[Music] [Music] I was raised in a place called Marblehead on the North Shore of Massachusetts overall it was a pretty nice place to grow up I got to play a lot of baseball me and my friends had a grand total of five public beaches to ride our bikes over to in the summer and in terms of school and family life everything was relatively stable for me But then when I tell people I work with that I actually had something of a nice healthy childhood they can hardly believe their ears you see although I grew up
in Massachusetts I ended up moving to New York and eventually to Los Angeles after finding work as a comedy writer and I'm not going to drop any names that isn't what this piece is about but there's certain writers rooms where I become known for my very dark and times very Bleak sense of Humor everyone I wrote with during my first major gig assumed that I'd suffered some kind of terrible hardship at a young age you know something like losing a parent in a fiery car crash or getting passed around by Lonely priests so when I
told them that in reality my childhood looked more like a Norman Rockwell painting than an after school special they were kind of shocked and one night over a few beers after work one of the other writing Staff ended up asking me where my sense of humor comes from if not from some deep seated trauma now at first I told him I wasn't sure but then as I thought about it I remembered something that had happened back in Marblehead when I was real young not to me but to these other kids it wasn't like it unlocks
some repressed memory or anything it was more like I realized that I might have severely underestimated the impact it had on my Psyche I remember how he laughed when I said actually there was this one time when because to him it was like oh here it comes here comes the repressed trauma kind of dark to laugh at I know but that's just how we were but then once we were done yucking it up he asked me to tell him the story that I was about to launch into when he cut me off and this is
what I told him back when I was in the fourth grade There was a girl in our neighborhood named Sarah she was a couple of years older than us in seventh or maybe eighth grade and I had the biggest crush on her but then everyone had a crush on Sarah or at least wanted to be friends with her because she was nothing short of a godamn saint she volunteered at the local church and was involved in a bunch of after school clubs but she wasn't some Square she hung out with us neighborhood kids too and
although her And I weren't exactly close she was a lot of fun to be around she was kind too and boy was she kind while that manifested in a couple of different ways it was never more evident than when she befriended the new kid Bobo Bobo whose real name was like Robert or Bobby showed up in the neighborhood when I was a third grader he was around the same age as Sarah so maybe 2 or 3 years older than myself he was super tall and wide for his age so He looked even older than he
was but right away we could tell that he had and I'll put this as delicately as I can severe learning difficulty I suppose that these days his parents would have taken him to a doctor gotten referred to a psychologist and they'd have a name for whatever Bobo had but back then we all just said that bobo was a little slow or touched was the word some of our moms used I think if this happened today his parents would have Kept a closer eye on him but this was the 70s so his folks let him play
outside like any other kid when we were first meeting him we asked what his name was and when he said Bobo we were like you mean Bob or Bobby and he just sort of looked at us sort of blankly and said yeah Bobo and that's when we realized that he was a little different but we didn't hold it against him now kids can be cruel and you can bet your ass that we Made fun of Bobo from time to time but it wasn't like we excluded him or anything like that if Bobo showed up while
we were playing street hockey we didn't tell him to buzz off we just made him goalie and watched him laugh whenever the ball hit his pads or helmet cage he was just happy to be included I guess and we were happy to include him but none of us took to Bobo in the way that Sarah did and he adored her for that like the rest of us Sarah must have Realize Bobo was a little slow and since not all of the kids in the neighborhood were as nice as we were Sarah took it upon herself
to be Bobo's best friend whenever bbo was about to go get himself into some trouble Sarah would be there to get him out of it and whenever any of the neighborhood bullies came around to give him a hard time it was Sarah who usually leapt to his defense when this first happened no one was particularly surprised that it Was Sarah who was brave enough to do the right thing and stand up to the bullies but Bobo sure was I don't think he'd ever had anyone fight his corner so hard and afterwards him and Sarah were
almost Inseparable Bobo didn't go to a regular school so it wasn't like a 24/7 thing but if Sarah showed up to hang out on a weekend you could bet that he was close behind Bobo and his family moved into the neighborhood right after the holidays of about 71 or 72 and then I remember he and Sarah became super close around St Patrick's Day and after that they were almost always together but especially during summer vacation of 72 every single day Bobo would either be hanging with Sarah or walking around the neighborhood asking everyone where she
was sometimes he'd hang with us if she wasn't around but whenever she showed up Bobo forgot about whatever he was doing and would follow her around like a lost Puppy but then three big things happened that summer and the first was the entrance of a kid called Jackson Jackson had already started high school and like a lot of boys around Marblehead he had a huge crush on Sarah now side note I guess that it sounds like there was a a gross age Gap here but I think Jackson was about to turn 15 that summer and
Sarah had already turned 13 that spring so as much as this guy was a total douche it wasn't like he was 18 trying to hit on middle schoolers or anything like that now anyways Jackson started asking Sarah if she wanted to go to the movies with him but she kept turning him down she was polite at first but Jackson wasn't the type of kid to take no for an answer he kept on coming around trying to hang out with us but it was all very disingenuous you know we could all tell that he was faking
an interest in us to get closer to Sarah and so could she see until Jackson Started wanting to date Sarah he'd been a total butthole to almost each and every one of us he was a few years older which already gave him a superiority complex but you could tell that he thought he was too good for us and that Sarah was too good for us too and so he keeps coming around hanging out and trying to Cozy up to Sarah but instead of warming up to him she's disliking him more and more as she sees
just how fake he can be he came around for maybe 2 Weeks or so seeming like he was willing to play the long game but then one day I guess he just sort of ran out of patience and The Mask finally slipped from what I heard it started with him asking Sarah why she wouldn't go to the movies with him or at least hang out just the two of them sometime so they could actually talk she kept saying that she didn't like him like that and they should hang out as a group since she saw
him as a Friend and to that Jackson responded with something like so what you got a crush on that goddamn RW that's why you hang out with them alone all the time I didn't hear him say it but I sure heard Sarah's reaction and everyone did she just about went through him for a shortcut as my old Irish Grandma used to say or tore him a new one as we might say today she absolutely positively utterly and completely eviscerated Jackson and she Did it in front of everyone now first off Sarah never yelled so to
hear her suddenly shriek what the hell did you just say got everyone's attention in an instant but then instead of giving him the old what for with maybe one or two lines Sarah went off like an artillery battery in fact scratch that she straight up carpet bombed him she told him how shallow he was how his breath smelled how he was fake a phony a fraud she told him she'd never be interested In him never not as long as either of them lived not even if he was the last man on Earth and she went
off like that for maybe 2 or 3 minutes straight and by the time Jackson turned around to walk home he was completely white as a sheet he'd been utterly humiliated in front of the whole of Maple Street and I do mean the entire of the street folks were coming out of their houses to see what all the commotion was about so old and young everyone saw Jackson getting Spectacularly humiliated by his crush and we didn't see much of Jackson anymore after that and good ryance to bad trash you know but it didn't take long for
word to filter down that just like he wouldn't take no for an answer he wasn't about to take such a humiliation lying down Jackson wanted venge and the word on the street was he was going to get it by the end of the summer anyway so a few weeks went by and We were all feeling very protective of Sarah and we were terrified that Jackson and his buddies were going to get her whatever that meant as a kid but when one week went by then two and Jackson stayed the hell away we figured things might
have blown over but then one day Sarah announced that she had some bad news and had at first we thought it was regarding that whole spat that she had with Jackson well it turns out it wasn't anything to do with that At all and arguably it was way worse at the end of the summer in just a few short weeks she and her family were leaving town for good her dad had been offered a very well-paying job someplace in another state and to try and get her placed in a new school they were moving towards
the end of August which was only like a week away when she told us hearing the news so suddenly sucked very hard I mean absolutely everyone was sad to see her go right after informing us Of this bad news Sarah announced that she also had a big favor to ask of us under no circumstances were we to tell Bobo that she was leaving if he was going to find out it needed to be face to face she knew that he was going to be incredibly upset and hearing it through the grape vine would only upset
him even more if he was going to find out it had to be from her and it had to be at the right time and in the right place we all understood why Sarah was Approaching things that way we were all sad to hear that she was leaving and if we were sad then Bobo would be inconsolable the only question was how was she going to tell him in the end Sarah decided that she was going to take Bobo for a walk somewhere private on the night before she was due to leave she delivered the
news in as gentle a manner as possible in private as close to the date as possible and that way they got to spend as much time as possible Together just being happy before a nice goodbye and a clean break we all thought that was a good idea and somehow we managed to stay tight lipped around Bobo so that he didn't find out that she was leaving until the date of Sarah's choosing which seems like a minor miracle now that I think about it with kids or maybe someone did let it slip and he either didn't
pick up on it or didn't believe it who knows and so about a week week Goes by and it comes to the day before Sarah's departure which if you're following is also the day that she chosen to say goodbye to Bobo I'm guessing her plan was to walk him down to the beach a small stretch of sand just up the street from where we lived I didn't know where she was taking him at the time I just saw the two of them walking off while saying a whole mix of things while a handful of us
were like well hope he takes it well most of Us knew that he was going to be completely de at the only thing that had stopped him being completely heartbroken was Sarah's method of delivery because if anyone could sufficiently soften that blow it was going to be her but then maybe 20 to 30 minutes later way before we expected Sarah and Bobo to return a kid comes running up the street with a bloody nose and looking scared out of his mind he' just run into Jackson and his Buddies who had just heard the news that
Sarah was leaving that very next morning and he must have heard the news somehow gathered up two buddies of his and then they jumped on their bikes and rode across town to look for her but then on the ride over they see the kid who came running up the street and knowing that he was a friend of Sarah's they beat the crap out of him until he told them where she was they were riding over to the beach right at That very moment and Jackson was apparently carrying a pocket knife obviously hearing that sends all
of us into a panic and then anyone who had parents who Liv nearby ran off to tell them so they could call the cops and since my parents' place was just a block away one of those kids obviously was me I told my mom and she grabbed the phone and called the authorities but when I told my dad who was working on his car with my uncle They jumped in my uncle's car and drove off in the direction of that beach I wanted so badly to go with him but my dad told me to stay
with mom well they went off to try and get there before the cops did so so they could stop things from escalating they didn't have the whole story they basically just heard some high school kid is about to stab Sarah down at the beach and then they took off like hell on wheels to try and stop it from Happening it sounds kind of crazy to think about it now because at the time once the cops and my uncle and dad were involved I figured everything would be okay grown-ups had power to fix every other kind
of problem so why not that one too it was only when my dad and uncle returned home a few hours later that I realized that things hadn't gone according to plan they didn't give me any real details they just told me that two kids had gotten Hurt really bad at the beach and that they were really sorry because two of them were kids that I hung out with and in my mind my dad and uncle and the cops had gotten there too late and Jackson had stabbed Bobo and Sarah with that knife that he was
carrying I later overheard that a third kid had been taken away by the cops and I figured that that kid could probably be none other than Jackson but as it turns out that wasn't The case at all and my best guess of what happened had been almost completely off Jackson had arrived at the beach presumably with plans to scare hurt or maybe even kill Sarah as revenge for publicly humiliating him but what Jackson hadn't planned on was Bobo not being even remotely scared of the knife that he was carrying Jackson approached took out the knife
and then according to Jackson's friends bobo just sort of Rage rushed Him if that makes sense he got all cut up in the process but he somehow got control of Jackson's knife hand and then wrapped his free hand around the guy's throat and squeezed with all his might Jackson's friends freaked out and ran off when they saw Jackson get taken down like that and they didn't even try to save him I'm guessing Sarah did at least that's what Bobo said happen but instead of listening to her he just kept squeezing Jackson's neck until he Stopped
squirming and fighting for air I heard that bobo later said that after Jackson stopped fighting a very distraught Sarah had asked him why he did it why he'd killed Jackson instead of just stopping him Bobo said it was because Jackson would have never left her alone and that's when Sarah tells Bobo how that wasn't true how she wouldn't have had to worry about Jackson after that day because she was leaving town in the Morning I guess Bobo was still kind of Berserk because instead of getting sad when he heard the news or feeling bad about
what he'd done he turned his rage on to Sarah and did to her the exact same thing that he' just done to Jack took her down wrapped a hand around her throat and squeezed we didn't find all that stuff out until much later on it wasn't until the end of high school that we were able to sort of dredge through all the rumor And hearsay and finally get to the actual truth but by then I guess it was far too late the whole Community had already gone through the horror and grief of learning what Bobo
had done but at the time at least the adults had the wise and house and us kids really had nothing to go on many of us were still under the impression that Sarah's death had somehow been an accident that Jackson had stabbed or cut her which in turn had sent Bobo into a murderous rage But then to learn that bobo had killed Jackson before turning on Sarah in some sort of blackout rage that was just far too much for people to handle I still know people who think Jackson's Rich parents tried to pin the murder
on Bobo because they couldn't deal with what an their kid was and while he was most definitely a total goddamn prick he wasn't the one who hurt Sarah hell he didn't even get near her there's no doubt that he contributed to The whole situation I mean I don't think Bobo would have reacted the way that he did if he hadn't been in such a keyed up state of mind but that doesn't change the fact that it was Bobo who killed his best friend in the world not Jackson I mean he said it himself at the
police station after he was arrested at that scene and as a result I guess they took him off to some home someplace where he might still be living all these years later and when I was done telling that Story I remember my co-worker saying something like yeah I knew something was lurking behind that dead-eyed smile and there it is there's your childhood trauma and you know something I guess he was right I think that whole episode had a profound effect on me as a kid but after pushing it to the back of my mind for
many years I could barely even remember it let alone acknowledge that it was probably one of the most formative Events of my entire childhood I mean half the reason I think my own childhood was so peachy was the fact that neither me nor any of my family were murdered in such a horrible tragic fashion it's just crazy to think that having a few beers after work led to me unlocking a part of my psyche that I never even knew was there but the effect that it had the most was that I'm now planning on reaching
out to Sarah's surviving Relatives I feel like I should reach out and let them know that even all these years later there's people outside her family that still remember her with affection but I'm not even sure if that'll be of any help now that the damage has long been done [Music] I'm a recent subscriber from Germany and this is a story that happened many years ago in my hometown it's quite an old story but it's something that you can Most certainly verify via news stories because this was a very famous story in Germany at the
time of its occurrence and so a few houses down for me in the street where I grew up there was this old guy who lived with his wife and dog in a big detached house he was a bit of a Shu in as you might say and I never saw him talking to anyone and the only reason you ever saw him leave his house was just to go walk his dog we lived on the same street in Peace for the longest time and although he seemed very antisocial everything appeared to be regular then one day
things started to go downhill at some point people started to notice how the car belonging to the man's wife was no longer in the driveway and then later on it was confirmed that she had divorced him and moved away this was only discovered because the lady's former work colleague just so happened To have bumped into a neighbor so it took 2 weeks for people to realize that she was gone for good we were sad for him but it is a fact of life that marriages do fall apart and he seemed to be acting like his
usual self so no alarms are raised one morning sometime later I left my house at the usual time to catch the school us our street is relatively quiet and normally there isn't much stuff going on but on this particular morning Things were looking very different there were a few neighbors on the street and my parents said that there's something wrong with the old guy which lived on the end of the street but nothing specific was known at that time everyone seemed very worried because apparently he gotten into an argument with someone while walking his dog
and this neighbor was shocked that he was even talking to them so when the man started screaming about something people Were shocked enough to come out of their houses to see what was going on you can just imagine this man has not talked to anyone for quite literally years and then all of a sudden he decides to begin screaming in the street and it made for quite a spectacle I wanted to stay and see what was going on but my mother and father insisted that I make my way to school and avoid being late and
so off I went and for the whole day I thought about it Every so often I wasn't obsessed but I was curious to see if the man had been arrested or taken away or if there' been any further confrontations I was actually quite excited to hear from my mother and father what had happened but to think of that feeling now makes me feel a deep shame in myself because what I arrived home to was not entertaining as I returned and exited the bus at the bus stop I saw that the Whole street was completely blocked
off and Evac uated police cars and officers were everywhere and even a SWAT team was there I had no idea what was going on so I rushed to the house met with my parents and they explained to me that the old guy tried to destroy the entire Street in some kind of manic episode he flooded his entire basement with gas and had an improvised bomb in his garden shed which was essentially a big pile of propane gas tanks tied Together a Time timer clock in a toaster served as the fuse mechanism for both the bomb
and the basement and the whole thing was rigged to explode between 7: to 8:00 a.m. in the morning with a smaller version of this explosive being placed in the recycling bin of the neighbors directly next to him before the old man triggered the bomb he wrecked the entire interior of his house by Smashing and breaking everything he then went to the garage and carried on The destruction which is strangely how he got caught a neighbor then heard all the noise and became suspicious he looked through the garage window and the fumes were so strong that
he noticed the distinctive smell of gasoline he broke the door to enter the house and discovered the mess the old guy had created and that's what started the so-called argument that everyone had heard that morning the neighbor Immediately called the cops after the screaming had finished and that's when everyone was waiting outside but right at the same time my parents SC olded me and told me to hurry along to school our neighbor was trying his best to activate the explosive devices and blow us all the kingdom come as they say the bomb squad from the
city police force later said it was a miracle that the device did not detonate it was well Put together with the only parts that were suboptimal being the timer and Detonator if our neighbor had taken just a little more care when putting together these two aspects of his device I would most certainly not be around to write this to you the police arrived not long after I departed and after gaining entry to the home they arrested the man before he could correct his mistakes and detonate the device and for a while it looked like we
Were going to have to stay in a hotel overnight but the bomb squad managed to remove the device around an hour after I arrived home from school and we were able to reenter our houses once the police truck had departed I heard that after he was arrested the man was deemed unfit to stand trial and basically went straight from the courtroom to a psychiatric hospital where he is remained ever since from What I understand he is very unlikely to ever be discharged as his psychological condition has not improved and he still Harbors a very deep
hatred of the world around him [Music] from the ages of around 6 to 11 my family and I lived in a very rough neighborhood one night it was just my mom myself and my two siblings at home my dad used to drive truck for a living which obviously meant that he was away An awful lot meaning a lot of the time it was just our mom taking care of us that night at around midnight someone started ringing our apartment's buzzer my mom woke up and went to the little intercom to ask who it was and
no one answered she thought that maybe it was some kids playing ding-dong ditch or something juvenile like that so instead of being scared she was just annoyed as she went back to bed but then about 30 minutes later someone starts buzzing for A second time mom gets up again and peers through the side window to see if she can spot anyone out there but she can't see a single living soul and that's when she started to freak out she goes back to the room and grabs my dad's gun and then sits in the living room
in the dark just waiting for someone to try and break in after God knows how long there was another Buzz this time Mom said she very calmly explained that if they carried on Harassing us she was going to call the cops and if they tried to break in she would shoot them again there was no response so she went back to the window to see if she could spot anyone in that time she did she said that there were three guys out there faces covered all looking up at the window all looking right at her
mom said she rushed to call the cops all the while me and my two siblings were asleep in our bedroom no one tried To break in right away but my mom had to wait for an hour for the cops to finally show up and when they did they buzzed our buzzer causing her to freak out one more time thinking that the masked men were outside again thankfully it was the cops and she invited them up to do a quick look and around the outside of the apartment building to make sure no one was hanging around
after their search they tell my mom that they had found a piece of Barbed wire about 4 ft long next to the front door and asked if it belonged to my mom she said that it wasn't hers and asked why the cop then told her that there was a chance that it belonged to whoever was knocking at the door mom asked if they thought the people were planning on using it and although they assured her that there was no way of knowing that she's convinced to this day that they were planning on torturing us however
what the cops did confirm is That she was very smart not to open the door to see who was there otherwise it could have cost her her life they also said that they'd Patrol the neighborhood until morning and do a thorough investigation once there was Daylight and later on that morning once my siblings and I were at at school they called back to talk to her about something they said that when they were searching around the house they found Footprints leading around to the back of The home leading up to my bedroom window you see
our apartment was on the second floor so scarily accessible to anyone with a fairly long ladder they also found Nicks in the window seal where the person or persons were trying to pry open the window to break in but failed my mom mom always suspected that one of our neighbors had been involved because he would always stare very creepily at my mom whenever they cross paths he also knew when my dad wasn't Home since he knows what vehicle he drives mom said that was the final straw of wanting to get the hell out of that
place and as soon as my dad came home she gave him a very strong ultimatum find us some place else to live or she was leaving him and taking us kids with her and So within 6 months we were living somewhere else and I celebrated my 12th birthday someplace where she actually felt safe and not in a neighborhood where she felt like she Needed to sleep with one eye open this account pertains to my current upstairs neighbor he disappears for weeks at a time and then we'll suddenly hear what sounds like a slaughterhouse happening at
11:00 p.m. on a week night announcing that he's now home there's been a lot of things that have happened but the top two that pretty much sum up everything you need to know about just how creepy this guy is is this one day I was bringing up groceries and he offered To help I told him thank you and assumed that he would just take the bags to the second floor Landing place them outside the door and then continue up to his apartment like our other neighbor who has done this exact thing before he follows me
back out to my car and then stands about 4 Ines behind me as I lean into the trunk of my car to get the last two bags he takes all of the bags and then walks upstairs as I finish saying the oh thank You you really didn't have to do that lies and unlock my door he goes oh it's no problem I know your old man leaves for work early in your home alone I barely opened the door enough to walk into my apartment before I can turn around and he's walked in he opened up
my fridge and puts the milk in and he starts looking around our apartment and into our bedroom and now just for context of why I didn't flip out and start screaming it Was 8: in the morning and the two other people who live in our building were gone so literally no one would have heard me he's probably 62 and I'm 55 if I have on some thick shoes and I say okay thanks for the help I'll see you around and he continues to dig through the fridge and looking towards my bed then he turns and
starts stepping towards me and then he realizes that I have a very large butcher knife 4 in away from my Hand and then he chooses to leave I call my husband who is at work an hour away crying and tell him what just happened that night he goes to confront the guy and he won't answer the door and so my husband goes up the next day and the guy breaks down crying and tells my husband he doesn't remember anything and he's so sorry and he was just trying to be very neighborly and my husband just
tells him my wife's a tough girl and she can carry The groceries up herself sometime later we woke up one night hearing someone yelling and screaming outside when we look out our living room window we see the upstairs creeper with blood streaming down his face he could barely stand screaming at the police I'm not going to the damn Hospital apparently he had gotten into a fight at the pool hall down the street with four or five other guys and gotten his ass Kicked eventually the cops got a hold of him and took him to the
hospital in cuffs and the next morning I went to go get groceries alone and my husband didn't have to work that day when I came home he was standing outside smoking a cigarette and you could tell that he was still messed up from whatever he was on the night before this time he walked straight up to the car and acted like he was waiting for me to get out but he stood by the Trunk this was also the first time that I had seen him since the initial incident that he could have thought my husband
wasn't home I called my husband and when he saw that I was on the phone and heard my husband coming down the stairs to the building he took off running around the corner my husband took me to the store that day and got me a gun and now anytime he sees me alone he just stares but if my husband is around he acts like he Doesn't even see us now I know this might come across as a sort of dumb idiot just whining about her antisocial neighbors but sometimes I get really scared being here whenever
my husband isn't around and since writing all of this down has made me feel just a little bit less alone I guess it was worth [Music] it this is a real story that has absolutely traumatized my boyfriend and I just over 2 years ago I moved to the UK to study at leed's University I always wanted to go there and get away from my parents as the situation at home was beginning to become too toxic for me and so moving away to study seemed like an ideal solution during my first year at University I moved
into student accommodation and met some really nice people it was a good year one in which I met my boyfriend and I greatly enjoyed My time away from my family and discovering what Independence really meant as second year came by I decided with some friends to move into a house rented by student accommodations it wasn't as nice as the university accommodations but at least we had had our own house and weren't restricted as much with noise which meant that we could throw parties and all of that I had a ground floor room and my window
gave into a small backyard In which I could go smoke every day as I am a smoker and in which there would be a very thin wooden door giving into the other side of the street where you would put your bins the door could only be closed and locked from inside the backyard but since it was an old door we had to attach some strings to keep it closed for Good I had Neighbors on each side of the house so we were surrounded by families and some other student accommodations The Neighbors on the Right of
us were five boys who looked way over the age of being in University and they seemed very strange and at one point I happened to run into one of them outside of our house one day because of a police intervention he said one of his flatmates attacked him and the others with a kitchen knife and afterwards I tried to burn the kitchen down I heard some screams and so I went outside with my flatmates and saw one of them he was Covered in blood and cuts with many on his arm and a wound on his
head inflicted by the kitchen knife my flatmates and I didn't know what to do so we offered him our help to clean himself up and then gave him an old t-shirt to change out of his bloody clothes we then saw the guy who HT his flat mates being escorted out by police and into a van presumably after being arrested for attacking his flatmates I don't know anything more About the story and the police didn't really tell us anything either but anyway the guy who we helped was quite weird he said a lot of BS and
kept trying to flirt with me but I didn't really care in the moment as we just wanted to make sure that he was okay because seeing him in such a sorry state was very shocking and after some time had passed I would be coming back home from uni and see him quite often in the street I Never said a word to him but he'd always be looking at me one day he came up to me in the street while I went to the corner shop and started talking to me weirdly in such a way that
I really didn't feel comfortable I told him I was too busy to talk to him in the street and he replied oh that's okay I'll just wait for you at the front of the house then we can get to know each other better when you come back and needless to say I was Exceptionally creeped off by this I bought my drink at the shop and headed back to my street and as I turned onto the street where my house was I saw him with his flatmate sitting on my doorstep waiting for me and I panicked
I went back next to the corner shop and called my only guy flatmate to ask him to open the door and tell those guys to go away but sod's law applied in this case as the English might say and not only was he not home when he answered my call but No one else was either I literally waited for an hour walking up and down the High Street before I went back to check if the co was clear and then when I saw that it was I sprinted back home and locked the front door after
this already pretty scary encounter I just tried to avoid the guy and mostly succeeded for a while but then one day as I went smoking in the backyard I noticed that the wooden door which is always closed was open and the Strings that we put there to keep it closed were cut off for whatever reason I didn't think anything of it and just closed the door again and put a new string on it thinking it was one of my flatmates who took the bins out and just didn't tie it back the weird neighbors would very
often scream and yell and fight in their house and it would wake me and my flat mates up in the middle of the night but we kind of got used to it after a While but one evening my boyfriend slept over like he usually did and he who usually never ever wakes up because of a noise woke up in the middle of the night because of a bang and some Whispering I was found asleep so he very silently woke me up and we both just waited in the dark and listened for any noises suddenly we
heard the wooden door just bang just shot open in some footsteps next to my window I always had my window open because it would get Really warm inside so we both just froze there and then we heard the door leading to the backyard get shaken softly as if they were trying to get inside and then they stopped luckily we had the curtains closed so they couldn't see us but we were ready to get dressed and get the F out of that room and lock them in if they came in from the window then we just
heard my window move and get more open and one of the guys Saying something in a different language that we didn't understand and started to hear them trying to get in my boyfriend and I just shot up out of bed took my phone and put clothes on and ran out of the room and out of the house I then called my flatmates and told told them to lock themselves in their rooms and then the police very luckily came in less than 5 minutes as the headquarters were a couple of streets down from us I don't
remember Anything after the police came I think my boyfriend and I were in shock they ended up catching one guy the other fled and was later found a few streets up smoking weed the police told us that they went inside their house and found a lot of cocaine and heroin and that they were carrying a massive kitchen knife with them I was so confused as I had never done anything to offend or do anything wrong to my neighbors so the idea of them Breaking in with God knows what intentions with a kitchen knife terrorized me
and my boyfriend the two guys ended up being arrested and one of them was put in prison for 2 years for carrying a weapon with intention to harm I never heard anything else from the police and I moved back home a few months later as I was so scared and it tormented me from months on end not knowing what would have happened if my boyfriend didn't Wake up I'm now still coping with it and finding it really tough to get over it of always asking myself what if and what would have happened I now very
often wake up because of the slightest noise and get horrible nightmares because of it but hey at least I'm still with my boyfriend and we often talk about it which does help me a lot [Music] So this has been a few years since this happened but to this day I feel almost sick thinking about that night when I was in my very early 20s I lived in a very cheap and very crappy apartment block that was known for being extremely sketchy there was this neighbor that always seemed to be listening to James Brown in mowtown
so even though he seemed a bit off I thought how could he be that weird if he's just chilling to some old school Music I'd heard him blast his music and have louder conversations but then again we both had studio apartments that were touching so I would just play music to not hear him so loudly now one night he was drinking a lot and had his girlfriend around you could hear him being belligerent but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary for him I suppose it wasn't too late so I headed out for the night
with some friends While my boyfriend stayed in I got got dropped off at around 1:00 a.m. or so as we were driving into the parking lot from afar and we saw my neighbor outside in between cars in the apartment looking sort of odd okay weird whatever this guy is kind of just creepy anyways and at that point my friends were more weirded out than I was but I didn't think much of it and had them drop me off near the entrance because it was easier for them to leave And that was until they drove away
and I walked up to go into my apartment which I had to pass him first I swear my heart dropped because he was standing still by then with his body hidden by the bush that is between our Apartments like the funny Simpsons meme but actually not funny whatsoever because as I approached it seemed like he thought maybe I didn't see him because it was so dark out and he was still as a Statue I waved and mumbled High because I freaking see you and I'm not going to pretend that I don't at this point so
don't even try anything since no one was out in the weekday at this hour and at that point after acknowledging that he was there he stepped out of the side of the Bush and came into the dim porch light and never in my life have I looked into eyes like that and my heart is racing as I type this they were widened dark fully Dilated just like a wild animal almost lunatic if I were to express his energy as well he didn't say anything but gave me a bone chilling look and I ran into my
apartment immediately my boyfriend was drowsy since it was late but he did say my neighbor's music was loud and continued for some time and he heard a ton of noise and arguing earlier but didn't think anything of it and that night all night we heard thumps and it sounded Like Furniture was moving now it just weirded me out knowing that he was awake in that state that I viewed him in which seemed almost Primal the next morning I heard the cops outside banging on his door and was partially relieved to see them but then Super
scared of why they were there in the first place they took him away in handcuff shortly after demanding to be l in and asked me when was the last time I talked To or seen him and I told him about that night the arguing noises frightening encounter and thumping all night what I found out during the next day will make my stomach turn forever I was told by this grounds keeper details I will keep simple since it was horrendous that James Brown listening neighbor brutally murdered his girlfriend that night dismembered parts of her and dragged
the rest of her body Near the train tracks which was directly behind our Apartments it hit me that the cold Primal and wide-eyed look that I had seen in that man was that of a person who just took another human being's life in such a vicious and disgusting way I felt so sad for this woman who didn't deserve to go like that she was always quiet sweet and seemed a bit down in her luck usually asking for cigarettes when I encountered Her and to this day my stomach still turns thinking about how close I was
to death quite literally and how he could have ambushed me out of insanity since he was just waiting in the darkness when I walked up basically to all of you who followed their intuition and got feeling listen to it if you have a bad feeling about someone even if they seem harmless stay a safe distance the hell away from them I moved into a different apartment right After because it was just too much thinking about what had happened that neighbor went to jail and I saw his booking photo so damn scary to see him again
and I just hope that he's staying in jail where he belongs [Music] this happened about 3 years ago and it was just after I had gotten into University I was really proud of myself and I had managed to pass a really difficult entrance exam and I was Looking forward to trying life in the city alone for the first time I knew it was going to be a big step but I was ready for it I come from the countryside so it was going to be all new for me and tough to leave the little supportet
Network and friends that I made there my first year at University was a mix of excitement and adjustment I made friends with some other students and my mom would often come to visit using my place as a kind of Hotel I didn't mind it was Nice to hear how my family was doing and see her and I guess it was her way of making sure that I was okay and I guess that she missed me too when I started my second year of University in April my mom came to visit again Apparently one of her
favorite artist had a concert nearby so she decided to use my place as her hotel as per usual I thought at the time oh great here we go again but since she sends me money every month I couldn't really Complain I didn't want to risk having my allowance reduced and those were the days now that morning she said I'm going to the concert today so I'll be back pretty late okay I nodded while eating the Miso soup that she had made and out of nowhere she said so how do you feel about this apartment what
do you mean I asked a little taking a back by the sudden question any weird neighbors or noisy People or anything I don't know I replied between my part-time job classes and parties I hardly knew who lived in my building but I did remember that there was a girl from the same University on my floor she seemed pretty outgoing always having friends over over for drinks and I envied her a bit for that well whatever you got work today right my mom asked yeah I nodded try not to stay out too late okay I wanted
to tell her to come Home early too but I just kept that thought to myself when I got back that night and said I'm back the apartment was Pitch Black it was 8:30 p.m. and my mom wasn't back yet I was hungry but since it was a bit warm warm and sweaty that day I decided to just take a shower first while I was in the shower I heard some rattling sounds and I figured my mom had come back I saw a dark figure moving through the frosted glass door as she entered the Bathroom well
you're back early mom I called out but there was no response hey do you want to go get some Ramen I asked and I heard a CH sound like someone clicking their tongue and with that the dark figure disappeared what's up with that I thought stepping out of the bathroom she usually loved Ramen as soon as I got out of the bathroom a smell hit me Immediately ew that stinks I blurted out it smell like kerosene which was weird because I didn't use a kerosene heater as I was wondering why I heard the front door
unlocking and my mom walked in you came in just to go back outside again I asked confused and she looked at me kind of puzzled what do you mean didn't you just come in a few minutes ago no I just got here she said holding bags filled with concert Merchandise so who was that in the bathroom my mind raced as I told my mom what happened panicked she called the police and they came right away we quickly discovered that nothing was stolen and that there were no signs of forced entry I guess I didn't fully
close the door when I walked in or something and the police suggested maybe it was just a misunderstanding maybe a neighbor had won too many drinks and walked in what They thought was their apartment but got it wrong realized their error and left and my mom was Furious but it made me wonder if I had imagined it all maybe I was just tired I wasn't able to fully convince myself of that because of that strange smell of kous scene the week after that strange incident was one of the longest and most nerve-wracking of my life
I couldn't shake off the feeling that something was off and I found myself jumping at every Little noise and double-checking the locks in my door multiple times a day I even contemplated moving to a different place but my lease wasn't up and finding a new apartment in the city wasn't easy or cheap a week after that strange incident something terrible happened the girl who lived my floor was murdered by the middle-aged man who lived below us after he went through that terrible act he set his apartment on fire and he went with It the news
and internet said the girl had riled up other neighbors by having parties often and making lots of noise and that's why she was targeted but that wasn't really true even when she had friends over you could barely hear them the Revelation hit me like a ton of bricks I couldn't help but wonder if the dark figure I saw that day was actually him maybe I was his initial Target but he backed off because my mom was there and would come back Soon the idea that I could have been in that poor girl's shoes kept me
awake at night and for days I replayed the incidents in my head trying to find some clarity some sign that could tell me what really happened I remembered every detail the sound of the door the figure behind the frosted glass and the smell of kerosene it was all too real to have been a figment of my imagination I'll never know for sure what happened that night and that Uncertainty is something that I've had to live with the police closed the case quickly after the man died labeling him as a deranged individual with a grudge against
the noisy neighbors they didn't dig any deeper and there were no leads no Witnesses besides me and I wasn't even sure of what I saw all I can do is pray for the girl who lost her life may she rest in peace even now years later I occasionally think back to that night hey friends thanks for listening Click that notification Bell to be alerted of all future narrations I release new videos every Monday and Thursday at 9:00 p.m. EST and there are super fun live streams on Sundays and Wednesday nights if you got a story
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