[Music] number one so I was very young when this happened so young in fact that I don't remember a whole lot only bits and pieces I'd say that I was five or six years old my parents filled in the gaps for me so I'm gonna tell the whole version of the story both my parts and theirs we were living in an old farmhouse at the time my parents were poor so they rented from a landlord there owned a few small properties in the area my dad worked in the steel mill on the midnight shift so he worked some odd hours this is relevant because it might be the only reason that we're still alive and that I'm able to write this story today help he's going to rape me help me we jolted out of bed and were fully awake in an instant I was sleeping in my bed with my parents that night because I was having some awful night terrors my dad who had just switched from midnight shifts the day's jumped out of bed and cautiously made his way down the stairs grabbing a stoking pick from the fireplace in the living room he got to the door when he heard it again help help oh my god he's coming the woman's voice on the other side of the door began sobbing hysterically we have to help her open the door said my mother my mom is an inherently good woman who always goes out of her way to help people every single day of her life she reached out for the deadbolt but my dad stopped her he shot her a look and said cautiously through the door what's going on who's after you and where is he the voice through the door responded I just need to get him before he gets here please please more sobs my father turned on the porch light and said stay up on the porch with your back against the door he then opened the deadbolt but not the chain lock he slipped a brick that we used as a doorstop through the crack take this and use it to defend yourself if you need it I'll be right on the other side of this door and if he comes after you I'll come out and help in the meantime I'm calling the police and they'll be here soon this is when the woman starts to absolutely lose her mind she began slamming her whole body into the door with a mindless fury what the [ __ ] wrong with you let me in this goddamn house right now what kind of [ __ ] people are you my dad forced the door shut and clicked the deadbolt home again he immediately called the police and they came within ten minutes when they arrived the woman was simply gone the door stopped brick was sitting on one of the porch steps my parents gave a description of the events and the woman as best they could we tried our best to get some sleep in the following nights but my mum and dad checked all of the locks and windows several times throughout the night I don't remember understanding what happened but I remember thinking that my parents were acting strange and wondering why they didn't help this woman I thought the man snuck up and got her while we were calling the police a few days later we found out that the police had been called for a similar situation at a different house my dad's brother-in-law worked in law enforcement and told us that that time the police happened to have a car down the street and arrived without lights and sirens the officers saw the woman that my parents had described at the front door on top of the porch when they began walking up to her a man dashed out of the bushes from the side of the porch they chased him down pretty quickly and recovered a long kitchen knife from the bushes where he had been hiding the man and the woman had been working together to try to gain entry to houses the police surmised that the woman would get people to open their doors and let her in and then she would let her partner in god only knows what they would have done once they got inside once I heard this story and put it together with my memories of the event he had sent chills down my spine imagine what would have happened if my dad had been working the midnight shifts or if he had just been asleep he grew up in a very bad neighborhood in Gary Indiana so he was always cautious about people around him usually it was Mardi irritating but that time it may have saved our lives number two this happened on a Norwegian Peninsula when I was about 15 years old it must have been 2006 give or take a year regardless it was Halloween night and I didn't really have any plans too old for trick-or-treating too young for partying it was a small Peninsula anyway so there wasn't much going on I was just sat at home playing runescape on my desktop this continued until sundown you could say I was mildly addicted to that game I usually like to play with the lights off bad for your eyes but I liked the mood it said anyway he had surround 9 p. m. my mum comes into my room and passed me on the shoulder didn't you hear me I said I'm going out for 20 minutes she said I had my noise-canceling headphones on so I was oblivious to the fact that she had been shouting to me she heads downstairs and I hear the door slam I put my headphones back on and sink back into my own little pixelated world and as such I can't really tell you how much time passed when this happened when you looked out of my bedroom door in which at the time was wide open you could see down into the long corridor leading to my mum's room opposite since all of the lights were off I could only really make out the outlines of all the objects and that was only after my eyes adjusted after looking at the bright computer screen until then it was like looking into a dark void of total blackness you know when one of your senses has picked up on something that you're not totally conscious of yet and you feel a little uneasy well that happened to me while I was playing it felt like someone else was around me like that I'm being watched sensation and I figure my mum came back from wherever she went and that I just hadn't heard her due to my headphones but if that was the case why hadn't she turned the lights on I looked down into the dark corridor at the far end something's glowing it's a large and fluorescent green it's spherical looks like a floating orb of some kind I freaked out and whip off my headphones after looking at it for a moment it becomes clear that this isn't an orbital or anything supernatural like that there's two black holes where I should be and a dark slit for a mouth he had said glow-in-the-dark mask and it's not floating someone's wearing it whoever it is he is facing me I can't make out the rest of their body but the head is definitely looking in my direction and this slowly inching closer it's some sort of distorted expressionless face it's hard to describe but the image of it is burned deep into my memory realizing he's been spotted the guy freezes well he just stared each other for what felt like the longest time he raises a finger up to the lips of his mask I'm just a trick-or-treater it's a thick manly voice one I didn't recognize in a state of shock and not really knowing how to react I just sit there keeping my eyes on him so trick-or-treat i mumble out neither please go now but he doesn't go the glowing face starts moving towards me desperate to keep him out of my bedroom i leap up and slam my door closed locking it and pressing the full weight of my body against it there guys just outside my door I can hear his deep breaths on the other side he tries the door handle it rattles more heavy breaths he tries the handle again then I can hear quick footsteps moving down the stairs and what I think is my front door opening and closing still in shock I just sit in my barricaded room sobbing to myself until my mom finally returns he it felt like forever since I last seen her she asked me what was wrong why I was crying and why there was a large hessian sack left in the corridor and I told her what had just happened she called the police for me immediately I like to think that this was just a crazy person and that they didn't really have any intention of harming me just some sort of messed-up Halloween prank whatever the case it was a surreal experience and the image of that floating talking face has haunted me for the longest time the most unnerving part about this to me though is the fact that the peninsula really was very small for me to see a face around town that I didn't recognize was very rare more than likely someone in my family knew who this person was hell I probably knew who it was I hate to think that after that event I may very well have interacted with that person the thought that they specifically targeted me out of everyone in the area made me extremely uncomfortable I never felt safe there after that that's part of the reason I moved away when I was 18 it was a late October in Sofia Bulgaria that year halloween fell on a Saturday and my friend Minko was throwing a massive shindig at his parents apartment now this guy was rich by Bulgarian standards born into money so when I say apartment don't think of a typical grotty sofiane flat think more along the lines of one of those unrealistically huge apartments from an American sitcom his parents had gone away for the weekend to either Spain or Italy or somewhere else suitably warm and as such things were set to go wild when the night finally rolled around I had dressed up in my zombie costume and set out to meet some friends minkos invitation said that the party started at 8:00 so naturally me and my group of chums didn't plan to arrive until 10:00 got to be fashionable when we did arrive most of the guests were already pretty drunk the vodka was flowing freely put it like that they had a massive punch bowl which was probably only ten percent juice knowing Mishka some of us had a few midterm exams coming up so we didn't want to go too wild we just had a few beers while everyone else picked out on punch other than the people on my course there was one other guy who wasn't really drinking that night some dude in a Wolfman mask who was just hanging around the punch bowl he didn't seem to know anybody at the party and was keeping to himself looked a little awkward to be honest the friendly half of me wanted to introduce myself invite him to hang out with me and my friends my socially anxious other half however decided against that the night goes on and one of the partiers starts to complain about having stomach pain I figure he's overdone it some guys really can't handle their alcohol he makes his way to the bathroom and starts vomiting not long afterwards another guest starts complaining about the same problem and then another and another eventually a dozen or so people are grabbing their stomachs in pain things start to seem serious with some people even vomiting on the living-room floor a little worried someone calls for medical assistance at the hospital things turned out not to be an extreme instance of alcohol poisoning instead we found out that the punchbowl contained a secret ingredient that someone had slipped in it had been laced with rat poison thankfully the dosage wasn't high enough to kill anyone immediately but without treatment the amount could have been fatal within a few hours at a party full of drunk people it was totally possible that no one would have been sober enough to react appropriately and call an ambulance somebody also could have easily passed out not realizing that they'd been poisoned thankfully though many were hospitalized nobody ended up with any prolonged health issues when we were questioned about what we all knew the guy in the wolf mask came into my mind he had been hanging around the punch bowl I mentioned it to the police and said that one of the other guests must have known who he was talking to my friends about it afterwards though he had seemed like nobody didn't know who he was everybody assumed that he was a friend of somebody else's and didn't bother to question his attendance as far as anybody could remember nobody talked to him nobody saw him without his mask on and nobody even remembered who he turned up with or even when he arrived at all he had just slept in unnoticed to begin with the police investigation turned up very little it seemed as though it was just a one-off incident some guy wanting to cause harm to a lot of people at once but people like that rarely try this sort of thing only once almost one year later to the day on the next Halloween weekend the exact same thing happened at a party in a different part of town this time the amount of poison used was increased three people almost lost their lives that night and ten were hospitalized this time however the perpetrator was tackled by another party goer who realized what he was up to and to questioning the police realized that the guy in the wolf mask was obviously a little disturbed in the head he cited an event known as the Jonestown Massacre as his inspiration behind his actions looking into it it turns out it was an event in the late 70s where over 300 members of a cult died after being forced to drink from a poisoned punch ball this unstable nutjob wanted to pay homage to the largest mass suicide in history for the first time in my life I was damn thankful that I had exams coming up I'm known for going a little bit wild at parties and for trying to drink everyone under the table who's to say I wouldn't have choked more poisoned punch than my body could have handled whenever Minch co-hosts a Halloween party now he always checks under everyone's masks at the door just to make sure they're on the guest list number [ __ ] a few years ago my aunt and her husband hired me to babysit for them it was Halloween weekend and they were going out to a party somewhere their son Josh who was only 10 months old at the time was a really simple kid to take care of he rarely cried and was really no trouble whatsoever to top it off he was super cute still is anyway I arrived at their place and they head off to their party saying that they'll be back before 11 p.
m. and that if there's any problems to call them immediately the night was mostly routine a couple of trick-or-treaters came to the door but other than that it was just me watching TV the baby was asleep upstairs and I had the monitor with me at all times I also made sure to check up on him every 10 minutes or so call me paranoid but whatever I just wanted to make sure that he was okay it's around 11:30 p. m.