I'm currently in a predicament, and quite frankly, I don't know what to do. I'll start from the beginning: five years ago, my next-door neighbor Charlie, or Charles as we call him, informed us of his 14-year-old son's disappearance. He reported it to the police; it was on the news, it was everywhere.
My wife and I felt absolutely awful and always offered to help them out in any way we could. As the years passed with no word of their son, we assumed they eventually came to terms with it and realized the worst had probably happened. My wife and I never had the nerve to ask if the body ever turned up.
Occasionally, Charles and his wife would invite my wife and me over for a barbecue during the warmer months. We noticed neither of the two were ever the same since their son had gone missing. Charles's wife, Kathy, was always quieter and more reserved, and Charles just seemed more awkward and nervous—both understandable to a certain extent.
Fast forward a couple of years later; just last week, Charles came over to me when I was taking out the garbage and asked to borrow a shovel. Without hesitation, I ran to get my best shovel, not asking why he needed it. He thanked me and said he just had to do some work in his backyard, and he'd get it back to me by tomorrow.
He then disappeared into his backyard. I went inside, and when I was by one of my upstairs windows that has a clear view into Charlie's backyard, I could see he was digging out a really big hole in the ground. He seemed to be struggling a bit; he's 56, after all.
I figured I'd go grab my second shovel and help him out. As I entered his backyard and called his name, he looked up from what he was doing, dropped my shovel, and hurried over to me, saying, "No, no, it's okay, I got it; please just leave. " I said, "What's wrong with you?
It's not a big deal. " Mainly because of his bizarre reaction, he told me, "I will not allow you to use that shovel in my backyard," and then pointed to the gate as if I were a dog. I was so taken aback by how he was acting that I just left without saying another word.
I went upstairs to spy on him through the window. He was digging the hole for at least another half hour. When it finally looked like he was done, he started looking around—up high at neighboring houses—as if to check and make sure nobody was watching.
Then, before I could think to hide, he spotted me at my window. All I could do at that point was casually walk away. He was up to something, and I wanted to find out what.
I continued to look at his backyard every so often, but he wasn't digging anymore. I figured he knew I was watching now and would wait until it was dark out. I was exactly right.
At 1:30 in the morning, I heard the sound of a shovel hitting the dirt outside. It was too dark to see anything from my window now, so I snuck outside quietly and looked over the fence into the backyard. I could see him digging loud and clear.
Now, when he went inside his house, I took that opportunity to sneak into his backyard and take a look at what was in the hole he was digging. The moonlight alone revealed a small piece of a black garbage bag protruding from the dirt at the bottom of the hole. I looked at his back door and back at the hole.
I did this three more times, deciding whether or not to see what was in the bag. In the end, I decided to run back to my backyard, and there was a good thing I did because he came back outside seconds later, but he wasn't digging. In fact, he disappeared to the other side of his house and didn't come back.
I went back into my house and quietly got back into bed, trying not to wake up my wife. The next day, the first thing I did was look out my window to see that the hole in the ground was completely patched up in Charles's backyard. I also noticed that his SUV was parked in the street now instead of his driveway.
I don't know what happened throughout the rest of that night, but I'm disturbed to think that what was at the bottom of that hole might have been his son's body. For all I know, he dug up that hole to remove whatever he had previously buried down there and drive it somewhere else to dump it. This is all speculation—call me crazy if you want.
I haven't told anyone, not even my wife, and quite frankly, I don't know what to do. Charles never gave me back my shovel. I'm not going to ask him for it; in fact, he's been avoiding me ever since.
Something disturbing happened yesterday. I, by coincidence, happened to look out my window across at Charlie's house and caught him standing at one of his windows looking into mine. When he saw me, he shut his blinds, and that was in the middle of the day.
I have no idea what to do, but I'm honestly terrified. I've lived in three houses in my life: two with my family and my current house by myself. We lived in the first house for the first 15 years of my life and the second house the next seven before I moved out to my current home.
This experience happened in my first home when I was 15, within the last few months of my family living in that house. I don't remember. My family was never really friendly with the neighbors.
In fact, there were two kids living next door with their dad that my brother and I had only talked to maybe once or twice our entire lives. As bizarre as that is, though, we did know both of their names: Eric and Todd. One day, my brother, who is five years younger than me, and I were outside playing basketball in the driveway.
That was when one of the two boys next door, Todd, came outside and walked over to us, initiating a conversation. I don't remember what we said to each other quote for quote, but I remember the first thing he asked us was if it was true that we were moving. As the older brother, I did most, if not all, of the talking; Todd was probably the same age as me—I never actually asked.
By the end of the conversation, he invited me to come with him and his brother to shoot BB guns by the river in the woods down the road. The next day, I agreed since it was the weekend and I didn't have anything going on anyway. My little brother asked if he could come at the last second, not under the assumption that he was automatically invited as well.
Todd said, "Yeah," and then walked away. Later the next day, around an hour before dusk, Eric and Todd rang the doorbell. We were quick to answer the door because our parents didn't know that we were going out to shoot BB guns.
Walking down the sidewalk with Todd and Eric, decked out in camo gear and carrying a duffel bag of BB guns, was really strange. The level of seriousness these two clearly had was really weird to me and my brother, and we kept meeting eyes, holding in our laughter a couple of times because of it. We got to the woods having spoken very few words; I could already tell these two were kids of few words, maybe explaining why we hadn't met them officially until that point.
Todd dropped the duffle bag onto the ground and unzipped it while Eric aggressively snapped a branch off a tree and threw it into the river. My brother and I looked at each other again, this time not finding it funny. Todd pulled out a couple of guns and handed them to me and my brother, and that's when Todd dropped the bomb and told us they were real guns.
Eric removed a loaded gun from the bag and began firing at trees across the river. When I realized he wasn't joking about the guns being real, I was in a mix of anger and confusion. I grabbed the gun from my brother's hands and placed both of them back in the bag.
I told them we weren't comfortable with this and had to leave. Eric stopped firing, and they both looked at us with expressions that seemed half angry. One of the two boys yelled a curse word at us as we were walking away.
I always had a feeling these two were bad kids, but this confirmed it. I told my brother not to speak to them anymore for the remainder of our time living there. We told our parents at the dinner table that night that they were really weird kids, but we didn't mention the gun incident.
I woke up that night to a breeze of cold air hitting me in the face; my window was open all the way. I felt something hard press up against the back of my head as I was looking out the window and then heard somebody behind me going, "Shh. " Somehow, I didn't scream or jump; I just stayed calm.
I was able to understand what was going on surprisingly quickly. I heard Todd's voice in a whisper behind my head. He told me if I ever told anybody, especially his dad, about the guns or the visit, he would come back and kill me and my entire family.
I replied in a quiet, shaky voice, "Okay. " He pushed my head with his gun before leaving through my window. Every night thereafter, for months, I would catch either Todd or Eric at a certain window of their house, looking into either my room or my brother's room.
Their behavior became weirder as we got closer to the date of our move. Just a week before we moved, a rock was thrown at my window one night at around 1:00 a. m.
I opened my window and saw Todd aiming a pistol up at the window. Feeling like I was about to die, I dove to the ground, only to hear the two boys crack up with laughter. I heard one of them refer to me as a “[ __ ]” “[ __ ].
” There were two other instances that week where the two would harass either me or my brother, and ultimately, I couldn't think of a more perfect time for us to move and get out of there. After all these years, neither my brother nor I told anybody about the boys or their threats. All I know is those two boys were troubled, and it was a good thing we got out of there when we did.
At the time I'm writing this, it happened two weeks ago. I've always hated just about all of my neighbors. I'm fresh out of college and living on my own, but that comes at a price—I'm living in a really bad area, the only place I can afford a house, so I'm not bound to have the ideal neighbors.
The neighbors on one side always have their music blasting, while the neighbors on the other side are the creepiest people I've ever met in my life. It's two people living next door: one woman in her sixties who's not friendly at all and honestly doesn’t seem at all. .
. There is an older woman and a slightly younger woman who has some kind of severe mental disabilities. I have no idea what the relationship is between the two.
I would commonly be sitting on my front porch when I'd look over next door and see the older woman holding the younger woman back as she'd be having some kind of freak-out episode. She'd have her arms crossed and she'd quickly rock back and forth while screaming and making noises. Sometimes she'd even look over and point at me and mumble stuff to the other woman.
It's quite disturbing, actually; sometimes I even go inside when I get too uncomfortable. Anyway, it was a night like any other. I had to go to bed early for work in the morning; however, the next-door neighbors were making an unusual amount of noise.
I could hear the deranged woman screaming and throwing a fit as the older woman yelled in distress. This went on for about an hour, and I couldn't take it anymore. I marched over to the house next door and banged on the door.
The older woman answered and greeted me with “What the hell do you want? ” I asked, as politely as I could, to keep the noise down. In response, she raised her eyebrows and tilted her head down, clearly annoyed by my request.
Just then, the younger woman entered the living room, screaming, “How dare you! ” repeatedly. The older woman held her back from approaching me and then slammed the door in my face.
I had no idea what just happened, but I felt like I hadn’t accomplished what I came there for. I walked back to my bed in defeat; however, I realized they had finally gone silent next door. I was able to get some sleep at last.
Well, I woke up feeling like the night went way too fast. I looked at my clock and saw that it was only 3:00 in the morning. My head fell back into the pillow in relief, but pretty soon, I thought I could hear something coming from downstairs.
I got out of my bed and went over to my door just to make sure I wasn't hearing things. When I didn't hear any other sounds, I went back to bed. I woke up once again to a dark room only 20 minutes after I'd fallen back asleep.
I didn't know what could have woken me up, though, and then I heard it. I panicked and tried to find my phone on my bedside desk as a source of light, but when I found it, I didn't dare turn the light on. I looked around the dark room in silence, trying to find some kind of dark figure in the room.
I looked at every corner of the room, and even though it was so dark, I could tell there wasn't anybody standing there. This time, I heard where it was coming from. I turned to the edge of my bed and saw a black, shadowy, circle-like object right at the edge of the wooden wall of my bed.
When the light of my phone revealed that black object, it would be the face of the deranged woman from next door. She screamed like the lunatic she was; she screamed as if she were a vampire in the light. I screamed as well; I screamed as I clumsily ran for the door and tripped halfway, looking back to see the woman following me.
I slammed the bedroom door behind me and ran all the way downstairs, where I locked the door leading to the upstairs. I called the cops as the woman pounded on the door, screaming incomprehensible things. When the cops showed up, I told them the woman lived next door and that she was mentally insane.
The older woman from next door came over after hearing all the commotion and spoke with the cops, pleading with them to let her go, but they insisted they had to take her in for at least the night. One of the officers asked me if I wanted to press charges, and as he asked this, the older woman gave me the most evil, hateful stare imaginable. I chose not to press charges, but her stare didn't change.
The officers drove the old woman away while the younger woman continued to stare at me as she walked back to her house. Five minutes later, I saw her get in her car and drive away. These two still live next to me.
I'm seriously considering moving out because the creepy woman next door makes it clear she despises me, and I've concluded that the mentally ill woman is not only terrifying but dangerous as well.
