[Music] This happened a couple of years ago, right before school ended. It was the last day of 8th grade. It was exactly what you'd expect on the final day of middle school.
Excitement and bittersweet goodbyes. Everyone was running around scribbling signatures and cheesy messages in each other's yearbooks. My middle school was huge, easily over a thousand students.
So to keep things manageable, the teachers collected our yearbooks and passed them around to different classrooms, making sure everyone who wanted to got a chance to sign. I'm sure you could see how that could create problems. Anyone who wanted to could write whatever they wanted in anyone's yearbook.
The teachers tried their best to prevent things from getting out of hand, but I knew a few kids who wrote some mean messages to people they didn't like. At the end of the day, when I got my yearbook back, I flipped through the pages eagerly, reading all the goofy notes from my friends. But as I scanned the pages, something caught my eye.
There was a signature below the face of someone I had never seen before. His name was Samuel Robinson III, a name I'm going to remember for as long as I live. The message he wrote was short, simple, and honestly a bit unsettling.
It read, "Hags, I'll be seeing you again. " I stared at the page, confused out of my mind. I'd never even spoken a single word to this Samuel kid.
It wasn't like there was anything I could do about it, though. The school year was over, so I couldn't see him even if I wanted to. I just chocked it up to some weird kid being weird, or maybe an honest mistake.
Either way, I stopped thinking about it. A few hours passed and before I knew it, I was at home hosting a sleepover in my basement with my best friends Kevin, David, and Kieran. The four of us ate Doritos and played Call of Duty all night.
My parents' bedroom was three floors above us, so we didn't have to worry much about keeping the noise down. We were messing around on my dad's rowing machine sometime just before 2 when we heard a sharp knock at the storm door. The sound instantly silenced us.
Who the hell would knock on the storm door? It must have been someone who either didn't want to wake my parents up or knew we were down there or both. It didn't make sense.
The person kept knocking in the same rhythmic pattern. I could tell Kieran was about to say something and I couldn't stop him in time. In a loud and assertive voice, he asked who was there.
I wanted to knock him out. He had basically broadcasted to whoever was out there that we were down there. My basement doesn't have any external windows, so it was unlikely that they had known we were down there, but now they did.
After a long pause and no more knocking, a muffled voice answered back. He said, "Come around to the back door. " In a high-pitched voice that genuinely sounded cheerful, like he was a friend of ours trying to join the sleepover.
It was definitely a teenager's voice, too. And it didn't sound like someone who was pretending to raise their voice, either. I was pretty scared, I can't lie.
My friends were seemingly unfazed, though, like they thought it was somehow exciting that some random kid was outside my house. They insisted that I at least check it out. And even though I didn't want to, they pressured me into it.
We crept upstairs, careful not to make too much noise. I approached the back door slowly, trying to ignore the pounding in my chest. Through the narrow glass pane beside it, I could see a shadowy figure standing under the dim light.
I got a little closer and his face came into view. My jaw nearly hit the floor when I realized who it was. It was him.
It was that kid Samuel Robinson III who had signed my yearbook. My friends went to go open the door. God knows why, but I stopped them saying I knew who it was.
I explained to them what had happened, and that changed their mood a bit. Keep in mind, Sam was still standing outside while we were talking, and he could definitely see in at us. He must have noticed how freaked out I was because he started motioning to the side of the house like he wanted me to go over to the window.
You might be wondering why none of us were taking the situation more seriously. I honestly think it was because it wasn't like some older strange man was harassing us. It was a kid from our own school.
Still, I wasn't opening the door for him. Instead, I went over to my kitchen window and cracked it open just a tiny bit. My friends followed me and stood a little off to the side.
He walked over to the window and I asked him what he wanted, telling him I recognized him from our yearbook. He said, "Oh, so you got my message. " And introduced himself as Sam.
Then he went on to say he always watched me from afar, that we could have been good friends. I agreed with him just so that I wouldn't piss him off. But there was 0% chance I would have been friends with this kid given any circumstances.
I didn't want to press him right away, but I had to know. So, I asked him how he knew where I lived. He didn't respond, and I didn't know what to say.
Before I could deescalate the situation, David called him a creepy stalker and told him to piss off. Sam's smile disappeared. He tilted his head like he didn't understand what David had just said.
Then just as quickly, his expression twisted into something I can only describe as hatred. He went from passive and honestly kind of friendly to aggressive and angry. He started screaming things at me.
How he hated my friends and thought we should all die. How my ex hated me and random stuff he had no right knowing. He reached toward the window and tried to force it open, but I jammed it shut and locked it.
He started snarling at the window and banging on it like an animal. He was 2 seconds away from shattering it. I'm telling you, we must have caused quite the commotion because my parents came rushing down the stairs demanding to know why we had woken them up.
That's when Sam ran away. I told my parents what happened as quickly as I could and my dad raced outside in his underwear. He came back a few minutes later saying he had no idea where the kid went.
I'm not sure why, but my parents didn't call the police. They just told us to go back to sleep and they deal with the school the following morning just to give the kid the benefit of the doubt. The next morning, they contacted the school.
That's when we learned the disturbing truth. Sam had been expelled a few weeks before the year finished, and he shouldn't have ever been at the school on the last day. Apparently, the yearbooks were printed before his expulsion, which explained why his picture was still included.
That meant he had snuck into the school somehow just to write me that message, which freaked me out beyond belief. Despite working with the school to find out more, nobody could track Sam down. It was like he and his parents didn't exist.
The whole thing was a pretty big deal, but the school did what they could to keep things under wraps. To this day, I still have no idea how he knew where I lived. That's what freaks me out the most.
The running theory is that he was a mentally challenged and troubled young boy who took a strange liking to me for whatever reason and then he stalked me for who knows how long. My parents were worried for weeks. It's something we don't talk about anymore because it's just uncomfortable.
But living in that same house has never felt the same ever since. [Music] My friend Garrett is a little unhinged. And when I say a little, I mean a lot.
He's one of those guys that goes around boasting about how crazy and aggressive he is like it's cool or something. He's constantly getting into fights, doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut, and spends more time in the gym than anywhere else, including his own house. There are actually five stories about him I could choose to tell, but the scariest one by far is the one you're about to hear.
It also directly involves me, and I feel much more comfortable telling my own story rather than someone else's. This happened a couple of weeks ago, which was also coincidentally the last day of senior year, May 2019. The graduation ceremony wasn't scheduled for a few days, so even though we were done, we still had to stick around.
It's tradition for all the graduating seniors to get plastered on the last day of classes. So, that's exactly what we did. There's this huge clock tower in the center of campus where all the seniors convene to get drunk, which is exactly where we were at at 10 p.
m. It was packed. There were over a thousand people crammed into that one courtyard.
It was bittersweet for me at least, but I think everyone was relieved at having finished finals, which are pretty tough at my school. There are a handful of other senior traditions I could tell you about, but I'm going to try to keep things succinct. There were six of us.
It was me, C, T, R, N, and obviously Garrett. I don't think the rest of my friends would be comfortable with their names out there, so I'm just calling them by their initials. I should also really quickly mention that we lived off campus, meaning we had to walk through the city to get home.
There are a decent amount of homeless people in that city, so it's not rare to encounter some of them late at night. Anyway, we were heading back home from the clock tower when Garrett did some Garrett stuff. Well, it wasn't really his fault, but that's neither here nor there.
As we were crossing the street, some random homeless guy ran up to our group and started tweaking. Usually the homeless people around here keep to themselves since they're all tripping on drugs and didn't notice their own surroundings. But this guy clearly wanted to engage.
He was just standing in the middle of the crosswalk yelling things at us like he was a bridge troll protecting the other side of the street. We laughed a little and started walking in a wide semicircle around him as we didn't want to piss him off or antagonize him. Well, everyone but Garrett, that is.
Instead of disengaging, Garrett started yelling things back at the guy, telling him to get the f out of the street and to stop harassing strangers. The tweaker didn't like that and took a few aggressive steps toward him. That's when the rest of us jumped in to prevent an altercation from happening.
We must have intimidated the tweaker because he stopped charging and went back to just yelling things. I pulled Garrett out of the street trying to get him to behave, but he pushed my hand away. Before any of us could do anything, he charged full speed at the tweaker and screamed crazy.
The tweaker started running away, which caused Garrett to stop charging and start laughing. I know it's bad, but the scene was genuinely funny, as messed up as it was. It was like running full speed into a flock of birds and watching them scatter.
We started walking towards our house after that, but after a few minutes, we realized the tweaker was following us. When he caught us looking back at him, he started yelling things about how we had made a big mistake and how he was going to quote call a niche, whatever that meant. We started heckling the guy back, hoping he'd get scared and leave.
But I'm pretty sure we only intensified whatever tantrum he was having. Look, I'm not proud of everything that happened that night, but we were about to graduate from a very prestigious university and had been celebrating all night with alcohol, so we weren't in the right headsp space to properly evaluate the situation. about a block away from our house.
We realized the guy was still following, albeit a little further back. Now, I told the rest of the guys I didn't feel comfortable leading him to our house, and the other guys agreed. So, naturally, Garrett took off toward the homeless guy before the group could come to a consensus.
He again started sprinting at the guy who once again fled in the opposite direction. Garrett turned and joged back towards us, and we all joged up the street. We thought that was it.
We made it back to our house pretty confident we hadn't been followed that time. I'm not even going to go into what we did back at the house. Let's just say it was a level of degeneracy I won't be approaching anytime soon.
I can't even tell you what time it was. I was stumbling out of the front door to pick up my Door Dash when I noticed something odd. The side gate that led into our backyard was wide open.
It was especially weird because we used this little strand of twine to keep it shut. So, the door being open meant that someone had deliberately undone it. I instantly made the connection.
It was probably that guy from earlier. I had enough sense to connect the dots, but I guess I didn't have enough sense to react accordingly. The smart thing would have been to alert my friends, but my drunken self decided to investigate.
I put the Door Dash on the porch and went around the house, trying my best to walk straight. I turned the corner into the backyard and before I could even see, I felt a rope around my throat. I flailed around wildly, but it was no use.
Someone was strangling me from behind and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt the rope's frayed ends digging into my throat as he tightened it with all his strength. I genuinely thought I was going to die.
With all my might, I swung my legs backward and he lost his footing. The two of us hit the ground and I could breathe again, but he was still on top of me. In a fit of rage, he clawed at my face and I could feel blood streaming down my cheeks.
I threw him off of me and he got to his feet before running out of sight. I'll try and keep things short from here on out. I ended up having to go to the hospital that night.
The cuts weren't bad, but I needed a bunch of shots to protect me against any kind of diseases the guy might have had. The police were less than helpful, and since I was moving out a week later, there wasn't much I could do either. The worst part about the whole thing was that I had visible cuts in all my grad photos.
Garrett felt so bad he ended up taking me to Nou, but I never held anything against him. I just hope he's learned his lesson about not antagonizing people who have nothing to lose. [Music] When I was in the seventh grade, there was this kid named Spven in my home room.
To put it mildly, he was a bit strange. He was one of those kids who didn't socialize with anyone else, even though people frequently tried to include him in things. I didn't have all my classes with him, but from what I remember, he would always sit in the same spot in every room, the back corner opposite the door.
Without fail, he'd show up to school in the exact same outfit every day, cargo shorts and an oversized burgundy hoodie. He obviously didn't talk much, but when he did have to answer a question or read a passage, he had a really deep voice that lots of other kids made fun of him for. I don't recall him having any friends at all, which made sense.
This one time, my friend Tyler caught him slicing worms during recess, which I'm pretty sure he ended up getting detention for. Speaking of recess, Sven would spend the whole period by himself next to the fence that bordered the woods. He never played any games or did anything even remotely kid- ccentric.
He'd just stand next to that fence doing god knows what. Some of my friends claimed to have seen him talking to someone on the other side. But I've personally never seen that, so I'm not going to spread potential lies.
I'm trying to think of other things about him worth mentioning. He had several quirks and some other weird habits typical of any strange middle schooler, but none relevant to the story I'm going to tell. This happened on the last day of school.
I went to a pretty big middle school with lots of kids per grade, meaning there were a ton of concurrent classes with students from the same year happening at all times. Because of that, there was this last day of school tradition where students from the same year would sneak into and sit in random classrooms to try and mess with the teachers. I'm pretty sure the teachers were privy to this and played along to amuse the kids, but that's neither here nor there.
I don't remember the exact time this happened, but I do remember I was in one of the few classes I shared with Sven. Everything was exactly as it had been all day. The entire class was mixed up with random students that were supposed to be elsewhere.
I was kind of a stickler for rules growing up. That's just how I was raised. So, I never participated in any of the tom foolery.
My friends all did though, so I was often alone in all of my classes since they went to other rooms together. This was one of those times. All my friends had left the room and the only kid I knew even a little coincidentally was Sven.
Sven was acting stranger than usual that day. That's something I remember distinctly. I can't fully remember what we were learning or doing in class, but I do remember that Sven was tapping his foot pretty aggressively, something he never did.
He was also constantly looking around the room as if searching for someone or trying to keep tabs on someone. I don't think he was watching me, but I couldn't be sure. The other thing I remember was that there were a lot more kids in the class I didn't recognize.
Granted, one or two wasn't anything out of the ordinary since everything was switched around, but the odds that there were so many students I had never even seen before were slim. At some point, the teacher, I'm pretty sure her name was Miss Bell, told us to get into groups of three or four to work on some kind of end ofear reflection worksheet. Nothing serious.
Most kids just used it as an excuse to talk and mess around. At one point, Miss Belle walked over to her desk, picked up the classroom phone, and turned her back to us. A few minutes later, another teacher showed up, I think from the room next door.
They stepped just outside the classroom door and started whispering. It wasn't a long conversation, maybe half a minute, but something about it felt off, like they were trying not to cause a scene. I could tell something was up.
Miss Belle looked uneasy. That's honestly the best way I can describe her demeanor. After they finished talking, Miss Belle and the other teacher came back into the room.
They didn't say anything to the class. They just walked over to a few specific kids and knelt down beside their desks. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but whatever it was, it was quiet.
clearly like they didn't want the rest of us to notice. A minute later, those same kids got up and followed the teachers into the hallway. No one really reacted.
I felt like I was the only one who even noticed what was going on. Miss Bell came back a few minutes later alone this time. She didn't say anything about the kids who left.
Just sat back down at her desk and started shuffling papers like nothing had happened. But right after she did, the fire alarm went off. Miss Belle didn't really react like she knew it was going to happen.
She told us to line up and head outside and we joined the rest of the school out by the field behind the building. As usual, everyone was grouped by home room. So, I ended up standing with a bunch of familiar faces again.
But while we were all standing there, I looked back at the school for no reason, just out of habit, I guess. And I could have sworn I saw something move in one of the second story windows. It was quick.
And maybe it was just a reflection or a shadow or something, but it felt wrong. The school was supposed to be completely empty. I kept it to myself, but I was really scared when it came to re-entering the building.
We never went back inside, though. Before the alarm even stopped ringing, we started hearing sirens. A few minutes later, police cars started pulling into the lot.
Not just one or two, but a whole line of them. They didn't waste time, either. Officers jumped out and rushed straight into the building.
No one explained anything. Teachers just told us to stay calm and wait. After a while, someone came around and said school was being let out early.
No buses. We had to call our parents. We were never told what actually happened.
My parents ended up telling me what happened, or at least what the school had told them. They told me that a bunch of kids who didn't even go to our school had somehow gotten in. A rumor went around that they were planning to set the place on fire.
Apparently, Miss Bell had discovered some very alarming tools in one of the kids' backpacks, and the school tried flushing everyone out with the fire drill. The details are still a bit fuzzy, so I'm hoping I'm explaining everything properly. The part that really stuck with me was what my mom said at the end, that the kids had been led in by Sven through the side fence during recess.
The whole thing was so bizarre, it's still difficult to process even now. I never saw Sven again.
