50 TRUE Disturbing & Terrifying Scary Horror Stories | Mega Compilation | (Scary Stories)

i've had some weird stuff happen lately and it reminded me of a strange encounter that happened about five years ago it was spring here in utah meaning cold mornings that require a coat and usually scraping your windows before leaving i lived in a relatively remote community west of the railroad tracks that lead to oil refineries in my area not exactly a busy area and very little housing where i lived in at the time although now it's a bustling community one friday morning about 9 30 as i'm on my way to work my usual route is

blocked due to an accident being cleared up so i take the quieter route through the industrial park east of my house i passed the only gas station on my way and headed through the industrial park which is quiet except for diesel trucks and the rare car like my own as i come over a small hill and over a set of train tracks i see a car pulled over to the side with its hood up and a guy just standing there next to the driver's side door looking at me as i approached the hill the car

was a copper-coloured two-door sports car from the late 70s or early 80s nissan i think he looks straight out of the 70s i'll never forget this guy blue jeans white collar shirt showing above his coat tan work boots darkish tan 70s style leather coat with wool showing at the collar a thick dark mustache and a john travolta in saturday night feveresque haircut bigger guy probably in his mid 40s around six feet tall or just over bit of a gut but clearly a thick dude who wasn't in bad shape hands in pockets but his feet planted

firmly and back straight like he was at a parade rest as i see him i slowed down to see what the problem was and start to pull over and get behind his car and he's staring at me the entire time no nod of recognition or hand wave to signal me no smile just staring with his face perfectly flat hands in pockets not moving i get this super creepy vibe and as i'm about to pull over i pulled away and sped off instead that's very unlike me i stopped to help people all the time but this

guy really gave me a bad feeling i couldn't shake as i look in the rearview mirror i see he's not moved but just turned his head a bit to watch me go and as i watch he turns back to stare over the tracks for the next car to come along i get to work and i'm feeling bad that i didn't help him out but i tell my boss close friend about the encounter and he tells me he gets creeped out hearing about it and i should be glad i trusted my gut instinct i didn't think

much more of it and get to work on my way home i take that road back home to see if his car was left there just in case he had a real problem and sure enough it was gone feeling relieved he had at least gotten his car taken care of i felt less bad about not helping some stranded stranger because i got weirded out by his appearance and demeanor i got home got some sleep and think nothing of it i worked saturdays at the time and always took the long way to work on saturday since

i didn't have to worry about traffic come 9 30 the next day i'm heading the same way to work i took the day before but because the industrial park is full of monday to friday type companies it's always a ghost town on the weekend when i came home the previous night i drove for 15 minutes in that area really low speed limits and it's a really long road and did not see another car on the road there even the gas station closes its inside operations on saturdays and evenings after six nobody was even around the

area during those hours so i'm cresting the hill and sure enough the same guy is there again same car same spot hood up and standing next to the driver's side door if i hadn't have been so creeped out by the guy the day before i may not have noticed how eerily similar it was like he somehow hadn't moved since the day before this time however he reacted to seeing me pulling a hand out of his pocket and trying to wave me down without moving his feet and clearly yelling something i speed up he clearly heard

my tin can of a toyota rev up and i kid you not he put both hands up and moved as in to step in front of my car to block me his face never changed the whole time just a blank stare and semi-frowned slit of a mouth as he started to step in front of my car in the two-lane road i was on i swerved a little to avoid hitting him and kept going now here's the thing that section of the road is straight for quite a way and though i was really shaken up by

the encounter i looked in my mirror to see him just step back into his car and keep staring west just like the day before like a stranger hadn't just swerved to avoid killing him and leaving him to his own devices it was weird i never saw him again after that but i called my local police force of whom i know several officers personally one of which was a neighbor thinking maybe he really did have a problem at the time a few things stood out to me namely that the day before that the gas station it

would have been open and if he didn't have a cell phone it was less than a block away and he would have had to have passed it in order to be on that particular stretch of road no way you couldn't have seen it and been where he was supposedly broken down i hadn't thought of it friday but it struck me hard saturday when i saw him again the second time and everything was the same carl with the hood up outfit even shirt as far as i could tell place and even the way he stood just

waiting for a car to come from the west just over the hill where he had been hard to see in the way until you were fairly close and since i knew his car hadn't been left overnight that felt very very wrong lastly the dead look on his face when he tried to flag me down i could see him clearly i was going at 25 miles per hour which is the speed limit on that particular spot and he didn't change his expression when he saw me he just went through the motions that was probably the most

unsettling part to me it was like he knew what to do but not how to do it right emotionally also that he just turned back to staring immediately after i passed him like the day i asked one of my cop buddies if they came across the guy but he hadn't heard anything and even later on i came to find out that the cop on that route hadn't come across anyone when he stopped by a bit later it's a smallish town not that much happens and non-emergencies are slow to be dealt with the best my buddy

told me thanks for calling stranded motorists can really get hosted when no one is around but also good on me for following my instinct about the guy basically if you feel creeped out by a stranded motorist call the cops and they'll find them help long story short i never saw the guy again and i hope i never do because whatever his game was i know his car wasn't just breaking down in the same convenient hard to see spot repeatedly all of the creepy stuff i've seen in my life this is the one that comes to

mind when i think of unsettling and unnerving run-ins i worked at this hotel and unexplainable stuff kept happening there's one room in particular that has more activity than any others and anyone who has worked there for longer than two months has a story to share about it for some context this room is not your typical hotel room it's set up almost like an apartment when you walk through the door there's a common area where you can watch tv and have a meal or enjoy the minibar complete with glassware there are two bedrooms in this room

and they are separate from the common area to start the first story i'm going to tell you about happened to me i was in the room cleaning by myself in the one bedroom when i hear the door to the room open up i thought that the people staying in the room may have come back earlier than expected so i called out from the bedroom apologizing about not having the room clean however i don't hear any response back so i call out to them again and again and don't hear a response back so i go out

into the common area to see if someone was there then i looked into the other bedroom to see if they were there for some reason but the room was empty i was confused at this and finished cleaning the room before going to talk to my co-worker to see if he saw anyone come up to the room when i asked him if he saw anyone go up to the room he said he didn't i asked if he was sure because i heard that door open with the card key click and he said he didn't see anyone

go up there in the room besides me the next story is about the same room but it happened to a co-worker what he told me is that one night he was delivering drinks to another room at the geyser clutch and ended up dropping the tray shattering the glasses within five seconds of the glass breaking he heard footsteps coming from the room and then the door opened and closed he thought it was just a guest seeing where the noise had come from and would explain the door opening and closing so he brushed it off after he

got the broken glass all cleaned up he made new drinks and delivered them and then told my co-worker what happened he joked that he must have woken up the people in the nearby room because he heard the door open and then closed the co-worker just looked at them confused and asked which room it was that he heard the door open so he told them the run apparently there was no one staying in that room for the night and both of them were worried that someone may have gotten in somehow so they both went to the

room to investigate and when they went in they found that no one was in there but all the glassware in the cabinets was completely destroyed to this day i refused to go into the room by myself unless strictly necessary because it always sends a chill down my spine and has a weird vibe the next story takes place in a different room of the hotel and after the events of the first just for context on this particular day we only had two people check in and since the hotel is small this occurrence happens every so often

as a result i had to do a few extra tasks around the hotel one of which is going into the empty rooms and turning off all the lights because people will leave the lights on more often than you'd think so i went into every room and made sure all the lights were turned off and went on to finish the rest of my tasks for the evening because i could clock out which is around 11 pm but because it was a slow night i was able to finish my tasks two hours early normally i will be

allowed to clock out early but the person running the shift that night was a stickler about clocking out early so she made me double check all the rooms to make sure the lights were out before she'd consider letting me clock out early i checked every room and as i expected all the lights were turned off except for this one that had all the lights on i was shocked when i walked in because i knew for a fact i had been in every room and turned all the lights off so the fact that it was turned

on freaked me out but as i was walking out a light by the bed suddenly switched on i was now creeped out i hadn't heard of people seeing lights coming on in their room so i knew something was up and just left that run the next story happens earlier this year and is one that still creeps me out to this day i was finishing cleaning this one room and was going back to our supply room to grab stuff to clean it as i was walking back to the room i looked down the hall then saw

a woman in a white robe and brown hair walked towards her room i go in the room to check and see which room i have to clean next and it just so happened that it was a room down the same hallway the woman was walking i was mad because what this meant is the woman came back to her room earlier than expected so i would have to go to her room and ask when i could clean her room now this may seem odd because it's a boutique hotel but we tried to be more personal and

give that extra interaction with guests i go to the room and knock on the door expecting her to reply but after 30 seconds didn't get a response i waited for two minutes before i used my card key to enter in case something had happened to her and as i opened the door slightly to call out her name to make sure it was okay to proceed i don't get a reply i then enter the room cautiously and look around to find no one i immediately start to panic because i knew for a fact i saw someone

walk this way to the end of the hall and that there were no other rooms she could have gotten into and i just ran out the room and closed the door i got to the front desk to speak to my co-worker about what i saw and he didn't seem phased although he hadn't seen her himself he says there are other people that have seen the phantom lady the following story happened in the basement of the hotel which alone looks very creepy and gives you a very unwelcoming vibe the basement is the heart of the hotel

though because it's how we're able to transport items without any guests seeing storing stuff as needed and also has some offices employees have always just reported feeling uneasy walking through the halls especially at night because sometimes it feels like you're being watched this incident happened on thanksgiving night of 2018. i only remember because after i finished my tasks for the day i had to help set up christmas decorations i go to the one storage area we called the dungeon which got its name due to being dimly lit and having a really musty yoda to grab

a few wreaths i spot the box containing the wreaths and grab too as i'm walking out i hear a whisper in my ear as clear as day wrong one i immediately jumped back because i was the only one around and had no idea who or what could have made that noise but i just went back to the main floor to set up the reefs turns out the one wreath that i bought couldn't be used due to lack of ribbon tinsel and there being no holly or berries on it within an instant i knew that the

voice was trying to tell me that i was bringing up the wrong wreath and i was shocked that i was being helped out the following story takes place in the basement too although it didn't happen to me the story goes that an employee was walking down the hall of a basement and saw what looked like one of the maintenance workers in the basement but this was well past the time their shift ended she called out to him asking why he was still there when she suddenly heard a crushing noise coming from a storage room next

to her she goes to see what caused the noise and there's a hole in the door like someone punched through it she goes back out to talk to the guy but he was gone the next story happened to this one employee who was doing a turn down service in a room for those of you unfamiliar turn down service is when your room is refreshed and you're given champagne and chocolate covered strawberries at least that's how we do it however we also add candles to the room and have a live flame to it which i think

is stupid as i see it as a fire hazard but the hotel hasn't burned down yet the guy was finishing lighting the final candle and double checked to make sure he didn't forget anything and found he forgot to get them new body towels he goes and grabs them the new towels and when he comes back into the room all of the candles he looked around not one but eight of them he thought this was weird so he lit them again and was on his way but just like me he was interested in the unexplainable so

he waited another five minutes before going back into the room and sure enough the candles were out he lit them again and left because he was sure the ghost was messing with him two hours later the guests that had the turn down service called to complain about the candles in the room being out when they arrived go figure this last story is a bit more wholesome for the first 15 years the hotel was open all of the groundskeeping was managed by the guy called sam from what i've heard sam loved his job because as he

saw it he was the artist of the hotel and helped add to its beauty because he would make sure everything was perfect grass was even flower beds looked stunning in the winter he made sure the parking lot was always clear of ice and snow sam really took pride in his work but sadly past of a heart attack eight years ago on the grounds it just hasn't been the same since however some groundskeepers still think he hasn't moved on and still roams the place one groundskeeper said he remembers one day as he finished putting new flowers

in the front he suddenly heard a whisper say beautiful he looked around and saw no one other than groundskeepers nearby but not near enough for them to have said this apparently this kind of stuff happens more often than you'd imagine multiple groundskeepers have said anytime they put in a large amount of effort into making the grounds look beautiful they'll sometimes hear a voice of someone saying that they did a good job they believe it's sam checking up with the grounds because if there was any place he'd want to be it's there because of how much

he cared for the hotel grounds just as a fun factoid the land on which the hotel was built used to be farmland for around 170 years until it was brought up and converted into use of the hotel in and around the 1990s as far as the unexplained stuff at the hotel goes he says that he never noticed anything until around three months of the hotel being open he said it would be little things at first like something falling off a desk or table besides knowing for a fact they weren't very close to the edge the

activity became more intense as the years went on and he thinks of the first time someone reported hearing a voice being in 2000 an employee was getting supplies in the service run when all of a sudden they heard a voice say leave the guy looked around to see if he was being told to hurry up but couldn't find anyone activity started to get violent in o4 when it was first reported that the bed in a room that had just been made was essentially trashed none of the sheets were ripped or anything but they were scattered

throughout the room along with the pillows by this time it wasn't uncommon for an employee to hear footsteps coming up the stairs from the basement only for no one to be there or have the feeling of being watched in the basement he said he can't remember the first time someone actually saw a ghost but believes it would be around the same time as the bed incident one thing that is interesting to note though is he has never once been told of any tactile experience now comes the darker information i was told in the entire hotel's

run there's only ever been one person that passed on the hotel's property and it's possibly the reason for the woman in white there's some context since the hotel property was converted farmland there are woods next to the hotel because the developers decided to preserve nearby naturally beautiful for the hotel in these woods there are trails to hike if the guests feel so inclined and a pond people could swim in however in 2007 a woman who was staying at the hotel drowned in the pond and ever since then we do not tell guests that the pond

is in the woods and if the guests do find it on their own there's now a sign saying no fishing no swimming no ice skating for liability purposes my boss personally believes it's her spirit people see around the hotel because no one else has perished on the property however that being said he believes the other activity experienced by people could be due to workers who have perished on the farm due to work injuries and not moving on in the room i had mentioned previously where the lights came back on after i had turned them off

a medium stayed there one night because she was in town for one of her shows she'd requested to stay in a room that had reported paranormal experiences so she was placed in that room she stays for two nights and when she's checking out she told us what she experienced while staying there just as a warning i wasn't present for what the medium said but was relayed to me by my boss the medium said that while in that room she made contact with only one spirit and it was of a six-year-old boy now this is where

it gets weird but confirms that the spirit in that place is from when the land was still a farm the boy would be mischievous and do little things around that room like turn on lights and stuff but then none of the spirits in the hotel are there to harm people this is coming from a medium so take that as you will i personally believe she was telling the truth about the spirits not meaning us any harm mainly because no one has ever been hurt as they usually do not even make themselves known to guests it's

mostly our staff we were a bunch of naive kids traveling abroad in 1992 and our two-week beach vacation turned into two nights of horror ever since our sophomore year my high school gang of friends dreamed and planned for an epic trip to cancun in mexico one of us saw a movie and thought it would be an amazing destination for us to escape the new england winter and celebrate surviving the high school experience there were six of us on the plan keith our unofficial leader lost his dad his junior year and so this trip became our

way of keeping him thinking ahead to something good greg and kirk were big history and archaeology buffs so they were as interested in the mayan ruins as the beach and beer dorothy and hannah were gamer girls a rare thing in my area and were up for a trip to the beach with their big brothers and i was just looking forward to an adventure unfortunately we couldn't go the year we graduated some of us had to put our savings towards college or other experiences and two of us got jobs that wouldn't allow the time off despite

this we had a pact to make it happen a year passed then another it was five years before keith phoned us to say he had booked not just a room or sweep for us but an entire house on the beach for two weeks five of us were back in our hometown for the holidays and we met up at a bar and had a great reunion and keith showed us the brochure he received from the travel company the place was gorgeous almost gordy in its gold trimmings and ritzy amenities clearly the house was going to be

expensive even split six ways but it wasn't in fact it was a bargain for two weeks what's wrong with it that was kirk's question but we all were thinking it keith explained that it's the hurricane that swept through and had depressed the local economy so these outlying properties were booking to try and keep up with the more prosperous city of cancun the house was nearer the village of puerto huales but near all the same attractions as tulum and exmel and we could go to any beach we wanted take a boat trip to isla mujeres or

even belize if we wanted to for a third of our original estimate we tentatively agreed because we knew keith vetted the place before committing to it he had already put down the deposit and set the weeks based on the hold and we all put it in the calendar it was late in the season of the following year the truth was that we were all getting older and moving on some of us were in relationships and planning for weddings greg already had a baby on the way with his fiancee so time was running out on our

childhood dream before we would part ways for good fast forward nine months and the day arrived i had digested travel guides and had everything i needed i took the cheapest flight which meant layovers and switching gates so i arrived later in the afternoon i happened to meet dorothy at the baggage claim we remarked how grown up we both looked shared a few hugs and agreed to share a cab to our vacation villa we waited in a long line to be married up with one of the taxis lining the arrival area caught up on the latest

gossip and life events and entered vacation mode dorothy was getting married in the spring and moving to europe hannah had to back out at the last minute because of work but sent her love when it was our turn we were paired with this old rusty bucket of chevy steel driven by an older man who swept us up with the grace of a ballroom dancer and the smile of a car salesman looking to make quota his name was bauloff and he wasted no movement getting our bags into the trunk and us in the back seat where

do we go i gave him the address and he looked at me in the rearview mirror air i repeated and he nodded still somehow confused after reporting to someone on the radio and including the address twice it sounded like even the dispatcher was confused he switched turn signals and began to merge right against the flow of traffic exiting the airport towards the city he quoted us a price and i agreed we headed down an empty lane into the growing shadow of dusk while most folks were heading into the bright lights of cancun the road was

two lanes and covered with litter shortly beyond the omramp we passed a tense city crowded with people and torches being lit to illuminate families living in squalor toddlers and children without clothes sat in the dirt and under makeshift tent homes further down the road beached vessels lay on their sides sunken into the sand or soil families with the means had converted them into homes by cutting holes in the hull to make doorways and windows stray skinny dogs and cats patrolled the roads for food stopping to glare as we drove slowly past there were few people

on the road in the growing darkness we had moved into the long shadow of the yucatan rainforest on a road following the beach the ocean was dazzling in the early evening and dorothy focused on that while i kept an eye inland paolo ii wasn't as cheerful or talkative once he knew where we were going you know people in puerto juarez he said i shook my head no a friend rented a house rented a house he nodded pretending to understand but remain skeptical it's a very dangerous place you must be very careful dorothy stiffened in her

seat a bit we had entered the forest just a bit which obscured her view of the beach she looked at me as if to ask what did we get into a mile more down the road we emerged from the trees to again drive along the beach inland bright jaundice security lights bathed a strip mall which included a market and a few odd shops the only market was opened and housed half a dozen or so taxis with drivers enjoying bears and sodas in the parking lot bowler honked and waved as we passed the men that cheered

he smiled and the presence of pleasant people relaxed us a bit but his smile faded as soon as we went around the corner another half mile or so and the road was dark in the headlights we made out some figures in the distance standing in the road a few teenagers were standing in the road a couple held flashlights and all of them carried heavy sticks and paolo began to slow down gang of kids aolo said they want to collect the doll dorothy grabbed my arm i had heard about something like this how much paulo shook

his head we not stop he accelerated towards the kids on the road and at the last moment they dove for the shoulders as the taxi roared through dorothy dove into my lap and we ducked down as the back of the taxi was pelted with rocks we continued on pow logged on the radio and reported it then mumbled to himself perhaps regretting getting this fare we arrived at the address shortly after despite the photographs emphasizing the dazzling facade and gardens the exterior of the property was wrapped in a 20-foot wall of concrete clocks topped with layers

of clumpy cement into which hundreds of jagged bottle pieces were mounted in place of what might have been barbed or razor wire the driveway was blocked by a tall steel gate and an intercom aolo had to buzz in the gate wind and scraped open against the corrosion and lack of lubrication taking forever to open wide enough for us to enter all the while baula and i kept watch on the darkness for sign of those kids on the road as soon as we got into the property bowler kept insisting that they closed the gate as he

pulled under an overhang at the door fortunately the gate began to close itself the front door opened and our three buzzed dude bros poured out onto the driveway they firemen handled our luggage into the house and we all began to hug and laugh paulo kept watch on the gate distracted as keith asked him about the possibility of driving them to chichen itza the next morning late of course so that they could sleep in and have breakfast once the gate was closed paolo was himself again sure he would be happy to take three maybe four in

his taxi it would take an all-day trip and he quoted the price keith agreed and paolo prepared to head out you keep the place tight so the bed bugs no bite i come back nine tomorrow keith let the warning slip over his head it occurred to me that he greg and kirk got there during the day so they most likely had a much more positive experience than we did bowler waited outside the gate to make sure it closed before driving off i also noticed he was returning to town with a wingman in a taxi who

turned around on the road to hail him the house had been carefully photographed to avoid capturing ugly concrete walls some of the walls looked to have been recently rebuilt and the older blocks had holes in the interior that were patched up with cement we went inside where the guys had already started playing d d and drinking the interior of the house exceeded the grandeur alleged by the photos the place had a sunken living room with comfortable sofas and chairs a spiral staircase up to the sleeping level and a massive dining area with a chef's kitchen

attached we got the quick tour of the place but dorothy and i were both exhausted from a day of travel capped by the ride from the airport we both had cervezas from the fridge noting that the pantry had been stocked by the owner prior to our arrival keith had already cooked dinner but we were able to feed off the remaining fajitas and bowls of junk food on the gaming table i didn't want to roll up a character so late in the evening but i hung out at the table with my friends happy to listen to

the pattern of our gaming once again we were all older spoke a little slower and thoughtfully but it was like being home one of the things i noticed about the house was that it didn't look out onto the beach at least not directly the tall concrete wall blocked the view from our first floor patio the pool was lit from inside casting the yard in a peaceful blue glow linking the property to the beach was another tall steel security gate through which i could make out a narrow sliver through the light of the rising crescent moon

this made sense in a way under mexican law all beaches were public spaces the property line ended at the war my thought was interrupted by something keith said the phone doesn't work what yeah we were tired so we were going to call for a taxi to take us into town to a restaurant but the phone doesn't work i felt a little nervous about that none of us had cell phones keith however didn't seem bothered the owner's grade he lives in puerto juarez i'll get in touch with him after we get back from the pyramids tomorrow

night dorothy and i hadn't planned to take the long trip to the pyramids we both planned to ease into the vacation by taking a trip to the beach and getting tanned i wasn't comfortable spending the entire day without a lifeline it wasn't an insurmountable problem as i started working out ways to maybe take a cab into puerto juarez in the morning for keith and see if i could fix the problem a loud buzzer sounded and all of us jumped the same echoed through the entire main floor like a game show buzzer sounding at the incorrect

answer except for longer as soon as it stopped it buzzed again keith rose from his chair and walked over to a small alcove presumably to open the gate don't open the gate dorothy and i said in a duet kirk and greg laughed keith stopped and shot us an odd look as the buzzer sounded yet again i'm not he opened a panel in the alcove that contained a small security monitor in intercom he squinted to see what was on the monitor i stood up and walked over as i did keith muttered bunch of kids one kid

was mugging for the camera and crushing the buzzer it was a fuzzy image but the fisheye lens and the security light gave us a look about 10 people not just kids but men women and a few dogs milling around them the one gazing into the camera wanted to be seen it might have been the lateness of the hour or my own paranoia but i recognized him as one of the kids blocking the road on our way to the house ignore them i suggested the buzzer went off and everyone got annoyed dorothy put her face in

her hands it bothered her more than the rest for some reason can you kill that buzzer i don't know keith shrugged he searched the intercom and hit the power button the buzzer ended abruptly it seemed as though the kid mashing the button knew this because he immediately stopped and stepped back from the panel he glared at the camera the light washing out all his features except his eyes full of mischief and a little anger the group huddled together in the small groups backs turned to the camera keith unnerved by this flipped the power back on

and pushed the talk button i didn't have time to say anything against this hey what can we do for you guys the group laughed so hard we could hear them inside the house the kids stepped up to the intercom again press the talk button and said something in spanish that i barely made out to mean he wanted food and booze and maybe to come inside and party with us in english he added we can bring in women and some ganja have a real good time see we all looked at one another not to discuss the

proposal but the ridiculousness of it sorry bro party down keith said thinking of calling it a night the gang outside talks to monks themselves for a bit the spokesperson considered this and then hit the talk button again no i don't think you'll sleep tonight and the group ran off in different directions and the spokes kid grinning wide as he glared into the camera and backed away he left the camera heading around the exterior wall dorothy stood up and went looking for something that turned out to be a bottle of tequila she was shaking greg went

to talk to her because they had always been close i had learned later that dorothy and her fiance were victims of a home invasion six months ago in baltimore they were tied up and robbed at gunpoint in the middle of the night this was a massive trigger for her we need eyes upstairs keith said someone needs to be able to see over the wall i have security cameras here and there beach side kirk and i had looked at the spiral stairs at the landing keith called up keep the lights off we did i went to

a beachside bedroom and peered out the sliding glass door to the balcony there was no window overlooking the side of the house they were probably clinging to the wall to avoid to be seen i sat on the king-sized bed and quickly decided that that was a bad idea because i immediately felt sleepy despite the adrenaline of being put under siege and i stood up just then a volley of stones rose from behind the wall a dozen or more softball and golf ball stones caught in the light of the pool area smashing down on the sand

and concrete some made it to the balcony bouncing off the metal railings before rolling into the pool the crackling stones sounded like gunfire and dorothy screamed from the other run immediately the backyard and beach were flooded with white light from the towers erected at the corners of the property the jagged glass atop the walls sparkled and i could see shadows cast towards the surf and the top of the heads a small group stepped back and launched another volley of stones some aimed at the lights while others came soaring at the patio window none of the

rocks aimed at the building reached the windows they bounced off the railing or the patio overhang the rock seemed that the lights just bounced off without effect kirk called my name from the front of the house and i rushed out of the room down the hall and into a smaller bedroom where he was pointing out to the front wall someone had thrown a heavy blanket up over the top of the wall a thick one like one of the moving blankets they rent at uh he made out the top of a ladder i looked around for

whatever reason and picked up the old radio clock beside the twin bed i yanked the cord out wrapped around the clock and kirk gave me the look he gives when i do something stupid or pointless in our weekly dnd game it wasn't until i got outside in the patio that my conscious brain caught up with what i was going to do just as a man's head peeked over the wall i launched the clock as hard as i could like a frisbee across the yard the 30 feet or so in his direction it flew low to

one side but shattered when it hit the glass and concrete showering the man in shrapnel it hurt and startled him enough that he slipped off the ladder out of sight he landed with a crash and a painful cry the floodlights burst to life in the front of the house lighting up the road beyond a handful of frightened kids scattered carrying their friend who looked really hurt the sound of stones hitting the house continued our back and there was shouting kirk ran back to where dorothy and greg were huddled together in the bedroom and i heard

him shout make sure they're not scaling the walls out back or charging the gate convinced they had abandoned their charge on the front wall i returned to the rear bedroom and gathered the white stones that had ended up on the patio plumes of white smoke rose from outside the walls curling in the security lights some more rocks flew into the yard but they were all weak hurls landing into the pool with no effect with about eight stones in my arms i returned to the main floor keith was at the alcove switching between three monitors and

a black screen they got one of the side cameras he said what are they burning i think they're burning the beach furniture half of them ran off the other ones a back and the older ones and someone started launching roman candles at the house from the beach dorothy began screaming as the fireball struck the overhang and sliding glass door bottle rockets followed along with an assortment of small explosives a couple of quarter sticks landed just inside the wall and the concussive power rattled the windows one destroyed a deck chair and turned the small flower garden

into a crater then it stopped the security light remained on for five minutes until a lack of motion reset the compound in darkness we had to adjust and it was a frightening moment as keith scanned the security cameras for a long while there were no signs of them kirk suggested they run up the road or beach but then the kid from the monitor walked up to the front gate again a big grin on his face and was carrying a handgun displayed clearly for us to see on the monitor he shook the camera and pushed the

talk button no i don't think you're gonna sleep tonight he spit on the camera and walked away none of us did except for dorothy if you count passing out from tequila and horror we estimated we had about seven hours until dawn kirk argued that everyone who came out was either asleep or celebrating their victory over the tourists back at whatever clubhouse they shared he wasn't ready to sleep though we sat in candlelight to get the best view outside the windows greg patrolled upstairs for a while and then joined us in the dining room the doors

were open and the screen shut so we could hear anyone gathering out back but only heard the gentle roll of serve if they come back the lights will go on greg said if the police drive by and see that rock on the wall maybe they'll check in to be honest we hadn't seen any lights except that of the moon and the ocean since the gang departed it was a beautiful scene to be honest i tried to relax and have a few coronas to help but we told stories of our glory days to keep awake and

even had to shush ourselves from keeping from waking dorothy it was around three in the morning when the security light out front goes on again we didn't have the energy to be startled but responded immediately i checked the security monitor it was a couple of people there to collect the ladder and the rug pulling the rug down triggered the lights and they quickly ran off back up the road into the dark tiny pixels of light shown in the distance as they switched on flashlights the rest of the morning remains a fuzzy memory i may have

drifted off and may have the others but none of us slept sunrise gave us all the confidence and keith immediately conspired with greg and kirk to power nap before paolo returned to take them on the all-day trip inland i said we should go to the police and get the phone fixed before the three of them left the property in the hands of an exhausted me and already terrified dorothy shortly after dawn dorothy came downstairs in a swimsuit walked past us without a word and walked into the pool she dunked herself and began fishing stones out

from the bottom i helped keith make breakfast and things began returning to normal keith agreed to postpone the trip until we could file a complaint and get the phone settled we ate and agreed to ask paolo to put us in touch with the authorities when the buzzer sounded again we all jumped a little but it was paula we let him into the compound he was dressed for comfort ripped jean shorts and an old golf shirt with sandals we explained the night before and he didn't seem surprised except for the part about the phone being out

he walked with keith around the side and confirmed his suspicion that the line had been cut outside the wall the line could be fixed but just as easily be cut again with this done keith phoned the owner to let him know what had happened according to keith he feigned concern and promised to use his connections in cancun and puerto juarez to increase police patrols the next night and hand over the security tape to the officers who would come and investigate convinced this would solve all our problems keith kirk and greg left the house late but

to put in the full day's hours away at the chichen itza site paolo pulled me aside and handed me a small metal case he patted me on the shoulder as if confident i'd know what to do with it inside was a handgun with two magazines startled i took it inside and wiped it down for prince but i kept it in the kitchen dorothy said nothing all day getting out the pool and showering she sat on the patio outside the dining room and read a book when the police showed up four hours later i bought them

in and explained everything one of them spoke english well enough and explained the house we rented had been owned by a local drug trafficker he wasn't exactly a kingpin but he was able to keep a nice residence until his life was terminated it was brought up by a local businessman but tourists for some reason didn't like the idea of being this far away from the protected tourist zone the kids were probably locals with nothing better to do than harass americans and we should relax and have a good time they didn't even want to see the

playback they just took the vhs tape and wished us well assuring us that a car would drive by at least once an hour overnight i didn't mention that a lot could happen in an hour's time i kept checking the phone line as if the sudden lack of a dial tone was my first alert the trouble i thought that if they could cut the phone they could probably cut the power almost as easily but i didn't share any of this with dorothy i made lunch but dorothy didn't want to eat she didn't want to talk either

she sat tensely in the sitting room with her book i collected the stones from the pool area and piled them by the door i cleaned up the debris and then spent some hours soothing my nerves with beer jimmy buffett songs and a network of pool needles serving as a raft the guys never settled on a time they should return paulo said not to even try because they had to drive through the jungle and there might be any number of delays or detours it was best to be home by sundown so when the sun fell behind

the trees that second night and they had not returned i started to get concerned there had been talks of playing a dodd adventure or just some card game that night so their intention was not to be out too late dorothy had taken a nap in the middle of the day but never went back outside after her swim she returned to her chair with another book and went right into it she refused dinner but i made her something anyway hoping the smell would just jump start her appetite i felt like a well-treated prisoner people walked along

the road outside the compound sometimes peering into the upstairs window to catch a glimpse of the tourists others lounged on the beach beyond the gate it was probably safe for us to go out there but we weren't taking a chance in the end the night fell over the house again and with just dorothy and me inside it when the security lights went off again it was around eight in the evening i had drifted off it was the front side of the house and i didn't see anyone outside the wall when i got to the front

door and looked at the peephole i saw one man standing in the yard he didn't have a weapon in his hand but i wasn't sure if he was armed he just stood there in the floor light staring at the front door then to one side of the unused garage and then to the downstairs bedroom on the opposite side dorothy got up and went to the phone there was a dial turn but dialing 9-1-1 left her with a deadline she tried a few more times without success at that moment the buzzer sounded fearing another attack i

retreated to the security monitors and saw bow loss cab outside i buzzed them through when the gate began to move the man in the yard fled to the back of the house it took a while for the car to get inside and i moved to get the weapon from the case in the kitchen the man raced to the back gate as i suspected it was accessible from the inside as he threw it open as he did about five men rushed forwards only to be stopped by the man inside and motioned to run which they all

did with the rest of the gang back in the compound baulot told us he radioed police when he saw a bunch of creeps outside the wall they were at the market and were on their way the three men were deeply tanned and a little drunk from their experience which they promised had a moment similar to the night before soon after the police arrived outside the compound and they interviewed paulo and the rest of us they had polaroids of the people they caught near the marketplace and took our word when we positively identified them as the

man in the yard and the others trying to get in it was all they needed to not only arrest them but to round up the other kids that harassed us the previous night settling in i returned the weapon to paulo but he offered to sell it to me for 50 bucks i can't say if i took him up on it or not but the rest of us felt a lot safer for the remaining 12 days of our trip we even took to the beach as a group it took a while but dorothy began to settle

in after three nights of no issues we all slept through the night and had the adventures we'd been dreaming of for eight years this story takes place when i lived on my old property i was a little boy maybe eight or nine you see the coldest act i lived in was a fairly nice neighborhood nothing crazy my room was across from my parents just down a long hall and next to my sister's room my brother and i shared rooms in a bunk bed everything was fine until my sister reached her teen angst face then came

the doll it was a creepy looking porcelain doll with a black tutu and had a punk rock kind of motif and she loved it she got it from her gob mother a woman we no longer speak to my brother and my mom and i never liked the thing because it gave us the creeps but hey it was her doll however slowly but surely we began to see a change in her she was beginning to become more reclusive and angry with my mother for no reason at all and even cut herself in front of me once

weird yes but nothing quite supernatural then she began to sleepwalk at first we thought it was normal maybe just stress from being a teenage girl i don't know but she started to creep me out and because of this i began to lock the door at night after my brother fell asleep and on one of these nights i heard her get up from her bed and slowly walk i was in my top bunk mind you watching under the door when i saw her shadow see as my room is across from my parents i couldn't tell her

she was standing there in front of my room all my parents but it was still very creepy and she stood there for an unnatural amount of time on the last occasion we all awoke one morning to a knife under my parents bedroom door and this just made them flip out they weren't scared they were more concerned about my sister being nuts and homicidal since she'd been acting so strangely things went on for a little bit until one day the doll disappeared and my sister came out furious huffing and puffing but no one in the house

seemed to have an inkling about its disappearance and so life went on and i never knew what happened to it until i asked my dad about it years later and he enlightened me it turns out that my godmother was heavily into black magic and santeria and had a deep hate for my mother over some petty squabble they had before my father and mother were married and held a deep resentment for her i guess firstborn females of the family is important in santeria and so when she saw an opportunity she gave my sister that horrible doll

we hated but what actually happened to the doll was the funniest part my mom is super religious and i guess at some point she had soaked the doll in holy water and left it in the trash for the garbage man to take out the dump the next day another funny thing my sister never sleep walked again i've had a few frightening encounters over the span of my life but nothing quite as intense as one that took place on a night during my senior year of high school i had been managing the latest in a series

of successive breakups with my high school sweetheart and i was looking for any reason i could find not to sequest myself into my computer room as i so often did my friend mia who lived in the neighboring community had invited me over to her place to hang out with her and her brother i was a socially awkward teenager and mia being a fairly recent acquaintance i accepted on the condition that i could bring along a frequent companion of mine robert he was always prepared to hang out and i could confirm his presence there before even

asking him she was hesitant of bringing another person round but when i promised her we'd set off some of robert's fireworks she agreed mia had conditions of her own stressing the importance of calling her to come pick us up as soon as we arrived at the transit station i thought it was a bit of an odd request i had been to mia's house before and it was only a short walk from the station i didn't think to ask her why as i was just pleased to be going anywhere oh and you have to bring your

fireworks i told robert after grumbling he gathered up the small cachet that he had stashed under his bed and we headed out robert and i arrived at the station around 11 and i did as mia had instructed not expecting an invite that late in the evening my cell phone was left uncharged with enough juice to let mia know that we had arrived as robert and i wilded away the time singing 80s tuned in and off key rhythm a black suv with tinted windows came streaming into the parking area next to the station swerving wildly and

honking before it shot off into the suburban community we were heading towards mia arrived shortly after and we made our way towards the schoolyard robert was still a bit prickly about wasting the last of his fireworks which was fairly uncharacteristic of him as he presented himself as one of the most habitually apathetic people i had ever met up until that point we had set off a handful of fireworks a few of them were duds but most of them did what they were designed for attracting attention another black suv came barreling down the road by the

school a few minutes later this one had a collection of balloons tied to the interior of the car that flew out a rear view window battering against one another as the suv came to a sudden halt mia's face held the look of knowing concern that i didn't entirely understand i'll be right back she told us i held my breath from a distance as i witnessed a figure hop out of the passenger seat of the suv and approach mia i let out a heavy sigh of relief as their greeting while out of earshot was warm there

was a rapport and friendliness not commonly reserved for foreboding strangers you meet with the hour creeping closer to midnight and the lights in the surrounding homes growing increasingly scarce mia was the type of gal you couldn't help but like she was bright funny talented and never did much to offend anyone she treated everyone on equal terms and a natural byproduct of this is collecting friends of every high school archetype some of those archetypes were one of the ones i was all too familiar with the jocks bullies and bad seeds the latter of which her district

high school had a notorious reputation for by that point in my life i was already content with the knowledge that the flaring tempers between most individuals of every identifiable clique would simmer with age but there would always be the select few that never quite got over the thrill of illicit dealings and physical violence their behavior would escalate and they'd step into the criminal lifestyle that a young adult where their actions became less excusable i was and still am a tiny male at 28 years old never growing beyond 5'4 and an easy target for such a

person i had the reputation for being a mischievous but laid-back slacker who could take a punch but couldn't throw one and i relied on the former trait to defuse tension between situations outside my tribe it didn't always work but it allowed me to escape by relatively unharmed for most of my high school career mia embraced the stranger in a hug before they parted ways the stranger got back into the suv and peeled off when she returned i asked her what that was all about that was a friend of mine from saint francis high they're out

celebrating his body's 18th birthday and driving around and beating the crap out of people walking by themselves you're alright if you're with me but i think we should probably head back to my place fine by me i'd rather not be party to some kid's twisted adulthood initiation rights as he proves his machismo to his bodies while they take turns packing my face in we arrived to mia's house but the mood had turned pretty sour and contemplative as we sat with very little to discuss aside from the obvious we got about 20 minutes into a movie

before me his father walked in mia it's 12 time to say goodnight to your friends mia explained the situation but being an honor student with overly invested parents can sometimes mean bearing the burden of strict rules one being in bed by 12 the other no safe harboring for teenaged boys overnight christ what had we gotten ourselves into mia told us that there were four of the suvs driving around she asked us to be safe before saying goodbye and locking the door behind her robert and i slowly walked off the porch and into the cul-de-sac a

disappointing evening but it happens i took my cell phone from my pocket to trouble my best friend for a ride but had forgotten that i didn't charge it earlier and the battery had since died robert didn't bother to carry a cell phone with him and communicated with the few people he did hang out with over msn messenger we took inventory of what we had left with us before taking off towards the transit station my pockets were virtually empty save for my wallet robert had a single remaining firework in his possession along with his zippo lighter

there was a house down the street that i recalled was being renovated with one of those industrial shaped disposal bins out front i leapt inside and re-emerged hefting a 2x4 with a few nails bent into it robert laughed at the visual call me buford pusser jr i am walking small i cracked robert had his zipper and a firework at the ready i'll shoot this in their face he said it sounded as if we were in high spirits it's because the risk of our situation hadn't quite sunken in yet we were aware that the transit station

would be shutting relatively soon and the train wouldn't be any help and this particular station held the final terminal on the line but the buses might still be active the neighborhood we had started in had enough walkways bike lanes and tree cover that we could sink our way through the shadows for a while we took our time choosing the most secluded and unlit passageways which in hindsight i realized did nothing to help our nerves at one point we came up to an intersecting walkway that we were familiar with in the daytime the passageway ahead of

us was lit overhead by a single yellow streetlight before fading into the yawning mouth of pitch darkness we stood there agonizing for several minutes so that whether or not we should find another route or stay the course listening for any sound of movement on the other side we briefly contemplated camping out for the remainder of the night before opting for another detail the night's silence was punctuated every so often by the squealing of tyres shouting or the sudden acceleration of a vehicle then we reached the main road not only one of the main roads in

the area but one of the main roads in our end of town from there on there was little cover nothing but houses buildings and a large empty parking lot all illuminated by street lights that at that moment felt more like the halogen floodlights they shine on escaped prisoners as they rush across the yard to freedom there was little traffic at this point in the night so if one of the suvs did come down the road we would not go unnoticed and there'd be virtually nothing to stop them from doing what they were intending to do

we listened for any sign of obnoxious motors revving before we took off across the road into the parking lot less than a minute later we arrived to the transit station we quickly checked the posted bus times but as indicated by the digital clock outside all the buses had made their final run we hopped into the shelter in the train terminal but the doors had already been locked we'd have to stick to the main road until we made it to the bus trap the bus trap was our safe haven what's unique to this bus trap is

that it was right under a tightly constructed underpass that divides one community for another after years of drivers still risking the odds to make their trip shorter the underpass had been fitted with added precautions cement blockades and a metal gate that only opened for buses this would increase our chances of making a clean getaway if the birthday boy and his pals sped towards us robert and i flinched to every distant sound unaware of whether it was an ordinary motorist on their way home after a late evening all the assailants we were so concerned with running

into we began to think that maybe we were overreacting there was a good chance that someone had already phoned the police on them and they had taken off to another area to avoid detection maybe they'd gone home or better yet gotten arrested we let our guard slip as we reached our old junior high starting to think that the worst case scenario we were preparing for was already behind us that i was carrying a cumbersome piece of wood only looked like a jackass the robert was still armed with a firework and his zippo for nothing this

is where i remember the set of walkways leading straight through the community towards an elementary school which was right by the bus trap i had walked it plenty of times before then with the street lights spaced out every 60 feet we'd see them from a mile away but they'd see us too what we were greeted with instead were long expanses of burnt out street light another sparsely lit tunnel of shadows and nightmares we started down the path because what other choice did we really have robert flicked his zipper open as much as he could still

careful to conserve his lighter fluid in case of an actual confrontation the walk didn't last long the oversensitive backlight porches helped to fill in dark points but there reached a point where it was getting too dark where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face and the accompanying sound of snapping twigs and branches was enough to signify that we might want to just get the hell out of there we stood paralyzed for a moment imagining the birthday boy and his friends waiting behind the shadow to pummel us though sensing it had just been

an animal we returned to the quieter neighborhood areas there may be more room for us to be seen but less risk of getting cornered we quickly made our way along unfamiliar streets and joined up with the final walkway to see it the elementary school and in the distance the bus trap we were so relieved to see safety in our sights walking at a relaxed pace and feeling foolish for turning a 20-minute walk into an hour-long ordeal we passed through the elementary school grounds and began walking the fully lit streets down the bus trap when a

black suv came whipping around the corner on the left hand side nearest the bus strap balloons from the rear window streaking backwards from the velocity as the vehicle accelerated there's no way they didn't see us crap i shouted at robert as we doubled back towards the elementary school and rounded the corner we both had to think fast as the road they run was only a 15 second drive at the speed they were doing we ran down the street along the elementary school but found no cover i heard the engine grow closer to us with his

seconds of turning into the street we were out of time and i pointed to the only cover i could find a side yard fence no accompanying front fence no attaching hedge nothing robert and i lied down on the grass against the fence long like boards and stiffest corpses our respective weapons at the ready i have never felt my heart pump as hard as it was at that moment tightly gripping the 2x4 while i watched robert position the firework and unclap the zipper as if this was going to do anything we really were chumps the suv

slowed to a roll as it turned the corner the headlights reaching down the road as they were searching for us convinced they wouldn't find us in the car they parked they parked at the edge of the property right next to us the headlights of the suv were peeking out just beyond the fence we were beyond screwed four doors popped open and within a few seconds each to each other feet kicking up gravel as the birthday gang murmured to one another and began to search for us i noted at least four sets of footsteps and a

couple of indistinct voices we were definitely outnumbered my mind flashed through all the numerous times i'd been pushed about at school laughing good-naturedly as i refused to fight back in futility i knew everyone who did this to me and this humanized me to them enough that they never pushed it too far these people didn't know me they weren't aware of the [ __ ] persona i assumed the odd guy who was alright with pain they didn't know i pretended to think i was funny these guys wanted to hurt me they wanted to hurt me and

my friend this is it i thought this is the moment you quit being such a coward and you earn your own respect i gripped the two by four tightly enough to dig tiny wooden splinters into my hand and just listen to my heart thump as my blood boiled with whatever rage i could summon i would only have a slim opportunity to surprise them before they take us down and i hope that robert would get his firework off soon enough to buy us some time if i was only getting in one strike i was going to

make sure it connected as if some force miraculously knew what we were up against i heard a voice say screw it a few seconds later the car door slammed shut the suv backed up pulled a u-turn and drove off all the courage i had to muster everything i was prepared to fight with in a losing battle that i never knew my body had in me and it all slowly settled back into the deepest regions of myself robert and i walked the quiet back route to the bus trap we arrived at the underpass and casually walked

through it we both took a moment to look back into the other community that we had spent so much of our time in without issue now in recognition of what we just had narrowly avoided it felt like the type of thing a person should do i wish i could say this near brush had some transformative effect on me that it forced me to re-examine my passive tendencies and open up a new chapter in my life where i stopped letting myself be treated like everyone else is ragdoll it didn't not necessarily my one takeaway from this

experience was despite my many previous assumptions about my fight or flight response it proved that in a rare moment when i'm backed into a corner i'll be prepared to stand my ground until then birthday gang let's not meet again over 10 years ago during the summer my friend's 13 year old niece katie flew home from boston massachusetts to florida for a week-long visit her plane was arriving at the jacksonville airport so my friend and i hop into my little red four-door colorado truck and drive the three hours from tallahassee florida to jacksonville florida to pick

her up yes there's an airport in tallahassee however it is a small airport and quite expensive to fly in and out of for example a round trip plane ticket that would cost 300 if you used any other airport would cost about 800 if you use the tallahassee airport therefore many travelers coming to tallahassee use other airports and drive the remaining distance because it's cheaper in the long run anyway we arrive in jacksonville and pick up katie one thing i should mention in regards to myself is that i am a very good natured and fun-loving jokester

i like to tease people never anything mean just good old-fashioned make you laugh fun so after we pick up katie and are about 10 minutes down the road i tell her hey just so you know i'm a narcoleptic if i fall asleep while driving just nudge me real hard and i'll wake up confused she asks are you even allowed to drive oh yes it's really no big deal my doctor says it's fine i have a note in everything at that point my friend chelsea and i who have been friends for over four years and knows

me very well cuts her eyes towards me with a what the hell are you up to look on her face and smirks on the way home we're laughing joking and having a great time this was my first time meeting katie so i had a lot of questions like what subjects do you like in school do you have any hobbies a boyfriend you know the getting to know you type conversation about 30 minutes into the drive in mid-sentence i pretend to fall asleep tilt my head back and start snoring now due to the tilted angle of

my head i could still see the roadway from my ever so slightly opened eyes i watched katie's face through the view mirror and the sheer panic and look of horror on her face was priceless she began frantically to nudge me trying desperately to wake me as i pretended to snooze away finally i busted out cracking up she laughed so hard she couldn't breathe and katie while she was clutching her chest and smiling with an expression of relief on her face and she began laughing too so her week-long visit started off with a good laugh throughout

the weeks chelsea and her family took katie to do many fun things like canoeing hiking and trips to the beach during the evening after i got off work i could go to chelsea's house and we would all sit on her back porch to play dice all but alas all good things must come to an end it was the day before katie was supposed to leave chelsea and i decided to take katy to saint augustine as it was only a 45 minute drive to jacksonville from there and sait augustine is one of our favorite places to

go for those of you who have never been to saint augustine let me tell you a bit about the place it's a historical town on the atlantic coast of florida it is actually the oldest city in the us and was founded in 1565 by spanish settlers the place is absolutely gorgeous and the architecture is magnificent there are many old shops in the center of the town such as a store when you can make your own candles and a coat of arms store when you can look up your family's surname in its history there are also

numerous tours of the historic buildings there like the old fort the jail and the museums there are also so many museums the best thing about saint augustine at least for me and chelsea are the ghost tours she and i had been on quite a few of them and they're very interesting so we made an agenda for the day an afternoon of shopping tours and then a blissful evening of spookiness around nine in the morning on sunday the day before katie was supposed to depart chelsea katie and i hopped into chelsea's old dark green dodge caravan

it had much more legroom than my truck and headed to saint augustine about an hour and a half into our trip her van began to overheat knowing that it would be bad for the engine if we were to continue driving we pulled over on the side of the interstate popped the hood and took a peek steam rolled out from under the hood so the only thing we could do was wait for the vehicle to cool off before we checked it out 30 minutes later we took the cap off the radiator and sure enough there was

no liquid we desperately looked around chelsea's van for some water but there was nothing the only fluids we had were a few half bottles of two day old tea and a half bottle of old coca-cola nothing that we could use to put in the vehicle's radiator because of the sugar content we started wondering what we could do we were on the other side of the interstate we didn't even know where we were exactly and none of us could remember what the last mile marker was that we had passed now i know what you're thinking why

didn't we just look it up on our phones well this was before smartphones were widely popular and gps wasn't even available on them as we're scratching our brains trying to figure out her way out of the situation miracle upon miracle it started to rain hard it was as if a tropical storm was brewing for anyone who was ever visited or lived in florida summers here are usually very hot very humid and normally accompanied by rain we floridians tend to joke about the weather conditions here if you don't like the weather wait five minutes and it'll

change relieved for our good fortune chelsea katie and i frantically scrambled to find an empty cup and whatever other containers chelsea had lying around that we could catch rainwater in together we found about three or four red solo cups and strategically placed the cups in various areas two cups we placed under the far end corners of the back bumper because the rainwater was pooling and pouring onto the ground in those areas the other cups we placed on the hood of the vehicle we got in chelsea's van drenched from the rain and it stopped all that

effort and the rain just stopped we got out to see how much water we had gathered unfortunately collectively there were only perhaps two or three ounces of rainwater what to do this wouldn't be enough to make it get anywhere and we didn't know where the next exit was should we chance driving without water surely between the three of us we could come up with an idea ah i had an idea the divots on the side of the interstate designed to wake up drivers if they run them over the ones professionally known as drunk bumps there's

rain water in between them but how could we get them to use for the radiator well as we had the red solo cups but the cups alone wouldn't help get the water out of the divots chelsea had a straw and then we promptly began sucking rain water through the straw of the divots and spitting them into the cup nasty but necessary now this section of the i-10 is very wooded but by no means desolate there's plenty of traffic especially on a sunday so while i continued to suck rainwater around the divots chelsea kept an eye

on the traffic anytime a vehicle were coming chelsea would yell at me that i would need to move the placement of the divots was close to the lines on the side of the road that are there to guide drivers therefore i'm on my hands and knees sucking rain water through a straw my head approximately five or six inches into the road if i didn't move in time my head would have been a passerby's new tire decor picture this a 25 year old 5 foot tall blonde female on her knees on the side of a busy

interstate sucking rain water from a drunk bump while a 36 year old five foot nine inch tall blonde female is yelling at her to move each time she yelled i would bounce up and back still holding the red solo cup in my hand and destroy my mouth only to drop back to my knees and suck more rain water after 15 minutes of doing this we decided it was too risky to continue we took the one and a half to two ounces of water i had collected and risked my life for and combined it with the

rain water we had for a grand total of about three and a half to four ounces of water still not enough we really wanted to be independent women and figure out our own mess but we broke down and did what any damsel in distress would do i called my boyfriend now husband who was working in mississippi which was about 10 hours from where we were he couldn't help us directly but he was a mechanic and we thought that maybe he could give us some advice on what to do sadly he didn't answer so he called

another friend of ours tom who used to be a mechanic in the army fortunately for us tom answered his phone and we explained the circumstances he confirmed that the rainwater we collected wouldn't be enough and said that we could still use it if we needed to filter it through something first to prevent dirt or debris from getting into the radiator we were at a loss we don't have anything to stream water we explained sure you do use a sock chelsea and i didn't have any socks as we were wearing flip-flops and hadn't packed any sneakers

but katie had all of her luggage with her and thus had socks she graciously gave us her socks and we poured the almost four ounces of water through it into the radiator this clearly wasn't enough we don't know what else to do we need more water and all we have is two day old tea and hot coca-cola are there any puddles by the side of the road tom inquired no we already looked does anyone have to pee pee chelsea said with a chuckle yeah you can put urine in the radiator it's not ideal but it's

clean and won't mess up your car really urine chelsea and i looked at each other in unison katie can pay there is something i haven't told you yet katie was born with a birth defect in which she was born without external genitalia basically she was as smooth as a barbie doll in her nether region therefore she had a medically inserted port into her bladder from which she could urinate practically on demand the only thing katie had to do was attach the tube to her port the gnar troubles would be over life-saving golden liquid would flow

from this magnificent child we thank tom hung up the phone and smiled and started forcing katie to drink the two-day-old bottle of tea and coca-cola all the while katie complained how much she hasted the taste i can't say i blame her the tea had been sitting in a vehicle for two days and definitely wouldn't taste good a while katie sat drinking the nasty liquids she hooked up to her medical tubing with a bottle at the other end chelsea and i converted one of the red solo cups into a funnel and began grabbing the bottles of

urine to fill up the radiator at this point i must tell you something about myself i have an aversion to certain smells during being one of them the smell of pure concentrated urine i shudder to think of it so chelsea had to do the honours of pouring the urine into the radiator but i unfortunately was holding the bottles of warm liquid and handing them to her while she's pouring them into the radiator the smell hit me and i began to gag almost vomiting everywhere in between my gagging gasps and awful wretching i'm telling chelsea to

hurry while she's pouring the last bottle of pee katie is in the middle of filling up another one and a state police officer sees us on the side of the road and pulls up behind us chelsea's van door is open with katie urinating into a bottle via her medical tubing thoroughly embarrassed katie quickly slams the van door shut and tries to hide what she is doing like a druggie trying to hide dope from the cops i quickly kicked the previously used medical tubes that katie had discarded on the ground under the van as i was

afraid the officer would think we were doing something illegal after we explained to the officer what was going on of course leaving out the divot suckin and urine being poured into the radiator parts he informed us in a southern drawl there's an exit only a mile down the road and there's a gas station with the water hose we thanked him and with the urine-filled radiator proceeded to the gas station with the officer following us the entire five-minute drive to the gas station we felt like idiots because if we paid attention and known exactly where we

were we could have made it to the gas station without having to go through this entire ordeal but this is not where the story ends we filled up the radiator with water and knew we had to get chelsea's vehicle fixed or we wouldn't be able to make it anywhere let alone take katy to the airport next morning by this time it was six in the evening we decided to find a mechanic shop after asking the gas clerk where the nearest service station was we drove a few miles down the road only to find the place

it closed for the evening just our luck we sat in the parking lot not knowing what to do next we couldn't just drive around looking for a hotel even if we found one what would we do the next morning and how would we get katy to the airport about that time a worker leaving the service station sees us bob and asks us what our problem is we explained to him that we were from out of town and having car trouble and that we were trying to get katie to the airport to catch a flight bob

graciously decides to take a look we pop the hood sit in the van and watch through the gap between the windshield and hood of the van bob uses a hose to fill up the radiator with water now because of the urine concentration in the radiator the water begins to farm and look like a head of beer bob looks confused by this eyes widen and we give each other knowing glances we begin to quietly whisper to each other oh no peepee katie's face begins to blush from embarrassment baffled and unbeknownst to him bob proceeds to stick

his index and middle finger in the urinary froth swirl it around a few times and sniff it he does it a few times trying to figure out what it is at this point i slide to my knees on the floorboard in the passenger side buried my head in the seat and started laughing hysterically trying not to let bob hear me chelsea followed suit she was standing outside the driver door with her head buried in the driver's seat laughing we kept repeating over and over for tears and laughter katie's pee who was sitting behind us she

was mortified she kept telling us to shut up it was so embarrassing we were laughing so hard we could barely breathe with tears rolling down our face bob finally finished making the repairs turns out it was just a cracked hose leading from the radiator he didn't even charge us but we thanked him and gave bob all the cash we had which was about twenty dollars and we're on our way once the van was down the road chelsea and i both simultaneously bust out with the loudest belly laughter as we record the entire day's events we

made it to our hotel room in saint augustine although it was way too late to go on the ghost tour and we were able to take katie to jacksonville the next morning to catch her flight everything turned out well in the end but the entire experience is one that i'll never forget and continues to make me laugh to this day i guess the lesson from this event is to always carry extra water on your vehicle and in an emergency urim works i spent a year studying in mexico recently and as you do on exchange i

tried to travel as much as i could between the semester there is a big break and me and my buddy that i spent the most time with during the exchange decided we'd go on a longer backpacking trip through mexico together we had a rough plan of where to go and what we wanted to see but we hadn't even booked our flight back yet nor were we sure from where we would take it from we wanted to keep it flexible we had an amazing time and a few days before the trip ended we finally decided we

would take our flight from a city that was close and had really cheap flights but the city itself didn't really have anything to offer then on airbnb we found a room very close to the airport in a house with a pool and we thought we would just treat ourselves to a relaxed pool day at the end of the trip it turned out that the hosts were a family the husband was mexican and the wife was from europe and could even speak our native language so we arranged that we would take the bus to the airport

and they would pick us up from there when we finally arrived at the city it was already dark and the bus driver refused to drive us to the airport since it was not directly on his route so he just dropped us off on the highway that was already a pretty bad situation to be in from the beginning standing with our backpacks at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in a not so safe city in mexico but i called the hosts and sent them our gps location and they said no problem and

that they would come to us the husband came to fetch us and it was a very uncomfortable situation getting into the car with a stranger in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere it also didn't help that the guy looked like danny trejo without a moustache and as i tried to make small talk with him he only gave monosyllabic answers or straight out ignored me well he's just not a big talker i thought and hoped that soon we would arrive looking back i can see a million red flags but for some reason

at the time we just didn't see them or were too tired but we didn't really have any other choice than going with him anyway we arrived and that should have immediately set off alarms we were in the middle of nowhere there were fields with sheeps and goats all around us and a gravel road off the paved road and along that road there were about six huge mansions all with two meter walls around them topped with nato fence huge gates and at least two gigantic guard dogs per house we entered the house and were greeted by

the wife a bubbly middle-aged woman that was very talkative and pleasant she had actually cooked dinner for us and we ate while exchanging small talk the husband just sat there without a single word after dinner we more or less went directly to bed because it had gotten late and we were tired from a long day the next morning we saw that the weather was not too good so we decided to go into town and just do the few touristy things the place had to offer instead of spending time at the pool when we came back

it was already dark but we decided to jump into the pool anyway to cool off as it was very hot and humid the wife joined us at some point and my friend made the mistake to ask how they were able to afford such a house as it didn't really match the price range of jobs they were telling us that they were doing and she deflected a bit and added that her husband was very handy because he had grown up in the streets and basically built the house himself we realized that it maybe wasn't the best

topic of conversation and broke it off quickly that was the last day of our trip and we had our flight back home early next morning we thought we could have some weed that was left over that we brought along with us on the trip and it would be nice to smoke it out since it was our last night but as this was a family home and they had kids around we thought it would be better to speak to our hosts if they would mind so later in the evening we asked the wife if it was

okay if we smoked on the terrace which for some reason she found quite amusing and started to laugh she shouted to her husband who was lying on the couch watching tv my love the boys asked if it would be okay to smoke some weed what do you think he laughed but did not give an answer we looked at her with a dumbfounded expression and she told us sure just go ahead so he went to the terrace and started smoking our joint later they joined us and we had a chat and this is where things got

messed up they started asking us for some reason where we got the weed how much it was who we got it from and how much we would have to pay to get it back in europe they seemed way too interested in the weed and at that point the wife just nonchalantly reveals to us yes we thought about doing that for a source of income selling weed but too many people die doing that because the cartels don't like it actually my husband used to kill people for doing that i immediately felt sober did she just say

and as if he read my mind her husband added yes when i was about 16 i took care of a lot of people for the cartel for money he said it in a tone as if he just used to mow lawns when he was a teenager i still thought i must have misunderstood so i text my friend who was sitting across the table from me trying not to make eye contact because i knew we would just freak each other out he confirmed that we had indeed understood right we discussed what we should do and he

agreed that there's no immediate threat and that we should just stay we don't have anywhere else to go and it's already late but then things got crazier we tried to keep our composure and not completely freak out while still making conversation with our hosts the husband a few minutes later got up and went inside to fetch something he returned with a literal kilo of weed pressed into a brick he proceeded to break bits off roll them into a joint that would have probably knocked out snoop dogg it was about the size of my thumb and

i guess it had about two grams of weed in there of course he offered it to us but we politely declined saying that we were already pretty stoned he seemed a little offended but fortunately bought our excuse but it got worse a few minutes later we heard a couple of loud bangs the wife became a bit uneasy and asked what was that to which he answered calmly nine millimeters to confirm my suspicion that it had indeed been shots i would say between five or seven pretty quickly after one another the wife's nerves didn't come and

she asked again what do you think they're shooting at cows air people don't you think we should go inside but he shrugged it off and we stayed outside a few minutes later there were more shots and this time even closer the wife got even more upset and asked again should we maybe go in what do you think they're shooting at and i think i'll never forget when he answered in the calmest way imaginable no it's okay i didn't hear any screams yet i don't know why but the way he just calmly said that freaked me

out and is still making my heart beat whenever i think about it after that we quickly excused ourselves and went to our room when we could finally talk and basically both lost it and panicked what the hell were we supposed to do we were locked into a house with a sicario in the middle of nowhere and people are shooting outside we decided it was probably our best bet to stay because we thought we're his guests he's not gonna harm us hopefully and it's better to have walls dogs and him in between us and the people

shooting around so we basically barricaded ourselves in the room and didn't sleep a second until the morning when we noped out of there and went to the airport i was never so happy to be patted down at airport security in all my life i am an atheist but i'm open to the ideas of ghosts however i can't explain what happened summer of 2017 i'm a 19 year old male working in dubrovnik croatia as a booker for a tourist company and a bartender animator for the same company's pub crawl boat party my employer was paying me

and my three roommates accommodation but this cheap guy placed us in a village called us which was 21.3 kilometers away from dubrovnik this village had six houses not including our own and less than 15 people living there the biggest issue was that no bus passed there since it was atop a hill so you needed to hike around downhill to this other village where the bus stop was built the hike down to the village was 45 minutes half hour on the road and 15 minutes in the village and the bus ride to dubrovnik was another 45

minutes one night i was working alone and was coming back about two am from the boat party making my way back from the bus stop to our house i stepped onto the road on the left of the village with the bus stop and turned on my phone flashlight to light the road since there were no street lights this was vehicles only no pedestrian path and i turned on the flashlight since this area was known for venomous snakes and i wasn't willing to deal with that i'm halfway there when all of a sudden i heard a

howling behind me a wolf like hell first there were no wolves in this part of croatia and secondly my father is a vet and we've had a lot of dogs mostly german shepherds so i know what a big dog sounds like and this dog's voice was deep i slowly turn around and find this massive dog staring at me roughly 20 meters away growling barking and howling but not moving a muscle i followed his example and stood there for half a minute just analyzing the dog i had never seen this breed of dog it must have

been twice the size of a german shepherd let's say as large as a great dane but its head was definitely more similar to a doberman or belgian shepherd also it was completely black there was something completely off about this dog i'm not gonna say it had an evil aura since i don't believe in that sort of thing but i simply had the feeling that this was something of a demonic dog or something like that i can't explain it but for some reason i felt like the least of my worries should be this dog biting me

take note at this point we were standing in the middle of a road in the middle of the night there aren't a lot of cars that pass here at this hour but i wanted to get off the road either way after staring each other down for about a minute i slowly without turning make my way to the house after i walked about a hundred meters the dog stopped the growling turned away and left i picked up the pace and was just only a few minutes away from home when i heard a growl this time it

was meters away from me i turned around and the dog was less than three meters away if i had made a single step i could have reached out and petted him once again this dog was growling but not attacking me it did the regular attackment posture with its tail up legs widened ears up and teeth showing we stared at each other for another minute the dog didn't move a muscle when neither did i the beast was as large as me at least i'm weighing at least 60 kilograms and was definitely as large as a great

dane once again i slowly start making my way home backwards and the dog doesn't let up but it doesn't follow me i made my way home and the barking and howling stopped as i closed the door behind me i tell my roommates about it and they say they'd never heard anything even though the dog was relentlessly barking and howling just 200 meters away from the house while they were awake with no tv nor radio on in the run i asked the neighbors about the dog they said the same thing and added that no one in

the village owns a dog my roommates and i agreed that we should never let anyone go home alone at night because of this scenario we went on to investigating the surrounding area and never found anything the reason this baffles me so much is because the temperature there can reach over 40 celsius and that's in the shade there's no natural drinkable water source and there are no animals there except the snakes small lizards birds and insects the dog even if it were able to stand the heat could not feed and that large of a dog must

need a lot of food nor could it find water there was no way that dog could survive in the wild and there wasn't anyone nearby or in the next village who owned a large dog the neighbor was kind enough to ask around you see the dogs seem to have come from nowhere and we never have heard from it again which is probably for the best because of my general interest in horror and because they were appealing to me for a while i collected dolls it didn't matter what type i had some porcelain ones some pretty

looking horror movie level dolls that sort of stuff they were generally creepy to the majority of people and of course they're haunted was a joke that i often had but i never had an issue with any of them in fact i thought they were all comforting they all had names and i had a history of picking them out usually from antique shops but i had two or three from a house sale after the owner passed away on october 28 2017 my parents were out of town so my brother and i were home alone and my

dad sent me a picture of the coolest doll they found at this church thrift shop the doll was the epitome of everything i liked i loved clowns and circuses and the soft pastel colors were my absolute favorite so much so that i was writing a story at the time that reflected these interests the doll was perfect it felt like it was for me like in that coraline sort of way but instead of looking like me it was just something no one else could have wanted in all honesty i don't think my dad would buy it

but lo and behold when my parents returned i had a new doll to add to the collection this was the first doll that i hadn't bought on my own or personally picked out but i wouldn't expect it to matter all of this happened and i found out more things about the doll one being that my parents bought it and the cashier avoided touching it completely on top of that they said oh you're buying him honestly that wasn't uncommon i had been given a doll for free before because it was in such bad shape one man's

trash is another man's treasure having some adversion to a creepy doll was nothing new another interesting factoid about this was that my father who is very strongly a factual person and doesn't believe in ghosts even the slightest said he felt this doll before he saw it to say the least my mom wasn't happy he went through with the purchase when she found that out i remember vividly how excited i was to hold it for the first time i got no negative feelings from it this was just a doll i do remember that one of the

first things i noticed was his lack of eyes i figured it was an old one and the eyes had fallen out if anything it just made me like him more the creepy clown doll who i never named quickly found his spot on my shelf and all was well i don't even remember when i started to get a bad feeling it started minimally small things like feeling uncomfortable around them or that i didn't like them facing me when i was laying down at night i was never uncomfortable with my dolls and even when i didn't want

to admit it i wanted to be the weird girl who collected creepy dolls but all of a sudden being around them made me anxious i can only explain it as a deep vibrating in my chest that was nothing but discomfort to be in my room i ignored it for the longest time but being in that room alone was invoking an anxiety in me that i haven't felt before or since at some point i started having progressively worse nightmares a reoccurring theme that they were never far from real life in fact they usually took place exactly

where i was at the time whether it be my bed the couch they were where those nightmares would be so convincing you'd be unsure whether you had woken up or not i recalled two nightmares in particular one more i was laying in bed the room was dark but not so dark i couldn't see anything i was laying on my side facing away from the dolls and towards my closet the door slowly opened and there was a really big doll just standing inside of it bigger than people-sized it looked at me but only its eyes moved

and for a moment that's all i saw before i awoke this was my first experience with what i can only identify with sleep paralysis but i don't know if i was actually unable to move or not or if i was just too scared of what might happen if i did of course nothing was in my closet it sounds like a cheesy nightmare for sure but to me this was terrifying it made it hard to breathe and made my stomach ring the other nightmare was when i was taking a nap on the couch and in the

dream i woke up and went to my room when i went inside i looked at the dolls and they were moved then i woke up again and this repeated each time the dolls became more and more scattered laying on the floor or completely broken altogether something was moving them they couldn't have been an accidental nudge before i awoke it looked like something had angrily shoved them all off the shelf eventually i did wake up and the fear i felt as i slowly went to my room was unlike anything i had felt before i walked as

slowly as i possibly could as if that was going to help with anything i was just scared of the possibility that they might have been moved i knew that if i went in my room and the dolls were out of place something was really really screwed up i turned on every light i could i was visibly shaking with fear but nothing was moved it almost felt like i was being mocked the nightmares continued for a while with no attempts to be fixed if anything i just made them worse staying awake when i definitely shouldn't have

been avoiding getting my rem cycle because due to my research i found that's when you had nightmares which i didn't want i can't remember any other specific nightmare but a lot of it was just the fear and anxiety that accompanied being in my room being near the doll and how uncomfortable it made me my dad even said he went in my room to get a pair of headphones and his hip which has been broken since i was about eight or so was suddenly full of a shooting pain and when he left the room it stopped

it was those small strange encounters that made it so out of the ordinary i would do anything to get away from that room when i could and i didn't even realize it anymore it was my subconscious telling me that i needed to fear my own space it was my own subconscious telling me i wasn't safe there anymore and i usually try to listen to it after new years is when i put all the dolls away the night before i had decided to move all the dolls out of my room i hadn't focused on the fear

of any specific one so i just moved them all out that same night i awoke and moved them back into my room i don't know why i just felt like they needed to be back they couldn't be sitting out there i just needed to move them back in apparently that morning i had been acting strangely and eventually my mom and i moved the dolls into a box and into the attic after i broke down explaining to her how scared i had been feeling about those dolls lately my mum is a very spiritual person so she

was open to helping me put the dolls away i haven't had an issue since but i did do some more research on the doll a few months ago for a while i didn't like talking about them or even thinking about them so i hadn't even looked at pictures of them these were all things i found out quite a while later a few things for one i finally looked back on all of this and the one doll that did have eyes in the picture my father sent me which i needed to scroll through two years of

messages to find that doll he had an eye of course it could have fallen out during the drive i didn't doubt the possibility but i didn't push the doll's eye out they were gone as soon as i had him the first time maybe it's a coincidence or i'm thinking about it too much on top of that i couldn't find any other dolls that quite looked like it my girlfriend and i found a few online that looked similar but they were never an exact match the colors were all wrong the face shape wasn't quite the same

and i still haven't found any that do resemble the doll i even tried reaching out to the manufacturers that created dolls that i thought looked like it the most and assumed maybe there just weren't many pictures online but i never got a way of contact all i know is that it still deeply disturbs me when i think about that doll my family and i were coming back from spring break in florida i was in eighth grade then our flight coming home went from tampa to houston then houston to home we get to houston at 10

a.m on saturday and have a three-hour layover our flights get cancelled because of a massive storm that affected half the us continental's policy is to put passengers from cancelled flights on standby on a different flight well getting five people my family on the same flight when we all stranded is as you can imagine quite difficult we spent the entire afternoon at the airport then we're about to get on a plane but the flight was cancelled at the last minute because no pilots could get to the houston airport at the end of the month when the

pilots have used most of their flight hours so now we have two flights cancelled and are still on standby my dad gets angry and goes to a manager the manager gets us an actual seat on a plane that will take us some town in north carolina which we can get a plane home from this flight ends up getting cancelled around 9 pm on saturday now my mom is angry too she talks to a desk attendant and got belligerent they almost had to call the tsa on her because she was getting too upset my dad ends

up telling the attendant that he doesn't care where we have to go to get home we just want to leave houston this apparently meant a flight to seattle the opposite side of the country from our home and my dad flips out at this obvious stupidity so we're still on standby for a red-eye flight home it turns out there are three seats open one for my dad and two for my two younger sisters they go down the walkway only to have the flight attendant tell them the flight is full and we end up spending the night

at the airport at 10 am we finally got a flight home it was the same flight we were originally scheduled for except a day later all in all we spent 27 hours in the houston airport not knowing if he would even get a flight in time to make it home for school to start back up for our troubles we received a whopping 40 for five people mind you in houston airport food vouchers and two candy bars per person my parents have owned a tavern restaurant for 14 years in my small town my father is someone

who likes to start new projects and is a well-known person in our town one day he was contracted by the local realtor to offer my father a private showing of a historical hotel that had been up for sale this hotel had been around for decades and went from hotel to restaurant to bar with little success everyone who had owned it before put it back on the market within a year the bank had the title now and the realtor told my father if you don't buy it and fix it up they plan on ripping it down

a lot of people in the town thought the only person who could save it was my father so he bought the hotel my parents kept the downstairs bar and renovated the upstairs for apartments that is when odd things started to happen my father would come home almost every night with the camera footage to show my mum and i the footage always showed an empty pool room with a random floating orb around in the foreground my father is a believer in the paranormal whereas my mother is not so her and i both chalk it up to

dust and bugs although i will agree the way the orbs zigzagged around the room was weird it still seemed like nothing but a month goes by and my father comes home early on a saturday from working down at the hotel he walked into the house spooked something my father rarely is and he detailed about how he was behind the bar checking on receipts from the night before when he heard footsteps approaching from the hallway entrance we don't open on sundays but if someone my dad knew saw his truck in the parking lot they would just

walk in to see him so he didn't find the footsteps odd at all without looking up from his receipts he called out we aren't open but give me a second he heard the footsteps entering the bar room and takes six more steps towards him before stopping taking another second to finish going over last night's shift he looked up and peers around the woodish support beam and there's no one there he said he got out of there so fast he doesn't even remember locking the door behind him my mum obviously thinks he's crazy but i'm freaked

that place had always given me the creeps but my father confirming my fears made me never step foot in the building again two days ago my mum had an experience there that sent her out of the door faster than my dad she was in the bar room before opening hours collecting the shift money from the night before she wasn't in there for more than five minutes before she started to hear the faint sound of music coming from the entrance hallway she said she ignored it for a while assuming it was one of the tenants upstairs

after collecting the money she went to leave and the music started getting louder she said it sounded like old walt's music piano based and it sounded clear as day the further she walked down the hall towards the bathroom the more prominent the noise became as she stepped in front of the woman's restroom she said it sounded like someone was in there playing music on their phone by this time my mum was sufficiently freaked out and ran out of rational reasoning behind what it could be just as she was about to open the door she said

she heard the water turn on and off twice before running out of the building in a parking lot she called my dad to come down certain someone had been in there with her but when he came down to check it out no one was there now my mum is a believer and we are both properly terrified of that old creepy hotel i really hope there's nothing more to share with you about that oh and as an update the hotel burnt down a week ago the cause is still undetermined a number of years ago me and

my boyfriend went on holiday to mexico we were looking around the pyramids on one of our tours and as we're getting back to our hotel my boyfriend sneaks me off to this side away from the tour guide and shows me something he has in his pocket by his face he had been itching to tell me for a while i thought he'd been acting funny and that's when he pulls out a small rock i look at it without much interest and go back to hearing the tour guide when he pulls me over again and says listen

i got this from the ruins i give him a puzzled look why would you do that i say i thought it was really cool to have a piece of history with us forever we can put it in our house i give him a faint smile i wasn't really sure why he decided to take a random rock home but i didn't think it was such a terrible thing anyway that night i had the worst dreams ever i dreamt that i was seeing my closest friend abby with only one arm she was trying to tell me something

but it was like she was underwater frantically waving her arm and stump and i woke up in a cold sweat and it really freaked me out i called her up back home but she was still asleep figures i tried going back to sleep but there was a deep rooted sense of fear in my gut and something was preventing me from sleeping with ease i tossed and turned and then my boyfriend poked me in the side i instantly turned and asked him what was wrong he said he had a horrible dream that my friend abby only

had one arm this freaked me out a little i hadn't said anything out loud even when i tried attempting the call i didn't leave a voicemail or a message of any kind there was no way he could have known or heard me i brushed this off as a simple coincidence but for the next three nights i didn't sleep well and a general feeling of unease overcame me we had a few days left of the holiday still and one afternoon as i was sitting up in my room waiting for room service as i wasn't feeling all

that well did i see a shadow about half the size of a normal person dart from our bed to the bathroom i was reading a book at the time and i just about crap myself i don't move feeling completely vulnerable i just stare at the corner where it went towards the bathroom and listen and wait minutes pass and with trepidation i scoop myself off the bed and look past the corner there's nothing there no one to be alarmed about and i start to get scared that's when i see the rock my boyfriend took from the

ruins it's just on the glass table in front of the tv and i wonder all of this started when he brought the rock could it be i go downstairs to rejoin my boyfriend a little while later and start speaking to him about the wrong and asked him what made him want to bring it he confessed he just thought it was cool and would be something fun to show the lads i gave him a snort and went to speak with the bartender and get another drink we started a conversation and i steered it towards culture and

history and then finally towards the ruins i wanted to be subtle then i said that i heard of the people that took objects from ruins like rocks and stuff his demeanor changed from the happy pleasant tone we were conversing in prior and he looked at me and said did you take something from the ruins no i said lying through my teeth good they say that those who take from the sacred sites are haunted by allusions i asked him what this funny word meant and he said that in mexican culture they are these tiny dwarf-like spirit

things that can drag your soul to the ground and kill you if you're not careful that they are not to be trifled with i understood them to be somewhere between a ghost and a bogeyman but i took his warning very heavily as i had seen something half the size of a man earlier that day i told my boyfriend later in the evening that i was having misgivings about him having taken the rock and convinced him that the best thing to do would be to return it so he begrudgingly agreed and we took the same tour

again albeit with a different tour company to not be suspicious and he returned the rock exactly where he found it i'm happy to say the rest of our vacation was spirit free and the feeling of unease lifted whether the feeling was in my mind or not is another matter but i know that i saw that shadow dart from our bed to the bathroom and it's something i'll never forget don't go pilfering sacred sites people you never know if you might bring more home with you than you expected it was a quiet and damp night in

akita california in this small town not much happened low crime rates everyone knew everyone if there was a roaring party meant to happen every team in town knew and if someone wasn't from there we could smell it it was oddly dark tonight completely devoid of light my friends and i decided to play on our personal playground this morning and we've been out here ever since it looks and feels to be close to midnight i've always been good at telling time just by looking at the moon tonight was a full moon actually my favorite of the

bunch marie come on we're gonna play hide and seek my best friend yelled from across the field i didn't even notice that i had been staring at the moon for quite some time now well we had a hill that connected the playground in the woods and if you went into the woods you'd soon find yourself in your neighbor's backyard so the hill created a wall between us and the neighbors as kids we made a sort of dare to see who had the guts to jump the wall and into the playground i of course always won

well me and vanessa vanessa is my best friend we're closer than tom and jerry honestly coming i respond to vanessa then our friend jackson who's only about a year younger than us which makes him eight i take one last glance at the hill which is the way to climb the wall but my attention is immediately drawn to something much more peculiar i see someone's feet climbing the hill but i can't see their face due to a branch that drapes over the hill at first i think nothing of it people always climbed the hill as a

shortcut to get to our neighbors on the other side but for some reason this war was different i couldn't take my eyes off this strange figure by this time vanessa and jackson noticed my staring and came over to see what i was so intrigued with within a blink of an eye the human feet that were once visible are now pause almost on instinct i push vanessa and jackson behind me slowly backing away towards the entrance to the house guys run we all start sprinting towards the door i struggle for my keys but they drop to

the ground and i hear a gasp come from nessa and i look up to find a creature staring right at us i secretly slip the keys to vanessa while i stand in front of them in a protective stance he's big his dew coated fur is like coal drew escaped through his mean to sharp teeth disappearing into the prickly grass his eyes while they were gazing right at me it felt like he was taking a piece of my soul and they were blood red but to my own surprise i wasn't afraid i felt drawn to him

paralyzed almost like i never wanted to leave the spot i stood in but my protection for my safety of my friends got the better of me you want them you're gonna have to go through me i said confidently he saw the challenge in my eyes i half expected him to lunge at us but he never did he stood there his crimson orbs never leaving my brown ones he was drawn to me i could see it i could taste it i felt a tug on my backstreet boys shirt and before i knew it i was standing

facing vanessa and jackson in my own home they looked terrified to say the least everything was in complete silence now we were safe but in my mind i was still out there gazing into those eyes i wanted to see them again and i turned to look in the window but it was gone there was a sting in my heart a feeling of disappointment and rejection my friends and i ran upstairs to calm ourselves down we all got permission from our mums in order for them to sleep over until the morning the next day my mum

walked nessa and jax to their house and we never spoke of that night again ten years later and i still fall asleep in the cold of night dreaming about those crimson eyes i've had more than one and my fair share of paranormal experiences and came face to face with multiple weird things since then i'm now 20 and did some deep research as to what i saw the only thing that describes my experience to a t is the hellhound my family is from hungary we are currently residing in brazil rio de janeiro here crime is crazy

high i remember that mike pondsmith once called rio the most cyberpunk city in the world because he read about these cases where police were fighting some cartel that used rocket launchers against them i live in a pretty expensive neighborhood but i can hear someone shooting be it pistols revolver or rifle every day i've been in a war before and here it's very similar the police climb up the slums and leave the perished ones on the streets the cartels burn people alive and so on that's pretty much a lightweight situation in the city there are many

more aspects which i could touch that aren't pertinent to our story even though we dress fairly simply speak portuguese with no accent and don't go walking around one look at me or my father then you know we're foreigners so there was this one time he was driving a company car alone going to the docks to take a look at some containers with equipment that the company shipped to brazil because of some big negotiation when i say father dressed simply i mean really simply a short sleeved shirt linen pants and shoes and an old watch that

belonged to my grandfather and that's it no fancy suits or anything when it wasn't strictly necessary it just so happened he was driving in a dangerous area too many trees and all he fell for the oldest trick in the book a boy of 12 or 13 in the middle of the street lying down no space to turn so he stopped that's when five thugs came out of the bushes with guns i sincerely doubt it was a real pistol the way he described them they looked more like green horns in the business than anything else everyone

was nervous when they came into the car they looked into the glove compartment and found nothing and told my father to drive to the bank they all entered the bank with my father and made him empty something like a thousand euros which is money considering we aren't rich no idea why the guards didn't do anything but thinking better perhaps it was for the best if that pistol really was a pistol that would have turned into a standoff with the police in a hostage situation in rio usually turns into showdowns they made him drive to islam

and took the car father was lucky unscathed other than a bruise that the gun dude made by whipping his head moral of the story father went to the police and explained the situation police have some kind of veneration for foreigners and he was wounded the bank refunded the money and from the six as far as i know they didn't enjoy it for very long police got four of them including pistol dude and the boy as they weren't able to scrap the car for parts they had to burn it one was wounded and apprehended but passed

away like the other four he was a minor as were two others of the fallen another regular day in rio sadly i used to go out with a girl called cheryl cheryl was a very volatile girl we met through a dating app and she seemed nice at first but on the few dates we went on i wasn't getting that many sparks from her she was so loud and obnoxious and rude she was smoking hot which is why i put up with it at first but there was this one time that the waiter bought her a

pizza the pizza itself was half of what she ordered and i think it was missing one topping i can't remember what it was something random and strange like anchovies and she started screaming at the waiter telling him he was incompetent and useless and how dare he get her order wrong i found this incredibly offensive but again i was blinded in my youth and she was hot i wasn't getting the best vibes from her anymore and after having a fun time with her thought maybe it would be best to call it quits as i knew that

our relationship was doomed so i plan a romantic night in a camp i thought it would be nice she liked camping and she loved the idea i thought maybe the best thing to do was to bring one tent have a nice evening together and then the next morning let her down on the high of a nice date i realized that was foolish in any case she goes along with it and halfway through the evening of us just chilling and chatting by the campfire roasting s'mores and whatnot does she suddenly get a bit jumpy she looks

at me and as if she can detect what i was planning all along she goes you're not breaking up with me are you no babe i lie [ __ ] i think she's caught on to what i want to do i wasn't sure if i should just carry on the lie or be straight with her but i really didn't want this night to go to crap and wanted to follow my original plan so i said nah nah let's just enjoy the night she smiles weekly and goes okay we carry on our chatting and eating and

that's when we run out of beer she hasn't drunk anywhere near as much as i have and says i'll go get more beer honey i think we need a little bit more just to finish this night off and make it perfect she says it with a little twinkle in her eye and i unsure how to receive this just smile and nod hand to my car keys and she says she shouldn't be longer than 20 minutes i must let you know that where we were camping was not very far in it was about a five minute

walk to the car and a ten minute drive to the local gas station to pick up beer and to come back so she really shouldn't be that long i sit and wait looking through my phone 10 minutes pass no worries 20 minutes pass no worries half hour passes okay maybe there was a queue an hour passes and she doesn't come back so i start ringing her phone and she doesn't answer i carry on going both worried that she's hijacked my car and that maybe something's happened to her i keep calling to nothing and then after

about three hours this point it's approaching midnight and i'm about crapping myself does she send a solitary message i don't like the fact that you lied to me it's over that was it that was all she said i replied saying babe is everything all right what's going on i wait till about 1am until she replies we're over that was it i frantically texted her more and more during the night but she never responded [ __ ] i fell asleep and when i woke up my battery on my phone had completely drained given that i had

been calling and messaging her non-stop and i had foolishly left my portable battery pack and cable in the car [ __ ] i was so annoyed i was completely stranded admittedly not too far from civilization but stranded nonetheless by this crazy girl i knew where she lived so i knew where my car should be and that wasn't really an issue it was more getting out of here than what i was worried about so i begrudgingly pack up the tent put everything away and start hauling it to the end of the campsite when i get to

the parking lot i realize there's no way i can carry all of this very far and i start looking around to see if there's anyone who can possibly get me an uber to my home i live maybe 25 minutes away and i have about 15 bucks in my pocket and even if it's a bit more i'd hope they wouldn't mind to help a guy out but there's no one i start to grow desperate it's a little walk to the gas station i know it's going to be about two hours so i'm willing to take my

things i leave them in a bush and make my way it took a bit longer than i originally anticipated and when i finally made it to the gas station the gas station attendant wasn't very helpful and offered to call the cops to come and get me they took an hour to arrive and when one of them finally arrived he looked pissed that he had come to pick up some stranger he was annoyed said we want his taxi service and thankfully let me use his phone to get an uber into town i got to my house

and then realized my mistake my house keys were on my car keys which cheryl still had i then walked an hour to her house banged on her door and she wasn't there i was furious she'd left me stranded with nowhere to go and with no explanation as to why i waited outside her door for a five hours straight and hid behind one of her bins when i saw her pull up in my car with another guy when she starts walking with him hand in hand towards her house i jump out and ask what the hell

is going on she looks at me in a very nonchalant way and says go inside dave i'll be there in a minute unlocks her house door and he goes in i confront her and say that if she doesn't give me my car keys right now and an explanation i'm calling the cops she sighs and with a little smile goes i'm not stupid i know you wanted to break up with me so i had to teach you a lesson this is what you get for pulling me along and lying to me in a way at the

time i felt like she was right so i just snatched my keys out of her hand unscrewed her two house door keys threw them at her and without another word peeled off back home i was absolutely livid that girl absolutely wasted my day and left me stranded anything could have happened to me what a horrible horrible person admittedly my intentions weren't all that good trying to give her a nice night before breaking up with her but even so i don't feel like i deserved that in any case cheryl i've moved on now and hope to

never meet you again i used to do contract security at the emergency room entrance of a downtown hospital the graveyard shift i would stand at a kiosk right inside the entrance and monitor access across from the kiosk were two sets of elevators the first elevator on the right could only go up to the third floor the two floors above us were administrative floors offices only no patient areas so on my shift floors two and three were closed for the night the elevator on the left i had to be especially trained to use it serviced the

same floors as the elevator with the addition of a helipad on the roof this is where life flight helicopters would land with life or death patients that had to be rushed to the emergency room security would be notified when a life flight was on route and we take the elevator use our access key and go to the helipad on the roof floor we locked the elevator in the open position so no one could summon it from another floor the elevator would remain open and in position until the life flight crew had the patient inside and

hit the floor 1 button security was not needed to assist the life flight crew we would take the stairs down as soon as we had the elevator prepped on the helipad it had been explained to me that the process was important and that people had died on the pad and even during the elevator ride down i'm not a ghost person i've never had haunting experiences but that elevator behaved very oddly every night i worked and the right side of the elevator that only serviced three floors would rest on the first floor since it served floors

that were not used during my shift it just sat there on the main floor i was required to check the second and third floors once a night whenever i went to the elevators i never had to wait for the right elevator to get to my floor because it was already there the left elevator that serviced the helipad and floors two and three had a mind of its own all night it would go up and down from floor to floor with no one inside you could watch the floor indicator for it it bounced from floor to

floor or night and it would lower to the main floor open with no one inside clothes and then go to floors two three or five the helipad all this activity with no one inside it the custodial crew was done on floors two and three by 10 p.m before my shift even started there was no one around to use those elevators on my shift on my nightly checks of the floors i never saw anyone up there the lights were even off not only that but the left elevator would go all the way to the helipad by

itself you have to have an access key to even have that option the other guards had no explanation the hospital employees obviously didn't want to be seen as believing in a haunted elevator and would change the subject or brush it off when i asked why the lift was so weird but i would watch from the security kiosk all night as that thing would go from floor to floor or shift it would open up on the first floor across from me and it was always empty the other relator that only went to floors two or three

never moved unless another security officer used it my dad had a sister who i never met she passed away before i was born it's a very touchy subject as you can imagine within the family but one time my grandma was getting drunk and brought up this story on her own i asked my father about it after and he begrudgingly nodded his head and said that we think it's true but to not speak of it the tale goes like this apparently many years ago my father and his sister were out on the land as they lived

on a ranch they were doing their duties and his sister chose to stay out a little longer to finish off some work she was doing she must have been around 17 at the time my father a bit younger went in because he was hungry and she never returned after about two hours my dad was thinking it was weird that she hadn't come in yet so he went out looking for her and when he found her she was crying by a tree the sun had almost set and it was dark and he was asking her what

was going on she explained that just as she was finishing trimming some bushes did she look over to come into the house and put the shears away when she saw this huge black dog with red eyes she said the dog easily came up to her chest and that upon seeing it she froze in fear the dog glared at her without a sound for a few more seconds and just like that evaporated into a smoky mist his sister couldn't take it and she freaked out ran and hid behind a tree not knowing what to do and

too scared to go home as that would mean passing where it had disappeared my dad told her not to worry that it was probably her imagination but deep down he didn't think she could imagine something so vivid that would terrify her so much he brought her in and they tried to forget about it but apparently his sister liked to share and told my grandmother and my grandfather what she'd seen my grandfather being a very stern man said that it was nonsense that she obviously imagined it and to put it at the back of her mind

and not give it any more thought my grandmother however was a bit more compassionate and although she had a hard time believing her that some strange dog appeared out of the mist and then vanished again she did her best to make her feel better not three days passed and again my dad's sister was out on the land doing some yard work my dad was right next to her they were chatting and having a good time when all of a sudden she seizes up my dad looks at her with a start and in the distance he

sees the very same black dog she is frozen in fear and as the dog disappears she lets out a horrific yell and then her face contorts in agony my dad doesn't really know how to describe it but her eyes nearly rolled to the back of her head and she collapsed they rushed her to hospital and they found out that apparently she had an unknown aneurysm in her head and it had burst killing her they don't know if the sight of the black dog was enough to cause it to burst from the stress or perhaps it

was an omen of her life coming to an end as you can imagine it took a very heavy toll on the family my grandfather started drinking again ended up going to rehab and never ended up leaving as he took his own life from the grief my grandmother is still about and doesn't often talk about her daughter but i know she still hurts from it my father has never let us have a dog for obvious reasons we were in my daughter's room going through the whole bedtime routine my wife sat on the bed brushing my daughter's

hair to put it in a braid while i stood around waiting to tuck her in and say goodnight while waiting i commented on a collectible 2010 holiday barbie doll still boxed that was given to my daughter by our neighbor i was curious to know if she had taken it out of the box and my wife replied that yes she did because dolls are meant to be played with to that comment i mentioned to my daughter that both her mother and i had collectible dolls tucked away in our closet each of them still in boxes and

never opened these were a bruce lee action figure under jesse the governor ventura doll and a 95th anniversary collectible raggedy handle as i said this my wife quickly corrected me and said no that it's a cabbage patch doll that she owned and that one of them would tan well having just reorganized my closet one day before i was pretty sure it was a raggedy handle but my wife swore up and down that she never owned such a thing curiosity got the best of me and so i pulled the box out of the closet and brought

it back to the room to show her as i held it up my wife stopped brushing my daughter's hair and slowly shook her head and trying not to scare my daughter mouthed the words it's not mine i've never seen it before with a very serious look in her eyes my wife has an incredibly sharp mind and a memory that sometimes terrifies me so i know she wasn't trying to pull my leg i asked if it might have been given to her by her sister but a quick phone call confirmed that her sister had not she

once did however give her a collectible mary poppins doll which both of them remembered so here we are now in our home a doll for which we have no idea where it came from i thought i had chills already running down my spine at that point until i realized the doll was coincidentally the same as annabelle the haunted doll which spawned horror movies and are now kept in the ed and lorraine warren the cult museum it's probably nothing but seriously we freaked out my wife does have a cabbage patch kid tucked away in another closet

but it's not this one day overs the rooms where people stayed more than one night at the end of the hall there were four rooms tucked into almost a corner you can't really see the doors to these rooms until you reach the end of the hallway there's two rooms on one side two on the other and i was grabbing all the supplies i needed to do the stay over when a man came out of one of the four rooms and asked how to work the coffee machine he was about three times the size of me

six foot three three hundred pounds where i'm five foot three and 125 didn't seem like a big deal or weird i'm pretty friendly and outgoing and can make little small talk i went back to cleaning the other room and minding my business when he comes out to tell me again his room didn't need attending to i figured i was glad that it was another room i could check off my list my manager had come down the hall to strip a room that had checked out and i turned down the hall to go strip another room

when the man came out of his room again i assumed he had another question about something in the room so i turned around to speak to him he asked aren't you scared to do your job not really since i rarely have any interaction with guests as a housekeeper i say he then went on to say that i was awfully pretty and needed mesa or weapon to protect myself and i showed him my car keys that i kept in my pocket for that exact reason the conversation wasn't really off-putting but when i realized what he was

getting at my body flooded with anxiety he then said i don't think car keys are enough you're small and could get easily snatched up and in that moment i went into the room my manager was in across the hall and waited for him to go back into his room before carrying on with my job as normally as possible that experience really shook me up and i sat in another room down the hall for a half hour crying and having an anxiety attack because i thought this man would try and find me in whichever room i

was in and take me to the man who stayed in room 131 let's not meet i'm 24. this happened two years ago on memorial day weekend after a solid weekend of partying in las vegas two of my friends and i all dudes of the same age had to endure the horrific drive from las vegas to los angeles if you haven't done this drive before it is typically a five-hour stint through the desert but on a busy weekend it can be extended to seven to nine hours and a hungover from a three-day binge is always painful

our other friends that were flying out talked dustin to staying for the better part of the day to wait out the traffic we had a buffet and lazed around the pool a bit more hoping to recover and decided to leave at 3 p.m perfect we'll be home by eight we were wrong two accidents and a billion people on the road impeded our progress greatly it took us six hours to get to barstow which is typically only the first two hours we filled up with gas and coffee and hit the road again this stop took an

hour due to the mass amount of people passing through the area back on the road at 10 more traffic a wrong turn and it's now 2 30 and we were passing through santa clarita about 45 minutes from our destination then we heard a horrific noise it sounded like a piece of steel ripping like paper then exploding but i managed to pull the car off the freeway and onto the side street i called the aaa and they said it should be about half hour crap situation but half hour's not that bad the neighborhood we were in

was alright multiple gated communities but the road we were on was desolate and a bit of an artery between communities we all napped and about 15 minutes later i was awoken by a car driving in the opposite direction it was an suv maybe a toyota 4runner with four people in it i couldn't tell what they looked like but they were looking at us a few minutes after i get a call from the aaa apparently when i called they thought i said santa clara which is six hours north in the san francisco area it would be

another hour before they could reroute someone to us we go back to sleep and roughly half hour later that same suv drives by our side of the road going much faster this time as they pass and they flash lights into our car i'm not sure if it was to scare us or to see if anyone was inside as the windows were fogged but my red flags went up for safety reasons i always kept a bowie knife and a miniature bat under my seat i know it's childish but it makes me feel safe so i took

the knife and handed my buddy in the passenger seat the bat he was asleep and didn't understand what was going on so i briefed him but he passed out and it was just me again a quarter of an hour passes and the suv pulls up about 300 feet behind my car bright sun and i officially begin to freak out i wake up my two friends without them moving their heads so team creepers can't see and we begin forming strategies but we are genuinely scared since we are stranded and outnumbered the suv turns off the lights

and i can see them passionately talking about something so we sit there freaking the hell out and look at them just waiting to see what they're gonna do and i decide to call the ea again and they give me an eta of 15 minutes the passenger and driver door both open and two linebacker-sized men get out hoods up all in black the driver leans against the grill of the car and smokes a cigarette staring at us the passenger pisses on the sidewalk i felt like they were playing mind games maybe they saw the light from

my cell phone it felt like the passenger was urinating forever the three of us are just sitting there stewing in our own fear the passenger zips up and talks with the driver the other two doors open revealing one small person with a beanie poured low and another large hooded man walked out the four begin to talk and walk casually towards my car i pull my knife ready my buddy has his bat and my other friend pops up his fists like a fighting irishman they get close then stop about halfway in the distance were the lights

of the tow truck i look back and see them get back in the suv as the tow truck operator gets out we get out and he starts his business and the suv speeds off fairly quickly we didn't get home till 5am i'm not entirely sure what they were planning i am assuming they thought the car was abandoned and wanted to take it or something more sinister if they knew that we were in there my friend in the backseat has long hair so maybe they thought he was a girl i'll never know but that was an

intense night my brother used to live with our aunt for a few years my youngest cousin who was a little girl back then was made to share a room with her older sister so my brother could use her my little cousin's room was filled with dolls of all shapes and sizes as in the only space in the room without one was the bed and a few steps leading to it as expected this creeped up my brother all the time and he would take his time to reposition them in a way that their backs faced him

instead but without fail every time he woke up all the dolls were facing him again he said there were even three or four dolls that always always ended up sitting beside his head even if he had put them away in the cabinet or locked them out of the room at first we tried brushing it off by saying it couldn't have been our cousins playing a prank on him until it went on even when he was alone in the house for days he got so used to it it didn't bother him anymore after a few months

as it happened to him until the day he moved out two years later my aunt and cousin said they'd never experienced anything remotely weird in that room so it was clear they had a preference for my brother [Music] i was 12 years old when this happened i didn't believe in the paranormal or anything until this night at the time i was living with my aunt and her kids in jacksonville florida there was this huge rainstorm going on outside that night and at 3 am all the power in the building completely went out i wasn't afraid

of the dark so i slept in the dark but i was awoken by the sound of my cousin who was screaming for me and my sister to wake up and come downstairs being the kid i was i didn't understand why he would be screaming for us like he was and i was four to five months older than him i didn't fear anything but he always acted tough my cousin was around six foot tall and was screaming like a scared child it would have made sense if me and my sister were scared because we both lived

in a state we didn't know i slowly started waking up aggravated by being awoken by someone screaming downstairs i could slowly hear the front door open i knew my cousin was standing in the doorway by how close he was to the stairs me and my sister share a room where our room is close to the stairs that leads to the first floor of the apartment i rolled over from facing the wall to where i would be fixing the closet that has sliding doors to access the clothes i peek out the window to see it's raining

so hard the world looks grey i hate the sound of thunder and i fear seeing lightning but i love the sound of rain it always has a way of calming me when i was either stressed or waking from a nightmare i used to have horrible dreams of being attacked by people with no faces not a blank face without eyes or mouth but the face is completely black with no eyes no mouth no nothing just emptiness it was always scary to have the dreams that i'd wake up crying i stare out the window just thinking of

how i wished i wasn't there and glanced towards the dresser with the clock showing 305 am when something caught my eye i glanced towards the closet where i saw a black shadow figure standing in the doorway it stood as tall as the door and i noticed it had red glowing eyes i admit i could have imagined it i do have mental health issues from abuse sustained by family and ptsd psychosis and borderline personality disorder as well as hallucinations so i could just easily conclude that it was all in my head and the hallucination episode was

making me feel uneasy but then i realized i couldn't be imagining because when i imagined it usually only stayed for a second or two but this thing persisted and was still standing in the doorway i was just laying in my bed staring at this creature just thinking why it was here and what did it want i was frozen in my place by fear i tried collecting enough courage to ask what did it want but before i could raise my hand towards its face where a mouth would be but like i said the only thing there

were its eyes this creature was telling me not to speak could it read minds did it know what i was gonna ask but my mind was set i wanted to know if i was going to die before i could ask this creature it shook its head and i relaxed but not long after it disappeared i laid in bed thinking almost on the verge of tears you could call me weird but this situation made me sad i couldn't help but think that death himself had wanted me but then probably didn't because no one wanted me that's

how i felt at the time i got out of bed after collecting my tears telling myself who cared who wanted me or not i'd prove it to everyone i didn't need them i wiped my tears woke up my sister telling her to come on and that our cousin was scared after we leave our room i look back to see if maybe it was behind us but the room was empty when i went downstairs i asked my cousin if he saw anyone in the house and to my surprise he just said he didn't like the dark

we went to our neighbors until our aunt's mom came back home about 6 00 am she comes home to find the apartment empty and find us at the neighbors she didn't want me hanging out with them because she didn't like me making friends a week later i was running down the stairs with my little sister behind me rushing to the bathroom to take a shower and get ready for school we did this every day racing to the bathroom to see whoever made it first would get the shower out of nowhere this huge black dog with

red eyes jumped out at me with its huge scary teeth showing an open moor i fell backward and landed on my butt causing my sister to stop laughing and ask what was wrong i asked her if she saw the dog that jumped on me and she looked puzzled and surprised she didn't see the dog how didn't she see it it was clearly in front of me and i felt the dog i touched its fur when it jumped at me it felt so real it scared me thinking she didn't see it she looked at me as

if i were losing my mind my sister got the shower first she won the game it was only fair i couldn't stop thinking about the dog when i got to school i rushed to the library before it started to see what the dog was the searchers i could look at said it was a hellhound a very scary dog and nothing that you ever want to encounter and that people say that they are ancient demons that serve as the heralds of death according to the legends seeing one leads to a person's end sometimes it's said to

be once other times it requires three sightings for the curse to take effect and for the victim to fall these factors make the hellhound a feared symbol worthy of the name bearer of death after reading the article of the creature i feared i was going to meet my end seeing the death guy i told myself i didn't want to die anymore and then the hellhound who knows all that i know is that i'm afraid of black dogs so a little back story my sister of 21 and i were road tripping to the west coast to

move there and we stopped at a hotel for one night to split up a two-day drive in mid-june we also brought along her super friendly but intimidating black britney slash pitbull mix pup i should also mention i'm a 17 year old feminine looking guy and often get mistaken for a girl due to my figure now onto the story we got to this hotel around 7pm checked in and got our room on the second floor everything was going great but we were hungry from the trip since her back was hurting from the drive i reluctantly went

down about two blocks to get some sandwiches the walk goes fine there and back and as soon as i'm back at the building i'm hungry and ready to eat much to my dismay my sister informs me that she forgot some things in her car and wants me to go fetch them i take her key run to the car it only takes about five minutes and i'm back at the hotel again now this hotel is one of those where the walkway to the rooms is an open balcony for reference and the elevator is only accessible with

a key card so i walk up to it and as i do i see these two men seemingly about to get up to their car or so i thought one had his hand on the door but upon seeing me they both head towards the elevator i've heard enough of these stories to know where this situation is heading i decide that if i walk away that would just invite them to follow me in a city i've never been to before so i use my key card and press the elevator button and get in and unsurprisingly they

do too now what i think to myself and suddenly remember that my sister has pepper spray on her lanyard with her keys i grasp it firmly in my hand and have my finger resting on the top prepared to spray now thankfully our room is a turn to the right and then a straight shot from the elevator i get off and try to let them get off first so they aren't behind me but they insist i go first so now i'm fast walking to our room key card in one hand pepper spray in the other ready

to slam the door when i get in i open the door and these dudes are right behind me about five inches away probably ready to grab i open the door and say hey i have the stuff from the car making sure they heard me loud and clear and pushing past the dog into the room i close it and then they see me looking at my sister who's on her bed facing the door they walk past our room to the right where there is only one other room i give my sister a look like you won't

believe these creeps and lock the door behind me i think had they not seen my sister and her dog they most likely would have followed me into the room and done whose nose what my sister also says she saw them walk past our window and look in because our blinds weren't closed all the way we think we heard them talking to a woman in the hall and heard them say goodbye so they probably aren't even staying here creepy dudes let's not meet again last night my sister who lives three hours away from me had somewhat

of an emergency and asked if i could come stay the night with her i packed my bags right away and headed there at 9am as i was about an hour away from my apartment i realized that my car wasn't going to make it the temperature gauge was rising and i didn't want to risk it overheating in the middle of nowhere so i turn around and when i'm about 15 minutes from home my car overheats at this point it's about 11 30 pm i pulled off an exit and waited for it to cool down then got

back on the highway but it did it again so i pulled off onto the side of the highway as i'm waiting for it to cool down i tried to start it again and it wouldn't start at all i'm a 23 year old female all alone new to town and my boyfriend was out of town so i start to panic a little because i've read way too many reddit stories i managed to calm down and call my stepdad to let him know where i was and that i was going to call a tow truck as i

was on the phone with him two cars pull off the highway right in front of me and then one right behind me at first i thought they were going to help me or that they were all traveling together and needed to stop but it was really weird to me that they all pulled off at the same spot i did with one pulling behind me and they all sat in their cars for what felt like forever but was probably no more than three minutes then a man got out of one car the one in front of

me and began to walk towards my car he came to the passenger side door stopped for a second then walked to the car behind me this whole time i'm describing what he looks like to my dad just in case he was then in the car for a while walked back towards my car and as he was passing my window hit it with his knuckle knocking once and he kept walking then he sat there for a while and then all left at once i'm realizing as i'm saying this it doesn't seem that weird but being alone

on the highway with three cars pulled off in front of you and behind you is a suffocating feeling and i really don't understand why he felt the need to knock on my window as he was walking by i'm not gonna lie it made me cry a little because it was so bizarre i'm hoping they just pulled off to talk to each other and i was just overreacting but please let's not meet my mum has had many many strange and paranormal encounters in her life including meeting her own doppelganger as a child she had many stories

to tell me and i've grown up hearing about them the flying cups in her bedroom the vacuum cleaner running by itself when she was a little girl however there's one that still baffles me to this day and i want to know if anyone else has ever seen this creature or knows anything about it years ago before i was born my mom had been staying at her best friend's house for a while her best friend was married so her husband was also there but he and my mum barely interacted with each other when she was there

he always kept to himself and still does today as they're still friends as my mum put it she was parked in her friend's driveway waiting for her friend to come out so that they could leave my mum was alone in the car fiddling around with some buttons and such and she glanced in her rearview mirror what she saw horrified her in the rearview mirror she saw a large black dog walking on its hind legs now i'm a very skeptical person of everything so i asked my mum if it was just a random big old dog

standing on its back legs and using the car for support she insists that no it was walking like a human did it did not touch her car it walked along the sidewalk like a human would it did not once get on all fours and that it walked on two legs she swears this and i can see by the genuine terror in her eyes that she's telling the truth i asked if she saw the legs she said as soon as she looked behind her it had vanished into thin air gone like a ghost when she looked

around there wasn't a single dog or person in sight that's not the scariest part for me at least my mum visited her best friend again not just the house she hates the house now a few years ago and the subject of spirits came up my mum told her exactly what she told me about the dog or whatever it was walking behind the car in her driveway because she never told anyone her best friend looked at her pale in the face and said my husband told me he saw that too it walked on two legs two

people saw the exact same creature in the same spot at different times i've heard legends of dogs and how you can see it so many times as a signal of fate or fortune but what was that have any of you ever seen anything like it i'm terrified because i passed my driving test recently and if i see this thing or anything remotely unnatural in my rear view mirror i think i'll have a heart attack when i was younger my family used to take vacations being that my cousins and i were a similar age this happened

in 2008 when we went to universal studios in orlando i am the youngest of nine cousins including all my sisters all of whom are girls except me as i said our ages were close and only ranged from myself at 10 to my eldest cousin of 15. at this age in my life i remember being particularly paranoid whether it had been a scary movie or two learning about things in school slash news so let's just say my perspective and reactions may have been skewed by this so my big italian family was staying at the hard rock

wherein there are restaurants bars pools and shops this one night the parent probably half in the bag gave us money to go to the ice cream parlor within the resort stay together they said i immediately knew the moment i saw him i still remember his face to this day he was the spitting image from the killer and disturbia and this ticked me off from the get-go i remember being online with my cousin hanging on the end and i was locked onto this guy i may be the youngest but i also hold the responsibility being the

only boy i saw him make an inaudible comment to one of my cousins before ordering his ice cream keep in mind this place is packed a lot going on kids running around maps open distractions everywhere but my eyes are locked next i see him clearly lean back and a little over to take a look at two of my cousin's legs we're talking 13 year old girls here and as i mentioned the place is packed the line is long and people are shoulder to shoulder and that's when things got crazy as he was paying with his

left hand his right was sort of hovering over my cousin's butt but barely touching with everything going on they didn't notice a thing i turned to my sister and told her what was up two heads is better than one plus i wanted to make sure i wasn't just seeing things her face immediately turned grotesque when he saw what i was talking about two of my cousins having already ordered ice cream my sister told us that she was getting a call talking 15 year old pre-smartphone era only for emergency flip phones so it would really only

be our parents and that we needed to get out the line good quick thinking on her part the two who ordered being understandably furious my cousin sadly walks past all the eager ice cream customers when i asked my cousin what the man said to her she said he asked if we were together for a minute there and sometimes even to this day i ponder whether or not i made a scene over nothing perhaps only because he resembled someone bad in a movie but his cold long hard stare of me as i departed the parser with

my cousins safe will always chill me to the bone back in 2004 i was stationed in japan with the us military i flew home to visit my family for christmas and then flew back to japan the problem was my plane leaving to the u.s got delayed for three hours while they resolved an issue with one of the engines so i ended up missing my connecting flight from tokyo to my japanese city no problem i thought i'll hop on the shinkansen and i'll be home in a few hours by the time i made it to tokyo

station though the last shinkansen had left they were closing the station for the night and i figured i could just chill on a bench until the morning but they went through the entire station chewing everyone out they closed the giant metal gate after we were all outside so now i'm stranded on the streets of tokyo a city i'm unfamiliar with in the middle of winter with nothing to do until 4am when the station reopens i walk to a few nearby hotels but they told me to get lost in so many words so i finally gave

up perched myself on a street corner near the train station and pulled out a book and decided to read to stay awake all night i wasn't about to sleep on a street corner while carrying a backpack and suitcase in an unfamiliar city then the craziest thing happened homeless people appeared out of nowhere they pulled up rooms and started cleaning up the street in the course of an hour all the litter was gone and the streets were dust and dirt free they made the place shine and then a bunch of them pulled out cardboard shelters folded

up behind vending machines and made their beds two of the homeless guys approached the vending machine in front of me one of them put out a small change purse and retrieved a few coins from it he bought a can of hot coffee from the vending machine as japanese vending machines have both hot and cold drinks and warmed his hands with it he'd offered it to his friend as well who warmed his hands and then they offered it to me i politely declined knowing i would be back to my comfortable life the next day i would

stand a chilly winter night in the streets and i didn't want to take their only source of heat away in the early hours of the morning the homeless folk all folded up their cardboard beds tucked them away behind the vending machines and they all wandered off leaving no visible trace of their existence behind at four am the gate opened and i rushed to the ticket counter i bought a ticket for the 9 am shinkansen and patiently waited on the platform for my train by noon i was rolling into my local station and that's the story

of how i got stranded on the streets of tokyo for the night when i was between the ages of seven and ten i lived in a house in a small town in missouri nothing was abnormal about the house i mean normal house settling noises which would cause me to have nightmares frequently until this incident that i will begin diving into the only weird thing that ever happened was our keys going missing when you walk in the door there was a giant metalwood stove that we put our keys on they went missing for weeks we destroyed

the house looking for them and one day they just reappeared and nobody knew where they came from anyway there was a doll back when i was younger called an amazing grace doll she had holes in her ears so she could hear you and would turn her head where the noise came from and would say mama well i loved this doll i explicitly remember cleaning my room and propping grace against the wall so she was sitting up i laid down on my bed to read when i heard the clicking she would make when her head turned

so i looked up and stared at her and got the normal mama she would say after she heard something so i tossed my book down and picked her up to make sure she was turned off she was i flipped a switch and then flipped it back to off thinking that it was a normal malfunction i sit her back in a spot and plop down to continue reading when i started she said mama again so i went and took all her batteries out i was over it at this point so i just tossed her on the

ground and went back to my spot she started clicking quicker and her head was moving back and forth and she just kept repeating mama i took off i ran to get my dad and he saw it and decided that we would burn the little doll we did but nothing happened again to my recollection but my nightmares got worse and this was when i was still religious so i would put all my stuffed animals around me in a circle to protect me i had a turquoise dream catcher and would pray every night for the nightmare to

go away they didn't until we moved they weren't every day but definitely several times a week in 2013 i was homeless and living in the local women's shelter the exclusive director of the place is a man called dan he was shady as hell with the creepiest sleaziest aura around him and a long history of abusive behavior towards the shelter's clients but that's an entirely different story most nights dan left the shelter by 5 pm and he was virtually never to be found on the grounds past seven but one october night he was still kicking around

at nine a few of the other ladies and i were sitting outside just chatting when we saw him pull his car out of the back driveway and take off down the street like his arse was on fire his back tires spun out in the gravel before getting purchased and that's how fast he accelerated and just as his car disappeared i saw an absolutely enormous black dog or wolf-like creature come leaping through the brick wall where his office was it took three long strides across the front yard left towards the road dan had taken off down

and vanished into smoke everyone was quiet for a moment until i asked if anyone else had just seen that one of the ladies said yep and we hurried around to get back inside i'd never felt so deeply and viscerally unnerved than i did that night i draped so many blankets over my bunk that it was like a little cave just trying to feel secure enough to sleep fast forward to december we had a new lady in our room and was staying up past light sound to work on some small christmas gifts and while we were

working we were quietly telling ghost stories i happened to mention what happened in october and once i'd finished two things happened all at once the temperature in the room plunged it was a little chilly back there because dam was too cheap to turn up the heat or even turn it on sometimes but this was cold like someone had opened the window and the baby in the room next door who'd been dead asleep let out the most blood curdling shriek i'd ever heard from her like someone was hurting her and started screaming and crying so loud

she woke up everyone in the woman's shelter to this day i don't know what exactly i saw but i've been left with the distinct feeling that it was evil and attached to dan in some way or another and you know it was always a joke that he'd sold his soul to the devil to be as untouchable as he was this happened at the last house my mother's sister and i were renting in the house had changed hands every year or so and it belonged to a renting company rather than a regular landlord so we didn't

have any information about the previous residence of the place but it was in a decent neighborhood so we didn't think it necessary to check about eight months after moving in last january i was playing video games in the office on a saturday night at around midnight or so when i was startled by an aggressively loud banging on the front door the wrapping was so hard it sounded like the door would fly off at its hinges and it echoed through the entire house loud enough that my mother could hear it in her room with the door

closed and with music on now we all know that it's never a good thing when someone bangs on your door that hard in the middle of the night but that didn't stop my mother from racing downstairs and beating me to the door to see what the hell was happening and answered it by pulling the blinds from the windows next to the door revealing a man who looked to be in his mid-20s standing very close to it when she asked him what was going on he replied he was looking for someone named jamal nobody knew a

guy with that name so she told them nobody was there the guy kept persisting and my mother continued to insist that the person they were looking for didn't live here after a few minutes my mother would later tell me that there was another guy who appeared from the left coming around from the side of the house where some windows were and it became very clear he was checking for jamal in case my mother was lying or something thankfully they eventually left the next morning i took out our car to drive to work and noticed it

wasn't driving right as i was sliding all around the lane i didn't pay it too much mind however because it snowed a few days prior and there was still ice on the road in some places so i assumed there was a lot of black ice it wasn't until someone in the parking lot of the store i worked at flagged me down and told me two of my tires were losing air and flatting out i carefully drove back home and told my mother what happened with the tires and it finally clicked the angry knocking at midnight

the aggressive demanding for a guy we didn't know the guy scouting around the side of the house likely looking in windows they slashed all our tires which meant they were lightly armed the thought of them not believing us and breaking in still haunts me to this day because we wouldn't have had a way to fight back if they chose to keep looking it's the first time i've ever felt completely helpless a few weeks later we got a package for someone who was a previous tenant and a guy came looking for it after assuming it was

delivered to their old residents turns out the guy was jamal's older brother we told him what happened and he seemed completely blindsided by the information as if that was the first time he'd learnt that his little brother may be involved in the wrong crowd i don't know what happened afterwards but hopefully the revelation led to jamal getting help we also got some free tires out the deal so it wasn't a total loss but i'd rather not see those two guys ever again especially in the middle of the night i am a collector of vintage and

antique items including mid-century fashion dolls i usually purchase them from thrift stores estate sales or very occasionally on craigslist recently i purchased a group of 1960s barbie dolls that were a real bargain i know the woman had a great knowledge of vintage dolls since she used to sell them on ebay so she knew what they were worth still i didn't question why she was selling them at such a low price i was delighted with said purchase and couldn't wait to fix them up for my collection a few days later my bedroom suddenly became infested with

flies it was absolutely insane how many of these dirty little beasts filled my run they seemed bent on driving me mad as they were constantly buzzing in my face or landing on or over me some folks say that flies were a bad omen that signify the coming of bad times these flies were of plague-like proportions and were also a true enigma of why they arrived when they did around the time i became very ill with flu-like symptoms the weirdest part of this illness was a strange feeling like my brain was burning i also experienced severe

headaches that included crazy brain fog that felt like torture it's hard to articulate exactly what the feeling was but i've never experienced such an odd feeling in my head it was so intense that ending my life crossed my mind one last oddity to add to the pile usually i'm a very vivid dreamer with dreams that always have the same basic elements after the purchase my dreams have become dark and muddled when i wake up i feel exhausted as if i haven't slept so why did i equate these mysterious happenings with the recent purchase of the

dolls i know it's not entirely logical but it's just a strong feeling i have what should i do could an inanimate object be cursed or bring bad luck maybe that's why she sold them for so cheap i just want to add that i do not practice the occult nor believe in ghosts the reason being is that after my father passed away quite recently i saw no sign of him my best friend also ended his own life some years before that and i felt that if i were ever to experience a spiritual visit he would have

given me some sign i just want to believe but i can't my shifts are from 11 pm to 7 a.m this particular weekend we had a whole wedding party staying at the hotel the night of the wedding was a saturday and that's when this whole thing happened before my shift started most of the drunk wedding guests had already retired to their rooms for the night i saw a few of them as the previous shift was leaving and they all seemed very friendly and happy once i was all alone for the night i settled in behind

the desk to begin my eight long hours of work then the hotel phone rings i picked it up and in my best customer service voice said good evening this is the strand hotel a man began speaking but i couldn't understand him it sounded like he was under water like the connection was bad when i could decipher what he was saying this was our conversation i need 10 towels delivered to room 401 ok i can do that for you it should only take me a few minutes my girlfriend isn't here i was silent because i have

absolutely no idea what to say to that i want to have some fun with you baby now i'm freaking out and then he hangs up i tried multiple times to call my manager but she never answered i ended up locking myself in the bathroom and calling my mum she calmed me down and i went back behind the desk i was still super jittery so when i heard the elevators start to come down i'll admit i hid i crouched behind some boxes and covered my mouth i heard footsteps but i couldn't tell where they were coming

from or going towards the kitchen area i stayed back there for about five minutes and when i was about to come out i heard about cough i froze i heard his footsteps going back to the elevator and i stayed hidden until he was gone now i obviously don't know for sure that the man who called me was him but would someone come down the elevator in the middle of the night stand around silently for five minutes and then leave and here's the detail that freaked me out the most the hotel room 401 that he wanted

me to bring turned towels to it was unoccupied that night i'll preface this by saying that i have spent a lot of time with native americans and their culture history is really important to me my dad grew up on the border of a reservation in alaska and was adopted by a family that was inuit and i spent a good amount of time with a friend who is lakota at the time of this incident a friend and i were leaving standing rock after being there for six weeks to drive home to texas we for some reason

decided to go and see mount rushmore on our way back and after being at standing rock for so very long we had a sour taste in our mouth seeing american presidents faces carved into the mountains that were straight up stolen from natives so my friend decided that we should go to wounded knee it was only a few hours out of the way home and it seemed important that we go side note it was about 11 pm at this point but screw it i was planning on driving straight to texas and we should go to pay

our respects especially after rushmore fast forward gps takes us straight to the main part of the gravestones and monuments plus a bunch of descriptive signs i've never believed in ghosts or spirits or any of that but as we parked i was seized with a terrible fear i couldn't move refuse to get out of the car struggling not to have a panic attack and get out of there that kind of fear my friend gets out of the car and goes to read the memorials and i sit in the car literally paralyzed with fear and terror i

look out the window and see two giant black dogs with red eyes that looked directly at me all i could feel was this oppressive feeling that was almost a thought that we didn't belong there and the word leave we maintained eye contact as i literally started to shake and feel the most horrible feeling and sense of dread i have ever felt also for the record i'm a really tough lady so it takes much more to even ruffle me i lay on the horn and once again my friend returns to the car and i tell her

that we need to leave now i don't tell her what's going on i just type texas into gps with shaking hands and start to drive away following the instructions i leave taking a bunch of turns and roads i didn't remember from the way in and after around five minutes we end up right back at the exact same place of wounded knee that we were at right then feeling legitimate and actual terror and trying not to lose my mind i tell my friend what's going on she happens to be a hippie who believes in stuff like

spirits and crystals and she took me seriously pulls her phone out and her gps did the same thing all i feel is dread i cannot get those eyes out of my head and i decided to trust my hound dog sense at that point and just drove as far away as i could my friend insisted we threw off all the jewellery we were wearing and i drove in clammy terror for at least an hour before i felt okay to even speak i still don't know exactly what happened and it still unnerves me i got goosebumps just

remembering this rewind this time to the year 2002. i was in a residential nationwide high school which is in washington dc and everyone knows that dc or any other major city can be dangerous i was invited to visit one of my friends home for spring break i met with some local students and they were all cute they invited me on a night out with them and one of the boys borrowed his mom's van wanting to go cruising around phoenix to show me the sights i was the only girl in the group of boys there were

nine of us hunkered down in an old dodge white van one of the guys had a brilliant idea of doing drive-by egg throws so they bought eggs and kept the van door open as they tossed eggs at pedestrians this wasn't what got us into trouble after all of our dozen eggs were tossed we shut the van door and we're getting ready to go home this is when it hit the fan i was sitting in the back of the van we were at a red light then a silver honda accord pulled alongside us and i saw

two men in the car they kept looking at us immediately one of them rolled down the window and actually showed us his firearm and was saying something that i couldn't understand the light turned green the boy driving his mother's white dodge van tried unsuccessfully to dart ahead or even dodge and that wasn't happening with nine school students in a van we were chased by the silver honda accord we tried slowing down and speeding up making quick turns but to no luck their honda accord was able to keep up easily and it wasn't helping that the

streets were empty we accidentally ended up cornering ourselves in when we pulled into a water reservoir entrance that had a dead end the two guys came out their honda their headlights shining in our eyes and they had weapons they each had two and were using bandanas on their shaved heads they were surprised how many people came out the van and even more surprised that we were all deaf and were signing they realized that we weren't throwing up gang signs at them then they said my bad and just left for once being deaf saved my life

so dudes in bandanas and honda accords that are in phoenix arizona let's not ever meet also do not throw eggs at people we were in high school and stupid they're in the bathroom walking out with a bat to investigate only suspecting a break-in only to find not a single sight of anybody or anything and the dining wear and table was untouched the next experience she had was when she was getting ready for bed and heard a noise coming from behind the chair the doll was sitting in and say a dark figure with red eyes glaring

at her with anger anyway on to my ownership when i received the thing i was fully aware that a possessed object may not show signs of any activity from a few hours up to a few months of being relocated i never experienced anything i let it sit on a shelf and collect dust only remembering it physically exiting my house every once in a great while i would just randomly think about it and even when i was doing something completely unrelated or busy at the house a few days ago i had lit a burn pile in

my backyard to get rid of a bunch of branches and logs when for some reason i had the idea to grab the doll and burn it to be done with it i went back to grab it and as soon as i touched it my heart began racing increasing with every step i took towards my back door i had finally made it outside to the fire and tossed it back laying on the fire within seconds it started smoking as soon as it did my heart stopped racing and i got relaxed thirty seconds later its hair and

clothes were in full flames and i watched it as it began to look like something out of a horror movie the eyes melted and sunk into its ceramic head and it was converted into a charred black soot until nothing but the head arms and legs were left i let the fire keep burning until all the wood had been burnt my main question here is whether or not it was a good idea to burn a possessed object if it is i don't want to think about it let me know what you guys think about my decision

to set the thing alight i'm 22 and as my mom was pregnant with me my grandfather passed away from lung cancer the only thing he ever got me was this little clown doll that was supposed to hang over my crib when you pour the clown's leg down it plays a little music box star song as it winds itself back up now i know this already sounds like a cheesy horror story but let's stick with it when i was a child maybe seven or eight i used to have the clown hanging from the metal curtain tie

backs in my room probably because i was too young to have read or watched it but one night my mum walked up the stairs and in my room while i was asleep because the clown was playing its song but it had its legs pulled down apparently it played for about five minutes and i do remember my mum recording it on her old flip phone and showed me that morning we actually found out later in the day that on that night my great grandma had passed away so my grandfather's mum my mum is super adamant it

was her dad sending some sort of signal but i'd be interested to know what you guys think about 15 years ago when i was 13 to 14 i went on a road trip with my best friend's family it was the two parents her brother around 15-16 years old and the two of us girls one of the hotels had a courtyard with a pool we went swimming all of us and there were a few other people swimming and hanging around the pool mostly kids swimming in adults on chairs there was one guy in his 50s it

looked like he was just sitting there not interacting with anyone sunglasses on so he couldn't see where he was looking and we all assumed he was with a family there the next day my friend's parents went on a date and left the three of us kids in the hotel room we were good and weren't inclined to do anything done like wander off so they weren't too worried we had a window overlooking the pool and i looked out and there was that guy again watching the pool where some young women were swimming later i looked out

again and he was still out there watching but a different family with young kids it wasn't sunny out so he wasn't sunbathing and he didn't have a book or anything he was just staring which made me very unsettled the next evening we all went out to dinner when we got back it was dark this guy was in the parking lot sunglasses still on checking the license plates of every car he checked our license plates as we were walking away from the car my friend's dad an imposing army guy very protective of his family and car

confronted him about it and the guy said he was a parking lot attendant we went to the lobby and asked them to clarify what was up with their attendant and i'll never forget the girl behind the desk saying we don't have a parking lot attendant we left the next day i lease a horse at a barn in a very rural part of ohio i'm close with the owners of the barn and have a key so oftentimes i'll go to ride later at night after the lessons are done and i finished my homework i had a

friend with me who was not a rider she was just coming to hang out at the barn with me the way the indoor riding arena is set up there are large garage doors on each side which i had to open for some airflow as i was tacking up my horse i saw something dart across the open barn door and the end of the breezeway i assumed it was a coyote and the aisle was lit up and the outside was dark so it was hard to tell i mentioned it to my friend and we walk into

the area from the stalls and just start to warm up since my horse is older and it was chilly the next half hour goes pretty smoothly it says i'm dismounting that i see the similar shape from earlier go fling past on the open garage doors my horse starts nickering nervously and getting shifty so i take him back to the aisle to one track i tell my friend to go close the barn doors for the night she says she doesn't want to go alone and is freaked out so she'll wait for me to go with her

i untack and we close the arena doors we walk back to the aisle to close the last door and right outside there's just this massive dog it was shaggy and came up to about my waist and five at nine its eyes weren't glowing but they were reflecting red in the light from the barn my friend starts grabbing at me and pulling me back but the dog isn't moving or anything just staring at us i know this sounds weird but i didn't get a bad vibe from it i come from a superstitious old world italian family

so i'd think i'd have known if it had bad intentions all of a sudden it turns around and trots back to the tree line my friend is freaking out crying and begging for me to call her dad to come pick her up because she didn't want us leaving by ourselves it has been a month now and i haven't seen the dog since but honestly the weirdest part of this story is that the other horses in the barn didn't freak out if you know anything about horses you'll know they sense danger and freak out if they

think their lives are at risk this whole situation is just super weird to me a few years ago i was reading a forum and a woman said she had a haunted photograph she said that the picture was taken of her and there was a ghost girl beside her that wasn't there when the picture was taken more importantly she said that anyone that saw the photo had bad things happened to them naturally i had to see it she sent me a link it was as she described it didn't look scary to me at all and nothing

happened to me eventually i forgot about it not long ago i was looking for something in my messages and came across the link to the photo i looked at it again and spent probably two minutes staring and trying to look at the ghost girl in detail then i closed the tab and forgot about it not two hours later my stepmom calls me to tell me my dad had a polymery embolism he lived on his way home my husband hit a deer and totaled his car and that night my daughter got a horrible stomach bug that

left us so dehydrated we had to go to the er i am never looking at that photo again 15 years ago i lived in a town in indiana where we lived was in the country a few miles away from town there were a few weird things that happened so first off i woke up at 3am and had a strong urge to go to my window when i opened the blinds and saw yellow eyes and it was as if it were piercing through my soul i felt instant hopelessness and fear then turned around and went back

to bed i'm 100 sure i wasn't dreaming when the morning came and i went to the area i saw the eyes and didn't see any footprints the following night i was standing on my porch and suddenly smelt rotting flesh the worst thing i've ever smelt and proceeded to hear crunching leaves to my left i see a very large black dog walking towards my home i screamed and ran inside that night and i heard scratching on the side panels of our home the following day i found a large patch of fur probably four by four in

the same area where i had seen the large dog but the fur was white with grey instead of black i called this thing a dog but it was dark i looked at this thing for long enough to determine it wasn't a deer and freaked out and ran i knew it was taller than on all fours we lived in that house for another year and there were still some mornings i would smell the rotting flesh there have also been weird instances where i've spoken about this and phones will glitch out or the phone line will cut

maybe i'm reading too much into it but it was spooky i didn't even know what i saw until a few months ago i was drinking with friends and one of them tells me a story and he starts going on about skim walkers so who knows this happened about 12 years ago when i was about 11. it was the day after christmas and my mum and stepdad and i were sitting in the living room watching tv it was past 9 p.m and my little brother had already gone to bed now my brother and i had gotten

remote-controlled cars for christmas their kind that had rechargeable batteries in both car and remote as we were watching tv my car that had been in the middle of the living room floor starts making a noise like it's turned on at this point all three of us look at it and witness it drive around in circles twice to make a perfect three-point turn then park up against the wall we all kind of just look at each other and my mom goes to check on my brother as he was supposed to be in bed she comes back

looking a bit concerned saying my brother is flat out and when he sleeps he really sleeps there's no faking the bear snores he gives off so she then asks me and my stepdad whether we were playing a prank we both deny it my stepdad even pointing out that the controllers to both cars had been on the side table where my brothers and i left them after playing with them earlier in the evening my mum proceeds to check both controllers and the cars for batteries all the batteries were in the charging docks plugged into the wall

and we had run the batteries out while playing with them earlier my mum brother and i had some strange experiences in this house but this is by far the strangest i've ever experienced personally i can't think of a logical explanation for this i've always thought perhaps it was a ghost this was over 10 years ago and i still remember it quite vividly i had just gotten out of an emotionally abusive relationship and was dealing with some pretty heavy depression a level of which i had never experienced before and was quite hard to crawl out of

the situation back at home wasn't any better so as a small escape i would go out for late night walks with my sister we never wandered too far the cops never stopped us or asked us what we were doing at two and three in the morning it was weird but we felt safe enough one evening we made our way to the local 7-eleven just a few blocks away to get to this place we had to cross a short bridge over an irrigation canal this canal is known for having bats roosting underneath and we would see

them occasionally fly out to catch insects we're just chatting about various things my sister and i make our way to the 7-eleven to get our drink neither of us had a lot of money so when we were out we would get the largest drink offered and share it between ourselves on the walk back home we were approaching the bridge once more and i look up and see the shadowed form of a dog it was huge much larger than a german shepherd or siberian husky would be it was moving towards us the odd thing was there

were no sounds of footfalls or the telltale signs of claws upon cement i've never seen a spirit before and since it was approaching a street lamp and still had no reflection of its eyes my sister directed us to the median that partitioned the different lanes of traffic there were no cars out we were the only ones on the street that night and we moved to the median to continue our walk since there were sidewalks on only one side of the road and that's where the dog was my sister said to leave it be and to

not look at it it won't bother us i walked several steps then looked back anyway the dog was gone even as we passed it if it had sprang into a run i should have heard the animals football but there weren't any i'm not sure what i saw but it was a little while before we went out again i work in a hotel so i'm sitting at the desk and a guy comes down to buy a drink from our market i do the polite chit chat while he pays you know like good morning how are you

but he just stares at me and figure maybe it's too early in the morning for him and move on with my day ten minutes later i look up towards our breakfast area and notice this same guy sitting in a chair facing me and intently staring at me when i meet his gaze he looks away and i think okay maybe he's just zoned out i keep going with my end of the shift stuff and look up again a few minutes later to see him still staring at me at this point i needed to count the drawer

anyway so i scooped my chair over to the drawer that also conveniently happens to be in a spot where he wouldn't be able to see me and start counting i then look up and notice him staring but now he's switching seats he moved into a higher stool that has a direct view of me at the desk no matter where i go he isn't even trying to hide or disguise the fact he's staring while it isn't all bad or even as bad as some other things i've had to deal with in the past it's certainly unsettling

and really freaked me out i made it home a while after when i left the hotel i sped walk to my car and got in as quickly as i could when i drove past the door he was standing by it just watching me i just hit the gas and took a different route home i checked behind me frequently to make sure i wasn't being followed but to anyone who has never experienced this let me tell you that it is profoundly uncomfortable and leaves you with a lasting sense of dread as a kid i saw a

fair share of paranormal activity but this is one that has left me puzzled as a child me and my siblings all shared one room two bunk beds for them and a kid's bed for me pushed right under the window of our room i vividly remember waking up one night probably five or six years old to a pitch black room as i laid in bed terrified of the dark i got an overwhelming feeling or compulsion to look out my window and when i did i saw a massive black dog standing at the road directly under this

seemingly only street light that was working as i was staring at this dog it turned its head towards me and i saw it had red eyes it stared directly back at me for what felt like forever before turning to face ahead again and then the street light flickered and went out and i could no longer see the glow of his eyes no more than a minute later the street light turned and in place of the dog was now a very tall man around seven feet tall all features completely obscured by darkness aside from one thing

red eyes that looked directly at me for ages before he walked away as he walked down the road though he gradually hunched over more and more until he turned back into the large dog i've told this story exactly the same for years and years to anyone that listens but i can't find any information as to what this could be my dad passed away when i was 11. every summer we went to a little town which had a porcelain doll museum i loved going there hanging out with my dad and had several doors myself but the

one i loved the most was one that resembled an indian girl with two braids i kept it on a shelf that was facing my bed pushed it to the corner and i had it for three to four years i didn't even touch it i only admired it well as i mentioned my father died in december fast forward half a year later it's june summer holidays and i'm laying on my bed with my laptop chatting with my friends at midnight both my dorm window were open but it was quiet outside with no wind and the doll

suddenly fell to the floor i was startled by the noise but confused since it didn't shatter the shelf was 1.7 meters high so i turned off the light covered myself in a blanket and went to sleep hoping i could the next morning the doll was still on the ground face down i started to think how it could fall it was protected from wind although there was none and a 40 centimeter empty space in front of it i got up shaking and slowly approached it i sat on the floor and picked it up it was intact

except for one thing the left braid was cut in half not torn cut i quickly put it away and never touched it again nor even took a look at it i still don't really know what happened i tried to think it was my dad comforting me but as i grew older that didn't seem logical why would my dad who loved me the most try to hurt my favorite doll i've had something very bizarre and scary happened the other day my wife and i were taking our dogs out for a run call me weird but one

of the most beautiful spots in our town is the cemetery we take her there once a week to run around in the area don't worry she doesn't go on graves or anything like that so everything is going good we get there and let the dog out and go park in the usual spot she comes running back very fast and i can tell she seems spooked okay odd because she always wants to run to every tree and smell it and normally it's a pain in the ass to get her ready to leave so we figured we

should head out and find a different spot to let her run on our way out we see an oddly shaped rock on top of the ridge just outside the cemetery my wife stopped the car so we could get a better look but something felt odd my wife gives out a little whistle to confirm it was nothing and it lifts its head she whistles once more a little louder than the first time and it turns around and looks at us this person or whatever it seemed to be at the moment just sat there with its head

cocked in our direction the face no joke looked like a dog a big brown dog with a long snout yet the dock had arms and looked like it was using a smartphone this overwhelming sense of fear came over me and i tell my wife to drive and get out of there fast i swear on my life i've seen this with my own eyes it's crazy the fear you can feel when you see something you simply cannot explain i plan on going back on my days off and see if i can find some evidence i don't

know what's been happening but everything has been weird in our home lately my cousin said it was probably a ghost joking but it got me thinking everything in our refrigerator has been expiring and is full of mold nothing was supposed to expire until the end of next year and yes our refrigerator temperature is fine it's 36 fahrenheit the dishwasher was full of maggots as well which almost caused me to vomit i've been hearing soft foot slips lately in the living room when i'm home alone the walls are soundproof as well so it can't be my

neighbors and i have two cats but they're always in my bedroom even my cats for god's sakes have been hissing and running away from the pantry when i open it i removed all the bags and food which caused them to get even more scared this all started about two weeks ago when my mother brought antique dolls at the thrift store which yes i know is a stretch to even think they're haunted and it might be a coincidence but i'm not taking any chances this might all have been something to do with those dolls i don't

really understand why this is happening now i'm very uncomfortable in my own home we can't move out we can't afford anything like that at the moment i just want to know what is going on about two years ago my best friend and i were driving home from late night classes we live in a rural area and take these roads daily we've had a few strange encounters on these roads but this one stuck with me it was pretty dark and we were going about 40 miles an hour i never drive faster than that on these roads

because of deer and other wildlife the road has a few houses so it wasn't completely wooded i'm driving alone and see some eyes and a dark figure that resembled a dog i stop the car to let it cross the road it runs across the road and at the edge of the bank and stands on its hind legs and runs like a human my friend and i are scared because of how creepy this was we tried to register what we saw and decided that it wasn't possibly a dog it may have been something else it was

too small and skinny to be a bear all i can conclude is that i saw a skinny canine creature running across the road then stand on its hind legs and run into the wood