[Music] i'm a single guy in my mid30s this happened a few years ago during a somewhat depressing period in my life i had just broken up with my girlfriend of 5 years the girl I thought I'd be marrying one day and starting a family with it's safe to say I was pretty lost at that time i can't lie the psychological damage of the breakup was pretty severe i spent entire weeks sulking and forgetting to take care of myself i'd wake up talk to no one go to work talk to no one and come home to spend the rest of the day in bed the weekends were even worse i'd forget to eat and I wouldn't leave the house i'd binge watch movie after mind-numbing movie not even realizing what I was watching half the time but enough with the Saab story i'm much better now although I still often think about the life I could have had if things went differently anyway it was a Saturday night i was slumped on the couch barely moving except to hit play on another random movie i couldn't even tell you what it was just another mindless action flick I'd forget about by the time it ended for context I was in my room which is on the second floor of my house i have a couch and a TV in my bedroom so I typically never watch TV anywhere else but there at one point I looked down at my phone it was a few minutes after 9:00 p. m i remember that distinctly because my mom was calling me for like the fourth time that day i didn't want to ignore her but I let it ring out anyway i knew she meant well but I couldn't bring myself to talk i didn't want to hear the usual questions about whether I'd eaten or gone outside eventually I got tired of whatever was playing and backed out to the menu i wasn't really in the mood for anything but I clicked on some random horror movie I'd never heard of it was one of those generic ones with a grainy thumbnail i figured I'd halfwatch it until I fell asleep about 20 minutes in I realized the movie was even worse than I expected the audio was a mess every time someone talked I had to turn the volume way up just to catch a word or two and then the next sound effect would blast through the speakers and damn near rupture my eardrums for whatever reason though I kept the movie on i think it was just because I was too lazy to change it again at some point I started noticing this weird sound effect in the movie it was this sharp metallic clang kind of like a pipe hitting concrete it didn't match anything that was happening on the screen no one was holding metal and no one was in a warehouse or anything like that and it wasn't timed with the scares either it would just show up every minute or so like the director had accidentally looped it or something same exact sound same volume and same pitch it was almost too consistent to be a coherent sound design choice that plus the fact that the rest of the audio was mixed so poorly made me question how the movie had even made it to streaming platforms the poor quality of the movie actually made it harder to turn off partly because I was enjoying criticizing it but also partly because I needed to see how something so terrible would play out about halfway through I got up to use the bathroom and for whatever reason I actually paused the movie instead of not caring enough about what was going on when I got back and sat down I grabbed the remote and hovered over the play button but right as I was about to press it I heard that sound again that same sharp metallic clang except this time the movie was paused i froze for a second just staring at the screen no audio no movement the sound had been clear as day and it had come from somewhere inside the house that's when it clicked it had never been part of the movie i stayed completely still trying to make sure I hadn't imagined it i watched the paused screen and just listened hoping my mind had just been playing a trick on me but then about 45 seconds later there it was again the exact same clang i didn't waste another second i immediately jumped up grabbed a knife from my desk and started moving room to room frantically checking every place someone could possibly be hiding every room in the house was clear though there was no one in fact there were no signs that anything was out of place either but as I walked back up the stairs with my heart still pounding I heard the clang again it wasn't as loud this time meaning it must have been coming from my room where I had been watching the movie but I had been sitting there the whole time so that didn't make any sense that's when it hit me i had a few windows open it was spring and the weather had finally started warming up so I'd gotten into the habit of cracking them in the evenings to let some air in i started thinking maybe the sound wasn't coming from inside the house at all maybe it had been coming from right outside the house this whole time i don't know why but that thought scared me even more i went over to the window and pushed the curtain aside just enough to get a look at the backyard and there it was one of the deck chairs was sitting out in the middle of the lawn maybe 20 ft from the house and standing next to the chair was a kid a young kid i couldn't really make out any of his facial features given that it was so dark out but the silhouette was way too small to be an adult it was 100% a little kid he was holding what looked like a PVC pipe which explained the noise I had been hearing he must have seen me because as soon as I looked out the window he smacked the pipe against the chair i instantly stepped away from the window and felt my body start filling with fear i know it sounds silly that I was afraid of something like that but I couldn't fathom what that kid was doing outside my house did he have some kind of mental disorder it did make sense and then I thought about the fact that he must have been standing out there for nearly an hour which freaked me out even more i tried to slow my breathing and think rationally maybe the kid was lost maybe he had wandered off from a nearby house and didn't know how to get back i told myself I couldn't just stand there and do nothing so I went down the stairs and made my way through the house toward the back door trying to keep calm i even turned on the porch light thinking it might help the kid feel less spooked or at least give me a better look at him as I was turning the doororknob I froze something about it felt wrong like I was walking into some kind of trap if that kid were really lost wouldn't he ring my doorbell or call out to me through my window and even if he were too scared to and ultimately decided that banging a pipe against one of my chairs was the best option would he really stick to that strategy after a whole hour it was insane something in my gut told me not to go outside so I slowly backed away from the door i crept over to a small window just left of the door one that overlooked the porch and part of the backyard i kept the light off behind me and slowly tilted the blind with two fingers just enough to see through without drawing attention and there they were there were two men wearing all black crouching below my back door as if ready to ambush me the second I opened it i must have stared too long because one of the men suddenly turned his head and locked eyes with me through the glass i dropped the blinds and instantly dialed 911 i was halfway up the stairs when I heard banging on the back door those guys were trying to break in i sprinted to my bathroom and locked the door by that point I was having a full-on panic attack i felt like I couldn't move i was struggling to breathe honestly shortly after I got to the bathroom I heard a crash from downstairs followed by the sound of footsteps walking around below me those people were in my house i heard a set of footsteps walking up the stairs and I held my breath as they made their way down the hall i saw the bathroom door knob turn ever so slightly followed by a loud bang like they were trying to kick the door down that made me lose it i yelled at the top of my lungs that the police were on their way and the person on the other side of the door instantly ran back down the stairs a few seconds later I heard one of the doors slam and silence the police arrived shortly after that and I told them everything there wasn't much they could do i didn't have any cameras and I wasn't even able to give them any valuable information the one thing that made them take things a little more seriously was the fact that there was a child involved according to the police that kind of involvement suggested whoever these guys were they weren't just impulsive criminals they were willing to go way further and that was the scariest part for me too i don't like thinking about the poor kid's involvement in the whole thing every explanation I came up with is equally sickening the police told me I was likely the target of a random attack but the whole scheme was just way too elaborate in my opinion nothing has happened since though and I've since moved on with my life i just really hope that kid is somehow safe even though I know the odds are slim [Music] it's currently 2024 as I'm writing this i'm a senior and I'm graduating in a couple weeks let me give you all a very brief rant i never understood how most of my friends could survive a whole week-long spring break trip to Miami or some other party destination i simply can't so for every year of college spring break was an excuse for me to just go home and relax this past spring break was no different i'd essentially be going off the grid for a week taking a break from grueling school work and mindless drama i was actually really pissed because I had been working on a flawless regrade request for a midterm I had just taken and my scummy TA denied it for no good reason but anyway it was a Monday morning i didn't really have any plans just needed to get a workout in but that was about it i've always been a morning workout guy it's the one thing that makes me feel like I have my life together so even though I was home for spring break and technically had nothing to do I still set my alarm for 6:00 a. m and forced myself out of bed i figured if I got to the gym early enough I could beat the rush by 6:20 I was already dressed out the door and on the road the drive to the gym takes about 15 minutes mostly back roads through quiet residential neighborhoods nothing ever really happens out there it was definitely a nice place to grow up in but a little boring once I got older and all my childhood friends started moving on with their lives i was driving along listening to some YouTube beats when something strange caught my eye there was an ice cream truck parked along the curb just sitting there engine off no lights that wouldn't have been weird in the summer I guess but this was mid-March it was still kind of chilly out all the kids were still in school too there was no reason for an ice cream truck to be sitting there at 6:30 in the morning it looked completely out of place as I drove past the truck I slowed down just enough to glance through the driver's window it was empty by the time I turned the corner and left it behind I found myself thinking more about it than I should have i don't know why the site just felt a little bizarre it wasn't just that it was too early in the year for ice cream trucks it was that I couldn't remember ever even seeing one in my neighborhood at all not even when I was a kid my area just wasn't that kind of place as weird as the whole thing was I quickly dismissed it and proceeded with my workout after the gym I got a quick bite to eat and headed home feeling like I'd actually done something with my morning but as I turned onto the same street from earlier the ice cream truck was still there in the same exact spot that made me pause i figured someone would have called it in by now this is the kind of neighborhood where people are really uptight and get twitchy if you park too long in front of their house that actually reminds me of a time when some grumpy woman gave my friends and I crap for parking in front of her house even though we were waiting for our other friend who lived right next door i say that to say that I'm not crazy for expecting someone to have called the police about the truck curiosity got the better of me instead of heading straight home I circled around the block to pass the truck again just to see if someone was inside it now and someone was as I drove past the second time I must have been a little too obvious with how slowly I was driving because the guy in the front seat locked eyes with me for a few seconds he looked really off he had this long almost cartoonishly pointed nose and a scraggly beard that looked like it hadn't seen a razor in years he genuinely looked like someone who lived in his vehicle and rubbed me the wrong way i drove straight home after that my parents were both at work so I had the place to myself i spent the next few hours just killing time sometime in the afternoon I walked down the driveway to check the mail as I got to the end of the driveway I glanced down the street and nearly died inside it was that same ice cream truck from before it was parked across the street about three houses down it wasn't facing me but I had a feeling it wasn't just a coincidence i didn't move for a second i just stood there trying to make sense of what I was seeing had that guy really followed me home i knew he had there was no other explanation i grabbed the mail and walked straight back inside trying not to make it obvious that I'd seen anything once I was upstairs though I went to one of the guest bedrooms there's a window that overlooks the street from a better angle so I pulled the curtain aside and peeked through sure enough the ice cream truck was still there i watched it for a few minutes but nothing happens i'm not sure what I expected to see but I couldn't bring myself to look away eventually I had no choice i didn't have all day to spend staring out a window so I tried to get some stuff done on my laptop i couldn't focus though every half hour or so I'd feel the urge to go back to the guest room and glance out the window every time I looked the ice cream truck was still visible but it was in a different spot which meant the driver was intentionally moving around the street for whatever reason i didn't know whether it was a good idea to call the police or not i wasn't sure what I'd even say given that nothing had actually happened even now I wish that I had just done what any normal person would have done and either called the police or tried to ignore the truck but I was too curious my older brother is really into bird watching so I started digging around his room for a set of binoculars I knew was in there somewhere eventually I found them and returned to the guest room i pulled the curtains aside and looked at the truck through the binoculars i was not prepared for what I was about to see through the driver's side window I could see that man from earlier only he wasn't just sitting there he was looking back at me with a pair of his own binoculars as soon as he saw me looking he instantly dropped the binoculars started the truck and drove off i was horrified that guy had been spying on me and my house for the better part of 3 hours after literally stalking me home that's when I finally called the police i didn't even know what I was expecting from it i just didn't know what else to do i told them that this ice cream truck had been circling my neighborhood all day that I'd seen a man inside watching my house through binoculars and that he drove off the second I looked back the dispatcher was calm and told me they'd sent someone to patrol the area and keep an eye out she told me it should be relatively easy to spot an ice cream truck given how distinctive they were then she hung up i didn't know what else to do after that when my parents got home a little while later I filled them in they were obviously concerned but they also told me it probably wasn't worth worrying about anymore i was pretty tired by then so I fell asleep pretty quickly sometime later I woke randomly in the middle of the night instinctively I grabbed my phone off my nightstand it was sometime just after 3:00 a.
m i sat there in bed trying to figure out what had woken me up when I heard it music [Music] it was very faint almost too faint to notice at first i kept listening and panic started building inside me when I realized what kind of music it was the jingle of an ice cream truck before I could do anything something clicked softly against the glass of my bedroom window i instantly connected the dots someone was throwing rocks at my window that had to be what had woken me up the music was way too quiet on its own i sat frozen for a while staring at the wall across from me i kept telling myself to look to just get up and check but every time I started to move my body locked up again eventually I forced myself to do it i crept toward the window and stood to the side of it for a second on the count of three I peeled back the curtain in one fluid motion and looked the man from earlier was standing in the middle of my front yard right below my window and on either side of him holding his hands were two small children or at least they looked like children based on how short they were i really couldn't tell on account of how dark it was i didn't waste another second i tried to ignore the pounding in my chest stepped away from the window and immediately went to wake up my dad i had already dialed 911 by the time he went downstairs to have a look around my dad's a pretty tough guy so I figured he'd want to handle things himself unfortunately that man had somehow slipped away in the few minutes it took us to get outside the police arrived a while later a few days went by and we never heard anything and I eventually had to go back to school but my parents promised me they'd be on high alert that was almost a month ago and luckily my parents haven't told me about any strange occurrences since then the reason I'm writing this now though is because my mom called me a few days ago apparently there was a missing person's case that had just gone public in our hometown two six-year-old twins a boy and a girl had vanished from a neighborhood about 30 minutes from where we lived the moment she said it my mind went straight back to that night to those two small figures standing on either side of the man in my front yard the whole thing honestly makes me sick why would that guy sit in my house for hours and throw rocks at my windows in the middle of the night and why even go to those lengths if he was involved in something as serious as a kidnapping maybe he was worried that I had somehow caught on to what he was doing but if he had really taken those kids wouldn't attention be the last thing he'd want and then there's the kids themselves i wonder if they were already with him when I first saw the truck that morning or were they somewhere else i really can't stop thinking about it the only explanation I can come up with is the type of person who would kidnap a child doesn't think like normal people do which is why that man would risk getting caught just to freak me out my mom followed up with the police to try and shed some light on the case and our possible connection to it if anything ever happens I will send an [Music] update this happened last spring about 9 months ago i'm a sales associate for BMW so my weeks are pretty busy when I'm not at the dealership I'm answering my phone because of all the phone work involved sometimes I feel like I have more to do when I'm not at the dealership as funny as that sounds because of the nature of my work I pretty much have to answer my phone every time it rings especially when it's an unknown caller so as you'd expect I get a lot of scam calls but I have no choice but to answer just in case it's a client or an interested party one night sometime after 10 p. m my phone started ringing it was a number my phone didn't recognize normally I would have picked up without thinking but this time I was already in bed halfway through winding down something about how late it was just made me let it ring out they didn't leave a voicemail i figured if it was important they'd leave one but a few minutes later the same number called again i sat up and answered it i was a little irritated but I still tried to keep my voice polite just in case it was someone serious at first all I heard was static just this thick uneven fuzz i was about to hang up when I caught something underneath it a voice i held the phone closer and [Applause] listened it was my voice i was 100% sure of it that actually made me freeze up a little bit after a few seconds I realized it was more than just a recording of my voice it was a conversation I'd had earlier that day with a client just standard stuff pricing availability setting up a test drive nothing sensitive but it was definitely real it was definitely my voice i still don't know if it was the right decision but I instantly hung up the phone i sat there for a while just staring at my phone trying to make sense of what I just heard i wasn't panicking but I definitely wasn't calm either the best way I can describe what I was feeling was a mix of confusion and unease my first thought was that maybe it was the client I had talked to earlier maybe he had accidentally called me while trying to play back the call or record it for his own notes i really don't know it felt like a stretch but it was the only explanation that didn't immediately spiral into something worse that didn't really explain why the number was unknown instead of the number he had called from earlier but it was the best I could come up with the next morning I decided to call him back just for my own sanity he answered right away and seemed totally normal friendly even but when I brought up the call from the night before he had no idea what I was talking about he sounded genuinely confused i apologized for the mixup and hung up and for whatever reason I believed him the rest of the day was normal i had a few appointments followed up with some leads nothing out of the ordinary i didn't think too much about the call for the night before but later that night around the same time I got another call the number wasn't saved in my phone again but it was different from the number that had called me the night before this time I answered it immediately exactly what I was dreading happened it was another staticheavy recording of a conversation I had that day with a client a different client a whole different conversation entirely i hung up again without saying anything that night was when it really started getting to me because now it felt intentional and I noticed something else the recording didn't include the client's voice it was only me talking like a one-sided call i started wondering if someone had been listening in on my conversations and recording me somehow i didn't sleep very well that night as I couldn't stop thinking about it but I didn't know what to do i never thought I was a paranoid person but the next week of my life proved me wrong every night for a week the same thing would happen i'd get a call from a random number and would listen to a staticky recording of a conversation I'd had that day i started recording the calls myself i can't even tell you why i just thought it was the smart thing to do by the third or fourth night it started to wear on me not just in a creepy this is weird kind of way i mean it started to actually mess with my head i couldn't relax i couldn't think i'd catch myself looking out the window every few minutes like someone might be standing out there watching me i started triple locking my front door then I started leaving a light on in every room at night at one point I even moved a chair in front of my bedroom door looking back it's really hard for me to explain any of these decisions but my mind was in a very different place during that period anytime my phone rang even during the day I'd step outside and answer it from the safety of my car where I could see every angle around me it sounds crazy now but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched at one point I even brought it up with the police i felt ridiculous doing it but I figured if someone was monitoring me I had to at least make some kind of report the officer I spoke to was polite enough but I could tell right away they didn't take it seriously he said they could try looking into the numbers but unless there was a direct threat or evidence of harassment there wasn't much they could do i don't know if they actually tried to trace the calls or just filed it away and forgot about it either way it didn't help if anything it made me feel more alone in it a few days later though the call suddenly stopped that week of obsessively checking my surroundings and answering calls for my car must have deterred whoever was harassing me part of me wanted to believe it was over but I couldn't relax if anything the sudden absence of contact actually caused me to spiral even further into paranoia my mom is schizophrenic so I always figured I was predisposed to developing some kind of mental condition but it was literally happening right before my very eyes i was becoming one of those reclusive people who think the entire world is spying on them i ended up getting a brand new personal phone number it was a massive headache switching numbers meant having to reestablish contact with clients update everything linked to my phone and risk missing out on people trying to get in touch with me but I did it anyway i couldn't shake the feeling that my old number had been compromised somehow after a few more days of radio silence the thing I was dreading happened one night after work I got another call it was exactly like the ones before it i kept my cool and instead of remaining silent and hanging up I actually spoke i said something along the lines of "I don't know who you are or why you're doing this but if it's money you want I've got it. " I went on to say that I'd happily pay to be left alone i gave the person my address and said I'd be willing to meet and then for the first time there was an actual voice on the other end it sounded like they were using a voice changer and all they said was 11:00 before hanging up i know what you're thinking why the hell would I volunteer my address like that honestly I can't answer that question i was acting irrationally i know that but it's impossible for me to explain exactly how my mind was working during that time so I'm not even going to bother the next four days were the most traumatic and stressful moments of my life i'm not sure how much I can even type out without getting too graphic but here goes i have a handgun in my house for personal safety i grabbed it from my room loaded it and sat at my kitchen table and waited i can't even begin to explain all the thoughts that were bouncing around in my head as I sat there i contemplated a lot of things in those 4 hours i'd go as far as to say that had it not been for sheer chance I might not be typing this out right now just thinking about that night gives me a sickening feeling 11:00 p.
