they were safe now. Relatively safe anyway. Reporting on the event across the US Was heavily influenced by the national enthusiasm for westward migration. In some papers, news of the tragedy was buried in small paragraphs. Despite the contemporary tendency to sensationalize stories, several newspapers, including those in California, wrote about the cannibalism in graphic, exaggerated detail. In some print accounts, the members of the Donner Party were depicted as heroes and California a paradise worthy of significant sacrifices. But it seems that sacrificing one's family and friends, as well as losing one's humanity through consuming human flesh, might not be worth any prize, no matter how great. Most people don't even believe me when I tell them, but I have a job where I work from home. People in my area mostly work with cars or in the medical industry. There aren't many jobs where I live. Thankfully, I was able to land a decent paying job that let me work from my home office. It definitely comes with its struggles, but it is hands down the best job opportunity available to me right now. It isn't always perfect. It definitely comes with its pitfalls. Sometimes you have to sit at your computer even when there isn't any work to be done. It's also very easy to get distracted. But I think my biggest problem has to do with the house itself. It's kind of creepy. The house itself is an old Victorian, like really old. We're talking mid-1800s. A family friend owns the house and sold it to me for a very fair price, basically gave it to me. I was super excited because it meant I got a nice big house to live in by myself, along with my girlfriend. I'm a natural loner and don't really care for social interaction. So I had a nice big house all to myself and girlfriend and a job where I worked from home with very minimal social interaction with other people. That was basically my ideal life. But the house's age meant that it was going to be scary at times. And I don't mean with ghosts or anything like that. But sometimes I hear the house settling or making noises that I can't explain. I've actually had quite a few instances where I'll be sitting down and doing some work, and then out of nowhere, I hear a noise that I just can't rationalize. I go exploring throughout the house only to find that nothing has changed. It's as ominous as it is frustrating. I did what just about anyone else in the world would do. I started to use background noise to drown out the disturbances. First I tried those quiet instrumentals on YouTube. You know, the ones that last five hours and they're supposed to put you at ease or something. It didn't really work for me because I couldn't get my computer to be loud enough to drown out all the noises. It was also not very good at keeping my attention. There was one week where my work was really slow and there wasn't a whole lot to do. I still had to sit at my computer, though. There was an understanding that I was allowed to basically do anything I wanted as long as I was available to my co workers if something came through that needed to be done. I didn't quite know what to do with this time and just started watching documentaries on YouTube. It actually was pretty fun. I learned a lot. So that next week when things started picking up again, I just instinctively turned on a documentary. I wouldn't be able to have all my focus on it, but it was a lot better than having some ambient noise. It actually helped distract me from the sounds of the house. I guess I just didn't have enough mental focus energy to notice any of the other sounds going on around me, if that makes any sense.

[Commercial Announcer 1]

Sense?

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

Well, it had been about two weeks of me watching documentaries while I worked. Everything seemed to be good until one Friday morning. I start work at 8 and this must have happened around 10. I was sitting at my office chair working while I listened to a documentary about a 911 conspiracy theory, when all of a sudden I heard an abrupt banging noise coming from upstairs. Like I had said, I hadn't been distracted by any noises for a while by this point. So the fact that I noticed this noise meant that it was probably serious. My fight or flight kicked in. You might laugh at me, but when I work, I keep a knife next to me. I ran upstairs with the knife and looked around for any suspicious noises. The banging had stopped and I didn't know where it had come from. I knew what section of the house that I heard it from, but there didn't seem to be anything out of place. I stood there for a few moments and then I heard it again. It happened right on the other side of my door. I immediately braced myself for there to be some kind of animal or something trying to get in. I didn't really know what to expect. I opened my door to see that the screen door had not been properly closed. My girlfriend didn't close it all the way when she left for work that morning. It was also pretty windy that day, so it was just going back and forth, causing a banging noise when the wind got bad. This was kind of a breaking point for me. I didn't want to live my life in constant paranoia and fear of some kind of attacker coming into my home. We live in a safe area. There's never been a serious threat, and I have run around my house with a knife way too many times now. I honestly felt kind of stupid. So I made a decision. I was no longer going to assume that someone was breaking in if and when I ever heard a sound. I put the knife in my dresser in my bedroom and decided that I was just going to be into work while I was working. Except for my documentary, of course. So there I was the next week. It happened on a Wednesday. I was sitting in my office doing exactly what I had set out to do. I was working, ignoring the noises and listening to a documentary. I remember the exact part of the documentary I was on when I heard it. The sound was the loudest sound I had heard in the house up to that point. At first I reassured myself that it was nothing and that I need to fight against this paranoia. The sound continued and I couldn't take my mind off it. After about five minutes of listening to what sounded like rummaging and walking, I went upstairs to check. Bear in mind, I didn't have any weapon on me and I was expecting some kind of reasonable explanation. When I got to my kitchen, I saw that the front door was wide open. The cab.

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[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

It's we're open. And there was a strange man rummaging through them. I didn't notice until after the fact, but he had been eating something. I remember screaming at him. I don't remember what I said, but it was something to the effect of. What are you doing in my house? Then he just ran off. Didn't say a word. He took a loaf of bread with him, but I don't think he took anything else other than what he had eaten Before I came upstairs. I reasoned with myself that he must have been a homeless man or something. I don't know why else you would steal a loaf of bread from a very ordinary looking house. This was the worst thing that could have happened. On some instinctive level, it had proved all my worst fears right. There was some kind of danger in my house. And of course it was the one time when I didn't have my knife on me. I lucked out that he didn't try to hurt me or anything. But it was still horrifying to see nonetheless. I just work at a local coffee shop now. It's the only way to stay sane. Back when I was much younger, my friends and I were into urban exploring before it was even really a thing. We grew up in a pretty rough area with a lot of old apartment buildings that had to be abandoned and eventually demolished due to asbestos. That stuff made them basically fireproof. But where fire and smoke will kill you quick, asbestos will kill you slow. But try explaining that to a bunch of teenagers actively looking for somewhere to hide from grown ups. So they could do some distinctively grown up things. Where other people saw a decrepit, dusty crap hole, we saw our own little corner of paradise, A home away from home. Or maybe home is too strong a

[Narrator]

word, but you get the idea.

[Co-Narrator / Interviewee]

Anyway, there was one particular estate that was almost completely bereft of inhabitants, having been gradually relocated by the city council until there must have been no more than two or three families left over. It was like an actual ghost town. Even the local corner shop had its shutters permanently down with a For sale sign quickly following its indefinite closure. But like I said, that kind of place was our bread and butter. So when they moved out, we moved in. There was this one set of high rise flats that means apartments to you North Americans that we used to visit on the regular. The heating and other utilities had been switched off for a while and this was in the middle of winter, so we used to stash cans of cider in the old cupboards and they'd basically act like walk in fridges. It got to the point that we ended up occupying one of the flats, bringing over an old nylon string guitar and other amenities, so the place felt a bit more homey. So this one night, just after Christmas, about five of us pile into the old place to get drunk and have a sing song. I remember that we were halfway through Bowie's man who Sold the World when the off key twang of a string breaking had us all groaning with disappointment. What's more, it was the G string. Anyone who knows anything about playing a guitar will tell you break a top or bottom string and it's not the end of the world. But break your G string and nothing quite sounds the same. So there we were, basically condemned to a silent disco for the night. But it didn't dampen our spirits entirely, so we committed to staying for a few hours to at least make the most of the evening. We are all just sitting around chatting bollocks and bumming smokes off each other when one of us loudly hushes the rest of us before holding a single finger in the air as if to say listen. There is a brief silence, and I do mean silence. No one heard a thing, so the lad who had shushed everyone just put it down to him hearing things. The mood softens again quickly and we're back to drinking and hanging out. Only a little while later, the same lad does the same hushing thing. He's not alone this time though. Another one of us swore that he too had heard something, a scratching or shuffling noise coming from the dark corridor outside the flat. If you have one lad with an attack of paranoia, it's easy to forget. If you have two lads hear the same bloody thing, you start to take things a bit more serious. One of us pokes their head out of the flat, shining the light off of his phone's screen into the darkness, before turning back to tell us there was nothing there. These flats were halfway falling down. It was perfectly reasonable to expect them to creak and croak a fair bit. But the two guys who had heard the noises remained anxious, shooting each other nervous looks in between scanning the flat's open doorway for movement. Cut to a few hours later and it's coming up to midnight. Energy levels are dipping severely, and so are the noise levels. This meant the atmospherics were perfectly attuned for us to perfectly hear the creaking of a floorboard just above our heads. This wasn't just the rundown condition of the building either. It was painfully obvious that the slow and deliberate creak came from a footfall on the floor above us. Don't ask me how we knew that. Sometimes your gut just tells you everything you need to know about a certain sound or a shape in the darkness. That's how the human race has survived for so long and so successfully. There really is such a thing as a sixth sense. As soon as we hear that creak, we all freeze. I mean, proper statue, still barely even breathing, with all eyes glued to the ceiling, we start asking each other what that was. But we all knew someone or something was up there. And it had been the entire time, I should add. At this point, we had managed to compile a little collective of wooden sticks, iron bars and other such debris that we told ourselves were our weapons stash. It was all just a bit of a joke, to be honest. They were purely totemic value. But in the moments that followed that horrible bloody creak, I thanked that what was holy that we had had the foresight to collect them. Each of us grabbed something to defend ourselves with before falling silent again, listening out for any other creaking sounds above us. We weren't left waiting long. Another creak, then another. Each one getting closer and closer to where the front entrance to the upstairs flat would be. We couldn't help but see sit there terrified, listening as whatever was up there got closer and closer to us. When the footsteps stopped, one of us plucked up the courage to creep towards the open front door to the flat and stick their head out. The next thing I know, we're just pouring down the stairs of the apartment block. With the lad who scouted the stairs out, shouting how there's someone up there. We were scared, maybe a little over paranoid. But over the next few days we started to question if we'd even seen what we thought we had. I remember seeing the shape of something on the stairs above us, but I wasn't 100% sure it was a man and neither was anyone else if we were honest with ourselves. In the end I had convinced myself that we had imagined the whole thing and decided to run a little experiment. I left a loaf of bread in the lobby of the apartment block, intending to prove that there was no one living there when the loaf was still there growing mold a few days later. But when I went back it was gone. Years later we watched the council demolish those flats as wrecking balls smashed into the brickwork and plastic window frames. We mourned our old hideaway, yes, but mostly we wondered if whoever was in there would be buried in the rubble. This time of year nothing pairs better with too much food and alcohol then grim macabre tales of murder and mayhem. This particularly ghastly tale takes place on Christmas Day 1929 on a farm outside Germanton, North Carolina. Charlie Lawson's big Christmas surprise for his adoring family of nine began with a trip into town. Sparing no expense, Charlie Lawson agreed to buy each and every member of his family an outfit for their choice before taking them over to a local photographer and having a family portrait taken. Quite a costly affair for a modest tobacco farmer. Just over a week later it would be Christmas Day 1929. One might get the impression that Charlie was a good father who tried to bring his family the best Christmas possible, even on his meager income. But you would be wrong. On the day itself, 17 year old Marie Lawson had been busy in the kitchen preparing a fruitcake for after dinner that evening, while the younger sisters, 12 year old Carrie and the 7 year old Mabel, wandered over to their aunt and uncle's house to celebrate the holidays and relieve some of the pressure on Charlie and his wife. Fanny Lawson, Charlie's spouse of 17 years had been tending to her and Charlie's younger children while Charlie and his oldest son, 16 year old Arthur, nicknamed Buck, had planned a very special Christmas Day hunting trip, something of a year tradition for the pair. As Charlie and Arthur prepared to set out on their holiday hunting trip, they soon realized that they needed more shotgun shells if they were to have a successful hunt. Charlie sent Arthur up to the store to pick up some more ammo while he waited patiently in the Tobacco barn. But when Charlie saw Carrie and Mabel walking down the path on their way back from their aunt and uncle's home, he shouldered his shotgun aimed in the direction of his young children and pulled the trigger. There is simply no telling of the absolute terror and confusion experienced by those poor girls. Charlie then set off towards the family home, his trusty weapon firmly in his grip. Fanny, who had been out on the front porch to investigate the gunfire, attempted to flee, but it was no good. There was no outrunning the blast. Hearing the gunshots from outside, the teenage Marie screamed bloody murder. Trapped in a state of abject panic as her father racked the weapon and gunned her down in the kitchen. The youngest children heard the commotion and, fearing for their own lives, attempted to hide. Charlie quickly found them and brutally bludgeoned them to death with the butt of his weapon. Then, for some unknown reason, he then placed rocks under the heads of his dead wife and children and wandered off into the woods as if in a daze. Concerned neighbors of the Lawsons initially walked over to wish them a merry Christmas, heard the gunshots, and hurried to check on them. Instead of the festive merriment they had come to expect, they stumbled onto a grisly tableau of blood, buckshot and shattered bone. Before they could set out to find Charlie, they had heard a single gunshot out in the woods. Charlie had taken his own life. By the time Arthur made it back from his trip into town, his entire family had been murdered. Folks at the town's general store had gotten word that something awful had happened, and someone in the town offered to give Arthur a ride back to the family farm. When he reached his home, the police had already arrived and a crowd began to gather in the woods. Police found footprints indicating that Charlie had been pacing around a tree for some time before taking his life. Next to his body were letters to both his parents. Some accounts reported that Charlie had placed stones over the eyes of his dead family members, as well as cushioning their heads with them. To this very day, no one is certain what exactly drove Charlie Lawson to slaughter his entire family, with the exception of young Arthur, before taking his life. Some speculate that Lawson had been abusing Marie and that she may well have been pregnant with an inbred child at the time of her death. Others have insisted that Charlie could not have had the capacity to commit the heinous acts that occurred on the family farm that Christmas Day, and that the entire thing had been staged to frame Charlie. A more credible explanation is that Charlie had developed a medical condition that affected his actions and caused him to experience a psychotic break. Perhaps he had knocked his screw loose after suffering a head injury while digging a ditch on the farm. Or, as some reported, he had some kind of painful growth on his chest that had him in constant agony, and he had decided to end it all and take his family with him. The killing attracted so much attention that an estimated 5,000 curiosity seekers attended the Lawson family funeral. They were all buried in a single large plot in the private Browder family cemetery just outside of Germanton. The house became a macabre tourist attraction after the incident, and Charlie's brother decided to open the house to the public, charging admission for tours of the property. Still on the counter sat the cake that Marie had been making. Even after the house had been closed, the cake made its rounds in traveling dime museums. Protective plastic had to be used to cover the cake. After several onlookers swiped some raisins, the cake toured for at least a decade before surviving family members buried the cake along with the awful memories that came with it. Though the home was later demolished, the area still has enough spooky history to have inspired ghost sightings of the doomed Lawson children and the murderous Charlie Lawson. Unbelievably, the tragedy of the Lawson family didn't end in 1929. In 1945, James Arthur Lawson, the only child to survive the Christmas Day bloodshed, died at the age of 31 in a truck accident in Walnut Cove, North Carolina, quite near Germanton. He was buried in the same cemetery as the rest of his family, leaving behind four children of his own. When news of Arthur's death reached the local community, rumors of a family curse abounded. They insisted that Charlie had reached out to claim his son from beyond the grave. The murders also inspired the famed bluegrass duo the Stanley Brothers to pen a suitably morbid tune recounting the Lawson family fate. The song includes the following they say he killed his wife at first while the little ones did cry Please, Papa, won't you spare our lives it is so hard to die.