← Southern Cannibal's Scary Stories
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
The best dancers from across the globe are about to join me for the audition of a lifetime. ABC Mondays do they have what it takes to compete and be the next Dancing with the Stars pro? I'm here to win. Nothing is gonna stop me. Our star judges will decide. This is what hunger looks like. It was 100% a wrong choice. Robert Irwin hosts. The next era of ballroom starts right here on Dancing with the Stars. The next Pro. All new Mondays, 8. 7 Central on ABC. Next day on Hulu. Hi everyone. Some of these stories are extra dark and disturbing. Please look at the pinned comment if you want to skip over any of them. I'll have the stories labeled in the timestamps without any more interruptions. Let's continue. I live in a pretty big apartment complex with multiple towers and four apartments on each floor. We live on the 12th floor, so random people wandering around up here at 1am isn't exactly normal. I was home alone one night just playing games in my room. My younger brother was at a sleepover and my parents were coming back from out of town. Later that night, well, around 1:00am I heard scratching near the front door. I didn't think too much of it because sometimes stray dogs somehow end up roaming around the buildings all the time. Then I heard the doorknob jiggle. I walked over and banged on the door hard, expecting to scare some dog away. Everything immediately went silent. I looked through the peephole and froze. There was a barefoot man standing outside my door in an old dirty tracksuit. He was a few steps back, almost like he jumped. When I hit the door, he was staring at it with his eyes just wide open. We stayed like that for what felt like five or maybe 10 seconds. Then he slowly started walking toward my door again. I slammed my fist against the door a second time, even harder. The guy immediately turned around and then sprinted down the stairs. I called security, but nobody picked up. Of course, a couple of hours later when my parents got home, I called again and I asked if anyone matching the description had been seen around the complex. Nope. The thing that still bothers me is that our complex has really high walls around it and a single gated entrance. I still have no idea how that guy got into the building or if he ever actually left. I'm a female and I live alone. I live at the end of a townhouse complex tucked away at the end of the driveway, and instead of a garage, I have a large open carport. My NBN for Internet in Australia, where you connect the ethernet cable from your router is right Outside on the brick wall in the carport. On the other side of that wall is my bedroom, more importantly, my bed. A few nights ago at 3:30am, I woke up to a weird sound on the other side of the wall. I went and looked and I saw a strange man walking down the driveway. When I went into the carport, the light was on, the PowerPoint was turned off and the ethernet cable ripped out and the port was broken. He had taken the COVID off the NBN box and that's what woke me up. He was putting it back on. I'm pretty sure he was looking for a spare key so he could get into my house because this is a classic spare key hidey hole, and he quickly bailed when he realized there wasn't one. I will also mention this happened when my neighbor clearly wasn't home at the time. It's a shared carport and her car wasn't in there. Annoyingly, he also broke the ethernet port, leaving me with no Internet for days. I've never been so relieved that I don't have a spare key. The year was 1991 and I was six years old, living in Winnipeg. My family was already in the middle of an unthinkable nightmare. My 10 year old sister Robyn had just passed away. I was the only child left and the grief in our house was heavy and suffocating. I went over to my friend Holly's place just to get out of the house. Looking for any shred of normal childhood, we decided to do what we always ride our bikes around the block. It was a beautiful, quiet summer day. The kind of afternoon where you feel like nothing bad can happen. But on our third lap around the neighborhood, the atmosphere changed. We noticed a van. It was a beat up white freezer van, no windows in the back, just a solid rusted metal shell. As it pulled up beside us, it didn't just drive past, it slowed to a crawl and the engine had this horrible rhythmic rattle to it. A sound like metal grinding on metal. Being so young, we didn't immediately have that stranger danger alarm that goes off. We were mostly just confused. We actually slowed down and stopped our bikes to see what they wanted. And the van stopped right along with us, idling heavily. The passenger window was already rolled down, revealing a pitch black interior that seemed to swallow the sunlight. I looked at the passenger and the image just burned into my brain. He was gaunt, with yellow teeth and long, frizzy straggly hair that looked like it hadn't been washed in weeks. Then the world seemed to move in Slow motion. The passenger door swung open. The man put one heavy foot out into the pavement, shifting his weight as if he was about to lunge. At the same time, I heard the heavy, clunky thud of the side sliding door beginning to retract. The passenger didn't even look at us. He turned his head back into the darkness of the van and said seven words I will never forget. You grab one, I'll grab the other. He said it loud enough for me to hear it clearly, like he didn't even care that we were listening. Pure, cold adrenaline hit us. We didn't scream or cry. We just slammed our feet onto the pedals. We were only a few houses away, and I remember my heart hammering against my ribs so hard it hurt. We didn't even stop to kick our kickstands. We ditched the bikes rot on the grass in the driveway, and scrambled inside, slamming the front door and throwing the lock. Holly's mom was in the house and was immediately confused. Seeing us bursting, crying, and shaking, she assumed we had just fallen off our bikes and scraped our knees. We were gasping, trying to tell her a van was following us. But to her, the rattling engine she could hear outside just sounded like normal street noise. There was no reason for her to be afraid. That is, until she looked at us and saw the sheer terror in our eyes. She went to the front window, and her face went completely pale. She saw the van. She watched as it slowly, deliberately crept past the house, almost at a walking pace, with our bikes lying right there on the lawn. Like neon markers. They now knew exactly where we had gone. She stayed by that window, her hand on the lock telling us it was going to be okay. But she never took her eyes off the street until that rattling engine finally faded into the distance. When my mom came to pick me up later, she was already a shell of herself from the loss of my sister. Telling her that I had almost been taken, that she had almost lost her only remaining child in the same week. It devastated her. It was a second trauma piled up on top of a fresh wound. It's a weight that I still carry, realizing that if we had just been a few seconds slower, my mother's world would have been completely extinguished. Around two years ago, my friend Jenny decided to throw a party for her birthday. She had not celebrated her birthday in many years and was really excited to do so again. Something important to know about Jenny is that she was in active addiction at this time. It was all kinds of different drugs. I think it mostly depended on whatever she could get at that time, but it was bad. She's a lovely person and she's doing very well right now. But I think that her drug use was one of the reasons why this all went so wrong. Her friend circle consisted mostly of people she used with. She had a few good and close friends, but not a lot. A week before the party, I asked her how many people she had invited, and she said around 80. I laughed and I asked her why so many. She said, well, I also invited people that I don't really know well, but they're chill. This was already kind of a red flag for me. That night. I had another party before hers, so I was pretty decently tipsy. I knew that the other party would mostly be people that I did not know on hard drugs, which I had never done and had no experience with at the time. So I needed some liquid courage. I went with my friend Noah. She had rented a small venue to fit all the people. It was a pretty much abandoned lot on a very quiet street. There were almost no houses, only a few factories. The layout is pretty important to know. Basically you had the entrance with a tiny yard for people to smoke. Then you had to enter the building and go up the stairs to get to a living room, kitchen type area. And next to that was a small room with a dj. Everything was fine at the beginning. I did have a lot of fun. Around one, there was a small fight. I didn't witness it, but I was told immediately after. Apparently there were four guys who tried to get in, but only one of them was actually invited. They were told to leave by some of the guys, and when they didn't, there was a small fight. Nothing noteworthy, I thought. Then I asked Noah if he wanted to go out for a smoke. He said that he'd finish his conversation and then we could go together. A little while later, we walked out of the kitchen and towards the stairs, but there were like six people bundled up at the top of the stairs. Instinctively, I took a step back. I was just turning around to Noah with this. What the? Look. When we heard people screaming and glass shattering. All the people who were standing in front of us jumped back and so did we. There was more screaming and people stumbling on the stairs. I then saw Oliver, one of the few people I actually knew at the party, walking up the stairs, his head covered in blood. Another guy I knew by face with a bleeding nose, and my friend Jason grasping his shoulder, his girlfriend behind him. Earlier that evening, I stupidly and drunkenly fell on the cement with both knees, scraping them open. But because of that, I knew where the first aid kit was. I've never had any issues with blood. I can't handle other bodily fluids, but when someone is bleeding, I can help them no problem. I saw Oliver go into the kitchen, and I wanted to go after him to help him. Now, this is about to get kind of gross, but bear with me. I saw Oliver had something stuck in his forehead. Because I heard the glass shattering, I assumed it was glass, but when I got closer, I saw that it was a piece of his skull sticking out of his forehead. That was too much for me. Instantly sober, I promptly turned around and went into another room. He was surrounded by a lot of people, though. And 911 was called immediately. Turns out those guys who were rejected from the party came back with 30 other guys carrying bats and steel pipes. They just started hitting the first people they saw, and then they left just as quickly as they came. The whole attack lasted no more than about 30 seconds. I found my friend Jason still grasping his shoulder. He and his girlfriend were closest to the entrance of the property. So they were attacked first. Yes. These cowards did indeed even beat up women. They didn't care at all. Jason's shoulder was dislocated. Luckily, his girlfriend wasn't too wounded. Police and an ambulance arrived pretty quickly. Oliver was taken to the hospital and luckily made a full recovery after surgery. My friend Jenny was hysterical, both because of what happened and because of whatever was in her system. The cops were no help. At one point, they yelled at her because she was too upset to form a complete sentence. They left after a while, and so did most of the other people. Noah and I were still there. We tried to help wherever we could. I was still in shock and kind of numb. But what snapped me out of my daze was seeing people scrubbing the blood covering the staircase. There was nothing more I could do there, and more importantly, I wanted to go home. Noah went with me, and we stayed for a couple of hours talking and just processing everything. To think that if we had decided to go smoke even a minute sooner, or if Noah wasn't having that one conversation, we would have been in the middle of this all. It would also have been a very real possibility that these guys had guns or knives. We lived in a pretty rough area, and that's even more terrifying to think about. Hands down, the worst party I've ever been to. I'm leaving my name out of this for reasons that will become obvious. As a teenager, I was not a good person and ended up going down a very dark path. I grew up with an abusive father and an emotionally shattered mother who he beat and humiliated. My brother and I use the almost pointless defense mechanism of lashing out and accepting that the world is unfair. And we're both from Glasgow, Scotland. Also, I didn't know if this is needed, but the story will feature a kidnapping while restraint and an attempted sexual assault. So there's a trigger warning for anyone wanting to avoid that. I'm not using my upbringing to justify myself. I just hope this may shed some light on how I became a contemptible person. The story's main focus will be the event that finally gave me a rude awakening. After my dad died in 2012, my brother and I got a job through an old friend of my brother I'll call Robbie. He ran his own pub and we were hired as door security. However, this was just on paper. In reality, the pub was only a sort of cleaning spot for his money. What he really did was sell drugs and extortionate money. As I said, myself and my older brother both had a very dark, fatalistic view on the world and we saw this as survival. We would basically collect money from people who owed Robbie money. If they refused, we were expected to use our fists. For two young men who grew up in violence, this was almost nonchalant. Unfortunately for my brother, he dealt with this trauma in a far more dangerous way than myself. He became a drug addict and in 2015, unfortunately, overdosed. This made me feel genuinely alone and it only hardened me and it made me even more fatalistic. Now, while I've explained all this to give some context, I'll now talk about the event that I wanted to discuss. Long story short, due to years of basically doing what he asked without question, Robbie started giving me more dangerous tasks. Instead of beating and threatening debtors and rivals, I'd now be expected to actually break into someone's house and take their property as collateral if they owed money. I was expected to beat up other businesses in that field who he saw was a threat. One day, myself and another one of Robby's hired goons, because that's pretty much what I was. We'll call the other guy Donnie. We were given keys to one of Robbie's properties in a semi rural area up north of Scotland. We were told we'd be hiding someone so he could get money he was owed, basically holding someone hostage. Now for some more context. Although I still had done whatever Robbie paid me for in 2019, I really started thinking about my life and wondered if I could do better and maybe put my Past behind me. However, I still didn't think too much about whoever we'd be holding prisoner. Like I said, my view was very cynical at this point in my life. So I just told myself that this person probably brought it on himself. The van blowed up and it was a work van from a local business. Two other of Robbie's guys came out and I immediately groaned. For the sake of this story, we'll call them Josh and James. These two were effective, but Robbie also sometimes found himself at odds with them because they were known for being violent for some kind of sick amusement. As I say, I don't claim to be a saint, but I never got some kind of sick delight from what I did. I only did it because it's all I knew and it's how I grew up. Anyway, these two go in the back of the van and me and Donnie expect some drug addict who can't pay his bill or some thug who's been beefing with Robbie. However, a flash of unease struck me when the person they removed was a young girl who I later found out was only 19 years old. She was bound and gagged and she had a few cuts and bruises, clearly courtesy of Josh and James. Now, you'll remember I spoke about my father's treatment of my mother earlier. I was a violent delinquent, but my experience with my father has caused me to have a special disdain and disgust at violence towards women and girls. I know this is hypocritical because I've happily in the past beaten up a male drug addict, no question, or even someone who owed Robbie money. But seeing this girl, who we'll call Samantha, tied up, bruised and gagged, this made me feel emotions I thought I'd buried. I pressed the others for context and I found out apparently Samantha was the younger sister of a very unreliable one of Robbie's customers. And we were pretty much holding her to basically intimidate him into paying his money. I told myself these things happen. It's just the life I chose to get into. But still, seeing Samantha bound and gagged, terrified, it made me feel ill. And I also had the feeling I'd end up saying something I'd regret to James and Josh because they were getting some depraved amusement from Samantha's fear. So in order to excuse myself, I offered to drive to the nearby village for supplies. And also because I was afraid I'd end up taking a swing for those two creeps, my avoidance method would turn out to be redundant. Anyway, when I returned an hour later, Johnny was Outside, looking uneasy. I asked him if he was okay, but he simply replied I'd avoid going in there right now. I then heard shouting and ran up the stairs. What I then saw made me see red. Josh and James, those two sick pieces of shit, were attempting to undress Samantha, who was now wailing behind her gag and tears streaming down her face. What happened next is a blur. Although they were in equal height and build to myself, I somehow managed to incapacitate the two of them. And the next thing I remember was running out of that house with a still tied Samantha over my shoulders and throwing her in my car. I then sped away, seeing this sickness. I still can't explain why, but it seemed to give me a major wake up call. Within an hour, I realized just how far I'd fallen and how my own violent past had influenced me. I took Samantha to the police while also confessing to some things. I told them everything I could about Robbie's operation and what happened. I didn't even care about the consequences. I just wanted this poor girl to be safe. Things were sorted pretty quickly. Being Scotland criminal groups aren't as well equipped to deal with major exposure as in some other countries. Robbie vanished for about a year, but he was eventually found during lockdown in one of his properties. Josh and James were arrested and during the trial, five other women came forward with accusations of sexual assault. So they won't be out of prison for a long time. This, however, wasn't a total happy ending. Like myself, Donnie had been conflicted about life and decided to take a plea deal. I then found out that Samantha was indeed the sister of one of Robbie's customers. But his drug debt wasn't even that big. Robbie actually had something far more monstrous planned for Samantha. It turned out Robbie had started getting tired of just drug dealing and loan sharking and wanting to gain more money and connections reached out to a human trafficking network. Samantha was supposed to be his way of buying into the business. Because of these crimes plus the information I gave, Robbie will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. I was sentenced to six years imprisonment myself. The court did take into account that I helped Samantha escape and gave information that put some dangerous people away. But I was still found guilty of being involved in a conspiracy to kidnap. And also as part of the deal, I confessed to a rather ugly assault that resulted in me blinding a man in one eye. I only, however, served three of my six years. I was released on August 4, 2023 after my original imprisonment. Date of July 27, 2020. Just to be clear, I don't claim to be a saint and I don't expect a ton of people to forgive me, but I am trying to be better. I've realized I was just a scared little boy who decided to lash out at the world and I will have to live with a lot of the things I did for Robbie. Ironically, I ended up becoming very close to Samantha who actually introduced me to my now girlfriend. She realizes I was just a pawn for Robbie and was also grateful for me rescuing her from an assault and after we found out why she was truly being held was more than grateful. I still think about my brother sometimes and I think he's the main reason I want to do better. His own demons basically drove him to self destruction and I won't become the same. I understand my new perception isn't going to fix all of the terrible things I've done, but if I can be better and actually help people, maybe I can get some sort of closure. For a little background. I am writing this story because a man who's like a second father to me just got placed into hospice care so he's been on my mind. His name is Robert and I met him shortly after my dad died. I'm disabled so Robert used to help take me to college when my mom could not. We used to listen to the oldie station together on the way to college and one day the song Mama Told Me Not To Come by Three Dog Night played on the radio. Robert, who was casually jovial and loved to tell dad jokes, got unusually quiet and a bit sullen after a while. I asked him if he was okay and he told me why that particular song made him somber. It involved an incident that changed his life forever. When Robert was In his early 20s, he used to run around with some friends who had grown up in the same trailer park as him and had, like Robert, come from dysfunctional families. His friends were T.J. dill and the unspoken leader of the group, Boone. Robert told me that he and his friends were all a little on the wrong side of the wall at that time. Robert used to do illegal car racing, but it was Boone who was the real bad boy of the group. Somewhere in Boone's family tree, a member of the family decided that his family was going to be outlaws and the decision just stuck for generations. Boone was no exception. He was dealing drugs by the time he entered high school. He was hanging out at biker bars when he was just 15 years old and he and his family engaged in a range of different crimes including gun running and making fake IDs. On the night of this incident, Robert and his friends were supposed to go to a Battle of the Bands event to cheer on some friends who were participating. Before they headed downtown, though, they were supposed to drop by a house party in East Point so Boone could make a delivery. If you know anything about Atlanta, Even in the 70s, East Point had a bad reputation. The only reason Boone had agreed to go was because it was supposed to be a party mostly full of college students from Georgia Tech and Georgia State University. He figured that college kids would not throw away their planned futures trying to rob a drug dealer. Robert was the driver, and the whole time he was driving to the house, he had a bad feeling. He tried talking Boone out of going, but Boone insisted he was just going to go meet someone at the front door and make the drop off and then collect the money. He was not going inside the house. When the guys got there, it was, of course, packed with people hanging out on the lawn, drinking beers and dancing to the music. The scene looked harmless and, honestly, pretty wholesome, but Robert could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. He parked at the bottom of the driveway and left the car running in case they needed to make a quick exit. Boone got out of the car, said hello to some of the college students, and then walked up to the front door. A guy came out of the house and the two of them started talking. Pretty soon, things began to escalate. They started yelling at one another, and Boone was pointing at something or someone inside the house. Boone pushed the guy aside and stepped into the doorway. All of a sudden, a gunshot rang from inside the house. Boone jerked backward and tried to clutch the door frame with his hand while his right hand went to his throat. His knees buckled and he fell face first onto the ground. TJ And Dill started yelling at Robert to let them out so that they could go get Boone. Robert panicked. He threw the car into reverse and sped off into the night. After running a few red lights and realizing he did not want to attract the attention of local police, he eventually stopped at a payphone outside of a gas station and called 911. Later, Robert learned what had happened inside the house from some friends who had been at the party. Apparently, there was a group of people sitting around the living room table cutting up pharmaceuticals and snorting lines. A young woman at the table panicked when she saw Boone. She became convinced he was an undercover police officer and then started yelling, don't let him in. He's a cop. Other people in the room tried to tell her Boone was not a cop, but she refused to listen. She shouted that he was a cop several more times before grabbing a pistol that had been sitting on the table. She stood up and shot Boone the very moment he stepped into the house. The bullet struck Boone in the throat and exited through the back of his neck. Someone at the party called the police, but Boone was dead before the officers ever arrived. The argument had started because Boone had noticed the gun sitting out on the table and he told the young man he was speaking with to put it away somewhere safe. The young man brushed him off, saying that it wasn't a big deal. Boone replied that someone was going to get killed if the pistol was left out in plain sight. When the young man told Boone to mind his own business, Boone shoved him aside and stepped into the house, likely intending to grab the gun himself before someone got hurt. Ironically, that decision cost Boone his life. The young woman who killed Boone was sentenced to seven years in prison. At first she claimed she acted in self defense, but she eventually pleaded guilty to avoid a much harsher sentence. Boone was only 25 years old when he died. Robert was a year younger and and that night became the turning point that changed his life forever. He started going to church, gave up his friends in street racing, and he got a job with an electrical company. A year later, he met the love of his life and together they would have three children. Whenever Mama told me not to come comes on the radio. Robert still thinks about the last night Boone was alive. There are many things he regrets about that night. But if there is one silver lining to this tragic loss of his friend, it was that the experience scared him enough to completely turn his life around. Robert honored Boone's memory years later when his only son, Robert Jr. Was born. He gave his son the middle name Boone, so that in some small way, his friend would never be forgotten. I'm a female from the UK and I'm writing this story because it's something that deeply troubles me. I wish to remain anonymous. Like I said, I'm a female from the uk. I moved to a more rural area to be closer to family after going through some very personal stuff and I was at uni. I'll call my driving instructor, Mark. Mark was in his 60s and I met him because he worked with one of my family members. I won't say his exact occupation due to privacy, but he worked in retail. He was always chatty and friendly and he was definitely an extrovert. He moved from our capital city to this rural area because his mom died and his Sister reconnected with him and asked if he'd like to move in with her for a bit so they could reconnect as siblings after being distant from each other for so long. He was a lot older than her and she left their family home at a young age, so they basically lost touch and only reconnected through their mom dying. Basically. Anyway, Mark started to train as a driving instructor. He kept his retail job, so he was doing both jobs and balancing them. I was a university student and I was ready to learn. I used to joke that I'd only trust a female instructor, but I decided to trust Mark because he was gay and I knew him already from his retail job, so I felt comfortable being in a car alone with him. I started to take lessons with him and everything was alright. But after a few weeks it became clear to me he wasn't teaching me properly. He told me he was qualified to teach students, but still had one more exam to sit before he was fully qualified and that he was under supervision from fully qualified instructors. I didn't know anything about how the process of being qualified works, so I just took this at face value. In the uk, driving instructors always have a badge called an ADI badge with a number on it and training instructors also have a badge or number, but I didn't know that at the time and Mark showed me none of this. My driving instructor after him showed me her ADI badge and I've since learned most of them will show you this upon first meeting. Anyway, as our lessons progressed, he wasn't teaching me at all. He had me driving in a circle on an industrial estate going at 5 mph and it was like he couldn't be bothered. He also kept insulting me, but doing so in a way where he could pass it off as a joke. He said that I couldn't go in a straight line or turn properly. I later learned this was bullshit when I got a new instructor. As our lessons progressed, Mark got so weird. He would talk constantly about the young boys he was teaching, but he never said anything inappropriate about them. He would tell me how they were doing, how they were better than me, etc. Looking back, this was so creepy, but I didn't realize it at the time. One lesson we were talking. I can't remember what it was about, but I said something about how I hated a specific food. I can't even remember how we got onto the topic. And this man literally shouts so loud you watch porn. And he shouted as if it was hilarious. I didn't say that and what I Said sounded nothing like that because I didn't even use a word beginning with P. We were talking about fast food joints, so it was burgers and different condiments we were talking about. I was like, what? No I don't. And I felt myself going red because I was just like wtf? He told me he thought I was telling him that I watched porn and I was so mortified and I felt so awkward. I told him that I didn't and I could again feel myself going really red and feeling so awkward and stupid. He kept laughing about it, telling me how hilarious it would be if I did watch porn and how women usually don't, so he'd be shocked. I told him again, I don't watch porn. And I could feel myself getting annoyed. I'm not a people pleaser at all anymore, but at this point in my life I was. We ended our lesson and when I parked his car outside my parents house, he brought it up again and he said it would be so funny if I watched porn. I told him I didn't and he told me he'd have to tell my family members that he knew from retail what I really get up to in my bedroom at night if I watch porn. So good thing I didn't. It was so fucking creepy and weird then, it makes my skin crawl now even to recall it. At the time it was weird, but in hindsight it's only even creepier. He then stopped me from getting out of the car. I was just about to get out. He took out his diary and he wrote the time for my next lessons in his notes and I was saying bye, about to get out when he told me to wait. He said that he had a story for me and I was like, what? Confused. He ended up telling me he worked for a hotel before he moved to this area and that he had a weird boss who loved porn. I felt really awkward and I wish he'd just dropped the porn thing because I'd already told him I didn't watch it and I honestly don't. He basically went on and on about this boss he had and how creepy this boss was and it ended in him telling me that his boss had invited him to a party where a woman would put a Mars bar chocolate bar up her vagina and the boss would basically eat the Mars bar out. Yeah, I'm really sorry for that disgusting, disturbing mental image. I don't know if it's a worldwide urban legend, but in the UK this Mars bar thing was a stupid urban legend. School kids would talk about when I was in high school, people would say, oh, this girl from the other school got a Mars bar. It was like this weird myth everyone talked about. I remember thinking that when he told me, but I didn't say anything. I can't remember what I replied to him, to be honest. But at that point I honestly just felt really uncomfortable. I remember getting out of the car and I told my parents all about it. My dad was furious and he really hated Mark. He didn't like the way Mark was teaching me and he wanted me to stop lessons and go with another instructor or just teach me himself. My mom was less bothered by it, but not in an uncaring way. I think because Mark was gay, she didn't think it was too crazy and he was so extroverted, she just didn't think much of it. I mean, she was like wtf? When I told her about the whole Mars bar thing. But again, since Mark was gay, I think she just didn't worry too much about it. Unlike my dad, I stupidly continued lessons. I had three more and after my third, Mark told me he would be out of town the following week for a wedding over 200 miles away. So the next lesson would be two weeks later. I said okay and wished him well for the wedding. When he came back, he was due to work a retail shift and he didn't turn up. I found out because my family member who worked with him received a message in the works group chat and literally everyone was wondering where he was and trying to contact his sister. His sister was at work herself and I ended up finding out that his sister went to his house, but there was no answer. A few days passed and it turned out he had been arrested by a really high up law enforcement here called the cid. Think like the equivalent of the FBI in America. They investigate very serious crimes like murders and sex crimes. Everyone was very shocked, including me. Mark ended up messaging my family member and telling them that he'd been arrested because he'd been in a huge family fight at the wedding and he was a witness. This didn't really make any sense because as I said, the CID doesn't investigate petty squabbles. A family brawl would be something regular police look into. Then he told other people he'd been arrested because he'd punched a 15 year old boy in the city because apparently he was in a park and they had called him a homophobic slur. Now I'm a lesbian myself and I don't want to sound bad, but Mark didn't look stereotypically gay. There's nothing wrong with looking stereotypically gay, but Mark just didn't come off as gay unless he told you so. I wasn't sure why someone would look at him and think to target him, if that makes any sense. I also wondered if he was at a wedding 200 miles away in the opposite direction. How was he in a city that was nowhere near where this supposed wedding was taking place? It just made no sense and I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. This all happened in July 2024. This all went down around July when I voiced this and some people I knew basically told me they didn't know and they believed him about the homophobic attack. He had so many people rallying around him saying it was atrocious, he was attacked and that the boy deserved to be punched. I just had a really hard time believing it happened though. Apparently his electronics had been confiscated and it sounds so stupid looking back, but this didn't immediately make me think he was a pedophile. I don't know what I thought, but I didn't think that. Time passed and I ended up getting a completely different driving instructor, a woman. And she told me Mark was teaching me all wrong. She told me it was also strange he didn't show his qualifications for being an instructor and that he shouldn't have been insulting me and basically told me he was wasting my time and sucking me dry financially and not really teaching me anything. She also told me I could drive fine in a straight line and my turns were good. Time passed and a few months went by. I met the woman who is now my fiance. I moved to the city and we got our own place and I was totally away from that area now. But before I moved there were some more updates. Right at the end of 2024 and New Year's Eve he was sacked from his retail job. He was accused of sexually harassing and abusing an 18 year old guy who was working there and also a 17 year old boy who he knew through the 18 year old. The 17 year old he met because it was the 18 year old guy's friend and basically he was doing the most heinous stuff to both of them. He started off with complimenting them both and it was creepy him calling them attractive, etc. Then he would touch them, like rub their chest. Then it escalated into insane, like literally dry humping them and groping them in the private areas, not just the chest. He started to demand that he drove the 18 year old guy home from work and he drive into secluded areas and make the guy feel like he was going to be kidnapped. And he'd do horrible things to him. He would chase him naked in the woods and when he caught up to him, horrible stuff. I know this all sounds completely insane, but it all really happened. A lot of the details are really disturbing. He was abusing the boys. He was teaching how to drive and meeting up with boys who were much younger. His youngest victim that we know of was about 10 years old and he'd actually been charged in the 1980s, 1984, if I remember correctly, for sex crimes. I think he avoided jail back then and I think sadly, he's going to avoid jail yet again. This time around, he would give boys envelopes filled with sick demands of things he wanted them to do. When he was sacked, he tried to deny everything. Day my family member ended up speaking to him and he was lying, saying that it wasn't true. He'd been abused himself as a kid so he would never put another child through that because he knows how it feels to be hurt like that. This makes it even more sick in my opinion, because he still claims this even in the newspaper. And I think this shows just how manipulative he really is. Anyway, he kept denying everything and trying to say he would never do those things and that these guys were lying. Why would he go for an 18 year old? How would he chase someone in the woods? And if he did, the person would run away, etc. It also came out that he flashed and exposed himself when he gave another guy a lift home. This guy was an adult. He was like 25ish. So it shows. Even adult men are targets for him. The town was going wild. Some people believed him, others were ready to face the truth. I was disgusted by his behavior. I remember hanging over the toilet and willing myself not to puke when I found all this out. Because I was just so disgusted and horrified that I'd been in a car with such a monster. I ended up bumping into him when I went to walk my family member home from the retail job. This man had the nerve to be staying in town. I was waiting outside and he had parked his car and got out and asked me if I was waiting on my family member and if we needed a lift. Absolutely not. And I ran inside the store. He was gone in seconds. I guess he was scared about getting knocked out when people realized he'd dare to stop there. I remember one lesson he was telling me about how one of his students had suffered a bereavement. He was A young boy, and the way my instructor went on about him. It breaks my heart to think that poor boy experienced such a devastating loss and then probably had that creep preying on him on top of everything else. It broke my heart and infuriated me. He disappeared for a bit. I don't know where he ended up going. My parents were horrified and my mom was traumatized that I had been in so close proximity to him. And we both thought about the Mars Bar comments and were even more freaked out. I definitely wasn't in his victim pool, but it shows how much of a creep he was. It still makes me so sick to know that I was so close to a pedophile. You think you know people and you think you can trust someone if they appear friendly. But the harsh reality is that you just can't trust people. I'm writing this in February of 2026, and just last month it was in the papers of details of some of his crimes. Not everything has been printed yet that I've seen, but I've seen some new stuff, like the fact that he was accused in the 1980s and was still somehow able to train as a driving instructor. Unless he was never training and just made that up. But I guess he'd have to have been training because the paper referred to him as an instructor. What gets me angry again is the fact that officers and court officials are quoted as saying he's a danger to the public, at high risk of reoffending, yet he should receive education and not jail time. It makes my blood boil that he gets away with it yet again. He knows exactly what he's doing and he's highly manipulative. These people never change, and even if they did, it doesn't erase what they did. These people deserve to rot in jail forever for what they've done. His own sister had to post on social media explaining that she didn't know, and the abuse she's faced from being related to him has made her want to end her own life. I'm no longer living in this town anymore, but everything is coming to light again. And with more looming court cases for him, I wanted to write the story to tell people to always be wary of people. I hate to say that, but you really can't trust anyone. It's never your fault if something happens and my blood boils and my heart breaks for all of the boys harmed by Mark and his sick actions. It turns out that when he was at that wedding, he was actually away abusing boys, and he had been doing it for years There was footage from ring doorbells dating all the way back to 2023. And combined with the fact that he was previously in the courts in the 80s, I just know he hasn't stopped for decades. He's been doing this and he knows he can get away with it because he always does. Another creepy thing is his sister runs a sweet shop for children and he asked her if he could help her out. She said yes, not knowing he was a pedophile and child abuser, because she had no reason to think he was. She left him unattended in the store, which is why she's been attacked by a lot of people. Because he was alone with children of all ages in that store. And even if they had their parents with them, he could still be looking at them like the sick creep he is. It makes my blood boil. I understand his sister didn't know. It's just horrifying. It's so clear to me that he did everything he could to have access to children. And it makes me so sick to my stomach. I want to tell listeners to always trust your gut. Don't be like me and ignore it because you think you can trust someone. I should have told him to fuck off and reported him for that Mars bar and porn incident, but I didn't. If I had, maybe he would have been caught sooner. Stay safe out there, guys. Always be cautious of who you trust. You can't trust most people. I still want to believe there's a handful of people you can trust. But the older I get and the more I see, the more I wonder if that's actually true. I wanted to give a bit of a message prior to my story. If you're being abused, please understand there's someone out there to help. Even if it feels like you're stuck, even if you can't leave right away, please make the effort to try. No one should have to experience abuse. When I was 20, I ended up in a relationship with someone named Darling, Abbreviated, so he cannot try and link me to this. He found me after the collapse of another relationship while I was facing homelessness. Our initial discussions were on Grindr, of all places. So take that as you wish. Him and I ended up bunking together at his parents house. It saved me from being homeless and it helped the house out by having extra income, so I thought that was the only benefit they had. We were fine for a while. At least a few months anyway. The abuse was very sudden. Things were going fine for the day. I was working my mall job at the children's Store I managed when I received a frantic call from his mother. Something along the lines of him trying or wanting to end his own life. How I needed to leave work right that second so I could come home and save him. Of course, the terrified young me jumped and booked it back home. He was on the balcony and had to literally be pulled off. He was 23, 24 at the time. He was mentally sound for the most part, aside from some mental illnesses him and I shared in common. We got him off the balcony and sat on the sofa. I missed work for the rest of the day. This continued for a while. Every so often I'd get calls to rush home to save him from his mom. I'd go home, help and drive the almost hour back to work each time. This did cause some strain on my job, which forced me to get a different one, still in the mall, but at a much more adult oriented place. The call still continued, but I was able to ignore them for the most part. That's when the abuse grew worse. He would start throwing cheers at me during talks at home where he disagreed with me. He started screaming in my face to shut up and if I didn't, he would storm out of the room, forcing me to chase him in fear that he would kill himself. He would hold knives up to his throat to which I would have to beg his dad to come get it from his hands, terrified I would see him kill himself. This continued for months, to the degree that one time he tried to rush out of our room to throw himself off the balcony and I had to basically grab his shirt to stop him. It ripped his shirt and then he yelled in my face that it was all my fault. His favorite shirt ripped and he made me sew it back together and he would wear it around me whenever he was upset with me to show the damage I caused. This all formed into him starting to not allow me in the bathroom alone, obsessing over the fact that I might leave, I might run away. He didn't want to chance it. Every bath, every shower, he had to join me or sit on the toilet until I was done, going as far as to bathe me himself occasionally, despite my protests. If I wanted to visit family out of the state, he had to go with me. I had to take him to see my mother and I asked him to help me take the bag inside the house given my mobility issues. He proceeded to fake a seizure in my mother's driveway. My mother is a nurse and did every trick known to men to force him to come too. He faked it until we called 911, which as he was taken to the ER and fully examined. Miraculously nothing was ever found and he was fully okay. He was pretty known to fake seizures and pass out when he didn't want to do something or wanted the attention of someone else. One weekend my mother bought him herself and I some tickets to some great haunted houses. She drove us to a different state to celebrate and we had a great time until he started complaining about it how he wanted stuff from the gift shop. He couldn't afford anything because he didn't bring any money. He wanted food but he couldn't buy food because again he didn't have any money. My mother bought him one thing from the shop and some food on the way home to which my mother handed it back to him in the backseat. He didn't grab it properly and he had dropped it on her floorboard, starting to tell my mom how she made him drop it but then he went dead quiet once she gave him the death glare. We got back to her house and he yelled at me about my behavior and how I looked at some of the scare actors longingly, things of that nature. My mother left her room to yell at this grown ass man about how if he doesn't stop screaming at me he will be kicked out of her house. He then called his mother crying about how she hates him and how his mom needs to come drive three hours at 10pm to come pick him up because my mom is kicking him out. He only hung up on his mom once. My mother said he was fine, he just needs to be quiet and stop yelling at me. Anytime I would drive back from my mother's in the car with him, he would make me stop to buy him food. He had no money and no job. I was the only one working. If I didn't buy him food, he would call his mom and say that I was trying to drive us off the road, I was going to crash the car, things of that nature until I just stopped and got him food. I had finally turned 21 mid relationship and I caught him cheating shortly after the fact. He was at the mall waiting for me to go home. I had his phone plugged into the back room of the store and I saw a notification that upset me but I planned on talking to him once I drove us home given he also didn't have a license. As I was driving home I gave him a small heads up of wanting to talk but having to wait until we got home given the circumstances. He then proceeded to tell me he was Going to jump out of the car, he grabbed the door handle and yanked it, which made me grab his sleeve, which then led me to crash my car into a pole going 30 miles per hour. And I totaled my car. His parents paid $3,000 for me to buy a new one so I wouldn't sue them, which was only about 25% of the car's worth. I got a beater car and I actually stayed with them, unable to find any other housing. One night we were down in the basement watching shows. He made a comment about how he wanted to kill me. He wondered how my flesh would taste if he cooked it. Wanted to know how killing me would feel in the first place. When I tried to leave the basement, he blocked the door. When we were in the basement, that's where we stayed for the night. He wouldn't let me leave. He would sleep on the sofa closest to the door, so if I got up to pee or otherwise, it would wake him. When he would scream at me and I would want to take a drive to calm down, he would try and take my car keys and block the front door to keep me from leaving. Every time it got to the point where the screaming was so loud, his mom and dad would come out to yell at him to stop yelling. I hid myself in our room one time, waiting for his mom to come to me, begging for her to let me get my car keys so I could leave. Begging for her to help me find a way out. Sobbing all the while. She told me, you'll get used to it. Once, while driving, he was actually yelling at me over me refusing to stop for food. I called my job to tell them I'd be late because of him. They heard his screaming and they called the cops, hoping they would meet me at our house. They did, but he was standing so close, I couldn't really tell them what was actually happening for them to properly assist me when I was at work. A few times, the neighbors called the cops for his yelling at his parents, assuming there was a domestic dispute. And he would yell at the cops that they need to go away and they will arrest him. Things of that nature, which they never did. I sought out therapy mid relationship, which he wouldn't allow me to attend sessions alone. The therapist didn't really find this odd and would allow him to walk into the room with us against my wishes, but given she was the cheapest therapist I could find, I kept going. I was able to see my friend once without his knowledge, surprisingly, and I told my therapist everything. Instead of helping me after I begged her for help. She dropped me as a client and never reported the abuse. He would also force me to drive in places while I was extremely sick due to my immune system issues. I was in the ER a few times, and he would make me drive into places such as the funeral house for his grandpa's funeral or Kings Islands in Ohio because he didn't want to go in the car with his parents. I was only able to get out of this house after two years. His sister and her boyfriend never helped me. His parents never helped me. I was literally on my own. Until one night he drank himself sick. I was able to grab a few things and run to a friend's house. That night, he blew the fuck out of my phone. But that was it. I was finally able to escape. It's been almost two years since that hell of my life. He's caused so much trauma. More than I already had. And made my mental issues 10 times worse than they were before. R, if you hear this, somehow, if you know it's you, please, go fuck yourself. I hope you rot for the hell you shoved me into. My time. You wasted the trauma you caused, Sam.