[Music] [Music] I used to go bowling quite often with my friends when I was young I'm talking like 12 13 there was a bowling alley down the block for my friends and I and so we'd go there on weekends the bowling alley has been closed for years but when it was open it was super cheap and affordable perfect for a bunch of young teenagers who didn't have money of their own this one weekend I went with my friends Jacob Josh and Mikey to the bowling alley we always went at night it was likely around 8
p.m. the bowling alley was always crowded on the weekends and sometimes we'd see familiar faces there was this older man who would sometimes be there alone bowling on the adult side of the bowling alley Where alcohol was served we always played on the non-alcoholic side how we took notice to that man was because he'd sometimes just weirdly walked down the entire bowling alley passing every lane watching people bowling then we'd notice him end up back at his Lane all by himself we nicknamed him creeper Bob after maybe the third time seeing him tonight there was
a lane open next to us and guess who out of nowhere sat next to us Bob or whatever his real name was but I'll keep referring to him as Bob he was setting up a game on the lane next to us by himself and it wasn't long until he started trying to talk to us he started making comments on our form and every so often interrup ing our conversation to tell us weird things like how long he's been coming here then eventually he said something really weird that he watches us play every weekend from across
the bowling alley and he decided to come over and introduce himself tonight he played it off like he was trying to be some kind of bowling teacher to us but really it was just annoying and most of all uncomfortable Bob at one point entered our lane as I was up to ball and he grabbed my wrist with his hands to position me into an allegedly better form I never gave him permission to touch me nor did I ask for his guidance we were only like 13 though none of us stood up and said y'll get
lost or something like that I could just feel the unease amongst my friends every moment of that man touching me I felt more and more disgusted we cut our night at the bowling alley short because of him we used the money that we would have used on more games on getting pizza Instead at a pizza place further out the block when we came out Jacob and Mikey went their own way since they lived on a different block Josh and I walked back down the other way in the direction of our houses as we did the
sound of a car engine starting made us turn around we noticed an old SUV like a Ford Explorer banging a three-point turn we both imagined the possibility of it being creeper Bob the SUV started slowly tailing us as we walked down the street so we picked up our Pace then the SUV pulled up right alongside us and the window rolled down it was in fact the man from the bowling alley he said out the window that he could offer us a ride home we said no thanks he replied it's not safe for a couple kids
to be walking around late at night we weren't even really that young we were young teenagers not little kids and it was crazy that he thought we were young enough to trick into getting into a car when we made it clear we weren't getting in he pulled to the side of the road and parked his car Josh and I decided to start jogging home when we reached the intersection where we'd split off we said bye and I continued jogging home by the time I made it back I was out of breath running after eating pizza
is not a good idea my dad was already asleep because he worked weekends my mom was out with her girlfriends most likely and the same was probably the case with my sister so I wasn't supposed to ring the bell because my dad didn't want to be woken up I went around back to get the key we had for the back door which was hidden in the shed when I got out from the shed I thought I heard something and I should have listened to my gut I went to the back door to unlock it and
as I opened the door I heard the sound of someone running up behind me before I could fully turn around someone pushed me inside the house covering my mouth and wrapping their arm around my neck I wasn't able to see who it was because I couldn't turn my head I scratched and clawed at the man's hand until I could move my mouth just enough out of the grip of his hand and scream dad I may have only been 13 but I was able to to put up enough of a fight to get him to lose
his grip a few times allowing me to scream this undoubtedly scared him off as he finally let go for good and ran outside I didn't look back I ran up the half flight of stairs to the main floor and yelled for my dad my dad came rushing out of his room and after telling him what just happened he checked the backyard and all around the property and then came back inside I told him about the man from the bowling alley how we nicknamed him creeper Bob how he followed joshai and his SUV after admitting to
stalking us at the bowling alley my dad filed a police report and tried getting the bowling alley to release the video surveillance from that night but they refused I was never allowed to go back there after my mom found out about this not that I'd ever want to the crazy thing is technically I can't say with 100% certainty that the man who came in behind me and grabbed me was the man from the bowling alley but realistically how slim are the chances that it wasn't him [Music] when I was a teenager my close group of
friends were I guess what you'd call delinquents we liked causing trouble breaking rules and messing around in places we didn't belong I grew up in a suburb in northern New Jersey so I guess you could say we were just spoiled kids with nothing better to do looking back the way we passed the time was a little silly but there's nothing I can do about that now anyway one of the things we really like to do was to go exploring in the late hours of the night usually we explored abandoned buildings but not always we actually
got banned from our middle school after jumping through an open window but that's a story for another time this particular night we were planning on executing a riskier task there were five of us me chip Jason Rowan and Anish Rowan had a tendency to bounce around from job to job which was kind of a running joke in our Squad he led jobs as quickly as he'd get them usually for the dumbest reasons you could imagine he had just picked up a gig as an attendant at a bowling alley a few Towns over from us I'm
sure you could see where this is going he had been entrusted the key to close up the place the night before Anish was a master of persuasion and he somehow convinced Rowan to let us explore the bowling alley at like 3:00 a.m. I'm telling you Anish could convince someone to give them their kidney that's how persistent he was I haven't heard from him in a while I think he might actually be in jail right now anyway the five of us agreed to get a little drunk before going we all had a substantial amount to drink
except for Jason who refused to go anywhere unless he was the one driving his dad had a really nice BMW and Jason liked being able to end our links when he got tired after getting a little buzzed James drove the five of us to the location I was the heavy drinker of the squad it's not something I'm proud of but it's just who I was at that point in my life because of this I usually took things a little less seriously than I should have especially when it came to dangerous or risky situations Rowan unlocked
the door and the five of us made our way inside chip was usually the most cautious and he kept triing us to be careful in his hilariously high-pitched voice Rowan told us we couldn't actually do any bowling right now which we were all a little upset about I had the genius idea of doing some makeshift sliding on the lanes as if they were sliping slides since we were drunk this was actually pretty fun the five of us soon tired ourselves out and decided we wanted to do some exploring we asked Rowan if there were any
back rooms we could check out and he told us there were we made our way into the employee only area and Rowan led us to some kind of storage room we started poking around and flipping things over just being stupid and careless we figured Rowan was going to get fired anyway so we weren't too concerned with messing things up as we started getting bored we heard a deafening bump from from below us the five of us froze staring at each other Jason the only sober one in the group asked if the place had a basement
Rowan looked just as shocked as we were and told that he had no prior knowledge of a potential baseman Anish grinned eager to continue exploring chip seemed really nervous telling us that we were probably going to end up getting Rowan fired we were Whispering now arguing whether we wanted to go look for this hypothetical basement just then Jason lifted the edge of a rug nestled in the corner revealing a hatch we were shocked the atmosphere in the room instantly shifted with the realization that the situation was now serious even if we had found the way
into the basement the sound we heard was still unexplained I don't think any of us really wanted to go down there but Jason made the first move in his classic level-headed style he flung the latch open and stared down at the old rusted ladder leading into the darkness screw this whispered chip motioning for us to leave Jason ignored him and went for the stairs he pulled out his phone and Shine the flashlight into the Blackness without another word he descended into the abyss I could tell Rowan Anish and Chip were a little scared understandably I
still had a lot of liquid confidence so I decided I'd go next a nich followed behind me and Rowan brought up the rear chip refused to come down with us the four of us pulled out our phone flashlights and began exploring the basement that had been hidden for some reason it was filled with dust and cardboard boxes stacked up to the ceiling there was nothing else down there or at least that's what we originally thought a niche noticed a door in the corner and we walked over to it Jason put his hand on the handle
but a split second before he was going to open it we heard a distinctive bump come from the other side which sounded identical to the one we heard earlier we looked around at each other with horrified looks on our faces I could tell we were all thinking the same thing an animal maybe no shot it was too loud to be an animal I was pretty freaked out at this point and turned away to leave like an idiot Jason cracked the door open revealing another storage room that's not all that was in there though in the
corner of the room there was a human figure sitting on the ground with its legs crossed facing away from us we were frozen in place utterly terrified after a full minute of stagnant the person in the corner of the room banged their head against the wall explaining the sounds we had been hearing I began tiptoeing to the ladder careful not to make any noise the rest of my friends turned around and began doing the same clearly filled with Terror just then Rowan tripped on a piece of junk on the floor and then cursed the person
in the room yelled and we ran Jason and I were up the ladder in a split second with a niche close behind chip was leaned over the concerned with what he was hearing Anish made it up and the three of us ran out of the room we heard Rowan scream get off me but Anish and Jason were too terrified to turn back I ran back into the room and saw chip chucking a metal pipe down the hatch which was followed by a demonic scream Rowan scrambled on the ladder and Chip grabbed his wrist yanking him
up Rowan ran toward me while chip slamed the hatch shut the five of us sprinted out of the bowling alley and Rowan hastily locked the door with Trembling Hands Jason drove us back with a blank look on his face we listened as Rowan described what happened after the rest of us made it up the ladder apparently whoever had been in the basement jumped on Rowan's back clawing at him chip came to his rescue and nailed Rowan's attacker in the head with that pipe causing the lunatic to fall backward Rowan said he only saw the guy's
face for a split second it was the horrifying face of a dirty old Homeless looking guy with a bird's nest of hair on his head Rowan ended up quitting the next day without giving his boss an explanation as it was definitely illegal what we had done to this day we have no idea how that guy could have gotten down there maybe there was an alternate entrance we had overlooked either way the basement had been intentionally hidden which tells me that Rowan's boss might have known something about the whole thing this experience ruined my taste for
bowling which I have not done since one night my girlfriend Rebecca and I decided it would be fun to go bowling we drove to the closest bowling alley and went through the whole process of renting shoes finding balls and picking a lane we both were really bad neither of us had been bowling in many years we paid for an hour of bowling Rebecca wasn't really enjoying it too much because she kept getting gutter balls I was doing better than her but not by much so I wasn't really able able to help her out much and
then to make matters even worse Rebecca's ex-boyfriend arrived with his group of friends and they started bowling a few lanes down from us Rebecca looked away refusing to even look in that direction Whispering at me that we need to leave now we packed it up early and left she went to the car and waited while I returned the shoes I think her ex spotted me while I was at the front counter and I looked away I didn't tell Rebecca this though we went home and agreed to play We bowling instead and have some wine that
sounded much more fun anyway when we got home the first thing I did was turn on the Wii and open a bottle of wine the bowling alley trip was a failure but I didn't want Rebecca to be unhappy we played wee bowling for like half an hour with music on in the background and drinking wine it turned out to be much more fun than the bowling alley until the current song that was playing ended and we heard something come from upstairs in that brief moment of silence Rebecca and I looked at each other other telling
me she heard it too I turned off the music for good but now there was just silence the sound we heard could best be described as a heavy object being dropped on the floor I went upstairs to investigate I checked every bedroom with the lights on I checked under every bed I was relieved to find nothing I wasn't actually expecting to find someone in the house but naturally you do need to go investigate if you hear a suspicious sound in your house still I wondered what actually made the sound because I didn't find anything on
the floor after maybe another half an hour of playing wee bowling we brought our little wine party upstairs to the bedroom and eventually we fell asleep Rebecca's a lightweight so she got much drunker than me which explains why I was the one to wake up in the middle of the night and not her I heard what woke me up though it was another clear and distinct sound of something heavy being dropped from above but the only thing is now we were upstairs and yet the sound still came from above so what else would be above
us the attic the attic door is right outside my bedroom door it's one of those doors with the string that you pull down and a metal ladder comes down I tiptoed out of the bedroom to not wake up Rebecca I stood under the attic door and listened every 5 seconds or so I heard the slightest creaking sound like from the weight of something moving around I didn't want to scare Rebecca but I'd heard of animals getting into people's attics sometimes I went to get a broom from the the closet to use as a possible weapon
if I were to have to fend off an animal then I quietly pulled the attic door open and climbed up I stopped at the top of the ladder in the darkness and listened I heard creaking it was the creaking of the wooden rocking chair we had up there I used my phone as a light to reveal the rocking chair there was someone sitting in it slowly rocking I nearly fell off the ladder I wanted to go run back to Rebecca and hide I I wanted to do anything but approach this person but I gathered the
courage to yell who are you the rocking stopped and the man turned around to look at me he started making this animalistic gargling growling sound then he got up and that's when I hurried down the ladder and pushed the attic door up I screamed for Rebecca to call the cops until I heard her acknowledge me I stayed under the attic door preventing it from being opened as the man in the Attic tried kicking the door open he eventually stopped and I heard the deranged laughter of a sick mentally ill person he spoke in another language
it sounded Russian I felt like my arms were going to fall off holding up the attic door waiting for the police when they finally arrived Rebecca went downstairs to let them in from here it was the job of the police officers to go up there and remov the man Rebecca and I waited in the living room sitting on the couch next to each other until we saw them bringing the man out through the living room to the front door in handcuffs the way the man looked at me said everything he was a dangerous mentally ill
person his stare was full of hatred and craziness with the hint of confusion his lip contorted in this bizarre way that would almost make you think he were drunk whatever happened with him we don't know we didn't press civil charges but I'm sure he was charged criminally if they didn't deem him to be insane this happened in the summertime when we keep the windows open and so it was most likely that he squeezed through one of the windows in the backyard I'm not sure why he picked our house we may just have been The Unlucky
house he stumbled AC cross
