3 More Hours of Scary Stories to Relax / Sleep to

Hear all these stories anywhere you listen to podcasts on the let's read podcast [Music] in the year 2009 Gilberto valer was a 25-year-old police officer living with his elderly father in the New York City burrow of Queens as you can imagine law enforcement is an extremely demanding profession and it gave Gilberto very little time to do anything else after Grueling 49 shifts all he wanted to do when he clocked off was collapse into bed and sleep like the dead then on his off days he found himself far too exhausted to socialize and this left Gilberto

in something of a predicament he longed for romantic partner but simply didn't have the time to look for one in person so instead he put his faith into the online dating website Okay Cupid this is how Gilberto met Kathleen Mangan an elementary school teach teacher who'd recently settled in East Harlem they hit it off fairly quickly and after just a few months of dating they moved into a small one bedroom apartment together near 88th Street in thirdd Avenue it was nice at first Kathleen later recalled we laughed a lot he was a gentleman but things

changed after I got pregnant after breaking the news to him Kathleen expected Gilberto to be happy instead he seemed Horrified he kept saying I can't do this I can't do this Kathleen later explained but after he calmed down he called my parents and assured them that he'd do the right thing the apparent change of heart was a huge relief but gilberto's Newfound fatherly enthusiasm was disappointingly short lived he drifted away from me so slowly I almost didn't notice Kathleen said then one day he just didn't seem interested anymore many blamed gilberto's behavior On the stresses

of being a new parent and he seemed to prove his detractors wrong when after moving his nent family into a larger two-bedroom apartment in Forest Hills he asked Kathleen to marry him the wedding was held on June 19th of 2012 with their 9-month-old daughter Josephine being The Unofficial guest of honor making things official seemed to renew gilberto's fatherly instincts at least temporarily but he soon sank back into the same patterns of disinterest And sorely neglected his wife and daughter he rarely helped with a baby Kathleen recalled then when he came home from the precinct after

midnight he'd stay up till 4:00 5: sometimes 6:00 in the morning playing video games or browsing the internet as far as she knew Gilberto spent most of his time online browsing Sports and policing forums but one day during the summer of 2012 Kathleen walked in on him doing something Else having worked as a teacher for the better part of the decade Kathleen possessed an impressive level of computer literacy this meant that when she walked into gilberto's office that day she recognized what he was doing and what he was doing was a mass eraser of his

internet browser search history upon hearing her enter the room Gilberto quickly minimized the browser window and pretend to have been doing something else but Kathleen had noticed And she found herself gripped by a nail-biting curiosity a few days later and following gilberto's morning departure Kathleen crept into his office then logged onto his computer I noticed that there were two little image files at the bottom of the screen she said so I opened them the images depicted an extremely disturbing variety of adult content yet they also struck Kathleen as horrifyingly different from anything she had a

Cursory knowledge of I've read 50 Shades of Gray I know what that stuff is Kathleen said said but this was different because the girl in the pictures she was dead there was a time when a more insecure Kathleen had believed that gilberto's dispassion stemed from her lack of attractiveness yet following the disturbing discovery on his desktop computer she realized something was very Wrong with her husband she sent him a text message one that simply read we need to talk then when Gilberto returned from his shift that evening he seemed visibly nervous during the confrontation Gilberto

broke down into tears and claimed that his interest in such deeply disturbing adult content stemmed from his inability to deal with stress he promised to visit a therapist and swore he'd never visit any such Websites ever again I thought maybe we'd had a breakthrough Kathleen later said we were communicating he was being honest he was talking to me but for the rest of that summer I couldn't stop thinking about what I saw finally on September 9th of 2012 Kathleen once again crept into gilberto's office while he was at work only this time and on the

advice of some online cyber Security Experts it was to install a discreet form of spyware on His computer I had no choice she said I was scared and she was right to be the following day Kathleen used the spyware to find out which websites her husband had recently visited what she found was nothing short of horrifying the names of the websites were chilling but what truly turned Kathleen's stomach was seeing what her husband had been getting up to I started going through his instant messages she said then all of a sudden I'm staring at pictures

of myself pictures of my friends pictures of other people we knew Gilberto and his anonymous online friends had been fantasizing about tying Kathleen up hanging her upside down then cutting her throat with a razor sharp knife they said it would be fun watching the blood gush out of me she later said another person said if she cries don't listen to her don't give her mercy and all my husband had to say in response Was don't worry we'll gag her but that wasn't all and as Kathleen continued to scroll through gilberto's messages she uncovered an appalling

escalation of their fantasy they didn't just want to kill me she said they wanted to cook me and eat me too upon realizing that her life might be in danger Kathleen immediately booked a flight to her parents place in their home state of Nevada and took baby Josephine with her Gilberto remained blissfully ignorant of her Discovery and continued to browse violent imagery online he Googled things like how to kidnap a woman and best human meat recipes he also kept a secret folder hidden away among a veneer of innocent sounding directories in which he kept photographs

of the women he'd like to murder and cannibalize many were athletes and actresses but many included his wife's Family members friends and co-workers one picture was captioned I'll be eyeing her from head to toe and licking my lips longing for the day I cram a chloroform soaked rag in her face it was now impossible for Kathleen to discern her husband's sick fantasies from palpable threats to the safety of her loved ones so with a heavy heart she reported gilberto's activities to the police just a few days later during the Early afternoon of October 24th Gilberto

was enjoying a day off in this Forest Hills Apartment when suddenly his phone began to ring Gilberto didn't recognize the number nor did he recognize the voice on the other end uh is this Gilberto The Stranger asked it is the man himself replied I'm sorry to tell you this buddy but I got this number from your insurance company The Stranger explained someone's hit your car pretty bad by the looks of Things you're home right now by any chance are you Gilberto didn't bother to answer the question he simply ended the call then walked outside with

a furious urgency about him yet when he arrived in the apartment complex's parking lot he saw that his car hadn't so much as a scratch on it confused gilber turned around to walk back inside but found his path blocked by three sturdy looking men in suits giberto valier one of them called Out it was not a question they knew it was him we're from the FBI and would like to ask you a few questions following a brief interrogation Gilberto was placed under arrest then shortly afterward he was charged with conspiracy to kidnap his own wife

Kathleen Mangan investigators soon discovered that there was no shortage of evidence and began collating emails which laid out gilberto's strategies and many of these Emails Gilberto made it abundantly clear that he was ready and willing to abuse his authority as a police officer to law potential victims into a false sense of security this is what made the case all the more disturbing said one US attorney following gilberto's arrest when you consider Val's position as a New York City police officer and his sworn duty to serve in protect and makes what he did unforgivable by the

time gilberto's Trial commenced he had gained worldwide infamy as the Cannibal Cop of New York City yet as the Judiciary set about determining his guilt the court of public opinion was concerned with something else entirely to the public it wasn't what Gilberto was being accused of it was what he might do in the future should he either beat the charge or receive a lenient sentence never never in my career have I ever hesitated to tell the marshals to Take the handcuffs off the client when I'm interviewing them oneon-one said the federal attorney who defended Gilberto

and this was the first time in my career I'd ever for just a second thought about keeping the handcuffs on yet to some this could be interpreted as a shockingly prejudicial statement after all Gilberto wasn't on trial for anything he'd actually done he was on trial because of something he thought about doing the prosecution Sought to paint Gilberto valer as someone fully committed to living out the fantasies he'd fostered online but where exactly did he go to indulge such lurid and bloodthirsty thoughts one of the websites Gilberto visited the most was named the dark fetish

Network the FBI estimated that the network was comprised of over 50,000 unique users and although its homepage bore a disclaimer stating fantasies only it was clear that many users practiced Their proclivities on and off the internet Gilberto began visiting the dfn in late 2011 and under the username girl Meat Hunter where he garnered sadistic admiration from fellow users on account of his frighteningly Vivid fantasies he partook in explicit exchanges with many of them but maintained closely and constantly in touch with just three the first was a 22-year-old mechanic from South Jersey named Mike Vanhees the

second was a British man named Dale Ballinger who went by the username Moody Blues and the third was a man named Ali KH who split his time between the US the UK and his native Pakistan in January of 2012 Gilberto sent Mike vanhees a photograph of Alicia frisa an elementary school teacher and close friend of Kathleen's the caption simply read five grand and she's yours vanhees attempted to haggle Gilberto down to four ,000 to which he replied I'm putting my neck on the line here if something goes wrong somehow I'm done for 5,000 and you

need to make sure that she's not found she would definitely make the news during exchanges with alian Gilberto suggested taking his wife on a surprise trip to India there she would be ambushed murdered and then cannibalized by the two men we'll take turns with her Gilberto wrote after sending Ali a photo of Kathleen in a During his conversation with Ali Gilberto exhibited a shocking amount of hatred for a woman named Andrea Noble who was later determined to have been one of his old College friends it's personal with Andrea Gilberto wrote she will absolutely suffer I'm

in the middle of constructing a pulley apparatus in my basement to string her up by her feet it was never confirmed why Gilberto felt such amonous towards an old friend but whatever it was it inspired him Murderous Grudge in him that lasted more than a decade by the summer of 2012 Gilberto was heavily engaged with conversations with Dale Ballinger the British man who went by the username Moody Blues Ballinger boasted of his ownership of a large industrial oven that had been installed in an isolated cabin nestled among the desolate Highlands of Northern Scotland Gilberto showed

him numerous pictures of female friends and Co-workers before Ballinger settled on a woman named Kimberly sour she's perfect he said it must be her once she's dead I'll take her out and properly butcher her body then cook the meat right away we could even Mount her on a spit like a rotisserie chicken Gilberto later emailed Ballinger in a Word document entitled a blueprint for abducting and cooking Kimberly and listed the materials they needed to murder and cannibalize her without Attracting attention to themselves Gil listed assets and materials such as chloroform a fully functioning vehicle that

would not break down or otherwise cause them trouble a length of strong rope and a roll of duct tape a tarp or plastic sheet to contain forensic evidence and cheap sneakers that they could wear before burning to minimize the amount of forensic evidence available to law enforcement during the course of their Investigation the FBI discovered that Gilberto had utilize the nypd's database in order to peruse the files of potential victims record showed that from the summer of 2011 to the summer of 2012 Gilberto gained access to the files of three women Andrea Noble Kimberly sour

and maren hardigan who was an old high school friend the files were mostly basic information such as date of birth eye color as well as previous convictions however they also contained Information Gil would have found very useful their home addresses on July 22nd of 2012 Gilberto told one of his online companions that he'd meet up with Kimberly sour during a College reunion down in Maryland she looked absolutely mouthwatering he said I could hardly contain myself just over a month later Gilberto and Ballinger discussed methods by which they could abduct a woman named Christine Pontelli Gil

and Christine had never met but since she was a recent graduate from his former high school he most likely happened AC cross her picture or profile via some kind of Social Media Group group for alumni however it's worth noting that Gil's attention seemed to have radically shifted from day to day not long after he fantasized over Ponto Celli's kidnap and murder he became almost entirely consumed with the previously mentioned Andrea Noble I swear he wrote if she lived near me she'd be gone by now even if I got caught it' be so worth it Gil

seemed primed to act on his psychotic urges but when the FBI raided his home in October of 2012 there wasn't a single scrap of physical evidence which suggested that he was about to kidnap kill or cook someone and despite frequently boasting of his efforts to brew a batch of homemade chloroform there were no traces of the chemical Storage or its manufacturer at the Forest Hills Apartment at his trial one of gilberto's defense attorneys Edward Zas laid out the Crux of his legal argument according to the client's direct messages three different women were due to be

kidnapped on President's Day He said that day comes and goes but nothing happens then my client changes the proposed dat to labor day but once again that day comes and goes and nothing happens nothing Happened because it's all just fantasy violent and disturbing fantasies of course but fantasies nevertheless befitting his profession Edward Zas spoke calmly and confidently in the courtroom setting but he later admitted the difficulties of such a case the only way you can defend this case practically was to take on the burden of convincing this jury somehow really to a certainty that he

could never do this said Zas but then how do you do that in A case where the guy is admittedly interested in this stuff eventually on New Year's Eve of 2012 renowned New York forensic psychiatrist Park deetz interviewed Gilberto in his holding cell Deets Rose to fame through his assertion that Jeffrey dmer was of sound mind when he committed his the string of horrifying murders and it was his job to determine whether Gilberto was willing or capable of acting on his lured Fantasies following a lengthy question and answer session Deets determined that Gilberto had no

desire to actually live out the things he discussed online Deets already knew from Val's NYPD psychology file that the officer had been administered the Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory a standard test meant to identify personality structure and detect signs of psychopathy the test showed no clinical Psychopathology DEET said and that's not something I run into very much even the most unassuming of people can display Psychopathic traits which means officer valer is either the most skilled manipulator Deets has ever encountered or he truly was of sound mental health during the interviews Gilberto openly discussed intimate details of

his upbringing with Dr de's and explained the or of his bizarre and violent fantasies as a child he'd been taken to A screening of Jim car's The Mask the movie itself was amusing enough but afterwards Gilberto remembered fixating on an image of Cameron Diaz who at one point had her wrists bound before being tied to a tree the mask would quickly become a younger gilberto's favorite movie though he never told anyone why he enjoyed it so much or why he'd play the same scene over and over again by the end of High School Gilberto was

a frequent visitor of a website known as Mook's kitchen Infamous for its depictions of terrified young woman being killed butchered and then cooked in cruel and creative ways however in his real life Gilberto was never anything but quietly respectful towards women and remained a virgin until he met his wife Kathleen in fact there are no available testimonies of him acting in a violent or threatening manner towards just about anyone I saw the kinds of things officer Valier was saying online Dr DEET said and there's no denying how disturbing they are I also understand how the

evidence could be construed in that way that suggests that he might act on such fantasies but I see him as many steps removed from the kind of person that might start to take action to class someone as a potential offender you need to be more than just whatever sick thoughts are floating around their head Deets went on to explain you mean all The aggressive actions and character flaws that indicate they might that one in a thousand monster were all afraid of but in officer Val's case I couldn't find them during his trial summations on March

7th of 2013 Gilberto openly wept as he listened to his attorney describe his wife's decision to divorce him his foolishness on the internet his insensitive ugly thoughts have cost him everything one of them said the Conversations are Preposterous they are disturbing they're disgusting we should be upset said that people are thinking these thoughts but they do not constitute a criminal offense in response the state's prosecutor painted Gilberto as a reckless impulsive man who was just days away from acting on his perverse urges there is something incredibly wrong just on the fact that with a New

York City police officer talking about Killing a high school student and then Googling to try to get information about her address US attorney Randall Jackson said that is a man who was trying to move a plan into action think about your favorite restaurant Jackson continued if you were to find out that the chef at that restaurant had a deep-seated fantasy of poisoning all of the people in the restaurant and that night after night he was engaging in conversations with other people about How he could poison the restaurant goers would you continue to eat at that

restaurant of course you wouldn't 5 days following summations and after many hours of deliberation the jury convened for their final court appearance the foreman appeared visibly exhausted as he stood back up took a breath and read the verdict we find the defendant guilty he said on the charge of conspiracy to kidnap Gilberto shook his head in Disbelief as he was led Away by BFFs and many claimed the verdict was a clear miscarriage of Justice were the jury even watching the same trials as us gilberto's mother asked one journalist but in the days that followed a

member of the jury publicly defended their decision we did what we did in good conscience said Victor Panero because we believed his fantasy was going to step into reality and the same way an addict needs a larger and larger dose he was Needing things that were more and more real he was bringing it into real life at his sentencing Gilberto received life in prison for the conspiracy charge and a maximum of 5 years for accessing the Federal National Crime information center database without authorization gilberto's mother was horrified and was a central figure in coordinating his

eventual appeal which shocked everyone when it was met with success during June of 2014 a judge from the federal district court announced that gilberto's conviction was set to be overturned saying the evidence supported his contention that he was engaged in only fantasy roleplay and by that time Guild already served 21 months in prison and the Lesser conviction regarding unauthorized access to the NYPD data face was commuted to time served and he was released since his exoneration Gil has Been incredibly open about his past and present and authored the book Raw Deal the untold story of

nypd's Cannibal Cop Amazon describes the book as a controversial Saga of a man who was imprisoned for Thought crimes and look into an online world of Dark Fantasy and violence that most people don't know exists except maybe in their nightmares Gilberto valer might have escaped a jail sentence but the FBI hadn't finished with the dark fetish Network in January Of 2013 they raided the Hamilton New Jersey home of 22-year-old Mike vanhees and found evidence of fantasies involving children on his personal computer shockingly his wife defended these fantasies telling reporters I was cool with it it's

disturbing yeah but you have to accept your partner's flaws in a marriage no one's perfect following his arrest Mike began cooperating with the FBI and aiding them in the apprehension of two other Suspected child abusers a 65-year-old police chief in Bedford Massachusetts and a 61-year-old former High School librarian who in 2009 had faced accusations of inappropriate contact with four male students the FBI intercepted Mike's Communications with the two men assumed his identity then made an ambiguous request from the man from Massachusetts essentially the FBI asked him nothing more than to show up at a certain

place With stuff for a thing and when he did he brought along a taser a claw hammer some meat skewers and a dental instrument used in the removal of human teeth Dale Ballinger AKA The Moody Blues was arrested in the UK following a joint operation between British and American police after a 4-day trial at Canterbury Crown Court in July of 2014 Ballinger was found guilty of grooming an underage girl online he also admitted to several other offenses including Administering a poison or noxious substance following an incident in which he put a cloth soaked in drying

cleaning fluid over a female friend's mouth in July of 2010 after giving him a 9-year jail sentence the presiding judge said his behavior was abhorent shocking and dangerous while psychiatrists ruled that Ballinger was not suffering from mental illness none of this is real he said during an Attempt to defend himself I'm an idiot because I went and put stupid things online thinking that it was funny but what's perfectly clear in Ballinger's case is that his posts were intended to be anything but comical he had already committed a serious predatory offense by the time he came

into contact with Gilberto valier one that he undoubtably deserved to be punished for whereas in gilberto's case he was convicted of a thought crime Not a violent or predatory one perhaps Dr Park Deets has best summed it up when he said what troubles me is that the whole world fails to recognize that just because someone has a desire to do something doesn't mean they'll do it the only problem is very few people find themselves gripped by violent fantasies and among those that do an even smaller percentage spend hours and hours at a time writing about

them with strangers on the dark web Serial killers have been known to spend years at a time preparing for their killing spree and much of it includes lurid ideations that are shockingly similar to Gilberto Valas so where exactly is the line between ideation and intention perhaps it's not Dr Deets who said it best but rather an old folk singer who once sang and if my thought dreams could be seen they'd probably put my head in a guillotine but it's all right ma it's Life and life [Music] only in August of 2014 a 58-year-old man from

Sou in Florida sat down on his computer and opened a very special kind of web browser using a software known as tour the man was not only able to browse what's known as the surface net completely anonymously but it also granted him access to the secret labyrinthine substructure commonly Referred to as the dark web once cloaked in his digital shroud the man began the lengthy process of uploading all the necessary files to create his very own website but but unlike many others who sought to exploit the anonymity of the dark web to profit from cyber

crime or illicit marketplaces The 58-year-old Floridian had something very different in mind his website would be named the play pen and his goal was to catalog the largest Collection of child exploitation material in history and just a few months later the play pen came to the attention of the FBI as a result of operation pacifier one of the largest global anti-child exploitation efforts and law enforcement history The Bureau claimed that they were aware of the site's existence from the day of its creation but were unable to act until they'd accurately track the location of the

site's servers and thus Its owner and operator the discovery came following a tip from interpool the international law enforcement entity that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and Crime Control Agents from over in Europe had themselves received a tip from a member of the public who claimed to have made a chilling Discovery whilst casually surfing the internet after attempting to directly enter the IP address of another computer the tipster must have entered a Wrong number because a split second after pressing the computer's Enter key they were faced with a truly harrowing site there in full view of

any Average Joe's surface net user was a huge collection of child exploitation material all under the banner of a website called the play pen finally in February of 2015 FBI agents managed to track the servers to a home in Naples Florida and following a decisive Dawn raid the 58-year-old Floridian was identified as Steven W Chase upon realizing that he faced life in a federal prison's protective custody unit Steven promised to fully cooperate with his FBI captors and when prompted he gave them full and unfettered access to his devices and hard drive the FBI spent weeks

mining data from the drive containing the website's backup data and Steven Chase's computer was a gold mine of information concerning the identity and whereabouts of his fellow Degenerates but once they were done the FBI didn't close the play pent down as one might expect them to instead they kept it running between February 19th and March 4th of 2015 the sole operators of one of the most active dark web child exploitation forums was none other than the Federal Bureau of Investigation unnamed agents did their best to maintain the ruse that chase was Still in charge of

the site striving to mimic his typing style and vocabulary so that the website's users believed it was business as usual during those two weeks the website's user base was said to have grown by more than 30% as people from all over the dark web flocked to yet another burgeoning collection of stomach churning depravity but all the while FBI cyber crime Specialists employed a malware Based Network investigative technique to hack into the computers of those who visited the site which in turn revealed sensitive personal information that could be used to track and arrest them by the

time they finally closed the website down and in tandem with a plethora of international policing agencies the FBI had secured the arrests of almost a thousand individuals from around the globe five of those arrests led to almost Instantaneous convictions for a number of high ranking site users putting a huge dent in the trade of child exploitation content worldwide when the news broke that such a huge number of child abusers had been apprehended as a result of operation pacifier it was met with Celebration by The Wider general public however as more and more details began to

emerge and journalists leaked the fact that the FBI had continued the website's operation Following the arrest of its owner there was widespread public outrage the Electronic Frontier Foundation who promote online civil liberties heavily criticized the FBI for committing the very crime it was charged with putting a stop to others claimed that there was evidence that the FBI not only operated the site but significantly improved its speed navigation and accessibility the FBI defended this decision claiming that everything they Did was in Aid of of their overall mission and reminded critics that the operation had bagged almost

a thousand dangerous individuals as well as promoting the rescue of hundreds of abused children from all four corners of the globe however in one case their Brazen technique meant that one of the very same Predators they sought to apprehend got to walk free with no charges whatsoever the initial search warrant Secured by FBI agents restricted them to gather information from only the eastern district of Virginia Virginia but little did the agents know their malware based data mining application was designed with a sole purpose of indiscriminately siphoning data from every single user who visited the site

that meant that when it became evident that this was the case at least one suspected individual was released without charge after the search warrant was declared invalid in This particular case to some this might seem like an easy mistake to make a cut corner here a miscommunication there there things just naturally go wrong sometimes but skirting the restrictions of a federal warrant is an extremely serious breach of judicial procedure something a small town sheriff's deputy knows damned well not to do therefore it really does beg the question why would an experienced FBI agent do something

that would obviously undermine such an Important investigation assistant Federal Defender Peter Adolf claimed that he had evidence that the play pen distributed 200 videos not 9,000 images and 13,000 links to illicit images of children while the FBI oversaw the site Adolf backed up his bold claims with archived messages from playpen users who frequently commented on how well the site was running during the FBI secret of tenure in 2019 the United States court of appeals for the First circuit weighed in on whether the FBI should have operated the playpen website in its United States versus ansalone

opinion it argued that operating such a Despicable website for 2 weeks amounted to outrageous government conduct that violated due process the court also argued in operating the play pen the FBI had distributed this material to hundreds of thousands of individuals and in doing so had absolutely no control over how these Images would be used forth with while the court said the government's conduct border Zone outrageous it refused to dismiss the charges ideally they said the FBI should not have run a child exploitation website for any length of time but that at the same time and

I'm using their words here we do not live in an Ideal World recognizing that another website would just pop up in 24 hours the FBI decided to run the website deciding that the rewards far outweighed Any risk it's entirely true that running the play pen led to the arrest and conviction as well as the rescue of hundreds of exploited children from around the globe hope but the question remains at what point do the ends stop justifying the means [Music] in late August of 2015 a spine chilling rumor began circulating around the internet among the deepest

reaches of Fringe forums such as forchan as well as Certain sections of more mainstream sites such as Reddit Facebook and Twitter a mysterious group of self- declared militants claimed to have captured several Islamic State Fighters not only that but they announced their intentions to beat torture and then murder them all via a dark web live streaming site on a monochrome hastily constructed website the group posted a chilling statement of intent we are working Around the clock we're operating in a war zone and got more urgent things to worry about but we will deliver and we

will hit the deadline expect fun games and torture as promised all interactive and completely free of charge we will make at least the first hour family friendly the statement continued and explicitly warn you before things get violent but we won't stop under any circumstances torture must become death red rooms are a hard Business and few can stomach it it also means a lot of attention and extra hassle for us but we promise one thing we will make them movie stars the rumors spread like wildfire and before long secondary sources of information such as the subreddits

r/d dark web and r/ Tor began running down the hours until the murderous stream was set to commence the subscriber numbers of both subreddits ballooned yet most users weren't there out of any real Thirst for blood they were simply curious they wanted undeniable irrefutable proof that the darkest Legends of the Deep Web were actually true at its core the dark web or Deep Web as it's sometimes referred to is in reality a relatively small collection of websites that are unsearchable and almost untraceable as you can imag imine this makes the dark web an attractive concept

to those interested in illicit marketplaces but according to some the Anonymity that tour browsers and onion routers bring has drawn in a very different kind of Predator there are rumors of videotape gladitorial fights to the death or deranged World War II era experiments being replicated for the benefit of paying observers others promise to turn a grown adult woman into a so-called living doll whereby she is encased in the restrictive latex suit before being subjected to horrendous methods of Physical torture but of all the pervasive Legends spawned by the dark web the so-called red rooms are

perhaps the most disturbing of all Legend has it that somewhere among the deepest reaches of the dark web people are broadcasting live and fully interactive executions of innocent often handpicked individuals but do these red rooms actually exist it's a tediously Comm question Said eileene Ormsby an Australian journalist who spent years studying the dark web and all of its related phenomena how can I go deeper in the Deep Web where's the really dark stuff well the answer is pretty simple that darker side that people talk of it simply doesn't exist Eileen is quick to point out

that in some cases crimes against humanity have indeed been broadcast live on the dark web but not the kind associated With red rooms it's been said that notorious Australian child abuser Peter Scully first broadcast the infamous Daisy's destruction live on the dark web to a select audience of paying customers and only later uploaded it behind a pay wall amounting to $10,000 us but in terms of actual red rooms existing for the purpose of live executions Eileen Ormsby says the idea is ludicrous the FBI has dealt with dark Web cases relating to child exploitation kidnapping Narco

itics trafficking and even contract killing but as Eileen argues if they're real why haven't red rooms found their way onto the list and if red rooms truly are real how is not a single confirmable screenshot made its way onto the surface web it's worth noting that around the early 2010s which is round about the same time that the first rumors of red rooms began to circulate the internet witnessed the Meteoric rise of a novel form of short horror story named in parody of another popular online Trend known as copy pasta creepy pastas followed a very

similar concept however instead of whimsical or thought-provoking paragraphs users copied and pasted short form horror stories onto each other's pages and profiles instead the likes of Jeff the Killer Candle Cove smile dog and the now notorious Slender Man were being Circulated around almost every single forum and social media site on the internet with the latter being so popular that it's spond several spin-offs including movies documentaries and video games in response to the demand for such content redit users created a forum known as no sleep with a sole purpose being to Cate the ever mounting numbers

of creepy pastas being churned out by amateur writers but as the collection of short Sometimes ambiguous short horror stories began to swell a deciding bizarre phenomenon began to emerge it began when one no sleep subscriber posted the innocent question of is the story real the vast majority of respondents gave the perfectly logical answer of probably not this reads like a fictional story other users asserted the contrary that the story could quite easily be real but once it had been established that no sleep was indeed a creative writing Forum interest in what was posted there dropped

off dramatically however instead of allowing interest to die off organically the forum's moderators took the incredible step of removing any posts or comments that made any reference to fiction creative writing or even the word story itself one might expect such rampant interference to be poisoned for a place built on free expression but instead something incredible Happened the Forum subscribership ballooned to 1 million then five then 10 million and to date no sleep subscriber numbers stand at over 17 million individual users visitors and contributors alike found actually appreciated the moderator's efforts to curate an online space

where the lies and Truth were indistinguishably blurred no sleep is so popular because its users enjoy actively suspending their disbelief it Thrills them to think That such Fantastical stories might be true in fact many actively wish that they were just in the same way that those who propagate rumors of red rooms are overtly or covertly thrilled that they might just exist somewhere down in the darkest recesses of the dark web interestingly a British hacker nicknamed cthulu has claimed that he's come across several different red rooms while going across the dark web but rather than the

maob spectacle they advertised Themselves to be cthulu explained that they were nothing but scams I decided to take a look at their servers he said just to see where they were located but found they had less security than your average company issu laptop I thought it was strange that such an illicit Network didn't seemed to have any major security concerns so I carried on digging then shortly afterwards I determined it was a scam users would be charged exorbitant Amounts of money to gain access to the Red Room and once they did they were greeted by

an ominous looking countdown clock which informed them of when the show would be starting but then when the timer ran out the page began to load then was nothing maybe an error message maybe a blank screen but certainly not any kind of live execution or snuffing film remember the Isis Red Room we discussed at the beginning of this well exactly The same thing happened there the trolls who put the site together had promised that a variety of grizzly punishments would be inflicted on their terrorist captors but when the feed went live 21 minutes of nothing

ended with a suspiciously clean and well-groomed prisoner being force-fed cooked bacon they promised a snuff film instead they fed a guide lunch the site was was later replaced by a notice stating it had been seized as part of a joint law Enforcement operation the notice appeared to be made by an amateur a similar website popped up just days later but once again it proved to be a complete farce the lack of solid evidence of red rooms has led some to believe that they're nothing but an urban legend however during the summer of 2020 two 17-year-old

Italian boys were arrested on suspicion of having paid entry to an online execution room after 10 months the investigation by the kabaneri of Sienna with the cooperation of the prosecutor of miners of Florence claimed the website the boys had attempted to access was called the hell of Horrors and contained thousands of rooms chats blogs and Shop Windows containing every kind of abomination conceivable the boys were apparently released without charge but their arrest shows that at least some government agencies are taking the threat of red Rooms very seriously but in all honesty that should come as

no surprise at this point the concept of red rooms has existed for more than 100 years back in 1894 HG Wells released a short story with the same title one which tells the tale of a haunted bedroom within an old Gothic Castle the term Red Room was also used to describe an area of the haunted house in the 1977 book The Amityville Horror and was used As a term to describe the protagonist BDSM room in the the novel 50 Shades of Gray then in 1999 Japanese film director dauki yanui released his seminal horror classic also

named Red Room this Incarnation was much more in line with the Contemporary idea of red rooms and involve prisoners who are forced to pick cards to decide which kind of torture will be inflicted who will apply it and who will be the next victim The Chosen tortures start off relatively mild but Gradually escalates into extreme sism and abuse as you can see red rooms are not A New Concept and by the time they became an internet Legend the term had been a byword for places in which acts of evil occur for more than a century

but perhaps the truly frightening thing about red rooms is that they might actually be real and it's that we can't seem to discern what actually occurs on the dark web and what doesn't some Sections of society have cultivated online spaces that are so far removed from reality the truth itself has become a fluid concept if we all believe that red rooms exists then by some philosophical standards they do exist albeit in a rather abstract manner red rooms have well and truly entered the collective Consciousness and Humanity's very history is a tale of dragging the imaginary

into reality that means it might only be a Matter of time before someone takes such a frightening but mythical concept and turns it into a terrifying [Music] reality so just to kind of give you a picture I'm not a small woman I'm over 6 ft tall and I weigh around 200 l pounds that paired with the fact that a lot of that weight is muscle doesn't make me the most obvious Target but even though that's what I always told myself it didn't make it true I guess in the eyes Of an evil man a woman

is a woman and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time I had something he wanted and I think we all know what I'm talking about without me having to say it I usually work from home but every so often I have to take a refresher course with my companies so they can make sure that I still know what I'm doing and track my progress I think it's a little unnecessary for someone who's been doing the job for 10 years like I have but I understand it's Part of making sure the company runs

smoothly and if I have to sacrifice one weekend every 6 months I try not to complain they always set me up in a relatively nice hotel and give me vouchers for food so it's not too bad only this time when I got the email about having to take the course I wasn't too pleased to find out that I'd have to drive into the city during a storm the course was around 3 hours away and the drive kind of sucked already but it had To be done I took my time getting to my hotel it may

have taken me double the time to get there and I drove way slower than I probably needed to but I wanted to get there in one piece and was happy when I finally pulled up to my destination exhausted but happy the rain was still coming down my crazy it almost felt like it was following me I was actually pretty upset when I got out of the car and found myself standing in front of a gross sleazy Motel there was Some SD characters standing out front and there was not one single bit of me that wanted

to spend the night there but seeing as it was already 10: p.m. and I didn't have the means to stay anywhere else I really had no choice I walked into the small room that would usually be called a lobby but calling that would be an insult to lobbies everywhere it was just a room with a guy sitting in a recliner with a laptop and a TV tray I told told him I Was checking in and gave him my name he asked if I was traveling alone and I instinctually said yes my first mistake he asked

for payment and I quickly explained to him that my company was paying for it I did notice a brief moment where he looked a little confused but he wiped that look off his face within seconds and apologized and said that he had forgotten he typed something into the computer and told me that I was good to Go I was given the key to my room in a small paper map on how to get there I opened the door to my room and was immediately met with this stench of cigarettes my mom smoked when I was

a kid so the smell didn't bring back any happy memories I'll just say that I closed and locked the door behind me and everything in me told me to turn around and get back in my car and just go home but I likeed my job and didn't want to risk losing it I inspected the gross Comforter and just ended up taking it off the bed altogether I sat down on the sheets and decided to call my boss to ask why they put me in such a disgusting place I knew it was late but she and

I had become pretty good friends which made me feel like calling at that hour wasn't completely unprofessional the phone rang over and over but she never answered I left her a message and hung up the phone and I just Sat there in silence for a while I didn't want to lay down in that bed or even take my shoes off in this place I was pretty sure that there was a blood stain on the pillowcase and I knew that there was a 99% chance that if I looked to see if there were any bed bugs

I'd probably find them and after around 30 minutes of contemplating what I should do I decided to sleep in my car would probably be better than spending any more time in that room so that was Exactly what I did I grabbed my bag and exited the room as quietly as possible I was grossed out beyond belief but I still wanted to be courteous to the people in the rooms around me and not wake them when I closed the door behind me I was relieved to see the men that were standing a few Doors Down When

I had pulled up were no longer there I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but being cautious isn't a crime I loaded my bag into my car and Hopped in the back seat to try and get some sleep before the refresher course the next day I don't know how long I was asleep before I was woken up by the sound of men talking not far from where I was laying in my car I peaked out from behind the driver's seat to notice the man who checked me in earlier standing outside the room

that I had abandoned not long before he was talking to the other two men that I had seen when I pulled up I watched them and was Horrified when he pulled out a key and began unlocking the door to my room I could have tried to make excuses for what they were doing but in that moment my heart was going so fast that it was obvious they turned the knob slowly and crept in without turning on the light I realized quickly that the second they figured out I wasn't in there my car would be the

first place that they' looked and I'd be in danger I tried my hardest to be as quiet as I Climbed back into the front seat of the car I turned the key in the ignition and heard shouting and saw the lights going in the room the three men came running out shouting something at me in a language that I didn't understand in that moment the car wouldn't start it was completely dead I tried over and over but nothing was happening the men approached my window and told me to get out I obviously wasn't planning on

doing that I took out my phone and I began Dialing 911 thankfully the operator answered and I frantically told her what was going on and where I was she told me that the earliest synops could get to me was about 20 minutes apparently Services were delayed because of the storm she told me that she'd stay on the line with me and I appreciated her for doing that I just want to say that I look back on the situation and honestly believe that she's the reason that I made it through This whole ordeal alive and I'm

not more traumatized than I already was and these men they were Relentless they tried everything to get access to the car they tried breaking the windows and even got a crowbar to try and pry the door open after 10 minutes of failing to get into the car one of the men got frustrated and jumped on the hood and started to smash the windshield in with his foot I guess that's the moment that my fight or flight kicked in And my reaction wasn't flight the operator reassured me that I could do what I needed to do

since my life was in danger I remember even telling her that I might kill these men and I meant that in that moment and at that moment I was fully prepared to end a life I opened the door I stepped out I don't think they were expecting that but they leapt at me immediately nonetheless thankfully all three of the men probably were weighing 100 lb so Soaking wet they were incredibly skinny and I like to assume that they had the mentality that because they were men they could just overpower me but they were wrong the

first man who came at me I threw him to the ground his head smacked against the pavement and it did enough damage to ensure that I don't think he was trying to get back up the second man tried taking me to the ground but he was also unsuccessful I grabbed him by his hair pulled him off of me as Best I could his other friend had a knife and I felt it cut into my back the pain wasn't too bad but the shock of it led me to let go of the man that I had

previously gotten a hold of and before I knew it I was on the ground being kicked I was trying to protect my head mostly out of instinct at that moment from my periphery I could see the blue and red flashing lights in the distance and I felt a relief wash over me even as I was Being beaten I reached my arm out and grabbed one of the men by the ankle I pulled on his leg as hard as I could and he eventually fell to the ground the other man ran when he saw the police

and out of pure adrenaline and anger I got up and just started pounding down on this now defenseless man in the face over and over and over we were just both soaking wet from the rain and his blood was starting to come off of his face into the Asphalt and I didn't even hear the officer telling me to stop in that moment I just felt a hand on my shoulder and turned turned and saw their face the man that I had beat was now unconscious and they eventually took him away in an ambulance I was

also taken to the hospital the beating I took caused some serious bruises and the cut but thankfully there were no major injuries I got around 10 stitches on the wound on my back it wasn't pleasant but I was just happy to be alive my manager ended up calling me back not long after I had gotten to the hospital she was completely frantic and had no idea what I was talking about in my voicemail she said that she had booked me at a really nice hotel in the same city and she had no idea why that

I had ended up where I did she sent me the info to the correct hotel and I realized immediately what happened both places had the same name but just a kind of Different spelling and I ended up at the wrong place the guy in the lobby had a confused look on his face because he actually didn't have any idea what I was talking about he just pretended to so he could check me into a room that he would have access to single female traveling alone the perfect Target the drive home in a rental car later

that day after being discharged from the hospital and I decided to take some time off from Work my car was towed back into town and repaired at the expense of the company that I worked for I guess there was some serious damage done to the engine presumably done to get me from getting away the company I worked for was actually very supportive after everything that had happened I was also pleased to find out that they caught the other attacker who had run away that night apparently he was hiding out at his mother's house I was

asked to come In to ID him which wasn't the easiest thing I've ever had to do but I did it anything to make sure that those men couldn't hurt me again I guess this wasn't the first time something similar has happened in that Motel only they could never really prove it before my incident and many of these men were just some strung out drug addicts hence why they were so small the trial had been delayed due to The lockdowns but they were all charged with attempted kidnapping and aggravated assault and are actually currently awaiting trial

in jail I'm hoping for justice and for all three of those men to spend a good amount of time behind bars I also know I'm just one of the lucky ones I don't know what I would have done or what would have happened if I was a smaller woman or if no had ever come to help me would I even be here today would I even be able to tell this Story I don't know but I'm grateful I am and I'm grateful I survived [Music] sometime in 2014 an Australian police officer named Steven hegerty was

sitting in his office reviewing several pieces of photographic evidence the process was slow and mentally exhausting because the photographs that senior Constable heger was reviewing constituted some of the most maddeningly disturbing things he'd ever seen each picture showed a child Below the age of 10 being abused by someone considerably older and they weren't simply a handful of photographs there were thousands of them sometimes the abuser was female most of the time they were male but all had gone to considerable lengths to obscure their faces along with any distinguishable tattoos scars or marks at least so

they thought as hegerty continued to study the horrifying photographs he suddenly noticed something small and seemingly Insignificant on one of the abuser's fingers just below where flesh meant fingernail was a small dark Freckle the same Freckle was present on the finger of almost all the mass abusers depicted in the photographs leading hegerty to the realization that they were all the same person all the same man The Freckle constituted a minuscule detail but it was one that would become a key piece of physical evidence in a global policing operation Designed to combat the exploitation of children

christened operation prism the operation sought to bring down the single largest child exploitation site on the dark web whose estimated 45,000 members accessed via sophisticated tour encryption software the Australian division of the investigation team headed by hegerty and dub task force Argos had discovered that the man running the site was actually a fellow Australian and was most likely Living in the southernmost area of the country yet despite having a rough idea of his location the man's identity remained a mystery the only thing police had to go on was the four-letter username he used when communicating

on the site surf a few weeks later South Australian assistant Police Commissioner Paul Dixon received a call from an officer at task force Argos all they said was we had a Potential Target in our jurisdiction Dixon said but at that stage we didn't know his name who he was we didn't even know he existed all we knew was the username surf the global investigation into the website the name of which has been kept a closely guarded secret went public in 2011 when a German man was arrested on charges of exploiting children this is how police

first learned that the website's owner was operating out of South Australia having shifted their attention to the Region Police managed to arrest a high ranked member of the site who was living in Queensland police had hoped that the man was the mysterious surf but to their dismay he was not however the man revealed that surf was indeed Australian and confirmed that he was operating from the south of the country another break in the case came in early 2014 when Dutch police raided The apartment of a suspected child abuser and seized his electronic devices then after

analy izing his computer's hard drive investigators discovered that the man had ready access to the notorious website and demanded he hand over his credentials using the man's login details police managed to access the site then began analyzing the metadata from a number of different photographs almost all of them had been taken by the Exact same Mak model of camera a compact variety of Panasonic wherever surf was acquiring his illegal content more than 90% of it appeared to become from the exact same Source officers from task force Argos began trolling the internet for any other mentions

of a user named surf it took weeks but they found one on a forum dedicated to discussion between owners of four-wheel drive vehicles officers discovered that several posts had been Written by a user named surf surf claimed to be an experienced off-roader and appeared highly opinionated regarding the best kinds of tires and suspension to use to ensure a vehicle was truly suitable for all terrains but what officers noticed almost immediately was the near identical style of typing it was undoubtedly the same surf from the infamous unnamed website they just had to find Proof 2 days

later after trolling through thousands of surf posts and comments police made a breakthrough many of the links surf had posted were broken and brought back nothing but 404 pages but one worked and that one was all they needed Ed officers found themselves staring at a Volkswagen amarok a crew cab pickup truck produced by VW since 2010 but most importantly the truck's registration plate was visible and after plugging it into the National Database a Single name came back Shannon mikul following a preliminary background check police made a truly harrowing Discovery Shannon mul one of the biggest

purveyors of child exploitation material in the planet have been working with children and young people through various volunteer programs for the better part of a decade but what's worse is at the time of the background check Shannon was a full-time employee of South Australia's department for child Protection meaning he had Direct access to dozens of Highly vulnerable children officers from task force Argos leapt into action Gathering as much data and evidence on mul as possible if they wanted to guarantee a conviction they they needed as strong a case as possible but that meant biing their

time and allowing mikol to continue operating the site causing irreparable harm to an Untold number of innocent children as the investigation progressed Police made yet another disturbing Discovery during the summer of 2013 an anonymous tipster contacted Shannon's employer the department for child protection claiming he'd made an inappropriate comment regarding one of the children in his case Shannon was suspended for 3 months pending an official investigation but incredibly was permitted to return to work following vehement denials and a general lack of evidence investigating police Officers were understandably nauseated by these new details and it was clear

that mcool posed to clear and present threat to the safety of children everywhere but it was also through their careful analysis of mul and his likeness that they made their biggest breakthrough yet one of the officers from task force Argos had been given a very unusual ual task he was charged with identifying which of mol's social media photos showed his hands in any Kind of detail since the abusers present in the photographic evidence went to Great Lengths to conceal their faces the only thing that truly set them apart were their hands or more specifically their

fingers this meant the officer in question spent hours upon hours cropping images of mul's hands along with the appendages of many others suspected in the trafficking or exploitation of children these images were then Painstakingly digitally enhanced until ready to be used as possible identifiers for the abusers and the photographs then one day senior Constable Steven hegerty came to visit the officer at his station to see how he was progressing the officer was in the process of enhancing images of mul's hands and as hegerty reviewed them his jaw quietly dropped on Shana's middle finger just below

where flesh met fingernail was a Small dark Freckle it was him the man from the photographs it was Shannon he wasn't just one of the largest per of child exploitation material on the face of the Earth he was directly involved in its creation all whilst having direct access to some of the most vulnerable young people in Australia as we've already mentioned the decision was made not to apprehend Shannon immediately police wished to covertly collate evidence on Shannon Without alerting him to the investigation as doing so might give him a chance to warn others or destroy

key evidence but after it was discovered that he was not only an employee of South Australia's Department of Child Protection but was active in the sickening exploitation of children police realized that they had no choice but to arrest him as soon as possible yet to do so successfully without Shannon destroying any evidence police Had to plan a delicate but decisive operation there are certain programs and techniques a person can use to render their devices completely useless to us one officer explained it doesn't matter who you are you're not getting in and if that had happened

in our case there's no way we'd have obtained the same kind of result we achieved our timing and subtlety were Beyond crucial to the overall success of this operation finally on the evening of June 10th 2014 Shannon mul was sitting at home presumably overseeing his evil empire when he heard a gentle knocking on his front door he got up from his chair neglecting to close his laptop then walked to the front door to see who was knocking from the sound of the knock it could have been a neighbor a cold caller maybe even a friend

or a relative but when he opened the door and found no one to be seen he stepped outside to take a look Around the moment his shoe touched the concrete senior Constable hegerty ambushed him shoved him up against the wall before forcibly sitting him down mul was was then informed that he was under arrest and reminded of his right to remain silent but he didn't say a thing hegerty later said that mul appeared shellshocked almost as if he hadn't expected any kind of legal repercussions whatsoever yet as law enforcement's reasons for rating his Address became

obvious mul turned pale then stared into space as if drifting off into Catatonia he was finished life as he knew it was about to change forever within minutes of mul's apprehension officers from a vast array of Australian policing agencies were swarming around his apartment senior Constable hegerty had been the first into the lounge there on a small brown coffee table sat mul's Tosha laptop still connected to an External hard drive that no doubt contained a trove of sickening material hegerty found that mul was running a sophisticated variety of encryption software but it was one that

cyber crime detectives were quite easily able to bypass and once they did it was simply a case of clicking a few links before officers gain full access to one of the largest caches of child exploitation material ever uncovered police even recovered the same Panasonic digital camera used to produce the vast majority of mul's collection meaning the case against him would be even easier to prosecute it took task force Argos almost 2 weeks to identify just seven victims from the thousands of upon thousands of obscene photographs it was a slow painstaking process and much of it

involved contacting the Children's Charities that mul had been involved in most kept detailed files on the children That had been in their care and after hundreds were delivered to their offices constable hegerty and task force Argos set about physically comparing the children with those found in mul's content seven of them were physically identical to those in the department of child protection's files I was satisfied that there were seven victims Constable hegerty later said We examined everything cross referenced times and dates the children Were under his care it all matched the worst thing is we don't

even know if that was all of them there could have been more we could never be 100% sure another piece of evidence task force Argos had to fall back on was an exact handwriting match between mols and certain pieces of writing displayed in the photographs it's common practice among those who manufacture these indecent images of children to create so-called Proof pictures creators use several different techniques but one involves a handwritten message from the abuser detailing the date time or their username this was the technique mul used and it provided evidence that task force Argos were

only too happy to add to their already burgeoning Arsenal I think I identified 14 photographs where he had handwritten something on a poit or a piece of paper con hegerty explained he would actually Place these notes on the child just prior to or during the abuse taking place from examples of handwriting taken from his house we managed to compare it to that in the images again it was a dead match once mul realized just how much evidence was stacked against him he offered his complete cooperation with the ongoing investigation hegerty accepted the offer but it

wasn't a confession he was Interested in task force Argos had more than enough to put him away for life so the one thing mul had to offer them were the identities of the remaining children he was documented as abusing he agreed to interview with Constable hegerty with the several other officers gathered in the adjacent room a lengthy question and answer session commenced the priority was identifying the remaining kids hegerty said and at that stage I was confident that we were Going to get the right result he told us four names then claimed that he couldn't

remember any of the others of which there were dozens mikul also answered questions regarding the dark web hell Trove that he owned and operated and although he tried to minimize his involvement in the actual abuse some of his responses shook even veteran officers to their core when asked how involved he was with the day-to-day running of the website McCool stunned those in attendance by explaining the sense of Pride his sickening collection gave him it was bizarre one of the witnesses explained after the first interview we just sat in the car park for a while unable

to speak I think we were just a bit Blown Away by the magnitude of what mul had said after two more hour-long interviews hegerty realized just how manipulative and malevolently intelligent mul really was his methods were shrewd to say the Least he explained I think this is one reason why his victim range was so young as soon as he thought a child would be capable of reporting anything he would shy away from them he would be very selective of who he targeted as victims Constable hegerty had no doubts that mul would have continued abusing children

if he hadn't been apprehended he was waiting for his next opportunity that's my honest belief it might have taken another 6 months it might have Taken another 2 years but given the opportunity he would have offended again following his sentencing hearing on August 7th of 2015 M was sentenced to 35 years in prison with a non-parole period of 28 years however in April of 2018 his 35-year sentence was reportedly reduced by 2 to 3 years after he assisted in the identification and capture of a prolific Danish criminal after learning of the sentence reduction the father

of one of Mul's victims spoke to a journalist from Australia's ABC News I don't like that he is getting a resentence because he has got no remorse at all the man said he didn't even say thank thank you he was sitting there with a smug smile on his face the whole time I suggest to mul and any other person who has ever hurt a child to stand up and start thinking about the children and stop thinking about themselves these children are living with a lifetime of hurt while Their abusers get three meals a day and

a roof over their head usually prisoners who help police capture their fellow criminals are greatly rewarded for their efforts the presiding judge could have given Shannon mul a much greater discount on a sentence instead he defended his decision to Grant just 2 to 3 years your cooperation has not been complete particularly relating to a serious matter in this Jurisdiction he said that does not reduce your discount but shows that there are matters that you still keep secret your Contrition and remorse remain equivocal and uncertain perhaps in this case the judg is on to something Shannon

mul has since claimed to be repentant of his actions and has professed a desire to continue his cooperation with the authorities but all likelihood his motivations amount to little more than a desire for Self-preservation perhaps the best insight into how Shannon truly feels regarding his crimes against humanity is a five-word comment that he left on his website's Message Board the comment reads abusing children should be acceptable [Music] I remember it being a kind of cold night in October the day had been long and I was exhausted from a work trip that had me driving for

hours now for context I Was a somewhat smaller man and always considered myself a sort of pessimist I decided to pull over it what looked to be just a run-ofthe-mill hotel that was right off the freeway it was one of those places that people on road trips could stay without having to drive into a big city to get a few hours of sleep the hotel looked like it had seen better days the sign outside read vacant and I didn't have to wonder why the parking lot was practically empty save for a few Rusted up beaters

I parked my own car and made my way to the LOB inside I was greeted by a sort of disinterested clerk who was too busy paying attention to his phone to even look up at me I paid for a room and was handed a key barely receiving a word during the whole interaction it was kind of weird as I made my way to the room I couldn't shake the feeling that something was really off about this place but I was too exhausted to care Though my room was no better than the rest of the place

and the curtains were torn and stained in multiple places and the air smelled like mil do I decided to take a quick shower and just practically collapsed on the bed my plan was to catch a few hours of sleep wake up and get out of there before Sunrise I must have slept for no more than an hour when I was jolted awake by a loud argument coming from the room next door it sounded like a couple People arguing over something I couldn't quite make out I got out of bed and press my ear against the

really thin wall that separated our rooms and I could hear the sort of muffled Where's My Money Durk there was a very Gruff voice demanding this and I remember specifically someone saying back I swear Joey I I'll get it to you by tomorrow and the other guy who I'm guessing was probably that Derek person Sounded incredibly scared it was kind of surreal in the moment and I could hear the conversation escalating and it became clear that someone was going to get hurt I knew I had to do something but fear pretty much had me Frozen

there I contemplated calling the police but didn't have any concrete information to really provide them and not to get political either but I also know police can also just make situations worse and just as I was considering my options the Argument turned violent I heard a loud crash echoing through the walls followed by what I can only assume were punches being thrown again the walls were almost paper thin and I could hear everything am I completely sure I heard punches no but one can assume considering that they were both just yelling at each other Derek

clearly didn't have the upper hand I exited my room and sort of just tiptoed to the door peeking through the peephole in the neighboring Room the hotel was old and obviously didn't bother changing to oneway peul and what I saw at that moment gave me chills Derek was being held down by two men both much larger and a lot scarier than he was he was br bruised and there was blood dripping from his nose and out of his mouth his eyes were swollen shut and tears were running down his face as I could now hear

him begging for his life the men had their backs to the door and I knew that I had no choice but at That moment to contact somebody it would have been wrong for me to not set my own personal opinions aside when someone else's life was in danger I went back to my room immediately grabbed my cell phone and died 911 and I whispered to the dispatcher about situation I explained my location as best I could it was hard considering I didn't know the area at all my heart was pounding in my chest as I

crept back to That peephole trying to just keep tabs on the nightmare that was happening right next door and just as I looked I saw one of the men draw a gun from his waistband Panic surged through me and I sank to the floor I was scared and couldn't risk them seeing me or hearing me through the door the sound of those gunshots pierced the air and I could hear dereck's screams of Agony tears started to well up in my Eyes as I felt completely helpless and the minutes dragged on as I huddled on the

floor just inside my room the sound of Derek's suffering was one of the worst things I'd ever heard he was moaning and crying out in pain I listened as the other men made fun of him they found him weak for showing that he was in that type of pain and I found that incredibly disgusting considering that they just shot him multiple times and I heard more shuffling in the room Next door and was relieved to hear what sounded like the men leaving after what felt like a small eternity I actually heard the sirens approaching the

hotel relief washed over me as I looked through my own peephole and saw the police arrive followed by paramedics the officers pounded on the door the room next to me demanding that whoever was inside surrender I guess they hadn't realized The men had already left the only response they got was Derek now pleading for them to help him I heard them break down the door and call for paramedics I was full of fear and anxiety as I waited for the officers to clear the scene and hopefully get this guy the help that he needed finally

an officer knocked on my door identifying himself I opened the door and was eager to tell them everything that I had heard and seen They told me that they'd have to take me down to the station to make a formal statement and I found that odd but I did what I had to do I packed up my stuff from my room and headed down to the police station and as I sat there in that police station that night providing my statement to a detective for what seemed like the H hundredth time I couldn't help but

think about whether or not that Derek guy was okay I never met him or even interacted with him once but Somehow I just felt a connection with him in those split moments and in my eyes no one deserves to die in such a violent way just because they probably owed someone money I wish that there was more I could have done but being how small I am not trained in really anything if I would have intervened I probably would have been severely injured probably even killed and no matter how many people like to say that

they would I just Couldn't risk my own life for someone I didn't even know I was informed later that night that that guy Derek had passed away not long after arriving at the hospital his gunshot wounds were pretty severe there was nothing they could do the detective assured me that I had done the right thing by calling the police and that my testimony would be important in bringing the men responsible to Justice if and when they were Found unfortunately as I'm writing this it's been almost 9 years and there's been no news on this case

I'm sad Derrick's family hasn't received Justice for his murder the events of that night have left me completely traumatized but I have to remember how lucky I am to still have my own life that's something that that guy will never have and the only thing separating the two of us that night was a wall different life decisions lead us to the Same place at the same time but still somehow worlds away from one another [Music] so long story short I was kidnapped it wasn't something I'd ever expected to happen to me but it did and

it was the most horrific thing I'd ever been through and the memories of that day have stayed with me even years later now I feel like I should give some back background I was 25 and I had just quit my job it was a boring cubicle job that Made me feel like part of me was just dying inside no offense to anyone with a similar job it's just that mine was so boring and so monotonous that I had actually started to just hate my life more and more every time I went in there so I

quit without even giving 2 weeks notice booked a plane out of the country that left the next week packed a small bag of Essentials and set off to do a solo backpacking trip I don't want to mention the country that I went to because I don't believe it's an unsafe place to visit and I don't want this story to hurt its reputation in anyway I got off the plane and headed to the hostel that I had booked the day before I walked in and it was gross like all the reviews that actually said but I

couldn't afford anything else in that particular country I got into my bed and fell asleep I was really hoping that one good sleep would get rid of the jet lag that I would be able to function Properly the next day I woke up at around 5:00 a.m. which wasn't too bad I wanted to sleep a little later but my brain wouldn't let me I got out of bed and grabbed my backpack and headed out for the day the goal was to try the local street food I watched a lot of videos about how great it

was in that country and figured it was probably one of the safer things that I could do as a Solo Traveler I spent most of the morning trying to find somewhere that Was serving food early but didn't have much luck throughout the day I noticed a lot of the locals staring at me as I walk the streets of their country completely alone at around 2 p.m. I found a vendor along a busy street that was selling a type of fruit that I'd never tried before I bought some and sat in the curb a few feet

away and the fruit tasted amazing after a couple of minutes something seemed really off though I Started to feel nauseous and had this feeling of being intensely tired I tried to stand up I thought maybe walking around would help but when I lifted myself off the curb my legs felt like Jello-O beneath me I fell back down and started to call out for help I was going to black out and I knew it I knew that would be pretty bad considering that I was completely alone and no one was ever going to come help me

and just before my eyes closed I saw people pull up in Front of me the door opened and a couple of men got out and Stood Beside Me and it was at that point that I lost all memory I woke up and what looked to be a relatively nice hotel room there were two beds a large flat screen TV in a large bay window that looked out onto the city I could tell that we were in a room high up in the building so there wouldn't be an option to escape through that window I looked

around the room to Try to see if there was anyone else in there but I was sitting next to a dresser and couldn't see the door that led out onto what I'm guessing was the hallway I spoke out is anyone there be quiet he'll hear you it's better if he thinks you're asleep I could hear the voice that had answered me but couldn't see the person I knew it was a woman and she seemed to have a slight accent who's He now I was desperate to know more but she just shushed me immediately just please

be quiet we'll both get in trouble for you talking so I stopped I was confused and scared but I knew well enough to listen to someone when they say that I'll get hurt for making noise my hands were tied behind my back and I shifted side to side while I tried to get free I made a couple of thumping sounds and I stopped the second I started to Hear footsteps they were coming from the bathroom just before the door open the girl offered me one more warning pretend you're still asleep he only likes to play

when you're awake I closed my eyes and tried to calm my breath sounds but what she had just said to me had made my heart be faster than it ever had sitting there on that hotel floor I wish so badly that I had never quit my job that I had just stayed And worked in that depressing cubicle because then at least I wouldn't be there wondering what if I was about to be tortured or even die in the next few minutes I heard the bathroom door open the footsteps vibrated the floor and I felt the

person get closer to me with each step they took I wanted to scream when I felt a hand being placed on my shoulder they shook me hard I kept my eyes closed and continued to pretend to be Unconscious they shook me harder and harder to the point where it began to hurt but I was determined to live determined to never find out what the woman meant by play if I open my eyes their hand left my shoulder when they realized that I wasn't going to wake up I knew that whoever this was was going to

her next [Music] he moved further away from me and I listened as he began to shake her Violently she wasn't able to keep up the act and she yelled out in pain and I couldn't help but open one of my eyes to see what was going on this man was large tall and heavy and I was scared when I watched him carry her away she was just some petite woman dirty and disheveled and she looked like she had been there for quite some time and the man's back was turned towards me as he brought her

into the bathroom she looked me in the eyes and mouthed Two words at me get out the door closed behind them and hearing her beg him not to hurt her made me want to cry loud music started to play behind the door and I knew that if I was ever going to get a chance to escape it was going to be that moment I was able to stand up by leaning my back against the wall and sliding myself up once I was on my feet I quietly made my way over to the door there was

one unlock and I had one chance to open it And run for my life I wasn't sure if the man was going to be able to hear the door open but if he could I had to act fast I held the lock between my teeth and turned it until I heard a click I turned around and grabbed the handle with my hand still tied behind my back the handle turned and the door opened the music in the bathroom suddenly stopped and I knew at that moment that I needed to run the bathroom door opened and

the man Began yelling I sprinted down the hallway and managed to slip into an elevator there were people inside looking at me with wide eyes I was begging them to get help to call police but not a single one of them could understand what I was saying the elevator stopped at the lobby and I just rushed to the front desk thankfully there was someone there who understood what I was saying they were able to cut me loose that were tied Around my wrists and put me in one of the offices in the back where I

waited 20 minutes for local authorities to arrive I was questioned by a few officers who had a hard time understanding me I led them to the room that I was being kept in and when they opened the door and searched the room the man and that woman were gone in that moment I felt heartbroken but not for me I wanted so desperately to help her she was so scared and looked So broken I really thought that she'd still be in there and that maybe I could help her they found my backpack in one of the

drawers and basically told me that I could just leave no investigation was going to be done considering that I guess there was no evidence the hotel had no security cameras and they couldn't just go off of my word I headed straight from my hotel to the airport and got on the next flight That I could home I didn't want to spend one more night in that country I arrived home and decided to stay with my parents for quite some time I gave up my apartment and spent well over a year too terrified to even leave

the house I couldn't even sleep because every time I closed my eyes I thought of that woman I tried going to the authorities in my country but they also said that there was really nothing they could do and I felt Helpless I wish I could say in the end that my life got better and that I learned something from this experience but that would be a lie I had crippling anxiety and can barely function outside of the house I only started to grow grocery shop for myself again just this past year I'm 28 now and

I still live with my parents I work from home doing a job that requires no human interaction I should have kept that job had a boring life anything would be better than the Hell that I'm now living through [Music] so I was staying at a hotel with my mom when I was around 16 we were in town for a concert and I really wanted to go swimming at the indoor pool but my mom was adamant that she didn't want to go with me I told her that she didn't have to and that I could go

alone but she was hesitant about that she thought that I was going to get kidnapped after something but I thought that she was Just being overproductive and ridiculous I got my swimsuit on and told my mom that I was going to the pool whether she liked it or not and she yelled at me that I was being some brat and I slammed the door behind me I made my way downstairs and through the hall that led to the pool I needed a room key to get in and was glad that I had one on me

I entered the pool room and was kind of disappointed to see so many other people in there there were at least 10 Kids in the pool and even more adults in the hot tub I didn't want to go back to my room though because I knew my mom would make some snotty comment and I just really didn't want to hear it at that moment I set my stuff down on a nearby chair and decided to go in the pool I went in the deep end to keep away from the smaller children and it was nice

it was a heated pool so I wasn't freezing like I usually would be in other places and I was Hanging out in the pool for around 10 minutes when I noticed a man walking alone he was probably in his 60s I would say and I remember feeling kind of creeped out by him just on the initial glance he hadn't done anything or he didn't even really look at me it was just sort of a feeling that I immediately got from him a feeling that you get when you know someone had bad intentions without really having

to do anything he got into the pool and made His way over to the deep end near me he was only 5 ft away when he started making some small talk with me he was asking me questions about school and just different things that I was interested in I tried ignoring him but he was adamant on getting me to talk to him I tried politely telling him that I don't talk to strangers but he did the thing that creeps always do and then introduces himself saying that we weren't strangers Anymore almost like Pennywise and he

starts to laugh I was getting weirded out to the extreme and told this guy to just please leave me alone and I got of the pool and actually decided to jump in the hot tub I thought maybe that I'd be safer around some adults I was horrified to see the man get out of the pool and slip his gross body into the hot tub he sat right next to me and made this moaning sound and mentioned how great the water felt I knew that That was just an excuse for the sound that he made because

he did it only when his leg touched mine I moved to the other end of the hot tub and he made a face at me like he was sad or something I sat there trying not to look at him and just enjoy being in the warm water but he had to ruin it by being a creep again I felt someone's foot touch mine it was like a caressing feeling not just an accidental touch I couldn't see through the water because of the Jets Creating the bubbles but it was obvious who it was I looked up

at the man and he had this almost smirk on his face and he actually mouthed something at me that I didn't pick up at first but when he did it a second time I understood him perfectly you like that I stood up out of the water at that moment and yelled at him calling him a pervert he seemed offended and I told the adults in the hot tub what he had just said to me and how he was trying to Play footsy with me and thankfully a few of the other men got the man and

actually took him out of the pool room I thanked them and they assured me that I would be safe in there with them their wives comforted me and asked if I wanted them to walk me back to my room but I was still being stubborn and didn't want to prove my mother right so I just stayed I was there for another hour before they had to leave there were a couple of other families in there with Me still so I still felt safe I had my eyes closed as I leaned back against the wall of

the hot tub when I felt the water shift in a way that meant someone else had just gotten in I opened my eyes and felt like my heart was falling out of my chest when I saw that man from earlier he sat down across from me and gave me that same awful creepy smirk like before only this time he whispered a warning to me he told me my room number and said if I screamed or made Any sound that he would go to my room and do something terrible to my mom I was scared I

wanted to scream and cry but I was also just 16 and didn't realized that I had more control over the situation than I thought I sat there in silence and watched in horror as he came and sat next to me he was so close that I felt his leg press firmly against my own he set his hand on my thigh and tears started coming down my face and that's when it finally hit me I didn't Have to put up with that I didn't have to sit there and let this man do this to me I

stood up as fast as I could and jumped out of that hot tub like my life depended on it which technically I guess it did he was still seated when I pulled my leg back and kicked him in the back of the head as hard as I could the other families began yelling one of the women there came rushing over and asked what just happened when I explained explained everything she started yelling at the Now almost concussed man he was grabbing the back of his head and was clearly Furious he started to Lunge at us

and I was thankful when the woman who came over leaned down and grabbed at his hair and started to pull another woman who seemingly came out of nowhere kicked him directly in the face and this time and I kid you not knock this dude out it turns out she had been overhearing everything they were about to get in the hot tub and do God knows what to him when I just Decided to run I ran down the hall and up the stairs I bangged on our hotel room door and my mom answered I was sobbing

and she pulled me inside and was frantically asking me what happened I was barely able to tell her while choking back tears but when I did she was Furious she told me to stay in the room and that she'd be back next thing I knew she came back with blood on her clothes as she told me the man wouldn't be messing with with any girls again I Asked her what happened but she wouldn't tell me and the police came knocking on our door later that night and they questioned both of us my mother had already

changed her clothes and they never asked her about her involvement the man was found floating unconscious surrounded by his own blood in the hot tub unfortunately he survived he was arrested and taken to the hospital and we didn't get any updates on his condition and we were just glad about it Because we we didn't really want to know and frankly didn't care he was charged with assault of a minor this also wasn't his first offense given the state that we were in so I know his sentence was much longer we were happy to get the

Justice not just for me but also the other girls they probably hurt in the past and possibly the countless others that hadn't come forward I had to go to therapy for this my mom has lived with extreme guilt for Letting me go to that pool that day alone I've tried telling her that it isn't her fault fault but there's nothing I'll ever be able to say to make her feel better about it I'm sad that there are people in the world that are like that and even sadder that most of them never get caught [Music]

ever since I was a little girl all I ever wanted to do was help people my mom used to say that even when I was a kid I'd be playing nurse with my dolls then as I grew into my teens I was obsessed with General Hospital and would binge watch scrubs episodes back when DVD box sets were a thing during my last 2 years of high school some of my friends found themselves torn between two or three options for college courses our es not me my answer was reflexive every time I was asked nursing I

want to go into nursing after getting my SAT results I Obtained all the prerequisite qualifications chose a handful of schools and programs and set about applying then once I was in I just had to keep myself financially afloat because I only had access to limited financial aid I had toine myself a part-time job and after a week or two of scouring Craigslist among other places I managed to find an almost perfect vacancy I'd rather not dox the place That I ended up working at so I won't use its actual name but the place served as

a kind of community center for young adults with learning difficulties we didn't provide intensive or emergency care to people with physical disabilities and those with more complex cases were referred to full-time Care Centers but when it came to people who were too functional to Simply sit around at home but not functional enough to hold down a job It was up to us to provide them with a place that they could visit that would both nurture and educate them honestly it was the kind of place that I have been only too happy to volunteer at if

I wasn't being paid but the flexible part-time scheduling made it ideal on so many levels it would look great on my resume and it made sense for them to hire someone with nursing aspirations as i' no doubt bring the same level of care to the community Center thankfully the community center's management team agreed with that assessment and when they gave me the call to offer me the job I was nothing less than ecstatic obviously my first couple of days on the job were spent familiarizing myself with both the layout of the community center as well

as the center's various members some visited on a daily basis staying from early in the morning till late in the afternoon whereas Others stopped by every so often maybe a couple of days a week basically whenever their parents needed someone to watch them some members just hung out played pool or watched TV or something but there were others who needed more than just light entertainment to keep them happy and occupied I was kind of surprised at first when I saw a kid named Todd sweeping the parking lot along with a member of The Care team

I was a little Concerned that he was being roped into working for free but I soon realized that Todd just liked helping out it made him feel useful like he was part of the team and it meant the world to him to see us smile and say things like great job buddy and all that and once that was understood well I thought it was just about the sweetest thing ever and it assuaged any concerns I had about the members helping out with our work one of the other members who used To help out with day-to-day

running of the place was a guy I'll just call Charlie Charlie was definitely one of the more functional of the guys who stopped by the center and he only did so maybe twice or three times a week weekends included being in his late 20s he was a little older than some of the other kids who were mostly High School to college age but he used to visit a lot more during his younger Years by the time I got the job he liked to stop by after lunch to help out where he could and he often

stayed until we closed up before walking or sometimes jogging all the way home again I was surprised when I first heard that that he walked or ran like 3 miles to and from the center every time he wanted to visit but there was no denying it was good exercise as Charlie himself would tell you and that's the thing about Charlie you could barely tell that he Had learning difficulties you could be having a perfectly normal conversation with them and then out of nowhere he'd ask you a question totally out of left field sometimes and and

you'd remember how he came to know the center so well in the first place for example we were unloading some egg pallets from a van just making small talk when he suddenly asked me are all the eggs from chickens and when I said sure he replied how do you know That I had to explain to him that I didn't actually know for certain that they were all chicken eggs but that the store operated on a kind of trust system which would allow me to get my money back for anything that wasn't a chicken egg Charlie

looked puzzled for a second then just sort of nodded before carrying on unloading the pallets I got the impression that Charlie still didn't understand but little misunderstandings like that were things he'd learned to Live with and everyone loved Charlie they liked him because he was helpful they liked him because he was thoughtful and they liked him because he was one of the few members who was actually able to articulate how grateful he was for both the center and its staff and through no fault of their own most members would only say things like a simple

thank you or I love you guys which was amazing and I appreciated every kind word I got but Charlie was Really able to just flesh out how he felt about us I saw a cooworker dash into the staff break room before bursting into tears because Charlie had said something to her like I don't know what I'd do without this place sometimes you guys feel like part of my family she wasn't a particularly over emotional person but I guess what he said that day hit her right in the fields and she didn't want him to confuse

her happy tears with sad tears Charlie was popular for other reasons too and then he often brought things from home sometimes it was a fresh tray of cookies sometimes it was a bag of sub sandwiches and then other times it was a brand new PlayStation for the playroom or a portable heater when the office got real sort of cold in the wintertime Charlie didn't work not as far as I knew anyway so I figured that he was either independently wealthy Somehow or that he had Rich parents that didn't mind dropping a few hundred on the

new gaming system and I know for a fact that that portable heater wasn't cheap because Charlie didn't think to just take the price tag off the Box before he gave it to us and I can guarantee people would have still like Charlie had he not been so generous but we didn't exactly turn his gifts down either we were very underfunded and without his or his family's help things Would have definitely been much tougher around the center but then that's why I felt so conflicted when after hearing all these amazing reports of Charlie I suddenly had

a very negative experience with him you see one evening we were in the process of closing up the center and I was finishing off a count in our food storage that had been interrupted earlier in the day I knew Charlie was around the center so I wasn't startled When he suddenly walked into the storage room at the rear of the kitchen but what I was startled by is the question he asked me do you have a boyfriend I didn't have a boyfriend not at the time but the question caught me so off guard that I

told Charlie that yes I did have a boyfriend I didn't want to give him any ideas if I said no so I just kind of instinctively lied Charlie then asked me what it was Like having a boyfriend I mean so I told him it was nice and that I love my boyfriend Very Much Charlie then told me that he wished he had a girlfriend and that he never had one and would like to feel that same kind of nice as he put puts it it seemed like it was another one of those moments with Charlie

where he said something so sweet that you thought it might break your heart but then suddenly the conversation took a drastic and Deeply unexpected turn Charlie paused for a second after saying that same kind of nice thing and then turned to me again before asking something that had my jaw almost hitting the floor he asked me if my boyfriend performed a very disgusting kind of act on each each other and before you go thinking I'm some Ultra Christian who thinks anything beyond handholding is extra marital evilness the thing he Asked about was very extreme the

kind of thing I'd drop a date like a live grenade over if they ever asked me to do it with them I had to remind myself who would actually asked the question and that even though Charlie had this really creepy grin after asking it I tried to just take a sort of professional tone before responding I told him his question was not appr apprpriate for nice conversation and explained why it would be considered rude and also Explained the thing that he referred to was not something that regular couples would consider normal or romantic Charlie apologized

kind of in the same way that he did when he got other stuff wrong but there was something different about this one he said that he was sorry but his expression kind of said otherwise the whole thing just left a really bad taste in my mouth so the next day I just brought it up to my Boss she said she'd have to handle it in the exact same way and that I was right to report it as soon as I was able it wasn't the first time that the mostly male visitors to the center had

made an inappropriate comment to its mostly female staff but that each time education had been the remedy not shaming or exclusion and I agreed wholeheartedly that most transgressions like that were nothing but innocent mistakes but like I had already Mentioned there was the issue of Charlie's expression and how I didn't think that he was all that sorry I didn't bring that up not because it wasn't relevant but because it didn't feel like it served a purpose if Charlie said anything else that crossed a line I could just escalate my complaint knowing my boss had my

back and with that in mind I didn't mention it to anyone else I didn't want to color their opinions of Charlie and since it appeared that he'd Learned his lesson regarding asking me about inappropriate topics I decided to just simply Let It Go rather than go around talking all bad about him and things went on just fine like that for a while with Charlie being his usual cheerful self at least until one day when everything changed suddenly and irreversibly one night me and another member of The Care team were closing up the center for the

night and Charlie was off helping them with whatever they were Dealing with I was in the records room which was this fairly small walk-in closet that was incredibly overstuffed with all kinds of files that have been piled onto old dusty shelves when who should walk in but Charlie himself this was a few years before all the records were transferred over to the digital system and seeing as everything inside was sort of deemed sensitive information we used to keep it locked at All times to get inside I had to get my keys out to unlock the

door but when I did I just left them in the lock and that turned out to be a huge mistake when Charlie walked into the room I noticed that he had my keys in his hand I asked him to hand him over but he just ignored me while flashing that creepily familiar grin then when I asked him a second time he turned slid the key into the door then locked it with a loud Click you know people sometimes say things like I felt my blood run cold or my vein turned to ice whenever something really

creepy happens to them I didn't know what they meant until that moment but it's true I got chill seeing Charlie lock that door not just because he'd locked both of us inside but because he knew what he was doing I asked him a third time to give me my keys and during that he tossed Them up onto the box of files on a top shelf then took a few steps towards me I kept saying this isn't funny Charlie give me my keys and get out but he didn't listen he just kept following me around the

records room as I tried and failed to keep away from him he was much bigger than me much faster all I took was one attempt to get my keys and he was on me I don't even want to say what he tried to do to me but let's just say That it was the one thing that every woman prays never happens to them but I didn't just let him do it I fought back and when I did he thankfully stopped trying but then instead of just unlocking the door and accepting the rejection Charlie began to

punch me kick me and stomp on me while I fell on the ground I tried to crawl away but every attempt just made it easier for him to just kick me in the head or in the ribs or other more vulnerable places on my Body and then suddenly it just stopped I heard the jingling of of the keys I heard them pushed into the lock and then by the time I rolled over to look Charlie was gone and the door was wide open what happened next feels like it happened to another person or like it

was a dream I had I think a combination of adrenaline all the kicks and punches to my head and just how unexpected the attack had been put me into a kind of Disassociate of State when I think about it it's like someone else got up and limped their way to the phone at the center's reception are to call 911 I just remember feeling so calm at a time when I'd have expected myself to be completely hysterical and I know now that that was just a way of delaying the trauma a function now but suffer later

kind of thing I was still on the phone with 911 when my cooworker walked into the Reception area and noticed me obviously I knew I was hurt pretty bad but I couldn't see myself you know so when my co worker looked at me and literally gasped with horror at all the blood and torn clothing that's the first time I actually started to really worry how bad things truly were I didn't need the ambulance in the end because my coworker drove me straight to the hospital she was like my guardian angel and stayed with me while

I was checked over and then gave me a ride back to my dorm after we spoke to two cops who showed up to the hospital I was a mess on that ride back to my dorm and I spent maybe 5 or 10 minutes just crying into my cowork shoulder after we pulled into the parking lot the nurses had cleaned me up pretty good but there was some swelling and I was for sure going to have one or two black eyes but aside from that nothing was broken it was probably the Worst experience in my life

up until that point but everyone seemed supportive and the cops were promising to investigate but when I looked back on it there was one little clue that everything wasn't going to turn out okay and that's when my cooworker asked me what happened she asked me the first time on the way to the hospital and when I told her it was Charlie who attacked me she was Shocked but not to the point of disbelief I'll be the first to say that of all the men who visited the center Charlie was the last person I ever expected

to turn violent or lash out but the fact remained that he had but then when I was sitting in her car in the parking lot of my dorm and my cooworker asked me a second time what had happened back in the records room I could see her beginning to doubt my version of events or rather not doubt me In the sense that she thought I was lying she was just incapable of imagining Charlie being capable of anything so horrifying I should have known that she wouldn't be the only one and at that time I totally

understood why she'd be so stunned to the point of disbelief it was an unbelievable story but like a surprising amount of unbelievable stories every word was the god honest truth I had no idea how the doubt would spread and grow until it divided a whole community and force me out of a job that I grown to love first part came when I got a call from my boss saying that I'd been suspended without pay until the cops investigation had concluded basically Charlie was flat out denying any wrongdoing claiming total ignorance and saying that he wasn't

even at the center on the day that I was attacked thanks to the center security Cameras that was a claim we could easily prove Pro false but then Charlie's parents had totally taken his word for it citing the fact that he' returned home at the exact time as usual I suppose this isn't totally relevant in a way but it's something that really creeped me out at the time and still creeps me out actually so I'll suppose I'll share it Charlie stayed way after closing that afternoon maybe 25 to 30 minutes after he usually started his

Walk or run home this meant that to get home at the so-called regular time Charlie had to have ran the 3 miles back to his house in a heavy jacket and probably Crocs at an extended Pace without stopping he wasn't smart enough to cover it up properly but he sure tried meaning that he sure as hell knew what he had done was a terrible terrible thing the second part came when I heard Charlie had admitted attacking me but Claimed it was after I tried to touch him he claimed he got scared lashed out then didn't

remember anything until he arrived back home in a panic but I know that's not true because the cop told me that this conflicted with the initial statement made by Charlie's parents who said he arrived home at the regular time while displaying no obvious signs of being upset basically all the evidence proved My story and that forced Charlie to admit what he'd done but everyone completely bought his story after being provoked in some way than losing control of himself don't get me wrong most people sympathized with me and knew Charlie's Behavior was wrong and had to

be dealt with in some way but they also refused to accept that he was really at fault and that he posed a danger to anyone else and then came the day when one of My co-workers approached me and tried to convince me to just drop the charges now the long and short of it is is that if I went ahead with the charges Charlie was going to be removed from the care of his parents and placed into some psychiatric facility for an undetermined period of time if the psychologist found a serious issue but he didn't

respond to the treatment they'd give him Charlie could end up stuck in the system for years on End if I dropped the charges his parents could get him the help he needed privately without having to be separated from him for potentially a very long time in her opinion and she alluded that many other people felt the same way the right thing to do would be for me to drop the charges and when I told her that wasn't going to happen she called me selfish I'd like to say that I handled the situation with a little

more Grace But I didn't I was Furious Beyond Furious and for the first time in my life I had to remove myself from a situation for fear of losing my own sense of control I couldn't believe what had come out of her mouth that word in particular selfish and it made my blood boil in a way that I can barely put into words looking back on it I knew she didn't mean selfish as in thinking of myself over Charlie and his condition she meant Selfish as in me pressing charges would sever Charlie's connection with a

community center which in turn meant no more gifts and as I found out later no tax write-off Financial contributions from Charlie's very wealthy parents in the end Charlie was deemed unfit to stand trial and since he admitted to assaulting me he was referred to a psychiatric hospital on the other side of the state the only caveat was that this was According to that same cop that I told you about Charlie would probably get out of the mental health system much earlier than I'd ever be comfortable with attacking me was the first black mark on what

have been a very clean record and with that in mind judges would look very kindly on him and his oh so charitable parents with the investigation concluded my suspension was lifted and I was invited back to work at the community center I turned down the offer there was No way that I was going back there and maybe that seems spoiled of me because not everyone was either on the fence or on Charlie's side my boss in particular was as good as she'd ever been I just couldn't go back to the place that valued the family's

money over my safety and the safety of other women working there and again that's not to say that she didn't believe Charlie had lashed out they just didn't think that he had it in him to do it again whereas myself And the state saw things differently God this seems so long and rambly by now and I know there will be people out there who listen to this and once again take the side of my attacker but I don't care this felt good to get off my chest for the first time in years and writing it

out has actually served as a sort of reminder of how I did the right thing I completely moved on from the community center and just sort of poured myself into my studies then Applied for nursing jobs in just about every other city and state than the one that I was in at that time I guess other people might have kept up with Charlie's treatment just to keep an eye on his release date but over time I've decided that I just don't want to know I just want to move on with my life I don't want

to think about these things anymore but I also have to accept that's just never going to happen sometimes I feel like a pair of Tectonic plates or something I don't really know how else to describe it you see every so often and enough tension builds up that there needs to be release but aside from that I can go years without paying it more than a glancing thought I guess that's what I hope this post might achieve and why I sent it in and I guess only time will tell [Music] so this was May 2017 my

husband Jim and I own a five Floor 100-year-old building which has our business in it an antique mall our apartment upstairs and various other tenants we'd had several back-to-back burglaries in the prior years and had reinforced the front doors of the business pretty intensely aggressive steel bars more cameras Etc anyway at 3:00 a.m. we were sound asleep upstairs as one is but then we got a call from sonitrol our security company we had a motion detect in our Unusual location not the main floor where 90% of the jewelry is but downstairs that sort of thing

is usually a spider on the camera or a mouse or something so we ran out less than prepared I was only wearing a tank top unies and flip-flops Jim did not grab his baseball bat but at least had pants I went one way to check the front door which was intact and Jim went the other way to check around back suddenly he called me and said someone's inside So I fumbled with my phone trying to call 911 in that situation your monkey brain is in the driver's seat and the phone is the black monolith from

2001 Space Odyssey finally I managed it and rounded the backside of the building narrating to the 91 one one operator Broken Glass Broken Window I said as I later heard during the runup to the trial oh my God they're in please come now then there was an Unholy crash it sounded like Everything inside was being smashed a bits the feeling of listening to someone busy destroying your livelihood is something I can't quite capture who was in there how many what path of Destruction was being rre I could only yell down the phone as a faceless

voice begging for help that I knew was still minutes away bear in mind I was freshly awoken into a horrible situation barely clothed and it was escalating by the second as it turned out the burglar Troy Had come face to face with Jim trying to exit the building out the broken window before IID arrived they locked eyes and Troy said something in Reverse Direction back to the depths of the building then he dropped his backpack with the stolen merch flung himself over a giant iron gate smashed through the restaurant tenants door then subsequently out their

main door at that point he caught a lot of glass to the face and body and was Bleeding pretty good Jim caught him on the exit and just pounced on him fully body slammed to the cement then he pinned Troy adrenaline is wild I was not crying but urgently begging the operator to hurry I was terrified I was going to see my husband die before my eyes and then I ran right into the frame because again adrenaline it gets right up on you and you just do the stupidest stuff there we were in the middle

of the street dimly orange lit by the street Lights and it was hard to just parse what was going on thanks sweet baby jbus Troy did not have a weapon and was wildly unprepared to have a mad man tackle him in the dark as it turned out he had done hundreds of burglaries and had never been caught Jim had the upper hand and had him fully pinned down and Troy was wisely playing posum suddenly we heard a roaring engine and someone laying rubber apparently I started screaming yeah it was Troy's getaway Driver his wife Kelsey

she leaned out her window and yelled get the F off of him or I'm going to kill you that was me that she was talking to clearly captured on the audio but I don't remember it and not willing to wait she then tried to run me over I vaguely remember realizing things were going horribly wrong but desperately trying to read the license plate into the phone with an idiotic laser focus it was out of state and I Struggled to read it and that's all my brain deleted how close she'd come to turning me into a

bloody smear within maybe a foot of me fast while I dodged like a badly clothed Matador clutching my phone we had to listen to the 911 recording a year later in the prosecutor's office synced with a video the video was from a nearby business with really good exterior cameras Jim started crying he had no idea what a close call it was the engine revving Overwhelmed by screaming at a certain point my voice was blown out I was trying to chant the license plate number like an incantation but you can't hear it because the engine Roar

and squealing tires Jim let Troy go of course Troy jumped into the car and they tore off down the street the police showed up maybe a minute later but they were gone anyway Troy had bled all over Jim from the door glass and Jim freak out so hard later we figured tro was likely Using IV drugs correctly as it turned out and I had to inspect Jim for cuts using a flashlight to make sure that I didn't miss anything and he still got tested unlike a number of other incidents this one was taken pretty seriously

due to the amount of evidence as well as violence and you know the attempted murder several months later they arrested Troy and Kelsey they had Troy's DNA from the bloody clothes Jim was wearing all over the car they'd been Driving which had been stolen but ditched it turned out that they were wanted in five counties for hundreds of commercial burglaries over several years to support their oxy habits back before the age of Fetti we were the only mess up that they had made they didn't know we lived on the premises Kelsey the wife flipped on

Troy they accepted a plea for her much to my displeasure since she was the one that Tried to kill me and at least she ratted him out six ways to Sunday he refused to plea he wanted a trial I would not wish a trial on my worst enemy he get interviewed Alone by the defense team did you know they can lie well they sure can and they won't in front of the jury but one by one they'll eat your soul and pick their teeth with the shards you don't get a lawyer you're on team prosecution

and theoretically I can understand it but it's still utterly Maddening they took me first they played the 911 take second time I'd heard it they insisted that because I kept saying they're inside that I was lying and there was someone else not Troy or Kelsey sorry I just used it as a non-gendered pronoun guys I had yet to see the person so they were a they which is what I told them adamantly then they took Jim they told Jim that I admitted that I'd lied and there was another person inside the Building he luckily laughed

and was like absolutely not she didn't finally the day before trial Troy accepted the plea thank God I've been having the stupidest meltdown ever do I dye my hair something other than purple I just spent $700 on it what shoes do I wear I don't have conservative shoes how can I cover my tattoos basically the most Pointless Stuff I could control because that train was rolling without me Kelsey got off with probation Troy was in prison from 2017 to 2020 until he got released early adjacent to the lockdowns Kelsey seemed to be clean and living

a normal life remarried with kids and looks happy I watch her on Facebook I really hope so but I do occasionally wish that she had a raging case of hemorrhoids or something though I'm not a saint and also forget the towel know where your shoes are at night this is critical in the immortal words of Kate McKinnon who cares of your pink pocket And stink rocket are on full display you best be able to run [Music] to preface I live in a college town with six other young girls in our 20s the city we live

in is not that ni and has a huge homeless drug problem where break-ins Are Not Unusual however what happened last Saturday was definitely strange my roommates and I as well as some of our boyfriends were hanging out and drinking In our house while two of the girls opted to go out to a bar by around 1:00 a.m. the two girls came home from the barn everyone was tired so we all went to our own respective rooms later in the night I was awoken by someone opening my door and standing in my room staring at me

and in my head I thought it was one of my roommates boyfriends trying to see if my boyfriend and I were still awake to continue to party since I was tired I pretended to be asleep to avoid being Bugged after a bit the person closes my door and then proceeds to Pace back and forth in the hallway they then begin to attempt to open my roommate's door whose room is right next to mine luckily her door was locked and she also had her boyfriend with her the person then proceeds to go into our utensils drawer

and grabs a knife to attempt to pick her lock after gaining some courage her boyfriend shouts who the f is that which startles the man then Sprints up the Stairs and out the door the police were called and did a search and obviously didn't find anything they told us break-ins were normal which we knew however what makes this whole scenario creepier is that he didn't steal anything my phone alcohol and $600 shoes were untouched we also suspect this person was not on drugs or alcohol as he moved very quietly and deliberately he was able to

get in because the two girls who came home from The bar did not lock the door behind them I'm not sure what this man's intent was but I'm forever grateful that I happened to have my boyfriend with me which is not often as he lives 3 hours away and pretended to be asleep it gives me chills thinking that a strange man was in my room and what could have happened if it was just me alone [Music] I never tell anyone the story but reading all the stories here I feel like I need to post about

it and because this I don't go on walks alone or even with friends unless it's in a very public place but even then I'm paranoid and with that being said my friend's family had just moved to a new town 15 minutes from where I lived it was a complete ghost town with one tiny grocery store a post office and a school this town was so secluded and quiet that I rarely ever saw cars drive by one night as we were unpacking boxes We heard a knock at the door it was a big tall man with

a shotgun in his hand and being from Oklahoma this could mean that you're either meeting your hick new neighbor or it's actually someone wanting to harm us it turns out was just a hick neighbor coming to introduce himself he told my friend's mom about the lack of police and how everyone tends to carry their own guns in order to protect themselves because the police were usually no help and about 15 Minutes away they also talked about how these areas can be dangerous and that my friend's mom should keep her gun with her at the this

time I was 13 years old and knowing this information you would think that I would simply stay my butt inside and not wander the streets of this dangerous hillbilly ghost town but I did there was no service no cable and nothing to do but go outside we walked to the store and get snacks walk to the school and play on the playground the Majority of the time we wouldn't see a single car or person but the same clerk in the grocery store and every walk we took there was a day my dad had brought me

to a friend's house and right off the bat we walked to the park that day I was sick to my stomach but was so eager to see my friend that I went anyways I had a terrible feeling and now that I'm older and I've experienced bad anxiety I can now say that that day I was experiencing some pretty bad anxiety and I didn't know why I felt this way when we got there we actually ended up hanging out with an old friend who had transferred to the school a year prior after he left we sat

on the bench for what felt like ages taking selfies and talking when all of a sudden the stereotypical creepy van pulls up to the park now my friend was and still was way braver than I was and will ever be and she was always the Daredevil one in our friendship but for some reason around This time I just assumed it was a family coming to play and my anxiety wasn't there but my friend was scared she immediately had a bad feeling when the van pulled up and I could tell that she was ready to leave

but we decided to stay and see who it was before we ran off of course like something out of a movie came out two big men literally barreling over to where we were we immediately started to walk away and they tried to follow and grab us at this Point we began to run they got back into the van and followed us I had no idea how but they didn't catch up to us but we ran as fast as we would up the road and straight to the grocery store I was so horrified when we got

inside that I couldn't even speak that sick feeling that I felt on the way to my friend's house made complete sense my mom was always watching True Crime growing up and sometimes she would have me watch with her so I was always really scared To walk around because of that but even with that fear I never thought that it would ever happen to me the van was parked across the street but eventually drove off we walked home with no way to call anyone thinking that they could be waiting for us around every corner with absolutely

no one around it was the scariest day of my life I didn't tell anyone for years which was stupid of me but at 13 years old I didn't know what to do I'm turning 21 Soon and the story is still keeps me up at night sometimes I can't help but imagine what would have happened if they captured me and my friend where we would have gone and what would have happened to us [Music] this scene happened when I was 21 years old it's in a smaller town outside of the huge City in the midwest this

was 1981 I worked at fast food and they stayed open until 3:00 a.m. my then Husband worked for a bowling alley as a manager and he was never off before 2: a.m. I was expecting my first child and business was slow so I was sent home at about 1:00 a.m. in the town we lived in there was a large private girls college women are being warned to lock their doors because two males were still in the loose and they were targeting women around my age they were sometimes following them home and attacking or forcing a

woman Alone late at night off the road the men were doing terrible things killing the women and they'd killed three women by that point two of the women were found on deserted roads and one in her apartment and there were no description of these men or what kind of vehicle they drove I left work climbed in my car locked my doors and started for home the hair on the back of my head stood up on end and my gut feeling told me something Was very wrong I figured out that I was being followed home I

took several turns around town trying to shake this car but to no avail the advice given was that if you thought you were being followed to drive to the police station we recently moved to this area so I had no idea where the police station was I was terrified panicked and couldn't think what to do this was in the days when there were no cell phones but the pay phones were made in different areas Where you could drive up to them sit in the driver's seat put your window down and the payones had a longer

cord to enable you to stay in your car and talk you still had to deposit money in order to talk even if you were calling 911 I thought about briefly trying to get one of those phones but I was too scared and didn't think that I could have a coin ready in time before these men could have time to approach me my parents lived about four streets over From where I lived and decided the safest decision was to try to make it to my parents' house I was still being followed when I got to my

parents house there was a short block that you could go around by my parents and I went around this block about three times and every time I did I honk the horn you would have thought that laying on the horn would have discouraged these creeps from continu to follow me but it had no effect and if anything they moved In closer behind me I pulled into the driveway and these creepers pulled right behind me turned off their lights and I heard their doors open and shut I was beyond terrified at this point they were out

of their car one coming up on one side and one on the other my parents house was a split level and he pulled up in front of the double car garage in order to get in the house he had to go in through through the garage door or front door and the front door was left Of the driveway about two car lengths away plus a set of steps I laid on the horn again they still kept coming my dad who was retired military often times stayed up late at night watching TV and thank God he

did this night all of a sudden he turned the porch light on and burst out the front door he assessed the situation instantly and started yelling at these creeps to get away from the car all the while barreling down the steps towards them at First they didn't Retreat very fast but must have thought better my dad is a very big bon and about 6' 4 in he had a brother that played in college football and he wore a size 15 shoe he made it to the front of their car and pounded on the hood of

it before they were able to Burn Rubber reversing out of the driveway while he was unable to get a license plate number because they didn't have a front plate he was able to describe them and give the make and Model to the police police told me how fortunate I was that my dad had realized what a dire situation I was in and I still get chills thinking back to that night and I remember it as if though it were yesterday my dad said that they thought that he had heard a car honk more than once

and that he heard me in the driveway and he had just shut off the TV and was heading to bed when I pulled in thank God my dad acted so quickly or I Might not be writing this today this incident has caused me to be hyperaware of my surroundings and I never turn into my driveway without making sure that I'm not followed always always be mindful of where you are and don't walk around with your headphones on or phone pressed to your ear you never know when you may be an opportunistic moment for someone with

ill intentions know where your local police station is and if you ever get Chills something is wrong drive into the police station the police are more than happy to help you out better safe than sorry and the police did cap these creeps about 2 weeks later and they didn't get a fourth victim they were both on probation serving their time and decided killing their victims was better than leaving Witnesses my dad is still my hero today his quick actions prevented me from being that fourth victim and the color Model and make of the car my

dad described was the description of what they were driving when they were arrested [Music] I'm 22 and I live in the countryside of France my Village is settled at the top of a hill and surrounded by forests and crops with no stores or a bakery my parents house is near two farms and behind the garden there are large crops this is essential to the story the Bathroom's window overlooks the garden and before my parents built a veranda there were curtains so every time I closed it when I was going to the bathroom it made my

family laugh why are you closing it no one's watching you and I would always say we don't know that just in case then The Veranda was built and my dad got rid of the curtains and put strips on the windows I got worried because I love to know that I have my privacy when going to the bathroom and I Even showed my parents that when we were standing at the end of the garden that you can see into the bathroom and of course they just laughed at me and said you're just being paranoid now weeks

passed and then I noticed a tractor parked just at the end of the garden every night my parents also noticed it and thought it was kind of strange we lived there for 20 years and it's never happened before sometimes we felt like we were Being watched but we Shrugged it off thinking that we were just being paranoid my dad came to talk to the farmer to get rid of the tractor and then it disappeared for a while today I was smoking outside and my mom came to me and said I think you're right we are

being watched yesterday night I was going to the bathroom and the tractor was parked in front of the garden with its headlights Illuminating the bathroom's window I turned the light off Went to the veranda and took a picture and then he left and I'm glad that I was right but worried because I don't know how long he or she has been stalking Us in the [Music] bathroom I was 25 and decided to take a trip into the city after my mom's passing she died unexpectedly and I still lived with her at the time I needed

to get out of the house everything inside of it reminded me of Her I chose a hotel that had a relatively good reviews and the price for the room was too good to pass up I won't reveal the hotel's name for obvious reasons and the main one being that I'm just trying to forget the experience altogether and even typing out its name is hard for me the hotel had an old world charm that instantly drew me in as I checked in I couldn't help would admire how clean everything was it was the kind of place

that you See in postcards and I was looking forward to getting to my room and finally being able to relax after everything I'd been through that month my room was on the second floor and it was nice to see that it had a view of the garden the hotel staff was friendly and everything seemed perfect it started innocently enough on the first night I went down to the hotel's restaurant for dinner as I sat alone at the corner table I noticed a man at the bar He was tall with messy hair and a pretty scruffy

beard he seemed to be in his 40s and was wearing a faded leather jacket and jeans I don't know why I remember what he was wearing but I do I caught his eye for a moment and he gave me a nod I'm a pretty awkward person so I just looked away and pretended like he didn't just catch me staring the night went on and I tried not to think about it too much after dinner I returned to my room and settled In for the night I watched some TV read a book and eventually fell asleep

but when I woke up the next morning things just felt a little off as I stepped out of my room and made my way down the hall towards the elevator I noticed the same man from the night before he was leaning against the wall just a few feet from my room and his eyes were locked on to me it sent a shiver down my spine and it was not the good kind I tried to shake off the uneasy feeling that I was Getting thinking that it might just be a coincidence but that voice in my

head was telling me something was wrong I should have listened to it I decided to try and go about my day without being too paranoid but being a woman all by myself a small bit of paranoia is required I wanted to see the sights and explore the city but no matter where I went I had this Eerie feeling that someone was following me and I couldn't escape the feeling of just being Watched that night I got back to the hotel and decided to have dinner in that restaurant again I really really didn't want to run

into that dude again but the convenience of eating and being able to go straight up to your room was just too tempting to pass up I also hoped that being around people would ease my nerves as I sat at my table the same man walked in once again sat at the bar only this time he was closer and he was facing me he had a drink in hand staring very Intently at me I tried not to look at him but when someone is staring at you and won't even stop when you look back at them

you can't help but take a peek every so often to see if they're continuing after a short while his face changed into sort of a smile and I was just thoroughly creeped out I got up to leave and noticed that he got up at the same time he began walking out after me and was eerily close behind me as he did So I swear I could feel him breathing on the back of my neck as we walked I tried asking him nicely to just stay further back but he started to laugh he followed me all

the way up to my floor and stopped a few doors down from my room I entered my room quickly glancing back at him and noticed that he was doing the same thing as before just standing there in the hall clearly waiting for me or waiting to do something to me all without saying a word I knew I probably Shouldn't ignore it anymore I was scared and confused so I decided to approach the hotel staff about the situation first before I went so far as to just call the police the man hadn't actually done anything to

physically harm me so I doubt that there was anything that they would have been able to do anyways I explained my discomfort in the fact that I had seen the man loitering near my room multiple times and they Were actually understanding and assured me that they would keep an eye on things for the next couple of days I stayed close to the hotel and inside my room for the most part I even considered cutting my trip short but I didn't want to let fear dictate my choices this was supposed to be my time to heal

and I didn't want to let some freak of a man ruin it as a person traveling alone as I was I was determined to just reclaim my Sense of security unfortunately every day I was there I saw that guy sometimes he would be in the lobby other times in the hallway or near my room and occasionally he would be at the restaurant he even managed to come into the gym the few times that I randomly decided to work out it was as if he was playing a twisted game of cat and mouse with me I

became increasingly paranoid constantly looking over my shoulder wondering when and where he'd appear Next one night after I'd been there for about a week I returned to my room after dinner and I was shocked to find a note had been slipped under my door the handwriting almost looked like it was hurried and barely legible and all it said was watching you my heart raced as I read the note over and over again I had had to know that it was from him I immediately called the front desk and reported the note the staff told me

That they were taking the situation very seriously and advised me to just lock my door stay in the room and wait for them to check the security tapes they assured me that they'd find the man to get the police involved if necessary I sat in my room waiting anxiously for someone to tell me that the man was being kicked out or even that he was being arrested and that I'd be okay minutes turned into hours and the sense of dread only intensified what If the staff couldn't find the guy what if he was waiting for

me somewhere in the hotel what if he was in my room and I just didn't know it almost felt like I was being hunted finally a knock at my door broke the silence it was the hotel manager along with the security guard they informed me that they had found the man who was in the process of being escorted off the premises they assured me that he Wouldn't be allowed back in the hotel and that they were involving the police to be sure all necessary steps were being taken to resolve the issue and I was relieved

but still shaken I thanked the hotel staff for their quick response and for believing me when I told them something was wrong I was later contacted by a detective who informed me that the man was arrested after they found multiple pictures of me in his coat pocket as it turned out the man had Been stalking me for almost a year without me ever knowing his apartment was filled with pictures of me in the town that I lived in doing everyday things things there were even pictures of me at my mom's funeral pictures of me in

my house taken through my windows I have no idea how I never noticed that someone was constantly following me but I guess realizing when I did before he tried anything physical was better than realizing too Late he was charged with aggravated stalking and looking back this experience taught me the importance of trusting my instincts and taking action when I feel unsafe [Music] so I was a manager of a hotel when what I'm about to tell you occurred it was around 1:00 a.m. and no new guests had arrived for a couple of hours it seemed like

a pretty slow night I was talking to one of the Employees about how whenever a night is this slow or quiet something bad usually happens they said I was just being superstitious but I've come to realize that that usually is the truth I've seen a lot during my 10 years as a manager plenty of domestic disturbances fights in the hallways drug deals gone wrong and the list really does go on and on but that night had to have been the worst at around 1:30 a.m. after my co-workers were finally finished telling Me how ridiculous I

was being about the quiet night I got a call from one of the rooms I answered and was met with the voice of a little boy he sounded maybe like five at the most and he started telling me that he wanted his mommy and that I had to get her I asked if he was okay and he said yes but just that he wanted his mommy I started to get concerned and just as I was going to ask what room number he was in a man came to the phone identified Tri himself as the Boy's

father and apologized for his son wasting my time before I could even get a word in the line just went dead we were old school so we couldn't even tell what room he had called from I got a little worried so I started asking around to my employees to see if any of them remembered a man checking into a room with a little boy I was having no luck until I asked our restaurant manager and he said a man had come in with a little boy earlier that night and Had used the voucher that we

gave all of our guests thankfully it was only a voucher used that day and it had the room number on it I grabbed one of the larger men that we had on staff and headed for the room I had no intentions of confronting the man or even asking any questions I just wanted to see the boy and make sure that it was okay so I grabbed a few towels told my employee to wait at the end of the hall and I knocked on the door A man Answered he was short and chubby and smelled horribly

of just alcohol behind him on the bed was the little boy he was so skinny I could see his ribs and he looked like he was covered in bruises I tried to act calm and I told the man that I had the towels that he requested he of course denied requesting towels and just shut the door in my face I turned around and speed walked down the hall into the elevator once I was Back at the front desk I immediately called the police I was instructed to Act Naturally and not make any further contact with

the man to avoid him running with the boy my heart was racing and I was sweating profusely as I waited for the police they surrounded the building and came in by the Dozen I told them what room they were in and gave them the key they had me come up with them in case there was a problem gaining access to The room I really didn't want to go up there but if there was any chance that they could help that boy I was going to take it the elevator ride seemed to last forever as I

thought out every possible scenario for what was about to go down the elevator stopped and I and about eight officers stepped off and into the hallway we walked down towards the door but they had me wait closer to the end of the hall I was terrified when I watched them knock on the door and Demanded the man to come out he refused and said that he would hurt the boy if they tried to get in at that moment things became very real and I believed him they tried to negotiate with the man for almost an

hour but he was relentless and determined to stay in that room as long as possible finally they decided to just rush the room it almost felt like everything was in slow motion there was a lot of yelling paired with the sounds Of things crashing around the room and before I knew it they were walking out with a man in handcuffs behind them came another officer running out with the boy in his arms he could barely hold his head up he was put in an ambulance and rushed to the hospital he later made a full recovery

and was reunited with his mother that morning that floor of the hotel had been closed off while they investigated and I Learned later on that the man who was with the boy really was his father apparently his wife was leaving him and taking their son because of his abusive Tendencies so he took the boy and threatened to hurt him if she left him they had been on the run for over a month it also unfortunately turned out the man wasn't opposed to abusing his son and the bruises were caused by him smacking and beating the

little boy for what he called acting Up I cried for days for that kid I wanted so badly to take away his pain and make him forget what his own father had put him through but I know that is trauma that he'll have to live with forever I'm just glad that he got help and that his mom doesn't have to spend any more nights without her son [Music] so it was the summer of 2012 and I was in my early 20s living in a small town that seemed maybe a little stuck in the Past my

group of friends and I were always trying to find new and exciting ways to spend our time and unfortunately curiosity got the better of us you see we heard rumors about an abandoned Hotel on the outskirts of town and we decided that it might be interesting or even a little creepy to go exploring it I guess when you're bored of your mundane life even something terrifying is better than staying in bed all night little did we know that this decision would lead to a Night that we would never forget the hotel had been vacant for

as long as I could remember it was a massive imposing building that stood at the edge of the Woods gradually being consumed back by Nature the plants surrounding it were so overgrown that it was almost hard to even find a way in stories about the hotel varied from person to person but one thing was consistent you were never supposed to go there after dark but we were idiots and Figured that we had some kind of strength and numbers so we packed our flashlights and headed out just as the sun was setting it was really foggy

that night I remember my friends and I gathered at the edge of the woods and I remember my heart was beating really fast at that moment I started getting second thoughts about being there but everyone was so excited I didn't want to be the person to bring everyone else down as we approached the hotel our Initial impression was that it was just a really eerie structure and that it probably wasn't as dangerous as everyone made it seem I even thought that maybe it was just a scary story our parents would tell us to just keep

us from actually going there its windows were all shattered and the on grand entrance was now just this huge gaping hole the graffiti covered walls and the overgrown bushes added to the already very creepy vibe that I was getting from just Stepping foot inside the building we cautiously entered flashlights in hand inside the lobby was filled with torn up old furniture and The Faded wallpaper peeled away from the walls we kept talking to each other about how what it must have been like when it was open and how weird it was that it was just

left to R we explored the ground floor first poking our heads into the dark room my friend started telling ghost stories to Try to freak the rest of us out every creaking floorboard made us jump but we laughed it off as we made our way up the steps to the next floor once we were on the second floor we stumbled on some stuff that made it obvious that we weren't the only ones who had ventured into that place sleeping bags empty food cans and Scattered belongings made it clear there were probably people squatting there it

was disconcerting but not entirely Unexpected after all an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere where you wouldn't have to worry about police would be the perfect place to stay if you were homeless we decided to push forward moving to the third floor and then to the fourth we heard the fourth floor was the spookiest so we wasted no time getting up there the higher we ascended the more damage we noticed the floorboards were falling apart and the building just seemed more sketchy up There we were making our way through the different rooms trying to

be careful not to fall through the floor when I started to feel as if though someone was watching us I dismissed the feeling Bell I thought it was probably just my mind playing tricks on me I'm sure anyone exploring a creepy abandoned location probably would feel the same way as we reached the top floor we discovered an open door that led to a rooftop patio it Was a spectacular view but something was off we all got very quiet and then as clear as day we heard a muffled conversation coming from a nearby room our hearts

were racing and we cautiously approached the room I started to beg my friends to just come with me and we could all leave but they were determined to find out if there were other people there the door was slightly a jar and we peaked Inside there were three men sitting around a small table that was also practically falling apart it was also fairly obvious that they were getting ready to do something substances I think I'm not sure exactly what it was they were startled to see us and for a moment we all froze my friend

Alex stepped forward and tried to strike up a conversation explaining that we had only come to explore the building he was just met with silence and I could feel The tension in the room grow thicker one of the men finally spoke up and then this gross voice filled with some hostility said you shouldn't have come here and his words sent a shiver down my spine I realized that we had unintentionally found ourselves in a dangerous situation far beyond what I'm sure any of us could handle this was technically their home and to them we were

the Trespassers another one of the men was also visibly agitated the man pulled out a knife starting to come towards Al with it he managed to back away fast enough to avoid getting stabbed but the other two men got up quickly to back up their friend Alex yelled at us to run and we all started sprinting down the steps the wood crumbled as each of us ran one after another Alex was in the back and the three men weren't far behind just as We were nearing the bottom floor Alex tripped and fell down a flight

of stairs I watched in horror as he landed with a thud on the lobby floor L they seemed to be unconscious and we were all screaming his girlfriend Beth had rushed over to him we stood between him and the three men but my mind kept telling me that we were all going to die that night I looked at the man and wondered what was going to happen Next I hope your friend isn't dead we weren't trying to hurt we just we just wanted to scare you a little bit we do it with all these kids

who come into our house here he put his knife away that he had brandished earlier we just didn't want anyone coming back that's all just get your friend get out of here and get some help we're really sorry just just don't send anybody back here all right I was looking into their eyes in The little bit of light that we had and realized just how scared they were too I knew that they were telling the truth and really weren't there to hurt us it was just one of those Wrong Place Wrong Time moments if anyone

one was at fault it was us we should have just stayed away from that place to begin with the three men walked back up the stairs and I look back down at Alex who now had his head in Beth's lap she was begging for him to wake up and none of us had phone Service and we quickly realized that we all have to carry him pretty much back to the car thankfully it wasn't too far just to the edge of the woods but we're still around an hour away from the nearest hospital though but we

we really had no other options the car ride was hard Alex didn't wake up during the whole ride to the hospital and we finally made it inside they immediately took him back apparently he had a brain Bleed when he woke up about a week later he realized that he really couldn't feel the lower portion of his body and he had been permanently paralyzed from the waist down Beth begged us to go to the police about what had happened she was Furious over the permanent challenges Alex would have to face for the rest of his life

and after talking to the rest of our friends we decided to leave the decision up to him and being the incredible Selfless guy he is he decided against reporting them to the police he said that the only thing it would do was ruin their lives and that one altered life was enough they never meant to hurt him and he knew that Alex was released from the hospital a few weeks later and struggled a lot with his disability for a long while he and Beth decided to end their relationship not long after that she never really

understood why he refused to report the men to the police And that decision was the reason I guess they broke up we were all just happy that even out of the relationship she honored his decision and just kept quiet it's been a little over 11 years and not all of us are still close friends Alex and I actually ended up falling in love and getting married Beth is still friends with us although not as close as we once were Alex doesn't let his life be defined by his Disability that night changed our lives forever but

pardon me even if it seems wrong is grateful it happened if it hadn't who knows if we'd be together [Music] working in a hotel isn't the most glamorous job in the world it's actually pretty far from that but when I needed a job there was an opening at the local hotel that gave it to me right away I was 18 and freshly out of high school and I decided against College because I Was in my do the opposite of everything your parents want you to do stage in my life granted I know not everyone has

to go to college to be successful but in my case I can't help but wish that I had maybe then I wouldn't have to go through all the horrible things my job brought into my life there were small incidents that happened within the first few months that I found uncomfortable at best gross men hitting on me asking me how much it would cost for me to join Them for the night then there was the actual physical disgusting stuff I worked at the front desk but we were severely short staffed constantly so I did housekeeping for

about a month and let me tell you it was truly horrifying I've seen pretty much every bodily fluid on almost every inch of a room at one point or another I finally had to tell my manager that I was going to quit if I had to clean another room and he assured me that that wouldn't be Necessary anymore and my job would be easy from there on out it was around 2:00 in the morning during an intense snowstorm no one had checked in for hours and I figured the rest of the night would be relatively

calm maybe even quiet I heard the door open and the bell that hung off of it rang loudly and instepp two guys they were wearing large heavy coats and they stopped in their heavy work boots to get the snow off of them they were laughing about something And immediately stopped when they saw me sitting at the front desk their smiles even dropped from their faces they made a weird face at each other and walked up to the desk slowly I put on my fake customer service spile and tried my best to seem friendly and helpful

but I was tired and worried it would show they didn't have a reservation so I booked them a room standard two queen beds I thought everything seemed pretty Normal with them and until as they were walking away I heard them start talking about how goodlooking they thought I was and with me being freshly 18 I figured that that was something I would have to start getting used to so I brushed it off and continued on with my night I was reading my book when I heard someone enter the lobby again it was one of the

men I mentioned before he walked up to the front desk and leaned over it getting way closer than I Was comfortable with he rre of beer and cigarettes and I asked him if there was anything I could help him with I was hoping it was something simple and that he'd be leaving back to his room as quickly as possible but life doesn't work like that he told me the shower drain wasn't working in their room and that he needed someone to fix it immediately I tried calling maintenance but of course they weren't going to answer

I politely told the man the Soonest anyone was going to be able to fix it was the next morning he started getting really mad saying stuff like he was going to complain to my manager and leave bad reviews by the time he started actually screaming I decided it would be more worth it for me to check it out than deal with him waking everyone else up in the hotel that would mean more complaints and me possibly even getting fired Granted it wasn't the smartest idea for me to enter a room alone with two man but

I wasn't thinking straight I was exhausted and just wanted his rant to end something that I would end up regretting for the rest of my life he led me over to his room and I asked him and his friend to wait outside while I check the shower drain they obliged and everything seemed normal at first I was leaning over the bathtub and turned on the faucet the water ran down Perfectly fine I yelled out that it was working normally and just as I started to stand stand up I heard the door slam behind me I

turned around quickly and screamed when I was met with the larger of the two men standing in the bathroom with me he grabbed me by my shoulders and slammed me against the wall be quiet or I'll make this a lot worse than it has to be he almost started to laugh when he said that I started to scream as loud as I could hoping one of the other Guests would hear me he released one of his hands to cover my mouth with one of my arms free I did something I'm sure that he didn't expect

me to do in that moment I upholstered my concealed handgun I held it not far from his side and pulled the trigger I knew I had no time to hesitate my ears started to ring like crazy he released me and fell to the ground my adrenaline was pumping and I barely noticed the door open and the Other man came in I pointed the gun at him and told him to leave or I'd shoot him and he knew that I meant it when he saw his friend bleeding out on the floor in front of me he

didn't even say a word before running out of that hotel room faster than I ever would have thought that he could run I stepped over the man's body on the floor I had no idea if he was alive or dead but I just had to get out of that room I stepped out into the hallway Leaving bloody Footprints behind me realizing that I must have stepped in some of his blood as I went over him multiple guests were standing out in the hallway demanding to know why they had just heard what sounded like a gunshot

a woman in the room next door must have seen the look on my face because she immediately came over to make sure I was okay the police were there not long after and the room was cordoned off the man was taken to the hospital and Surprisingly wasn't dead and didn't end up dying an investigation was done but thankfully security cameras did show proof that I was lured into the room by the men and they did re-enter after I asked them to stay in the hallway the audio was very clear and I was never charged with

anything regarding the shooting the other man was found only a couple of miles away his truck had gotten stuck in a snowbank they were both charged with kidnapping the man who Cornered me in the bathroom was also charged with assault and both were sentenced to 3 years in prison as well as given no contact orders upon their release I quit my job not long after and decided to enroll in college I'm currently studying English and I hope to get into writing one day and that's why I sent this in and it's truly felt cathartic if

there's one thing I can advise anyone to do in this scary world that we live in it's this learn how to Protect yourself it could save your life one day [Music] I a 35-year-old female used to work at a small startup that had a small Warehouse in the city I enjoyed it because it had great benefits perks and a pretty easy commute I just walked a few blocks to the metro line in our city usually I work the day shift so my walk to the station wasn't too bad I just encountered normal City Life on

the Occasional time that I worked into the night I usually work with some co-workers that I knew or my then boyfriend would pick me up if I had to make the walk by myself I'd wear giant headphones to deter cat calls or other annoyances I had a doctor's appointment that morning and was allowed to make up my shift by staying after the day shift crew left however I finished my shift before the rest of the evening crew which meant that I made the walk by Myself that day it was already dark and the street was

pretty much deserted except for this one really tall Burly dude walking just ahead of me yelling into his phone I had my headphones on but nothing playing because I wanted to be aware of my surroundings big Burly guy sounded angry and didn't turn back to look at me until after he yelled into the phone I did my part now it's up to you to get rid of the body I don't care what you got to do just make it disappear then he turned around and stopped walking looking at me surprised I quickly stopped to not

run into him and give him an awkward Grimace or smile acting like I hadn't just heard him say that because I was listening to music at the next crosswalk I quickly crossed the street he just stared standing in place until I was a block away and then turned the corner and Disappeared I don't know if this guy actually knew that I was behind him and said that to scare me cuz he thought that I was listening to his conversation I hope or it was just up to no good but either way that was super creepy

[Music] so this happened years ago but I still think about it pretty often my three little sisters their dad and I were standing in the checkout line at the grocery store my younger sister couldn't Have been much older than a year so I was 10 and holding her on my hip a middle-aged woman joined the line behind us she was trying to get my baby sister's attention over my shoulder just cing and baby talking her so I turned us towards her slightly as a polite gesture only for her to start moving closer and holding out

her hands it was happening so fast I almost couldn't react I had just enough time to give her a panick look as she reached out to take her from Me and I shouted excuse me don't touch her get away from us at the same time my dad took a step in between us and this crazy woman asking her what she thought she was doing she just got really sheepish and was trying to laugh it off instead of backing up she made her way past us and then proceeded to try to cut us in line I

think my stepdad would have exploded if not for the cashier giving this lady a glare and waving us forward she left Us alone after that and it was super awkward but the whole experience left us all quite shaken the woman gave me an off vibe from the start and I'm really not sure what her intentions were I think she probably just thought that I would allow her to hold my sister for some insane reason but who knows she probably was trying to run off with [Music] her this happened in November of 2014 I went to

Walmart to buy groceries while My 16-year-old daughter was attending her homecoming dance I tried to do my grocery shopping to coincide with her 11:00 p.m. pickup all at once I realized it was about 5: till 11:00 p.m. and I was still standing in line to get checked out about that time one of their customer service supervisors walked by me and I motioned to her explaining that I had to pick up my daughter and if she could hold my cart I'd come back and check out as soon as I picked her up she Agreed and had

someone take my cart to the cooler and told me to tell them at service desk when I got back so off I go pick daughter up arrive back at Walmart at 11:15 daughter came inside with me and as we were coming to the store a man about 50 something walked over in front just past me and peered down the front of my daughter's strapless pink formal which from a couple of hours of teenagers bopping around dancing had become looser and mentioned what he Could do with her and she happens to be well endowed he had

a female companion with him when he walked in I could see him and her out of the corner of my eye I don't know if this was his girlfriend or relation to him but she watched and heard him and didn't say anything I felt like I was in a stuper like did this just happen Split Second I was stunned that anyone would have the audacity to walk up and say this to my daughter Right in front of me her mom walking right beside her I became completely enraged and Ste between his learing eyes and my

daughter he asked her another inappropriate question after stepping in front of him and putting myself between him and my daughter I asked him if today was a good day for him to die honestly I was running on pure rage and adrenaline which probably gave me more guts than brains in that moment he glared at me And tried to walk in Tighter and intimidate me I told him to get the F away and he finally walked back over to who he was with but continued to glare at me as they went on inside Walmart ahead of

us I absolutely couldn't believe this had actually just transpired my daughter was in tears and scared beyond all reason I took her straight back to the women's department and had her put on a sweat jacket zip it up and paid for it In line with my groceries if I'd have really thought about it and not been running on adrenaline and still having the shock Factor going on in hindsight I should have left that store called the police and gone straight home at the same time the thought crossed my mind that he might have followed us

to the car and then what I think if she had been alone regardless what she was wearing he still would have approached her if someone is This Brazen inside a public store what is HE capable of doing on a dark isolated place the whole situation chills me to the Bone I think the only reason he walked away was because I stood up to him and didn't Flinch to have walked up to my daughter passed me on her left and stood so close to her and looked down the front of her dress and said what he

said to her is unbelievable I never thought I just reacted with pure rage that he would Dare to do what he did I never again went to Walmart that late at night again and have warned my daughters to always be aware of their surroundings not be carelessly talking on their cell phones and to always be aware of their surroundings coming and going [Music] as I'm at an intersection not too far from my house there was a car from the opposite side of the road turning into where I was going and we almost hit each Other

we both stopped on time and it was no biggie but the guy in the car is noticeably yelling at me from inside his car giving me the middle finger all right so I let him go ahead and I thought that that would be the end of the road rage for tonight but boy was I wrong immediately after I let the guy through behind him was a car turning very fast so I accelerated and quickly got in front of him not out of ego or anything I just thought that considering The position of my car and

the turning lane it's likely this idiot would hit me right afterwards this guy is obviously angry and starts flicking his extremely bright lights at me for a minute straight it was annoying considering something brighter than the sun is shining at me for a minute and you can tell it's hard to navigate at night like that so I said to myself two can play this game and I slowed down to 20 M an hour from 50 for a minute or so still Flicking his lights but not as much at this point and at this point I

was close to home and turned into my subdivision thinking the whole Saga would end then and there but dear God this guy follows me into my Maze of a neighborhood and I get near my house and he's still following me I freak out and was wondering should I just park in my driveway and he'll go away or should I go into a random neighborhood and lose him there so as soon as I pass my house I decide to go right past it and into another neighborhood a couple of minutes away and he follows me exactly

to there at this point I left that neighborhood and I'm just jumping on my gas pedal and sped down the road and made a random right turn at this point he's still following me but it's a red light for him so thankfully he stops and after that I lose him honestly this was a scary experience for me considering my suburb isn't too Far from a very dangerous hood where there's gunshots and crazy stuff like that who knows if I would have stopped my car at home maybe this guy would have gotten a gun out and

put it to my head [Music] I'm an 18-year-old male from a Southern state in the United States I usually don't feel uneasy and I'm generally very chill about situations and people in public on this day I was spending time in Washington DC with my friend a 23-year-old male it was a low energy day and all we really did was spend time looking at monuments but early afternoon we were thirsty and decided to head to a Starbucks for a drink while waiting in line someone tapped me on the shoulder at first I thought it might be

someone that I knew or someone trying to get through but it turned out to be an older white dude aged 25 to 35 with long dirty red hair and a scraggly beard and he said says to me Jesus is King I Responded yeah I know we're Christians my friend did the right thing and ignored him while I found myself stuck making uncomfortable Small Talk he began telling me how Jesus was always with him and how God would communicate with him despite being a Christian myself I had a hard time believing what he was saying he

mentioned God told me that you were going to be a drummer to which I replied I am already a drummer I had no idea how he would know that or was just a Coincidence but it did make me feel a little uneasy then he said God also told me that you'd be a singer and my heart dropped I'm also a singer and this really started to freak me out he went on to mention various things about my mom and how he knew that she prayed for me as a kid and how I was destined to

let my hair grow out his breath smelted like weed and it made me scrunch up my face every time he spoke eventually he left the line to sit down I was was Really uncomfortable there and ended up staying longer than we should have as soon as we got our drinks I rushed my friend out as quickly as possible I had a real uneasy feeling and it took me a while to start feeling better [Music] this happened a couple of years back when I was around 14 or 15 years old there was a mostly abandoned peninsula

in our town that I often visited with my dog when I was younger I even got lost a Couple of times and had to swim across parts of the river to get back home it was always deserted and you could walk for hours without running into anyone my mom was always very against me going there but of course I thought that I knew better and went anyway even though she specifically forbade me one time I decided to go with one of my girlfriends from school and her two little dogs it was empty as usual we

went to the shores so that we could play with the dogs in The river as we started playing we noticed an older man maybe in his mid-50s that was walking nearby behind the trees he stopped pretty close and just stared at us for a couple of minutes with an expressionless face without saying anything at this point we started to feel a little uncomfortable then we noticed that he started slowly taking off his clothes the whole situation was really offputting since the whole Peninsula was Fully abandoned and he could have easily chose any other location to

bathe we should probably have left at this point but we were really having fun with dogs and were not ready to go home we decided to leave the beach and go a bit further to find another location where we could be alone as we were leaving I looked back and saw the man staring at us the same unsettling way I couldn't see well but at this point he seemed fully naked he didn't follow us though and I Convinced myself that it was probably just an innocent nudist we walked for maybe 5 or 10 minutes until

we found a new area to go into the water we waited a bit and there was no sign of the man so we started playing with the dogs in the water we spent maybe an hour or so there and to be honest I completely forgot about the guy then suddenly my friend walks up to me with a pale face and says we need to leave right now don't turn Around and of course I turned around and there he was the same man standing right behind us fully naked yanking on himself while watching us with the

same creepy expressionless face we got the dogs and walked as fast as we could we have no idea how long he was there lurking in the bushes just pleasure ing himself while watching us needless to say I never went back there alone after that many years have passed and I heard multiple stories of creepy Encounters from different people on that Peninsula it's scary to think what could have happened one day when I was wandering there alone the peninsula was mostly covered with dense forest and it could have taken very little effort for a grown man

to drag me into the bushes [Music] I went into a local thrift store today to check out some bookcases or TV stands since I just moved into a new place and need new furniture I was checking out a Bookcase and looking for a tag sometimes they're in strange places so I did a little hop to see if I could see one a man in the right of me says what are you looking for up there at first I didn't pay him any mind and did a courteous chuckle in his Direction I winded myself through the

little maze of bookshelves and random furniture and didn't think anything of it until I happened to be able to see over a piece and he was staring at me I Kept maneuvering through the store and everywhere he appeared I picked something up and was looking at it and all of a sudden he was right there and was about to say something I went to the other side of the store and all of a sudden he's there asking if I had a restaurant recommendation in the area I say no and I turned around and moved my

knife from my purse to my back pocket hoping he'd notice apparently he didn't because back in another Corner he's There again I call my partner and this finally seems to get him to move away he kept going around the same random spots and picking up objects and staring at me I stayed on the phone and my partner said that I should just leave but I didn't want to I had a purpose being there and I wasn't going to let him ruin it luckily he finally departed without buying anything I tried keeping an eye out when

he left but I didn't see exactly if he drove off or not so I was A little spooked when leaving luckily I bought a table so someone escorted me to my truck with it [Music] so this was nearly 13 years ago maybe this isn't as creepy as I remember it being as an adult but given all the stories about trafficking or kidnapping I still feel very weird whenever I think of this I was walking home from my aunt's house after school and she lives only about a block from my parents house It was starting to

drizzle a little so I remembered finding it curious to see a man in a business suit to no coat or umbrella walking seemingly to Nowhere that would make sense there aren't any modeling agencies near the street so him being on foot at about 600 p.m. seemed odd he stopped me while I was walking on the sidewalk past him and abruptly asked me if I ever considered modeling at this time I was about 12 and very goth so no I was obviously not Modeling something about this whole thing sent off alarm bells for me because it

didn't seem like any viable agent would ever approach any random young girl like this what still strikes me about this was how he was carrying a portfolio of his models that he showed me to try and legitimize this proposal but the pictures were either a not of actual people but illustrations watercolor paintings architecture or scenery and B photo shoots taken from Fashion magazines like Vogue that he was passing as his own clients he tried to get my information for me and I hurriedly declined and said that I would have to talk to my parents I

don't believe that he had a business card and At The Mention Of my parents he seemed to back off once I walked away from him I remember running the rest of the way home I told my parents about this and they agreed that it seemed really off they did call the police to alert them Of any suspicious activity just in case but I never heard anything about it again [Music] [Music] my aunt and uncle's house was in a small desert town they had about 4 acres of land and a good amount of space between Neighbors

on the back of their property there was a fenced in area with a large shed and an old salvaged U-Haul moving truck I was visiting for a couple of Weeks one summer my little cousin and I were about 10 and 12 at the time one morning we were roaming the property by ourselves the adults were all out running errands and we ended up walking between the fence and the old moving truck we were on the passenger side of the truck walking from the back towards the front all of a sudden my cousin just froze the

hairs on the back of my neck stood instantly he didn't make a noise And just pointed at the side mirror in the reflection we could see a man sitting in the driver's seat his face was caked in dirt and blood he was moving around quickly and at one point he ducked out of our view we instantly turned and sprinted back to the house we locked out the doors and called the cops and family we were freaking out running from room to room looking out the windows brandishing baseball bats the police and family showed up at

about 20 to 25 minutes later and they searched all over but never found the man they found the fence was bent down where he must have climbed over it there was blood and dirt smeared all over the driver's seat of the truck he must have been trying to steal it or something because the ignition wires were pulled out like he was trying to hotwire it no explanation for the blood nothing happened after that my cousin and I had nightmares for the next few nights but That's about it [Music] [Music] hey friends thanks for listening click

that notification Bell to be alerted of all future narrations I release new videos every Monday Wednesday and Friday at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time if you got a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit r/ letre official and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video and if you want to Support me even more grab Early Access to all feature narrations for just $1 a month on patreon and maybe even pick up some let's read merch on spreadshirt and check out the let's read podcast where you can hear all of these

stories in big compilations and save huge on data located anywhere you listen to podcast links in the description below thanks so much friends and I'll see you again soon [Music]