35 ANIMATED HORROR STORIES ( COMPILATION OF FEBRUARY 2021)

i used to be in a really really bad place i had struggled with mental health issues from the time i was in middle school mostly depression and anxiety you know the usual culprits i have been working in a starbucks as a barista the starbucks was actually inside of a target you would think it would be bad but it was pretty nice anyway i dated this one guy who may have been an actual sociopath he had some serious problems i haven't spoken to him in a few years now and i don't plan on reaching out anytime soon trust me you'll see why in just a minute he actually found me out back one day i was behind the store i said i was going on break but i really just needed to go and cry for a little while i was feeling really overwhelmed and depressed i just didn't have anything to look forward to in my life at that time i remember looking up at him i could barely see him through the tears in my eyes he started talking to me and he really comforted me i told him that i thought about ending my life and was severely depressed at the time i thought he was just a really sympathetic person willing to help someone down on their luck but now i know the truth he saw a struggling person who would be easy to abuse and that's exactly what he did to me i vividly remember him wiping my tears away right off of my cheek i was so touched and his name was mike he really got me it wasn't long before we had exchanged numbers and started dating it was really great at first that honeymoon part of a relationship was so great but the honeymoon phase doesn't last forever and when i started to see him for who he really was i got afraid i noticed that he wore a mask and i don't mean like a costume he would pretend to be someone that he wasn't he literally faked a personality there were a few times that i was at his apartment and he would just start acting really weird it was like his true self came out and it was horrifying he was so mean that i honestly can't even put it into words he really did enjoy making me suffer i remember him telling me that i wasn't good enough and that i needed to lose weight and read more and work harder and a million other things he told me everyone in my life thought that i was pathetic he said so many things like that and i honestly couldn't stand it it was like he found that negative voice in the back of my head and put it on speaker the worst i ever felt about myself was when i was with him and i totally let it all happen because no matter how mean he ever was to me a part of me secretly believed that he would be the only person to ever be with me that i wasn't worth anyone better than him yeah it was a really dark time it wasn't too long into our relationship that he convinced me to move in with him he actually had a nice place but it was kind of far from my job and my parents because of the move i had to drive almost half an hour one way to starbucks of course he didn't care he never did about things like that he gradually isolated me from everyone in my life he did it one by one he started with some of my friends and i might mention that i wasn't very close to them to begin with but any contact with anyone other than him was a threat so he would tell me that so and so person that i speak to once in a while actually hates me but sometimes he was more abrasive about it there was one time when he grabbed my phone right out of my hand and blocked my co-worker's phone number he was really threatening about it too i knew that if i ever unblocked him that he might actually do something to me things started escalating to the point that even i recognized that they were out of control i knew if things continued down this path he was going to kill me or i was going to end up taking my own life it really was that bad i won't bore you with every little horrible story but he broke my stuff cheated on me he even joked about the fact that he cheated on me said i should be happy he's with me at all when there are so many other great women out there and all kinds of stuff like that the day i realized that i had to get out was really important i didn't really have anywhere to go though mike basically forced me to break off contact with everyone and he regularly checked my phone to make sure i wasn't speaking with someone who i wasn't supposed to i reached out to my mom while i was at work borrowed one of my co-workers phones and gave her a call it was really nice to hear her voice i explained as much of the situation as i could and she said she completely understood and that she was more than happy to let me move back home that was a really touching moment for me i walked out that night because mike was out i was able to pack my stuff and leave without ever having to say anything he probably would have gotten me to stay somehow said the right words made me feel like everything was going to be okay the way he always does he didn't appreciate the fact that i was gone he was mad he started showing up in my job a few times a week he would always try to talk to me convince me that things could get better he said that he would change and be nicer to me but i knew that he was just lying to me i knew he just wanted me back under his thumb i ignored everything he said and that seemed to work for a little while it didn't stop him there was no way that i was going with him again this is where things get crazy though he really wanted me back he showed up at my work one day i actually happened to be on break i was walking around target and just killing time honestly as i was walking i saw him looking through some of the glass near the starbucks section of the store my heart dropped he looked livid like really worked up and violently kind of mad i stopped and just stood there for a moment i didn't know what to do he turned around and saw me and we made eye contact and the only thing i could think to do was run my body spun around faster than i ever had before i ran as fast as i could in the opposite direction and i knew that he was chasing me it was actually weird how i got out of the situation there is an employee door that you need a card key to get through the starbucks employees had them too for some reason i think there was a glitch in the system but either way i was far away enough from him that i got through it and closed the door behind me one of the target employees asked me if i was okay as bad as the situation was i honestly didn't want to make a scene i told him i was fine and just needed a minute to take a break i sat there for about 15 minutes and left mike was gone and that was the last time i saw him i'm not sure why he hasn't contacted me since i'm just glad he hasn't though he was responsible for the worst part of my life and honestly i'm lucky to have gotten out of that situation alive wherever he is i just hope he isn't doing the same thing to another poor girl out there [Music] i had a seasonal job at target last year every year they bring in new people during the seasonal times to help with all of the chaos of this pending season it's pretty standard just about everyone was doing this it just happened by chance that i was doing it at target i think it's actually funny i don't think i've ever actually been to target until that job but anyway it was actually a night shift position i would come in and start working at around 4am and that was one of the crucial times to get stocked up on stuff for the big shopping rush that day now the way we did it it was we would get a shipment off of a truck and all the supplies would go into the back we did that as fast as possible so the truck driver could get on with his next stop those guys were always in a rush and once we got the stuff in the back it was up to our team to get it all organized and stocked that was all fine and dandy pretty standard procedure now there was normally a good number of people who work this shift with me normally between four and five of us with the manager somewhere else doing whatever else managers do but here was the situation the layout of the store was a little weird we had so much room in the warehouse area for all the supplies but sometimes it would be too much like drastically overflowing and we had this other room to put some of the stuff we just couldn't fit anywhere else it was a weird situation because that overflow room was not very big i think it used to be someone's office i don't know what happened there and i don't really care either that was the job it was a true nightmare to organize the stuff in that overflow room it was a really tight working space because it would normally be two people in there doing that then the rest of the team would be outside this room was kind of secluded as well it was just kind of out of the way and didn't make sense to be a storage spot again not my decision just what i was told to do it was one of these early mornings that i had to work in that overflow room with a guy i didn't know that well he never said very much and he looked a little sketchy i'd actually seen him walk off the premises a few times after getting a text message that was really weird it was never for very long either it was like he got a text message and went outside to take a smoke break or something no one ever said anything though so he just continued to do it honestly none of us really cared that much i didn't mention we came in at four in the morning right well this one morning that we were working in the overflow room something a little strange happened he got a text message and went outside like usual i asked him where he was going and he just said i'll be right back he left before i could say anything else but i noticed he dropped something as he went out it fell on the floor and i went over to pick it up i could tell you exactly what it was but it looked like a clear ziploc bag of herbs honestly they probably weren't herbs at all but being really tired and overworked i assumed he was a gardener and he was carrying his herbs around i know i know how stupid it sounds i have a lot of friends that are really into gardening and i guess i just assumed the best case scenario when he came back he seemed like he was in a rush he was looking around frantically i told him he dropped his herbs i pointed to them on a table in the room and that was when he got really aggressive with me he asked me if i thought it was funny and that was when it dawned on me that he wasn't walking around with lavender in his pocket all day it also dawned on me that he was probably selling while he was working this shift that would explain why he would randomly go outside every once in a while he threatened to kill me if i said anything to anyone and i was honestly scared to death i didn't know what to do looking back i probably should have told my manager and called the police right then but i never really had to deal with anyone that was a criminal or anything of that sort of course i didn't say anything to anyone but now every time that i saw him he gave me a weird look we'll just call him david for anonymity's sake and that wasn't his real name but it'll work over the next two or three weeks i started to observe david a little more closely i paid a lot more attention to what he was doing and what he was looking at and how he was behaving and after that time i realized a few things about him firstly he was definitely a drug user himself i couldn't tell you what but my guess is that it was something pretty hardcore he would talk to himself like a crazy guy once in a while and other times he would just completely zone out like he was in a different planet the other thing that i noticed about him was that he was very unstable sometimes he would get really upset over very minor stuff there was one time he screamed at the top of his lungs because his shoe was untied and other ridiculous things like that not why all of this was going on i was still living my life i still went for runs at the local park and i made youtube videos in my free time just for fun i tried to forget about the whole situation with david that was until i saw david at the park where i always ran he was sitting in the bench staring at me dead on i stopped midstep that was the scariest realization ever because it meant that he was stalking me and i didn't know what his intentions were i didn't know how long he'd been doing it or why i just knew that i was in danger i kept running and played it off like i didn't notice him but oh boy how could i not then there was one morning where it all went down i showed up a little earlier than usual i was always on early bird and i just hated being late i was there about an hour before my shift started must have been about three or so i was chilling in the parking lot listening to a podcast on my phone and that was when i noticed someone pull up behind me i parked kind of far away from the store to not take up parking for the customers throughout the day i just thought it was unusual for someone to park so close to me when there were spots everywhere else my heart sank the person behind me turned on their brights and that was when i knew it was david my fighter flight kicked in i turned my car off and sprinted to the store as fast as i possibly could i knew the employee would be open and i would be able to get to safety there david started driving after me like trying to run me over he probably would have gotten to me too but there was the spot where it was a line of trees in the parking lot i ran to the other side of the trees when i noticed that he was driving and he couldn't really do anything after that i got inside and screamed that i needed help surprisingly enough my manager was there i explained the situation to her and we called the police she locked the employee entrance and we waited until the police gave us the okay obviously david had booked it the cops couldn't find him either he wasn't at his apartment apparently he gave the wrong address when he applied to work there i guess they don't check the seasonal workers very thoroughly at target hopefully they do now and that was the story of how i almost got messed up working at target last year and if you're wondering i don't plan on applying again this year target was my favorite place to go shopping i'm sad to say i don't think i can never go back there though sometimes when you have such a bad experience it will ruin the love you had for a place or a store altogether and that's what happened to me it all started when i graduated college i was a psychology major and i struggled to find a job i live in a mid-sized city and there just wasn't anything appealing to me there weren't any jobs in my field that i could get the only psychology job i could even find wanted 10 years of experience so i had to take whatever job i could get i ended up working at some funky call center and i say funky because it really was a complete dumpster fire every single day the managers had no idea what was going on my co-workers were some of the weirdest people i'd ever seen most of them didn't have a college education either which made me feel really bad about myself i had some really low confidence during this time and i felt like a failure i still live with my parents and had a massive amount of student debt and i was working at a call center making minimum wage i had also let myself go during the last few months of my senior year in college i was really stressed out trying to pass i just didn't have time to make salad or go for runs anymore i was feeling really down there for a bit and this is where james comes in he was a really weird guy that worked at the call center too he had a goofy looking mustache and was a bit of a creep i definitely saw him checking me out a few times and i even saw him look at other girls too a little pervy but i couldn't expect anything less from a place like this that i worked at oddly enough james was the only guy at this place that was ever nice to me everyone else was so miserable to be there james had been hired a couple of weeks before i got the job there so i guess it just didn't have enough time to make me and james completely miserable yet there was one time when i went out for a smoke break james joined me and started flirting with me he definitely had his problems but there was something about getting a little bit of attention that did kind of make me feel special i was always a very introverted person and i hadn't had a boyfriend in over two years it felt nice to be noticed it wasn't long before we exchanged numbers and started talking a little bit outside of work there were a few weeks there that i kept trying to get him to shave his mustache i told him he would look a lot better it took about three weeks to finally get through to him but when he did i was surprised he was actually a really handsome guy under that caterpillar and that was when i made up my mind if he made a move on me i wasn't going to say no he never made a move on me though and i was surprised because i was sending some pretty strong signals for him to do so he just never did not even over text messages or anything all he would ever do was flirt it wasn't very long into that situation that i gave up on him i figured he didn't like me i mean honestly what else was i supposed to think i downloaded tinder like everyone else i knew my situation was bad and i secretly fantasized about hooking up with some rich guy i didn't find a buff millionaire but i did find a really nice guy eventually we went on a few dates and started going out together regularly and i really liked him we're still together by the way but this is where things got weird with james he started acting differently he started doing more and more inappropriate things i was friends with james on facebook and when i changed my status to an in a relationship he did one of those emoji reactions and he put an angry face i remember seeing it and rolling my eyes typical men i thought they don't want you until you have someone else now something james would always do with me is send slightly naked pictures it wasn't like full frontal or anything like that but he would take racy photos of himself getting out of the shower or changing and things like that that was okay when i was single but he just didn't stop and these new pics were much more revealing if you know what i mean and i kept telling him that i was in a relationship and he couldn't do this anymore he just wouldn't listen he always said that he forgot and i knew he was doing it intentionally things also got really awkward at work there were quite a few things that he would do that were just freaky for example pen started disappearing from my desk i didn't think anything of it at first just that i was being clumsy but one day i happened to walk by james's desk and notice all of my pens he also followed me outside every time i went on a smoke break he always played it off like he wasn't doing anything but it was so obvious to everyone well it was around the six month mark of me working at that funky call center i had my performance review and i got a raise i got an extra dollar an hour which i was pretty happy about i had a few hundred dollars in savings and decided to treat myself to my favorite store target i remember making a self-congratulatory post on facebook about it i even mentioned that i was going to treat myself to some new sheets from target i remember getting comments from some of my friends and former classmates they all congratulated me and i was really excited sure i had a stupid job but i was making the best of my situation i remember getting to target at about six or seven on a friday night i went alone i walked into the store and went over to the bedding aisle i really wanted to pick out the best sheets for me i am a little ocd about fabric and how things feel so i was running my hands across the sheets to find the one that i liked the best that was when something unexpected happened i felt a kiss on my neck i had been so wrapped up in feeling sheets that i didn't even notice who was behind me i immediately thought it was my boyfriend i mean who else would randomly kiss me in public right well you guessed it it was james i turned around after he kissed me and i was smiling but my giddiness turned to disgust when i saw that it was him my stomach dropped and i wanted to scream but i just couldn't bring myself to do anything more of me was in shock than anything else i know i must have looked so repulsed but that didn't stop him from pinning me up against the aisle wreck and continuing to kiss me he shoved his entire tongue down my throat it was honestly disgusting this probably went on for about three or four seconds before i finally snapped out of it i pulled my head away and slapped him across the face as hard as i could i told him that i never wanted to see him again i fell down onto my back and i just sat there telling him to please leave me alone he stood there though looking down at me smiling james was a really freaky guy he started getting on top of me and kissing me again and that was when i finally screamed at the top of my lungs someone who must have been in an aisle over or too overheard and came running it was a man who looked like he was in his thirties he ripped james off of me and threw him against the wall after that james took off the man was really nice to me he helped me up and made sure i was okay he asked if i wanted to call the police and i was so shocked i just told him no in the moment and that wouldn't be the last time that i saw james we still work at the same call center and my god it's pretty awkward i know he still creeps on my facebook and he looks at me all the time i'm honestly not sure what to do about it i haven't even told my boyfriend about happened and honestly i'm kind of afraid to but i seriously might have to one of these days i used to love valentine's day i used to love all the cutesy displays and valentine's themed stock items we put out in the walmart i worked at and i used to love picking out something special for my boyfriend after planning a little date night with him but we're not together anymore and i'm not much of a romantic these days either in fact i dread february 14th coming around each year because it reminds me of one of the single worst moments in my entire life so like i said i worked at walmart when this all happened and it actually happened in the store too i love the decorating and checking out the romantic stock that we'd gotten in that year but i usually try to get valentine's day off or if i was working it i'd trade shifts with a co-worker but this one year i can't get off and no one would trade with me so i was stuck working eight till five on valentine's day but it's no big loss i can wait for my presents and me and my boyfriend arranged to do something after work anyway so i took it on the chin right after i finished my lunch break i happen to be walking by one of the valentine's displays when i see this older guy staring at some of the items i thought it was the cutest thing ever this sweet older gentleman looking to pick his wife up something romantic or maybe he had his eye on someone in the nursing home he was at either way it was super adorable to me so i saddled up to the old guy and asked him who the lucky lady is he's all startled for a moment again kind of super cute and has to compose himself before he gives me his answer there was no one special in his life he was just something of an old romantic and seeing cutesy displays like ours on valentine's day made him long for lost loves of his i remember he said that i then asked if he had his eye on anyone new and he starts talking in a way i found kind of confusing at first like i thought i may have misunderstood maybe lost the context a little but after a minute of him just sort of babbling i realize he's not making any sense at all he keeps skipping from thought to thought just like a stream of broken consciousness coming out of him it was right about then that it hit me that he wasn't all there that was also about the time that i realized he wasn't that old either i mean all his hair was gray he had like an old man jumper on but he was so animated when he talked he seemed sort of spry like full of nervous energy and at a push i'd say he was in his mid 50s but something about him just seemed off and i was starting to think that initiating conversation hadn't been the best idea on my part i wish him luck with who the lucky lady turns out to be then slowly make a move to walk away but he stops me not with a word i mean he physically stops me from walking away he didn't grab me or anything at first it was just his fingers gently half wrapping around my wrist but it was enough to really put me on edge then he asked me in a way that seemed both extremely childlike and extremely sinister both at the same time will you be my valentine it was so surreal that initially i thought he had to be joking like no sane person would ask anyone that in a serious way not like that anyway so i just sort of laugh it off before apologizing and letting him know that i was seeing someone and right as i do i try to pull my wrist out of his hand he tightens it wraps his entire fist around my wrist and squeezes i just froze for a moment and almost two years of working at that walmart i've never had so much as an issue with a customer maybe it's because i'm short and blonde maybe it's because i'm just lucky because that whole interaction went from zero to 100 so fast and given my total lack of experience in any kind of conflict management i just had no idea what to do so i froze the guy starts turning red in the face and he continues to squeeze my wrist as hard as he could there are veins bulging out of his neck he's trembling so hard his eyes are starting to water and he is strong like really freaking strong then what he did next haunted me for months afterwards he gets his face right in mine while i'm absolutely frozen in terror and start singing he tried to keep his voice down but he couldn't get the words out without his words trembling from whatever weird rage fit he was going through after two lines i just start screeching for help but as soon as i start making any noise one of his hands shoots up around my throat and pushes me back hard against a shelf and when he starts squeezing i stop being able to scream then one of his other hands goes somewhere else somewhere i really wish he hadn't put it but when he did i finally found the strength to really fight back but it was over moments later some other customers come barreling down the aisle when he heard my scream and tackled the guy so hard that he almost floored me too and if the guy seemed crazy before he got tackled afterward he turned into a full-blown lunatic he actually bit the guy who first got him down and if it wasn't for security showing up as quick as they did i think he might have actually gotten free he was legitimately frothing at the mouth by the time the cops showed up i've never seen a person look like that before that guy was more animal than man by that point and the fallout was huge walmart sent me to some trauma management thing that didn't help at all and sent emails around to the other associates promising they'd do better with security and stuff but it was all just for show i gave statements to the police too and for a while it looked like i'd have to go to court to testify against the guy that assaulted me but as it turned out he was found unfit to stand trial and instead of going to real prison he ended up in some state hospital somewhere else when it was all said and done i just tried to get over it it was one of the more horrific moments of my life sure but i refused to let it define me and for a long while i worked on my overall mental health and particularly my sense of self-esteem i thought it was good after that i thought it was fixed so there was no way of me anticipating what would happen when i met a friend at this 50s diner that was our favorite place to eat we're just sitting there conversation on hold while we eat and the song comes on on the old jukebox until the lyrics started everything was fine but then these two girls started singing some words that i thought i'd gotten out of my head completely i know you belong to somebody new but tonight you belong to me i recognized it instantly from the weird little changes in pitch in the girl's voices but it was the exact same song the guy in walmart had sang before he grabbed me i know i caused a bit of a scene when i got up and fast walked out of there with my friend calling after me but i honestly didn't care i couldn't breathe while that song was my ears i just couldn't be there i suppose trauma is weird like that no matter how much you think you have it under control it's still there bubbling away just beneath the surface but i do work at it and i managed to neutralize how that creepy old song made me feel too i mean it took a while but i managed it like i said i'm not going to let what happened define me and i'll wear my wounds with pride but valentine's day is most definitely ruined for me i used to love valentine's day i used to love all the cutesy displays and valentine's themed stock items we put out in the walmart i worked at and i used to love picking out something special for my boyfriend after planning a little date night with him but we're not together anymore and i'm not much of a romantic these days either in fact i dread february 14th coming around each year because it reminds me of one of the single worst moments in my entire life so like i said i worked at walmart when this all happened and it actually happened in the store too i love the decorating and checking out the romantic stock that we've gotten in that year but i usually tried to get valentine's day off or if i was working it i'd trade shifts with a co-worker but this one year i can't get off and no one would trade with me so i was stuck working eight till five on valentine's day but it's no big loss i can wait for my presents and me and my boyfriend arranged to do something after work anyway so i took it on the chin right after i finished my lunch break i happened to be walking by one of the valentine's displays when i see this older guy staring at some of the items i thought it was the cutest thing ever this sweet older gentleman looking to pick his wife up something romantic or maybe he had his eye on someone in the nursing home he was at either way it was super adorable to me so i saddled up to the old guy and asked him who the lucky lady is he's all startled for a moment again kind of super cute and has to compose himself before he gives me his answer there was no one special in his life he was just something of an old romantic and seeing cutesy displays like ours on valentine's day made him long for lost loves of his i remember he said that i then asked if he had his eye on anyone new and he starts talking in a way i found kind of confusing at first like i thought i may have misunderstood maybe lost the context a little but after a minute of him just sort of babbling i realize he's not making any sense at all he keeps skipping from thought to thought just like a stream of broken consciousness coming out of him it was right about then that it hit me that he wasn't all there that was also about the time that i realized he wasn't that old either i mean all his hair was gray he had like an old man jumper on but he was so animated when he talked he seemed sort of spry like full of nervous energy and at a push i'd say he was in his mid-50s but something about him just seemed off and i was starting to think that initiating conversation hadn't been the best idea on my part i wish him luck with who the lucky lady turns out to be then slowly make a move to walk away but he stops me not with a word i mean he physically stops me from walking away he didn't grab me or anything at first it was just his fingers gently half wrapping around my wrist but it was enough to really put me on edge then he asked me in a way that seemed both extremely childlike and extremely sinister both at the same time will you be my valentine it was so surreal that initially i thought he had to be joking like no sane person would ask anyone that in a serious way not like that anyway so i just sort of laugh it off before apologizing and letting him know that i was seeing someone and right as i do i try to pull my wrist out of his hand he tightens it wraps his entire fist around my wrist and squeezes i just froze for a moment and almost two years of working at that walmart i've never had so much as an issue with a customer maybe it's because i'm short and blonde maybe it's because i'm just lucky because that whole interaction went from zero to 100 so fast and given my total lack of experience in any kind of conflict management i just had no idea what to do so i froze the guy starts turning red in the face and he continues to squeeze my wrist as hard as he could there are veins bulging out of his neck he's trembling so hard his eyes are starting to water and he is strong like really freaking strong then what he did next haunted me for months afterwards he gets his face right in mine while i'm absolutely frozen in terror and starts singing he tried to keep his voice down but he couldn't get the words out without his words trembling from whatever weird rage fit he was going through after two lines i just start screeching for help but as soon as i start making any noise one of his hands shoots up around my throat and pushes me back hard against a shelf and when he starts squeezing i stopped being able to scream then one of his other hands goes somewhere else somewhere i really wish he hadn't put it but when he did i finally found the strength to really fight back but it was over moments later some other customer had come barreling down the aisle when he heard my scream and tackled the guy so hard that he almost floored me too and if the guy seemed crazy before he got tackled afterward he turned into a full-blown lunatic he actually bit the guy who first got him down and if it wasn't for security showing up as quick as they did i think he might have actually gotten free he was legitimately frothing at the mouth by the time the cops showed up i've never seen a person look like that before like i was more animal than man by that point and the fallout was huge walmart sent me to some trauma management thing that didn't help at all and sent emails around to the other associates promising they'd do better with security and stuff but it was all just for show i gave statements to the police too and for a while it looked like i'd have to go to court to testify against the guy that assaulted me but as it turned out he was found unfit to stand trial and instead of going to real prison he ended up in some state hospital somewhere else when it was all said and done i just tried to get over it it was one of the more horrific moments of my life sure but i refused to let it define me and for a long while i worked on my overall mental health and particularly my sense of self-esteem i thought it was good after that i thought it was fixed so there was no way of me anticipating what would happen when i met a friend at this 50s diner that was our favorite place to eat we're just sitting there conversation on hold while we eat and the song comes on in the old jukebox until the lyrics started everything was fine but then these two girls started singing some words that i thought i'd gotten out of my head completely i know you belong to somebody new but tonight you belong to me i recognized it instantly from the weird little changes in pitch in the girl's voices but it was the exact same song the guy in walmart had sang before he grabbed me i know i caused a bit of a scene when i got up and fast walked out of there with my friend calling after me but i honestly didn't care i couldn't breathe while that song was my ears i just couldn't be there i suppose trauma is weird like that no matter how much you think you have it under control it's still there bubbling away just beneath the surface but i do work at it and i managed to neutralize how that creepy old song made me feel too i mean it took a while but i managed it like i said i'm not going to let what happened define me and i'll wear my wounds with pride but valentine's day is most definitely ruined for me back when i was in my early 20s i met a girl who set my entire world on fire she was smart beautiful and had passion for art we're gonna burn together she'd say not in the literal sense of course it's just that romance that we got swept up in was without a doubt the most intense thing i'd ever been involved in with my entire life it was like a wildfire just burning out of control nothing had topped it before and nothing has topped it since but let's just say that neither of us were in a particularly good place in our lives and as passionate as the relationship was it wasn't exactly healthy for the most part she was very very possessive and i'm not going to lie i thought that was kind of hot at first but that got really old really fast and her behavior started to cause arguments between us she would explode at the mention of any other girl i once mentioned something to do with my sister and she immediately interrupted to accuse me of being unfaithful even after i explained the girl i was talking about was my sister she stayed mad it just defied all logic but i was in love so i stayed with her so we're together for 17 and a half months and that time included some of the best and worst moments of my life so far but in the end the bad started to outweigh the good and faced with another valentine's day with her i decided i couldn't do it anymore i made the decision to break up with her and as you might imagine she did not take it very well at all at first she was in complete denial saying that there was nothing wrong with our relationship and that she had no idea why i was trying to break up then she got angry like really angry started throwing around accusations and threats none of which i thought that she was capable of acting on then came the tears and the final acceptance by far the hardest part for me she was crazy but i didn't think she was a bad person and it sucked to have to hurt her like that she insisted on staying in touch maybe staying friends or something but i had to go no contact it was the only way we'd really get over each other i felt like a monster but i did it anyway about a month goes by and i'm sitting in my apartment alone on valentine's day i'm sort of over this girl but i'm also sort of not and with it being valentine's day i'm thinking about her a whole lot so when my phone buzzes and i see it's a text from her i'm like rushing to see what it says i deleted her number but you know when you just always remember the last four digits of someone's number yeah that so all this message says is we were supposed to burn together and that just kind of broke my heart right there i thought about calling her maybe try and patch things up and in retrospect maybe that's exactly what i should have done but in the moment i just tried to stay strong and stick to the no contact rule i tried to take my mind off stuff stayed away from all the romantic movies and valentine's episodes that the tv networks were trying to force down my throat but still i just couldn't shake the lonely feeling i had in me so later that night i'm kind of intoxicated just sitting on the couch when my phone buzzes again i just know it's her like knew it in my gut and surprise surprise it was i debated just quickly clearing the notification and ignoring the message but my curiosity got the better of me and i found myself reading it i knew the first line said we were supposed to burn together again from the notification but only when i opened up the whole thread did i see that underneath the first part it just said but now you're going to burn alone again it hit me right in the feels it was incredibly clingy i know but at the same time you can't even deny how poetic that is poetry that's all i thought it was just that old metaphor we used to share i didn't think that she'd take it as far as she did i didn't think she meant literally burn because sometime after that i'm on my couch and i just started smelling smoke i go through the stages of like thinking i've drunkenly forgotten that i'm cooking and then thinking the neighbors are burning food on accident then thinking someone is making a campfire outside or something just pure denialism really not wanting to believe that the apartment building was actually on fire then the fire alarm starts going off a rush downstairs and no shoes or socks just a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and ran out the back of the building to the fire escape point and on the way i see smoke billowing out from under the door of the apartment below me minutes later a fire truck is parked outside the apartment building spraying water into the apartment below me which had been absolutely scorched it was one of the more surreal experiences of my life these firemen are asking me if i'm okay if i needed one of those foil blankets it was february and it was freezing outside but all that could come out of my mouth is like i know who did this i know who did this one of them tells me to get in touch with the police if the cause of the fire was criminal so i immediately do because like i said i had a good idea of who set that fire in the first place like i wasn't quite sure how she done it but having my ex-girlfriend text me like you're going to burn alone and then all of a sudden there's a house fire that was a no coincidence to me no coincidence at all and over the next couple of weeks i had to go and stay in my mom's place while some renovation work was undertaken at my smoke damaged apartment but i did get in touch with the police who thanked me for the tip and said that it get in touch with me if the cause of the fire was found to be arson only it wasn't they called a little while later to say that a fire department investigator had determined that some faulty wiring was to blame for the blaze and so they wouldn't need any testimony from me i brought up the text messages my ex had sent me how her words seem to precede the fire in a way that was just too apt to be coincidence but again they insisted that no arson was the blame i even called her and texted her saying that i knew what she had done that she wouldn't get away with it but as you can imagine she played dumb saying things like i don't know what you're talking about you shouldn't be contacting me it's something that messes with me to this day and there's so many unanswered questions that frankly i'm not sure i want to know the answers to i just know that one moment she's texting me telling me i'm going to burn and the next my apartment building's on fire i'm not saying my ex broke into the apartment downstairs and did something to the wiring but it's even crazier of me to suggest that she willed something like that to happen or like engineered it or something i know how paranoid that sounds so i tend not to put that theory out much but it had such a profound effect on my mind that i still moved apartments not long after just to be safe because to me there's still something very frightening about that time in my life something i can't quite explain and now when i remember that old like we're going to burn together it doesn't set me a light anymore all it does is make my blood run cold beginning on november 22 1986 the life of oscar pistorius was unusual from the get-go he was born missing the outsides of both feet and was also missing his fibula the fibula are lower leg bones that extend from the knee to the outside of the ankle parallel to the shin bone its job being to stabilize the ankle and support the lower leg muscles given that he was without such support his feet were essentially useless so at just 11 months old doctors made the decision to remove oscar's lower legs entirely at that point if you'd have speculated that the young amputee might grow up to be a professional runner people might have called you crazy but in fact that's exactly what oscar became thanks to a piece of cutting edge paralympian technology that came to be known as running blades manufactured using carbon fiber reinforced polymer material the curved design of these blades is intended to store kinetic energy like a spring allowing the wearer to jump and run effectively the blades are so effective that at the 2011 world championships in athletics oscar was the first amputee to win a non-disabled world track medal and at the 2012 summer olympic games despite not winning anything pistorius was the first double leg amputee participant a titanic achievement we can all agree naturally these victories and appearances made oscar an international sensation and he received an incredible amount of fame wealth and attention as a result oscar met south african model and paralegal riva steencomp at a party in november of 2012. the pair hit it off and soon began dating pretty seriously as for a while it seems that riva was phenomenally smitten with oscar many of her more superficial friends would wonder aloud what riva saw on him but those close to her knew what it was when riva was in her early twenties she had broken her back in a horse-riding accident and was forced to essentially learn to walk all over again it was one of the most debilitating and humbling experiences of her entire life and she never forgot how much strength and willpower it took to conquer her temporary disability she saw that same kind of fortitude and oscar and it made her love him for it the pair spent christmas of 2012 together and after a few months more of steady dating decided to spend valentine's day of 2013 together too it was the perfect date to mark the blossoming of their new relationship and both parties must have been feverishly excited at the prospect of such a romantic occasion but what they didn't know was that an evening that would begin with love and affection would end in a nightmare of terror and violence that would set the world's media aflame according to oscar his valentine's date with riva went marvelously well the pair shared a romantic meal watched a movie and then after a little too much wine spent some time in bed together before falling asleep then in the early hours of the following morning oscar awoke to hear a noise coming from the ensuite bathroom one that sounded an awful lot like the window sliding open oscar continued to lie there listening in the darkness and in the moments that followed he swore he'd heard someone actually trying to climb in through the bathroom window moving as quietly as possible he slid off of his bed to retrieve a loaded pistol that he had hidden nearby and arguably oscar might be right to be so vigilant despite having a population six times smaller than the united states south africa has 23 percent more violent crime and the wealthy pretoria neighborhood that oscar called home had been previously targeted by violent home invaders approaching the bathroom door with his pistol locked and loaded oscar was terrified his new girlfriend was lying in bed just feet away and there was potentially a violent home invasion about to occur and he hadn't had time to put his prosthetic legs on he was walking on his stumps later oscar would say this made him feel utterly defenseless he then heard a noise that to him sounded like whoever was on the other side of the bathroom was about to rush into the bedroom to do god knows what with them he panicked and fired four shots through the bathroom door the first thing oscar did was turn back towards his bed where he had expected riva to be scared out of her wits having been woken up by the gunshots but there was no riva only an empty bed it was then that oscar realized who was behind the door it wasn't some violent home invader it was his girlfriend riva he tried to open the bathroom door but it was locked from the inside oscar then grabbed a cricket bat and began to smash down the door and succeeded in creating a large hole through which he was able to crawl he then unlocked the door grabbed the unconscious riva then actually carried her downstairs in preparation for the ambulance he had called riva was rushed to the hospital but was pronounced dead after attempts to revive her failed for oscar it was a living nightmare it seemed that he tried to defend the girl he loved but in doing so had ended up killing her instead at his trial oscar seemed genuinely remorseful admitting that he had shot riva by accident and how doing so had destroyed his life completely it was mostly established by witness testimony that oscar and riva had a very healthy relationship and were very much in love valentine's cars were presented as evidence affectionate whatsapp exchanges that were brought before the court as proof that there was nothing overly sinister about riva's death that it was nothing more than a tragic accident but other evidence was submitted too evidence that suggested that there was trouble in paradise in one particular text message sent less than three weeks before her death riva told oscar that she was scared of him sometimes she said that whenever oscar snapped that she was terrified and went on to describe his behavior as nasty riva's mother june steencomp also had doubts that her daughter's death was merely a tragic accident she told a courtroom that she didn't believe oscar's story at all that none of his actions suggested that he felt protective of her she believed that riva and oscar had a horrible fight or argument that evening and that she'd fled to the bathroom because she was scared and had naturally locked the door behind her i think he may have shot once and then he had to go on and kill her because she would have been able to tell the world what really happened what he's really like she later told journalists asserting that there was no doubt in her mind that oscar had killed her daughter because she'd wanted to break up i believe their relationship was coming to an end she said in her heart of hearts she didn't think it was making either of them happy as the trial concluded oscar pistorius was convicted of manslaughter having escaped the murder charge that state prosecutors were hoping for the conviction came with a prison sentence of just five years but a combination of cooperating with law enforcement and good behavior in prison meant that oscar was just released just 10 months into his sentence he was still under house arrest and had community service to complete but the fact remains that someone was able to take a life and see the inside of the jail cell for just 10 months even in light of the accidental nature of riva's death just 10 months seem like an alarmingly light sentence but over the course of years successive appeals and mounting evidence all pointed towards the likelihood that oscar's version of events was just pure spin and that somehow he had actually known it was riva in the bathroom that night before he opened fire this assertion that oscar pistorius had deliberately murdered his girlfriend gained so much traction that by 2017 oscar's sentence was upgraded to murder and he was sent back to prison for an additional 13 years it was a strange and drawn-out process maybe even more bizarre by the fact that south african courts don't have juries so any and all evidence was reviewed solely by a handful of prosecutors and judges before any fresh sentence was handed out what exactly this new evidence showed isn't available to the public just yet but whatever it did or did not prove it led to a south african judge to throw the full weight of the judicial system behind one of their country's biggest sports stars whatever that evidence was it must have been pretty damning indeed and if the death of riva steen comp wasn't simply some tragic accident then the implications are horrifying a young model went over to her sports star boyfriend's home not for any valentine's day romance but to break up with him this person was so enraged by the rejection that she was forced to lock herself in his bathroom he tried to smash the door down with a cricket bat and when he realized she might use her cell phone to call for help he fired four shots through the wood of the door one of which struck her in the skull on a day of the year when couples everywhere should be getting together romancing each other and enjoying their companionship valentine's day of 2013 became one of terror pain and death for young riva steencomp who died scared and alone in the bathroom of a man she barely knew every year without fail i get a valentine's day card now i might be mistaken but most people reading this are thinking oh lucky you or why is that something to complain about and nine times out of ten you might be right but the thing is i have no idea who sends them and have actually spent a great deal of time trying to figure out who it wasn't something that was creepy when it started off in fact getting a card from a secret admirer was a pretty awesome feeling the first card came when i was 13 years old right about the time i needed a little confidence boost but then when they started arriving year in and year out i got to thinking it was just my mom sending them or something i confronted her about it on valentine's day when i was 16 and she insisted it wasn't her i mean really insisted saying she'd tell me if she actually knew who it was i ended up asking all my close family and friends but none of them admitted to sending me an anonymous card so cut to me being in college it's coming up to valentine's day and i realized that for the first time in a long time i might not actually get a card that year only i did same style same handwriting same mystery person that must have sent it but here's the thing i had literally just moved dorms like a week prior because of a burst water pipe in my original dorm room but the valentine's card is addressed to the new dorm room which was on the opposite side of campus literally the only person in the world who had my new address was my mom so cue the second confrontation about the valentine's card in like two and a half years one that again ends with her violently assuring me that she hadn't given my address to anyone so the question remained who was sending me those cards it really creeped me out for a while but it was something that i grew to live with again i mean it seems like such a non problem i keep getting valentine's day cards people would always just laugh i'm 33 years old in may of this year i've moved apartments three times in the past six years after my mom died it got to the point where i'd move and not a single member of my family knew my address until i told them so the second time i ran a little experiment i didn't tell a single person that i moved only my new landlord the utility companies and me knew i was living in this new place i waited two months like that having to pick up mail at the old apartment keeping my address secret until one particular day rolled around february 14th not a single other person knew my address and i still found a valentine's card in my mailbox [Music] i'm not going to lie to you i'm a pretty strange guy i've always been a loner and i've always hated people for as long as i can remember which is why it's ironic that the scariest experiences of my life is associated with valentine's day i was working after i graduated high school i didn't want to go to college as i was really poor and i didn't even know what i would want to do if i did go my plan was to lay low for a little while and figure things out maybe save up a little money the gas station i worked at was the kind of place that grossed out visiting truckers i remember this one time when a trucker stopped in he saw me looking at my phone while i was waiting for him to get ready to pay for his beef jerky he gave me a judgmental look and said i should take some responsibility for how bad the place looked i didn't have the energy to explain that i wasn't the owner so i just rang him out and asked if that was all he was going to order he paid and left without another word so yeah it was one of those kinds of places anyway it was valentine's day a couple of years back i had volunteered to work the night shift because i made a couple of dollars more on the hour which was always nice plus it's normally pretty slow and there isn't much to do i normally amuse myself by looking at memes on reddit but i remember on this particular night the entire mood was different i don't know what it was but i had an ominous foreboding feeling in my heart that night and i'm not normally the kind of person who buys into the whole paranormal thing i must have gotten that feeling around 12 am i tried to brush it off as best i could but i felt oddly on edge the strangest thing was that i had worked plenty of night shifts before i never had a feeling like this i was so busy trying to calm myself down and fighting my own fear that i didn't even notice him a man had come into the gas station must have been about 1 15 am or so i remember his face so vividly so aged his eyes were extremely off-putting if you gazed into them for long enough you would inevitably find yourself wondering about the guy's mental state suffice to say he was a creepy man he seemed to be in a rush i remember noticing how swiftly he moved through the aisles and he instinctually knew exactly what he needed didn't have to stop and think even once most people do he came up to the register looking to buy a small gardening shovel duct tape and a rope i remember looking down at the items and immediately wondering if this guy was some sort of serial killer or something that was the exact moment i got out of my own head i started when i asked him if he wanted anything else he didn't say a word just pointed directly at the cigarettes behind my head i placed a pack of marble lights on the counter and look back at the man he was holding up his hand with two fingers it took me a second to figure out that he had wanted another pack of cigarettes i rang everything up i could hear his breathing increasing it was as if he was annoyed that i wasn't rushing i tried breaking the tension by making a joke you've got a gardening day tonight do you his facial expression didn't change at all he made direct eye contact with me and simply shook his head up and down i told him that his total would be thirty four dollars he slapped down two twenties on the table grabbed his items without a bag and darted out of the gas station i went outside to watch him leave i know i'm not supposed to do that but i couldn't help myself i was so curious by this point what was he buying those things for did i seriously just meet an actual serial killer all the wondering thoughts left my head immediately when i saw him slam on the brakes he turned his truck around and began speeding back to the gas station my body went into full panic mode i ran back inside closed the doors locked them put the clothes sign up and i actually called the police he pulled up outside the gas station and put his truck in park my heart was pounding in my chest i screamed at the dispatch the address and then put the phone down on the counter i mentally made peace with the fact that i might actually die and i hope that at least someone could hear me dying i heard him start beating on the door trying to get in the only weapon i had available was one of those shovels from the random utility isles i darted across the gas station and grabbed one bracing myself i screamed at him that the police were coming and he had no chance i didn't believe the words as they left my mouth the doors were made of some kind of fiber or plastic material i think they were even bulletproof so i knew i was safe for at least a little while that was when he stopped pounding on the door i thought he was going to drive his truck into the gas station to get inside but thankfully the thought never struck his mind he did however break one of the windows and throw a lit match inside after that he drove off into the night i quickly put the fire out and the police got there about 20 minutes after everything happened one of the cops tried making a joke about this guy's attempt to burn the place down and i was too dazed to hear it i just remember the guy pity laughed at his own joke before walking back to his police car i explained to them the entire situation from beginning to end i still have no clue why he suddenly decided that he just wanted to hurt me perhaps he wanted one less potential witness maybe he was just a random psychopath maybe it was because he saw me peering back at him and that triggered him and as dramatic as this experience may have been i still get really anxious thinking about the items that he had purchased i still wonder sometimes if he had purchased those things to torture someone he had kidnapped because he was definitely capable even if i ever get a girlfriend at some point in the future valentine's day will never be the same we wanted to have a good time together my girlfriend and i you see she's a nurse and has to work the night shift the hospital she works at requires about five years of experience before you can even think of working on day shift this wouldn't be such a problem but i work as a marketer i have a typical nine to five in an office and it's really tough finding time for each other our sleep schedules are chaotic to say the least so when valentine's day rolled around on a day and night that we were both working we got really frustrated it's really hard to explain how you feel like you're being cheated out of time like there isn't going to be a moment you can sit down and truly enjoy your relationship for what it is but we decided that we weren't going to let our lame schedules get the best of us we decided that we'd visit a city for a weekend away valentine's day fell on a thursday but we figured having a little trip that weekend would be the next best thing maybe even better she's been really adamant about visiting oak ridge in tennessee her grandfather worked there back in the day and it's always been of interest to her she's always telling me these facts about how creepy it is and how she just has to go one day it's roughly an eight-hour drive from where we live so we made a deal about driving i was going to drive the entire way there and she was going to drive while we were actually in the city she totally got the good deal of the bargain but that's just what you do when you care for your girlfriend but something strange happened something that has tainted my memory ever since that time when i think back and remember that weekend away i'm not thinking about us cuddling up on the couch or any of the fun places we got to visit there either we got there friday night she mostly slept in the car but still felt really tired she told me she'd be able to sleep that night we got there and be awake and normal for the next day so that's just what we did and it was a really great day we got to visit the museum and learn about the manhattan project even got to visit the plant where her grandfather used to work at least we're pretty sure he's deceased now but the tour guides said this was where the majority of the work on the bombs were done and well he worked on them i guess it was crazy anyway the day was great but it didn't last very long by the time it was dark we were out of ideas for things to do and quite frankly out of energy we decided to visit our favorite fast food joint wendy's don't judge us and she was driving as we made our way there it was only a 10 to 15 minute drive she had her music on and i was just kind of looking out the window at one point a blue mustang was beside her car we were stopped at a red light and i looked out the window and peered into theirs i saw a very old man he looked unhappy miserable even his skin looked unnaturally pale i'm not sure when he started but he was staring at me it wasn't until i looked into the car that i noticed it either not gonna lie it kind of freaked me out we made eye contact for about five seconds and then for the briefest of moments he smiled but it was so fast it must have been a split second that his mouth went to a smile and then back into a frown it was the strangest thing i've ever seen i looked over at my girlfriend and she hadn't noticed at all she was jamming out to bohemian rhapsody the light turned green and we were in motion again i didn't take my eyes off of that car for the rest of that ride at least until they turned that's not the craziest part you see it gets even weirder we were planning on leaving monday morning and on sunday night we went out to eat but this time to an actual restaurant we weren't feeling fast food again we looked on google and found a local restaurant that had pretty decent reviews i had my favorite food deep fried chicken so off we went i had completely forgotten about that strange man i saw in that car but about halfway through my meal i noticed him again this time he was in the restaurant he was staring at me i know he was and when i noticed he did that exact same facial movement just the way i remembered he went from a miserable frown and in a split second he was smiling only for his face to be frowning again in just the next instant i'm not sure my reaction was warranted he hadn't actually done anything wrong to me and i was enjoying a nice meal with my girlfriend which is why it was so strange for my fight or flight to kick in and i went up and confronted him he was sitting in a booth alone i asked him why he was staring at us like that to my absolute surprise he never said a word just sat there and frowned at me i asked him what his problem was before my girlfriend told me it was time we head home she knows i can get a little worked up and wanted to avoid a confrontation it's not illegal to look at people she said still those something about that man that made me feel so strange so watched well monday morning came we were about an hour into the car ride home and she was asleep again and you guessed it you totally guessed it i saw this freaky old man again but this time it was way worse for starters he was driving a totally different car i don't know what this guy's life is like but i can just imagine what you have to do to be able to afford a mustang and still have enough money to have a second car and the make matters even worse he had been in the left lane as he was going to pass me but he didn't he just paced me for about a mile i noticed that there was a car next to me and it wasn't until i looked over to flip the bird that i recognized him he was a creepy old man but he wasn't frowning anymore that smile that he'd only been able to muster for a split second was now permanently stained on his aged face it was the most horrifying thing i've ever seen in my life suddenly he turns his head forward and aggressively veers his car in my direction reflexively i slam the brakes and swerve off to the side of the road my wife is immediately shaken awake and all we can see is his vehicle speeding off in the distance through a cloud of dirt my heart was racing like crazy and by the time i could process my girlfriend screaming asking what's going on i started to feel myself choke up we discuss whether we should waste our time calling the police but i was so scared that the best course of action seemed to get out of that god forsaken town as fast as possible the rest of the ride home happened without incident and i haven't seen him since needless to say that was the least romantic and most insane valentine's day ever [Music] this is probably the weirdest experience that has ever happened to me one that is causing me a lot of trauma and seriously has made it difficult to ever date like a normal person ever again let me give you some background i'm a 23 year old woman i live in a small town in rural mississippi i know everyone in the town and they all know me i never quite fit in with the small town scene it wasn't that i was against it or anything but there just wasn't anyone i really clicked with i had lots of friends but i was still completely alone for as long as i can remember a couple of years ago i started dating a guy who i met on tinder he was from a couple of towns over and wasn't the best looking guy in the world but i don't let something like that stop me i just wanted to know if he was nice and compatible with me so we went out on a couple of dates didn't go horribly he was a perfect gentleman and every time he never pressured me into doing anything that i didn't feel comfortable with which i really appreciated so after about three weeks of casual dates here and there we made the decision that we really had something here we both deleted our tinder accounts together and started spending more time with each other honestly i thought we had a real chance of having a lasting relationship but as the time went by i noticed that he was weird and not the i watched conspiracy theory documentaries on netflix kind of weird i mean i saw some real signs of various mental illnesses some of them included narcissistic personality disorder bipolar disorder with some extreme episodes of anxiety and depression and he would eventually go insane over some of these things that stressed him out so one of the times he got into one of those episodes was when his uncle was going to visit his parents asked him to sleep on the couch so his uncle could sleep in his bed and he had a literal mental breakdown i remember me and him texting back and forth and he was asking me if it was a good idea to physically attack him or start a fight a few more incidents like that and i knew that i had to end this relationship quick as much as i want to help people i really don't want to sacrifice my own well-being for the sake of helping anyone else it was probably three or four weeks into our relationship that i made the decision i asked him if he wanted to get some coffee and he agreed we broke up and he actually took it rather well which surprised me i wasn't expecting him to have some kind of breakdown and while he did look sad he didn't act inappropriately towards me at all i get a solid frown on his face then he walked away i felt bad for doing it but that was the decision that i made now we get into the weird part in the couple of weeks that we've been dating he had never been to my house and had no idea where i lived that's going to be important to remember a little later on we probably broke up around april or so it seems to be somewhere in that time frame at least so you can understand the terror that washed over me when i saw his car parked in my driveway almost a year later on valentine's day it had been so long since i had last seen him i didn't even recognize his car at first you can bet your rear end that i had my pistol with me ready to protect myself especially because my parents weren't home remember i live in rural mississippi people don't just randomly show up at your house who live two towns away just doesn't happen like that he got out of his car holding flowers i couldn't believe myself what the heck is wrong with this guy i thought i walked up to him making sure to keep my pistol out of sight i didn't want to alarm him but i was ready to use it if he had bad intentions his face looked strange he looked like he hadn't slept in days he also looked like he was really struggling and uncomfortable i asked him what he was doing here after we just kind of looked at each other for a minute and then he said it will you be my valentine the moment he began to speak i knew he was intoxicated and it honestly frightened me i had heard too many horror stories that start out exactly this way i pulled my gun out and pointed at him i screamed no get away from my home and never come back he genuinely seemed startled at the sight of the gun then he got going to his car and drove away but as he ran i noticed that he dropped something metal in the hurry he must have just barely nudged out of his pocket after he sped off i waited a few minutes just to make sure he was gone then i walked over towards the object that he dropped on the floor i couldn't make it out at first because of the darkness i picked it up and put it under my phone light i was mortified it was a pair of metal handcuffs just imagine how much he must have thought about me that he waited all this time building up the nerve to just randomly show up at my house with a pair of freaking handcuffs ready to do god knows what to me it was honestly quite horrifying i called the police and reported him they couldn't really do anything seeing as he technically didn't commit a crime so i made sure to tell my family and friends to watch out for him if they happen to see his vehicle around i just imagine how different my life would be if i hadn't been armed that night i was all alone and my parents wouldn't have been home for hours there was a solid chance of him kidnapping me and becoming someone you see on a true crime documentary this has been a big reminder for me and let it be a lesson for anyone listening right now if you're defenseless and alone in the middle of nowhere make sure that you have some way of protecting yourself because i'm sure that i'm not the only girl in the world he's ever going to try this stunt on again a couple of years ago me and my husband decided that we were sick of the pressures of valentine's day the cards the flowers the last minute bookings and so on instead decided that we'd make a whole week out of it we thought if we could spread the romance over a period of seven days it wouldn't be as wearing we both wouldn't feel that stress every couple feels in the weeks leading up to it so living in the uk we decided that it wouldn't be too hard to get to lake geneva find a cabin we could rent for the week remote with perhaps a little restaurant a little drive away and settle down my husband spends some of his childhood there and this gave him an opportunity to stop in on some of his old friends and family whilst we were there it sounded like the perfect trip we booked time off of work scrolled some websites and ended up finding this lovely semi-resort it was essentially a collection of cabins or lodges made for couples they were all fairly far apart from each other but were connected by small gravel paths to a central area which had a restaurant owned by a fairly famous chef a lodge that acted as reception and a spa there were some facilities dotted around but all with appropriate architecture so even though it was pretty much a resort it would never feel like it sure it was a little expensive but we saw it as an opportunity to combine a holiday and expensive valentine's dinner in a weird way we thought we were saving money the staff there were all incredibly polite when we arrived they knew our names instantly from our online booking and made sure to whisk our bags away almost instantly whilst they went through the process of booking us and they gave us each a complimentary cocktail and satisfied this vast glass window that overlooked the lake it was unbelievably stunning and so quiet that was what we appreciated the most i think a break from city life somewhere where we wouldn't have to worry about the crowded bus or getting a cab after one too many glasses of wine we were coming to the end of our cocktails when a man came and sat down next to us he introduced himself as luca and had one of those funny european accents where you can't quite place it the english accent was almost perfect but a couple of clipped vowels and funny consonants meant you could instantly tell he wasn't actually well english he seemed friendly enough tall athletic wearing white tennis clothes he asked us where we were from and we said the uk and we chatted for a little while about that i do remember him saying that i looked just like his wife and that we should meet her i remember that because he kept looking out for my doppelganger whenever we'd take walks around the resort trying to see if i could spy curly blonde hair we said that we were sure we'd catch him either in the restaurant or perhaps the spa and were intrigued to meet his wife he seemed a little odd in his own way his eye contact was a little too intense and he spoke a little too loudly but being british we felt that maybe this was just a cultural difference unfortunately february isn't the best time for a trip to a resort in switzerland the weather there can be pretty up and down and for a lot of our time there we were pretty much rained out of doing anything outside but we were a married couple when it wasn't hard to find things to do around valentine's day that required being inside lucas cabin must have been close to ours because we'd see him fairly often on her walk to breakfast passing through when we were having lunch that sort of thing i decided pretty quickly that i didn't like him i decided that it wasn't a cultural difference that he was actually quite rude and would always try to steer the conversation back to himself whenever we'd have a quick chat he'd make a point of humble bragging about whatever he was off to do and it began to make me angry i was at the end of the day trying to have a week with my husband and it was kind of ruining it my husband snores loud and so quite often in the middle of the night i'll get up and move to the sofa it's sort of become a little ritual and i don't mind really doing it i can usually fall back asleep pretty quickly if not instantly earplugs only go so far when you can genuinely feel the guy vibrating as he snores trust me so the second night we're there i get up and move to the couch in the front which faces a huge glass panel overlooking the lake i have to turn on a lamp to find my way around not knowing the layout of the room off by heart like i do at home and i see the window the view is stunning and even at night if you sit and watch for a while and let your eyes adjust to the dark you can make out lights across the water and begin to see the scenery i was watching the view like this when i spotted something it's funny how you can make out shapes in the dark but i gotten used to the way the branches of the trees moved in the slight wind which was why i noticed something so still still and in the shape of shoulders and head it was down the path little way the path that led into the resort and it just stood there watching something i became very aware at that point of the lamp that was going on and the fact that although this figure was just a dark shape to me it could see right in and see me i began to feel really really scared i didn't want to panic but i started by saying my husband's name very quietly then a little louder then louder until i could hear the slight panic in my voice the figure didn't move it must have been about a hundred feet away because i couldn't make out any features just a shape i called again and my husband came out of his room he asked what was wrong and when i tried to show him what i'd seen the figure was gone i guess it had seen someone else come into the house and had decided to leave i explained what i'd seen and although my husband was supportive he said at that distance at night it could have been anything could have just been a member of staff doing a nighttime check or a security guard whatever it was despite his snoring i slept in his room for the rest of the night the next day we had breakfast as usual luca came past and chatted to us for a little while i didn't say anything i began to become a little convinced that had been luca who had been watching me that night i hated the way he talked about his wife whilst looking at me as if just because we looked the same we were somehow connected although there was still a little anxiety from last night i managed to enjoy most of the day that night we slept in the same bed and i made sure to choose the side closest to the wall then it was valentine's day since our plan was to have the whole week to do it we took it easy having a late brunch at the restaurant just when i thought that maybe luca had left he came past i thought it was strange that he wasn't with his wife but he said something about her going on ahead to get a good court for tennis we said we were considering an afternoon game and i remember him seeming a little concerned he told us that they were all booked up and that he thought that maybe we'd have better luck booking a day or two in advance we were a little disappointed but hey it allowed us to have a bloody mary after brunch so we weren't complaining that night we got drunk after dinner like really drunk i think we got a little carried away on their two-for-one valentine's cocktails because we were giggling like school children we chatted to a few of the other couples we met ate some amazing food watched the rain on the lake thankfully luca was nowhere to be seen we stumbled back to our cabin sharing an umbrella lent to us by the staff and after doing what couples would do on valentine's day my husband fell asleep i lay in bed a while had a couple of glasses of water from the sink to try and prevent the hangover i knew was coming after i stopped the tap running i thought i heard the drain stutter for a second i listened a little closer no it wasn't a stutter it was a noise like knocking only a little more frantic in triplets i listened again the same noise louder then i realized what it was someone was trying to lock on the window they were trying to see if it was locked as i stood there trying to make as little noise as possible as i moved across the room to wake my husband i heard footsteps moving around the cabin and then the same noise but louder the same person was trying the door now but they were more determined really pushing and pulling i didn't want to make a noise but i shook my husband as violently as i could to wake him up and whispered what i thought was happening he was dead to the world and as i tried to wake him with a hushed voice i could hear whatever it was trying the door a few last times but harder finally he woke up and saw the panic in my eyes he got straight to it turned on every light in the cabin and grabbed a broom as he made his way to the front door there was nothing no one i was sure though and he could tell from how i was acting that i was serious we called the resort security who came over and were extremely polite and even the manager of the place came down to assure us that it was all fine they said they'd look into it that sometimes the wind made noises like that and were even so kind as to make sure a security member sat outside her cabin for the rest of the night there were no signs that anyone had been around and so they said if we were sure we wanted to report something they'd happily come with us in the morning as we were talking the next morning i felt like i wanted to mention luca but didn't want to seem paranoid but i barely slept in my mouth seemed to run on its own i mentioned that luca had always acted strange to us and that i thought his cabin might have been near ours they told me that whilst it wasn't their policy to report on guests they could tell me that lucas cabin was actually fairly far away from ours his was in the singles area for people on retreats writers artists etc and that the couple's area was the other side of the resort i mentioned that his wife must have been staying near us then or something like that and i remember the woman behind the desk looking puzzled she said luca came alone left after lunch on valentine's day and that there had been no woman with him at any point during a stay it come alone and left alone they'd have known any visitors have to at least sign in at reception when i mentioned looking into this further i was really rattled by the whole thing they said although they would flag it with local police there wasn't much they could do luca wasn't a swiss national and they couldn't follow him just because a guest thought that he might have been stalking them or something of the sort they asked if i'd even seen luca during either of the encounters i'd had and sadly i had to say no when they heard that they shared a look that i could instantly tell meant they didn't quite believe me the resort offered all sorts of compensations a free dinner the next night and even offered me a discount on a week's stay another time despite the offer i don't think we'll be going back anytime soon [Music] i have never been a huge fan of valentine's day i've always found the holiday to be kind of a drag and a waste kind of like new year's eve at the time of the story i was 20 years old i worked at a small convenience store that was open 24 hours i told them that i would work the overnight shift on valentine's day because i didn't have any plans started out just like any other night shifts i had worked in the past very slow and boring so i was able to get most of the work done by about midnight i usually spent the remainder of the shift just watching youtube or netflix at about 1 30 am the bell rang alerting me that someone had entered the store he was a tall somewhat handsome man from what i could tell at a quick glance i shouted how are you tonight sir and he responded almost immediately cassie is that you i paused for a moment in disbelief that he recognized me and then that's when it hit me it was a guy named ricky that i went to high school with we were never really close but always very friendly i immediately greeted him with a hug because that's just my personality after a minute or two of catching up i finally asked what are you doing in here so late he frowned slightly and said well i just broke up with my girlfriend about a week ago and honestly i've been a bit of an insomniac lately and just wandering around i said i was sorry about the breakup and asked if he needed anything and he responded in a very genuine voice honestly it's just really great to see an old friend and if you wouldn't mind if you're not too busy i would love to just sit and talk for a while i actually thought it was kind of sweet and felt bad so i told him he could hang and we could just talk and catch up the first 10 to 15 minutes were normal even enjoyable we laughed and joked about some old high school memories after about 15 minutes he asked to use the restroom and of course i let him this was when i started to think things through a little bit this random guy showed up in the middle of the night and just happened to immediately recognize me and strike up a conversation with me i was sure it was just a coincidence but it did seem a little bit weird while he was in the bathroom for a minute i decided to search him on facebook and notice he had some mutual friends the first thing i noticed was that he had some weird photos pictures of him with knives and lots of symbology stuff that almost looked like witchcraft or something i don't know i'm not much of a horror buff but one of the pictures definitely had a pentagram in it he came out of the bathroom a few moments later and this is when things started getting really strange i threw my phone back down and greeted him as if everything was normal he said in the low almost disturbing voice i'm so happy to see you again i responded in a confused manner ah yeah it's great seeing you too he slammed both hands on the counter that i sat behind and said in a now aggressive voice you don't understand i'm so happy i found you i love you cassie and we were meant to be together going from semi creeped out to full-on terrified i just responded nervously not knowing what else to say uh thanks ricky but i'm seeing someone that of course was a lie but i honestly didn't know what else to do at this point he tried to grab my arm from the other side of the counter and i jumped back quickly and told him he needed to leave he took a step away from the counter and looked at me with almost lifeless eyes and a smile that left my body paralyzed he dropped his coat to the ground and took his shirt off he was covered with tattoos really creepy tattoos across his chest was the word animal and a crazy font the rest of his torso was covered with strange symbols i'm not sure actually what kind of symbols under his left pack was my name tattooed it literally said cassie in cursive he then pulled a knife out of his pocket and pointed to the tattoo of my name while he continued to sinister smile and gaze i know it's easy to say what you would do in this situation but i was frozen i felt light-headed like i was in a dream and couldn't wake up i was scared if i made a move he would lunge at me or try to grab me again he started to scream my name loudly cassie cassie i started to cry i couldn't even catch my breath and that's when it happened the bell from the door rang it was a big man walking into the store ricky didn't even flinch he kept his gaze fixed on me and was slowly approaching me once the man saw what was happening and saw me cowering in fear he ran over and pushed ricky down ricky got up and ignored the man completely and still kept his crazy gaze on me i picked up my phone to call the police and that's when ricky finally ran and tried to jump the counter and the man took him down again this time holding him down until the authority showed up ricky was arrested with that blank stare across his face that man who saved me just happened to be a passing truck driver wanting to grab a hot cup of coffee i feel like i owe him my life i have no idea what ricky planned on doing but he was charged and they used video footage from the store to help with the conviction i'm so thankful for that truck driver and i will never forget that evil dead look in ricky's eyes as he lunged for me and what was that tattoo was it really my name or for someone else named cassie i don't work over nights anymore and i actually move far away from this town i'm not sure if ricky ever got help or is still in jail i have no idea when or where this obsession he developed for me began and honestly i don't care i just hope we never meet again [Music] valentine's day is a time for love and showing emotion and gratitude to that very special person in your life four years ago my girlfriend and i decided to go out for valentine's day where we live it is still fairly warm in february so i decided to take my girlfriend on a picnic that we had been planning for about a week or so my girlfriend and i love being outdoors and i figured after the picnic perhaps we could walk on a trail or perhaps take a quick hike about a month ago while i was hiking i found this amazing spot where i thought we could have the picnic from one of the main trails it only took about 15 minutes to walk there and it wasn't that hard of a walk either you did have to go off of one of the main trails around a semi-narrow bend and leading to a small rock formation the area overlooked our home it was a beautiful view and enough flat land where we could sit and have a really nice picnic i set up an entire area for us chairs tables and a bunch of her favorite snack foods on the rear side of this spot was more woods and even in the daylight there were so many trees back there that it seemed dark so when valentine's day finally came we set off for our adventure thankfully it was a beautiful sunny day it was warm with a nice breeze not a cloud in the sky we held hands on the trail until we got to the spot where i went off the trail i told her to trust me as we went off the path she was hesitant but was down for the journey just as i expected the short trip was easy for her we reached the spot in no time and she was blown away she just stopped and stared at the horizon in awe when she saw the spread of food i had she was even more blown away today could not have gone any better and in almost a blink of an eye that changed while we were laughing and staring at the beautiful view she stopped suddenly i asked her what was wrong and she said that she had heard something in the woods i looked behind in the dark trees but saw nothing i told her she was crazy just kidding around obviously and tried to go back to flirting with her but she wasn't having it she insisted that i checked out the woods so annoyed more than anything i told her i would i got right up to where the tree line started and i peeked through some endless amounts of trees i saw nothing if i'm being honest i had a really hard time making out anything in there but i truly didn't see anything she approached after a minute or two and said in a terrified voice right there you don't see that shape it looks like a person i squinted and tried to make out the shape it just looked like a shadow to me babe i think it's just a shadow i responded in an almost condescending voice she was hysterical and asked me to please look at it so i stepped into the dark forest and to my absolute fear the dark figure moved it was very slight almost like a shoulder shrug but i saw it at this moment i felt intense anxiety and fear but i didn't want to freak out my girlfriend or even worse alert this potentially dangerous person and i knew that they were there after only a couple of steps i told my girlfriend i needed something and i turned back to where we were sitting i grabbed my girlfriend and tried to tell her not to freak out but that i did in fact see a person in the trees she was crying hysterically and i was just trying to think of the best way to get out fast i looked down over the lookout but it was just too steep the only way was the way we came which was fine but i just didn't want this lunatic to follow us i decided to leave all the stuff behind and start walking down the rock formation she went down first as i stared into the trees and that's when i saw it clear as day this shadow figure was definitely a man and he was approaching us now it was only about 45 or 50 feet away i couldn't make out any specific details but it looked like he had a beard i finally started going down the rock formation and i told my girl to run as fast as she could we made it to the trail quickly as we stopped to catch our breath we heard the rustling of trees and the crack of sticks this man was chasing us she pulled out her phone to call the police but apparently she didn't have a signal of course we finally reached the parking lot of the park trails and there were two police cars the police were already looking for someone apparently there was a woman jogging the trails early in the morning and found a man laying off to the side of one of the trails she called the authorities right away and the man reported being mugged and robbed we told the cops everything but by the time they got into the woods they couldn't find the man from what i understand they never caught this crazy person in the woods and i'm not sure what he would have done if he actually caught up to us i still can't believe my girlfriend spotted him from so far away and i'm so thankful she did we both have a really hard time going on nature trails now and i still have yet to return to that specific park from now on we decided it was best just to stay indoors especially for valentine's day this is a short story that happened to me last year on valentine's day i recently bought a house with my soon-to-be husband he works really hard and always spoils me when he can while he was at work i decided to run down to the local store and buy some stuff to make him a romantic dinner the store is literally 100 yards away from my house at most so i quickly left around 1pm and did not lock my door i live in a really safe area with hardly any crime and the police station right around the block i was going to be back in less than 10 minutes so i didn't think it was a big deal to lock my door i left and came back in just under 15 minutes i waited in line longer than i thought the rest of my afternoon was normal i prepared dinner and got the table set with candles and everything along those lines my afternoon was fairly normal and just like any other day at about 4 30 p.m i went to the bathroom and thought i could smell a funny smell almost like cologne my boyfriend didn't wear cologne but i didn't think too much about it maybe it was my body wash from the shower or something along those lines a little after seven my boyfriend came home from work he greeted me with valentine's day flowers and an amazing piece of cheesecake that i would be having for dessert i was thrilled he was also so thankful for the dinner i had prepared for him and we had a lovely evening after we ate he said he was going to go wash up and meet me on the couch for a movie and some cheesecake as he walked upstairs where our bathroom was he stopped talking mid-sentence and said in a voice that still haunts me what's that smell i came to the bottom of the stairs and asked if he smelled the cologne too he did and immediately mouth the words call 9-1-1 to me i went into the other room and called i tried to whisper as to not alert the potential intruder what my boyfriend didn't tell me until later was that he saw muddy footprints on the bathroom floor and the shower curtain was open with two wet dirty footprints inside next to the bathroom is a spare room that we don't use and the door was shut and that door is never shut he grabbed the door slowly and tried to turn the handle but it was being held from the other side he kicked open the door and to the horror of both of us was a small dirty looking man he was dressed in all black with brown work boots my boyfriend who is only an average build slammed him down with ease and pushed him against the wall after only a few moments the police showed up and quickly ran upstairs luckily nobody was hurt and the intentions of this intruder were unknown i was alone all afternoon with him and he did nothing i couldn't sleep well that night i remembered that it was all my fault i always locked the door and this one time i decided not to i began to freak out that the man was in the shower right next to me when i was going to the bathroom i'm just thankful my boyfriend didn't get hurt and the police station is literally right around the block this year he took off valentine's day with me and we're still trying to cope with the experience the worst part is we still never got answers we don't know why this man broke in and i'm not sure we ever will so the events of this story happened to me two years ago on valentine's day it was the first valentine's day i had celebrated with my now fiance d we decided would be nice to go on a double date with a mutual couple we both knew the evening was nice and relaxing we went to their house for a lovely dinner and some games none of us really were the type that like going out drinking or partying so this was an ideal night for us after a couple of hours we decided we were going to go home for the night and watch some movies in front of our electric fireplace now the couple whose house we went to didn't really live too far away but they did kind of live in the middle of nowhere we live in a decent sized town but once you reach the outskirts of town it's a lot of corn fields farms and huge open fields so even though it was only about a 10 minute drive it feels like you're in the middle of nowhere when you leave our friend's house you travel down a long road with no lights for about a mile or so then take a left and travel down another even longer road in the pitch black until eventually you reach the outskirts of town well about halfway down the road we saw these flashing lights shining through the seemingly endless row of trees and until we finally saw it after we passed all the trees we pulled over on the side of the road and they're hovering over the field it was a massive craft of some kind i'm not real good with measurements but i would say about the size of a plane but a very strange shape it was long and kind of flat with the pointed edge it was clearly hovering over the field high enough that it was well above us but not moving there was lights all over the craft and many of them were flashing in an erratic pattern my then girlfriend and i sat in amazement and admittedly fear at this huge craft and the most peculiar thing was that it was quiet you couldn't hear any noise whatsoever coming from the craft as i took out my phone to try and record this all the lights went off on the craft i tried to snap a picture at this point but it was just too dark and the picture just looks black the craft then started to make a very loud humming noise and even though we could barely see it it started to slowly approach the road where we were parked at this point scared and nervous we decided to drive away when we got to the end of the road we saw the lights again poking through the trees once we got home we tried calling our friends several times but they didn't answer finally about an hour later she called back and said she was sorry and didn't even hear her phone ring which we found strange because her phone was always on high we told her about the events and she seemed very skeptical she said living over there her entire life she has never seen or heard anything like that ever we talked about the event for a while and eventually said goodbye and enjoyed the rest of valentine's day and really had a great rest of the evening shortly after that night we found out that several people in the area had experience seeing strange things like that apparently there is a military base nearby and some believe that they are testing some kind of new military equipment others think it's something perhaps extraterrestrial i'm not sure what i saw that evening but i know beyond a shadow of a doubt i saw something big and very close to me something that i am unable to explain has anyone ever seen this craft i speak of i'm just looking for answers the last two years on valentine's day we have gone back at the same time to see if we see anything and we've seen nothing since that night though this was strange and terrifying it has given us a valentine's day tradition and an event that we will never forget [Music] the contents of the story have caused me to recently move back with my parents who live in another state last year i was enjoying my first year of being a college grad and living in my own house well a house i rented but i still lived alone i was focused on my job and wasn't really looking for a boyfriend or anything like that every morning i go down to the park which is only about a two minute walk and i jog before getting ready for work on valentine's day my routine was no different as i was finishing my jog i was approached by a pretty handsome looking man he was tall looked in shape styled hair and super white teeth my creep alarm was not going off at all he said in a calming voice you're very pretty and i just thought i wanted to tell you that and hope you have a wonderful valentine's day and then he just jogged off honestly it kind of made me smile because that kind of stuff doesn't usually happen to me after all that excitement i just continued on with my day like i would any other day at about 1 pm the secretary at my job told me i had a package i thought this was very strange considering i had never gotten packages before it was a huge beautiful bouquet of roses there was a note on the roses that said to the lovely lady i saw at the park i hope this makes you smile no it did make me smile which is stupid but i admittedly realized how weird and creepy it was that night i was cooking dinner and was going to do some work from my home computer i thought i could hear a noise outside my window but i just chalked it up to the wind or something i got up a little after eight to clean some dishes and take a break from the computer i looked at my kitchen sink window and saw a car outside my house parked in the street now i had no other reason to be freaked out other than just a bad feeling there was no parking on my street after 7pm and i had never seen this car before now again there could have been dozens of explanations but i just didn't feel good about the entire situation it just felt really off i sat back down at the computer trying to focus on my work but i had this sickening feeling in my stomach as i sat there in dead silence in my room is when i was sure i could hear something i had a window that sat right next to my computer where i was sitting i pulled back the curtain and exposed the man from the park trying to break into the window we locked eyes and he just stared at me like a deer in headlights he did not have that same smile as before at the park he looked mean aggressive after only a couple of seconds of eye contact which seemed like an eternity he started to bang on the window and screaming let me in i screamed and ran to the other room calling the police he must have heard me because i saw out of the kitchen window him run to the car in front of my house i couldn't make out the license all i knew is that it was a white chevy of some kind which describes about a billion people i never forgot the look in his eyes almost immediately i moved home i never stayed in that house again i was advised to stay at a hotel for a couple of nights and then i drove home to my parents i'll never forget that almost evil look he had as we locked eyes through the window no more than inches apart they never found the man i described and many people think i made this story up but i'll never forget the horror of that valentine's day have you all been following all these zoom and skype dates that have been happening since the lockdown started as you imagine the use of dating apps have skyrocketed since the government had ordered us all inside for the foreseeable future those who would usually flaunt their game in the club or at the gym are now forced to use the same tactics as the less socially adept of us and dating apps and although i'm not entirely happy with the increased competition i'd be lying if i said my match count hasn't bumped up a little silver linings right anyway instead of using tinder or hinge with their increased emphasis on physical appearances definitely not my strong point given i'm about 30 pounds overweight right now i opted for reddit's r for r forum which is full of posts from those who want to hook up for conversation flirting and occasionally even more so i put up this pretty dumb post basically asking if there were any girls that wanted to have like a lockdown date or whatever i listed a bunch of my interests mainly horror movies and a few political issues close to my heart and implored anyone who identified with them to get in touch one or two girls did and i feel mean admitting this but they just didn't seem particularly engaging nice yes charming one really was but our talks didn't light a fire in me not like the message i got in the wee small hours of the morning when i was up way past my usual bedtime the message from a girl named amber who wrote eloquently and charmingly about how she too was looking for something of a lockdown bae herself she was highly politically involved as she put it which definitely sparked my interest and sharp comparison with the two other girls who wrote back to me who didn't seem interested in politics she was also extremely intelligent the way she was able to articulate her thoughts was something i had rarely encountered in online interactions which is also why i was so shocked when i found out she was only 18 11 years my junior only when she described herself i started to get suspicious she seemed perfect too perfect she told me she was five seven asian american fit and toned from yoga and spin class in her own words she was pretty cute catfish was the first thought that came to my mind there was absolutely no way a girl is cute sounding as that would be getting in contact with me so i just made a joke about it well a joke that wasn't really a joke i basically called her out on it how she didn't have to pretend to be some hot asian girl just to get my attention not with the kind of conversational skills that she did the next message was just a link to an imgur photo a risky click if ever there was one as there was absolutely nothing in the way of the caption to clue me into what the picture was of but i suppose curiosity just got the better of me and i just clicked for those that don't already know a verification photo is when a person hand writes their username or other pertinent information on a piece of paper to prove that they are indeed who they say they are and yep you guessed it the picture was verification as it turned out amber was exactly who she claimed to be young asian and impossibly gorgeous i mean i was literally stunned when i saw that picture of her i just stopped and stared for what seemed like minutes when it came to returning the favor i was terrified i am not in the least bit confident about my appearance as i've made clear and the idea of trying to take a selfie something i'd never even done before that evening was almost too much to bear but i did it anyway i comb my hair wash my face then went over my beard with the barely used trimmer my mom bought me for my 28th birthday basically her way of telling me to get that stuff off my face then when i was done i found my angle took the photo and then sent it over the suspense the raw suspense oh my god i honestly think the last time i was that nervous was before my first date i ever went on as a seven i'm talking that heart racing sweaty palm time slowing down nervous that makes you feel sick to your stomach i was convinced i'd never hear from her again that she'd see how mismatched this whole thing was and just up and goes me only she didn't she actually replied saying that i was cute that was three weeks ago now we've talked every single day since then sometimes having multiple hour long phone calls that run into the wee small hours of the morning and the more we talked the more serious things became at one point amber asked where she saw this going after lockdown was over she told me she was living in portland whereas i was all the way over in the greater boston area pretty much opposite ends of the country to one another but she pretty much straight up raised the issue of us needing to act on the chemistry we had i told her that money was no object that she was legit the most beautiful charming young woman i'd ever met in my entire life it was true i meant every word of it but i understood when she told me that she heard that kind of thing all the time that they'd tell her just about anything to get the chance to sleep with her and i believe that too she asked me how far i'd be willing to go to prove myself to her i told her as far as she needed me to go at that she just laughed telling me how she doubted it i was indignant i'd do anything everything she asked just to make her believe it that's when she told me to get a knife i'm ashamed to say that there was barely any hesitation i just trusted her i trusted that she knew what was best for me she already seemed to be able to read me like a book she asked if i had an envelope handy i told her yes that i had a pack of about a hundred crisp white envelopes she told me to open it i obeyed she told me to place the blade of the knife onto my palm i obeyed and when she finally gave me the order i pulled the blade across my flesh and let fresh blood flow onto the open envelope it didn't even hurt it was the strangest thing but for the first few minutes there was no pain at all just this dull hot feeling as i watched the blood flow from the open wound staining the perfect white of the paper a deep crimson i held everything up to the webcam showing her exactly how far i was willing to go for her and oh my god the look on her face the way her pretty almond eyes seem to light up it just filled me with joy i don't really know why i'm telling you this i know it's making me sound crazy just as much as it's making her sound toxic but in that moment it all just made so much sense words are cheap actions count for something and there's no dearer currency than her own lifeblood it seemed like the purest act of devotion imaginable and for a while i saw nothing wrong with it and had zero regrets when it was done she told me to buy a larger plastic envelope one that'll properly conceal the blood-filled paper one then i was to mail it to her again it made a lot of sense it was possible to fake something like that i mean pretty easily so the idea that she wanted to see for herself to verify that i'd be true to her it was just second nature as instructed i paid extra for next day delivery a lot extra but it would be worth it i felt like every penny i spent on this girl was worth it money can't buy something like we shared at least that's the way it felt at the time i remember being so excited that the prospect of her opening that envelope of seeing her satisfaction at knowing what i'd done for her and when she saw when she showed me her opening that thing over webcam it was every bit as disgustingly glorious as i imagined her eyes lit up in that same adorable way and she smiled in a way i'd never quite seen before such a wide white smile she giggled as she held it up bringing a hand to her mouth and in one fluid motion she brought the blood-stained envelope to her lips and kissed it only she didn't just kiss it i watched transfixed as she began to lick at the dried blood stains spitting on them and lathering them with her tongue until the dried mess hydrated and formed a sticky crimson residual now writing this now it's really obviously disgusting but at the time it seemed like love it was the purest act of acceptance of another living being i'd ever witnessed she was purporting to adore the very blood that ran through my veins that even in a dried up crusty state she could invigorate it it said so much with so little the next day we got into a conversation about cats amber loved kitties as she put it she had a bunch of clothes with cat designs on them hair accessories that resembled catgirls it was a whole theme for her but since she was in college living in a dorm room that she was basically trapped in due to lockdown there was no way of her getting to own one now for the first time being away i confess that since my last girlfriend had broken up with me and moved out i'd strongly been considering getting a pet to combat the crushing loneliness that came with a lifestyle such as mine this revelation delighted her and she asked if i would go get her one i was confused at first thinking we meant she wanted me to like send her a cat i didn't think this was entirely out of the question i mean animal shelters would still need to run despite the covet thing there had to be a way i could find an animal shelter in her area and arrange to have one dropped off but obviously that's not what she meant at all she wanted me to get a cat i acquiesced to the idea pretty quickly it did suit my plans after all but then the conversation took a weird turn she asked me if i love kitties so i told her yes the truth is i don't like them as much as dogs but i wasn't about to over complicate the situation by saying that then she asked me which i liked more her or cats again i said her then she asked if i loved enough to hurt something innocent i hesitated but again i said yes then came those fatal words that now don't seem so loving anymore prove it she told me in no uncertain terms that she wanted me to prove that i loved her more than any other living creature she didn't want me to get into any trouble to ruin my career by getting a criminal record or anything but she still wanted proof it was horrifying listening to her talk she'd obviously thought this out maybe even long in advance she told me i could get a really old cat from a rescue center one that was near the end of its life anyway one that might well be suffering from joint pain or breathing trouble she told me to look at it like an act of mercy one that would prove i was the right man for her one that could make difficult decisions and own them too and i'm ashamed to admit i agreed to every word i found that local animal shelters in my area were still indeed operating i called one to ask them a few questions regarding the adoption process and found it would be infinitely easier than i even expected i could pay them a visit and leave with a cat the very same day then it came to asking my own rather tailored set of questions i told her i wanted to give an older kitty a comfortable time in its twilight years that i was something of a feline philanthropist and had been doing so for many years it was heart-wrenching hearing that rescue center worker telling me what a good person i was how no one wanted to adopt the older cats and how one would be so so happy to have finally found someone to take care of them i think that's what did it the sobering moment that made me realize how stupid i'd been these past few weeks how lust and desire and loneliness had driven me to the point where i was willing to relinquish my entire humanity i had never heard so much as a fly in my entire life and there i was planning to hurt an innocent essentially defenseless animal i knew i had to do something i opted for a clean break i thought about writing her a long goodbye message explaining how i'd come to that decision hoping it wouldn't hurt her feelings too much but then it occurred to me that she didn't really have feelings not like you or i might do she had a fixation on what she could do it all made sense in that context she got off on power on manipulation and any way she could achieve that was justified i blocked her own discord deleted the email account i'd used to send her long stream of consciousness letters from it hurt it hurt really really bad at first but once i told myself she'd easily find a new partner a new victim the decisions became much much easier to deal with so please people learn from my stupid short-sighted mistakes don't let this lock down loneliness get the better of you are people out there bad people just waiting to exploit it [Music] back when i was about 17 i stayed behind after school with a few mates to use the sixth forms lan network to get a big counter-strike game going this was back before i had a decent enough internet connection or a decent enough computer to actually play online games at home so you can imagine i had an absolute ball i mean we all did and we stayed so late that the caretakers had to physically start switching all the computers off all the mains in order to get us to leave since it was like november it was actually dark by the time we were all on our way home and the only light i had to guide my way was the glow from the orange street lamps at the side of the road but all of a sudden as i'm walking down the old half mile long street i used to live on all the lights in the street just go out at once it was so alarming that it literally stopped me in my tracks and i found myself looking around to notice that all the lights in the nearby houses were off too the power grid in this city i live in is pretty reliable and that was the first time anything like that had happened so naturally i'm a bit freaked out i try calling a friend of mine to see if the power is out in their neighborhood too but my phone won't work i just keep getting this robot voice saying your call could not be connected please hang up and try again so the phones are out the lights are out my parents aren't home yet and i've got a voice in the back of my head that says world war iii is about to start i am way too anxious just to sit at home in the dark both literally and figuratively so i go out into the streets and start walking over to where my friend lived same one i tried to call other people have come out of the houses too neighbors talking to one another wondering what's going on it was actually really freaky how dark it was outside like it's a thing that very few of us in the west ever get to see an urban landscape completely plunged into darkness there was a tension in the air you could feel it and without a working phone to get in touch with anyone or find out what was going on that tension just got heavier and heavier literally nowhere had power i walk like 30 minutes over to my mate's house with the only flickers of light being from hand torches and candles you can see better around main roads thanks to car headlights but it was chaos without traffic lights and whole intersections were jammed up with cars trying to maneuver around each other i made it to my mates house and obviously there was no power there either only at a time when it was much safer to do so we didn't stay inside and i've always thought it was weird how we gravitated back to the only real source of light pretty much everyone else did too and in the course of walking up and down the car clogged main roads we just sort of bumped into the rest of our little friend group and what started as quite an unnerving experience morphed into something supremely exciting we had no idea when the power was coming back on or why it had even gone out in the first place and after a few hours of almost complete darkness even the grown-ups around us started to openly wonder if it would come back any time soon things started to take on a distinctly apocalyptic vibe but we were teenage boys and we were together we had a youthful air of invincibility that made us think that we could take on anything it was actually quite euphoric but that feeling wasn't to last you see we weren't the only people to detect a hint of tension in the air and where other people saw potential chaos in danger others saw opportunity the first hint of it came when we saw three lads bolting out of a corner shop quickly followed by the pursuing owner who barked them that he called the police obviously they'd taken advantage of the darkness to steal from him and that was the first time it really registered with us just how vulnerable we all were at such a time no power meant no light but it also meant no alarm systems no cctv cameras with the police being unable to respond to calls because of the terrible traffic we started to see things like shop owners with baseball bats and iron bars in their hands pulling down shutters over their windows or drivers who'd have to be physically separated from one another to keep them from fighting it was a bad scene and it was foolish of us to stick around on the off chance that anything got particularly heated to me my mates decide to retreat to this primary school car park we used to skate on one that was tucked away near the river and surrounded by trees maybe if it wasn't for the power cut we'd have understood why that might be a bad idea but whether it was the pitch darkness or just this general lack of awareness we had no idea what was coming and dear god do i wish we had so we were hanging around the car park which was normally lit by a few lampposts dotted around but obviously on that night it's near pitch darkness the only light was coming from the moon or from our phone screens which in like 2005 were not particularly bright literally anything could have snuck up on us if it was quiet enough we had absolutely zero spatial awareness which is what made the events that followed all the more terrifying at first one of us is all like shh did you hear that everyone freezes listening out for whatever our mate had heard but there's just silence a little while later this happens again and that time our apparently paranoid friend was insistent that he heard something in the trees nearby but we just dismissed his fears as nothing but an attempt at a prank so when one of us was grabbed by someone looking to put them in a choke hold we all just thought it was another one of our number messing around and i'll never forget the fear in the air when we suddenly realized that we were not alone anymore that whoever had done the grabbing was a total stranger who must have just materialized from basically nowhere one of us tried to wrestle the stranger off of our friend but they seemed to be thrown to the ground by some unseen force it was hideously confusing where these people were coming from and why they were doing it was a complete mystery but i knew one thing for definite we were under attack i'm not even entirely sure what happened after that i'm pretty sure we were outnumbered because i can remember at least two people kicking me after i was floored by a punch to the face it seemed to last for ages too and it only stopped when i heard two voices near me saying something like oh i think he's dead what he's not moving i think i think he's died god let's get out of here man and then the kicking stops i hear her eat foot falls and then suddenly everything is quiet i should have maybe felt some degree of relief that the attack had stopped but that guy's words just rattled around my skull he died i look up from tucking my head into my chest and shielding with my arms and see a few dark shapes either crawling or limping towards another dark shape that was lying motionless on the concrete that was one of the worst moments of my life thinking i was looking at the dead body of one of my closest friends but thankfully he wasn't dead it wasn't exactly okay but it wasn't dead he must have taken a pretty heavy hit because he was completely knocked out cold like one of those bad knockouts too when the person is groggy when they wake up it was still really worrying but jesus the pure relief i felt when he moved and groaned for the first time none of us were hurt too bad just a few black eyes and some busted lips and despite the fact that we were concerned that the guy who got knocked out might have had a concussion he didn't complain of feeling nauseous or dizzy over the next couple of days in the end we all just limped home hoping the power would stay off so we wouldn't have to go to school the next day sporting black guys and lip scabs but the power did come back on so we didn't even get the day off a big takeaway from the night of the blackout wasn't so much how much it sucked being ambushed like that it was something entirely more frightening i had seen with my own eyes the brittle threads that hold society together don't need much pressure before they're stretching to breaking point and all it takes is a little power outage before we're all feeling that pressure but some of us feel something else too and for some the darkness brings out a primal predatory desire to hunt and victimize the same people we call neighbors and it's those kinds of people the monsters in human meat suits that we fell victim to that night [Music] i live in a place called bennington here in maine it's the least populated part of the state which probably makes it one of the least populated areas in the country and with a population of just over 50 people with the very definition of a one-stop light kind of town we all live pretty spaced out too nearest neighbor on my right side is about a mile away nearest neighbor on my left side is more like three miles away the sense of community here is really strong but out here you really are alone in most senses of the word and that kind of isolation is made all the more obvious whenever there's a power cut it's only happened like twice for the entire time i've been living out here and one time it was only for about an hour the second time it must have been a serious fault down at whatever power station feeds his juice because the power was out all night and i don't just remember that night because i couldn't watch the pats play ball it's burning my memory for other reasons too so like i said second ever power cut but thanks to the experience i gained from the first time around i fare a little better that time i have candles stored away i have dynamo flashlights i even got a battery-powered hotplate that would be good for a few uses even if it did burn through the batteries so instead of panicking and bumping into stuff in the dark that time i just make myself comfortable pick up a good book and sit down to ride it out on the couch now it's at this point that i should bring up my dog teddy teddy got his name because my grown-up daughter thought he looks like a teddy bear which he kind of does and given his considerably superior senses the power cuts never seem to bother teddy nunn teddy never bumped into furniture or got spooked at every little noise or shadow teddy just stayed curled up by the log fire and warmed his bones as i curl myself up ted gives me this look at one point as if to say see now you get it old man just relax and take a load off power will come back when it's good and ready to but teddy didn't stay so relaxed for long and neither did i a couple of hours go by and i'm so engrossed by the book i was reading that when teddy started to bark it almost scared me out of my wits you see teddy never barked at anything even when he saw squirrels or raccoons he just sort of looked at me like what are you gonna do about them there critters old man nothing phased him ever so to even hear him yapping like that in the first place was pretty unusual then that got me wondering what could possibly freak him out enough to make him bark i'm all like what is it boy what are you smelling but ted just gets up walks over towards the door to the hallway and starts growling all low in between barks and as i'm sitting there watching him i get this real bad feeling in the pit of my stomach this is the first time i'd ever seen him acting like that downright aggressive and territorial now as much as i respect the second amendment i don't really believe in keeping a gun in the house i hate the things always have and long story short i lost a relative in a shooting accident when i was a kid no just being around a pistol makes me kind of sweat and anxious but what i do have on hand for some defense is an old recurve bow i used for hunting not exactly ideal to stop a burglar but it was better than nothing i must have looked like an old worn out comanche warrior creeping through my living room with a freaking bow and arrow with only fire light to see what was going on but i sure didn't feel like one i just turned 55 i was a grown man but something about all that darkness and being so isolated made me feel like a scared kid best case scenario teddy had picked up the smell of a bear or lynx on the wild one that was still way off in the distance worst case could be something considerably worse when i take a peek out from the house through the window of my office teddy follows jumping on the windowsill and barking a few times after sniffing the air whatever he was smelling i sure wasn't seeing it so after appearing into the darkness for a minute or so i just take ted back into the tv room where he stopped his barking all was quiet again so i carried on with my reading about an hour later the same thing happens all over again teddy jumps up from the rug barking up a storm only this time he seems considerably more aggressive he bounds over to the door of the tv room scratching at the handle and growling in a way that actually kind of frightened me like i said i've never seen teddy act like that like he was a completely different dog when i let him out of the tv room teddy ran through the open door of the kitchen and started barking and scratching at the back door i mean he was going back there and there was no way i was about to let him go outside the mood he was in he'd probably run off as fast as he could and get up getting himself lost besides that i felt strangely safer with ted around he stopped barking for a second sniffed the air and then bolted back into the tv room where he started barking even louder at the glass patio doors that led to the backyard i follow him all like get him boy tear him up but when i catch a glimpse of the sliding glass doors i'd swear i saw something moving in the shadows outside i couldn't even tell you what i saw it was nothing more than a flash of movement it was obvious enough for me to grab that recurve bow that i propped up against the couch i was so scared that i could barely line the arrow up with the drawstring ted was going crazy at this point acting like he was fixing to smash through the glass windows and chased down whatever you could smell and like i said it might even have been just the way the fire light reflected on the glass but i wasn't willing to roll the dice on something being out there then suddenly ted stops barking again i figured it's because he's lost the scent or something because he shut up entirely and stops pawing at the glass in the back doors but then he went and did the weirdest thing he backs off from the doors stands in front of me shaking on all fours and takes a pee right there on the carpet he hadn't done anything like that since he was a puppy ted was hardcore house trained it definitely wasn't out of fear of some black bear either ted's been in the same area areas those ever since he was a pup and unless he actually saw one i can't imagine that he'd freak out the way he did but the fact remains that animals like dogs have been known to just go to the bathroom on themselves whenever a much larger predator predators in the area only i can't imagine how much larger it would have been to make ted forget his house training after that he almost was completely silent just the occasional whimper while i stood there with the flashlight just waiting for the mother of all black bears to come smashing through my back windows at least i hoped it was nothing but a black bear i understand those animals but i didn't understand what was going on during that power out at all and it just about scared the life out of me but by far the worst part of the experience was when i actually heard something in the little side walkway to my house see there's a little gravel path where my wife used to grow vegetables right around the side of my house and i swear to the almighty that i heard two distinct crunches on the gravel red as i'm staring out into the darkness for like the hundredth time that's when i started to call out i know you're there and i'm armed now you better get out of here i listened again and for the next few minutes there was nothing but silence and then just when i started to think that i'd just imagine the whole thing i heard it again clear as day footsteps on the gravel that time i was closer and i'd heard people walk up and down that gravel path a hundred times over the years so i'm telling you right now whatever was outside my house that night was way way bigger than a person if it was a black bear it must have been the biggest one on the entire east coast now i'm not saying it wasn't a bear or something maybe it was just a big old dog that got lost and took the wandering into my yard but like i said it was big really big and you can bet your bottom that i came shaking like a crapping dog as i heard its footsteps getting quieter and quieter as it made its way off my property i didn't hear nothing for the rest of the night ted didn't bark again but it seemed like he'd thrown in the towel with that line of defense anyway but i didn't hear nothing outside and evidently nothing broke into the house otherwise i'd be rambling on about it it's just kind of surreal to me that one of the scariest experiences in my life comes across like a second-rate campfire tale i don't scare easy and what happened during that blackout scared the living hell out of me i just hope whatever that thing was whether it was a bear or the turner beast or something else entirely stays well away from my property in the future because it'd take far more than just a few arrows to take down a beast as big as that just over a year ago in october 2019 some real scary stuff went down and i thought i was gonna lose my life i live with my mom in california just out of sacramento and i love her a whole lot because she works really hard to take care of me i'm much better right now but a year ago i really wasn't doing so good and i was dependent on an oxygen mask for my breathing it wasn't like a face mask or anything it was pretty discreet i wore what's called a nasal cannula which is like the little clear plastic tube that runs up your nose it was quite uncomfortable at first but you get used to anything after a while anyway so i spent most of my time hooked up to a pap machine and it was a super important that it stayed switched on at all times or i might suffocate but if it ever did switch off or break for any reason i could just switch over to my battery-powered oxygen tank and voila tragic death avoided the system was flawlessly safe for so i was led to believe because what that system doesn't take into account is that all of a sudden pg and e might decide that it's going to switch the power off to my house i wake up in the middle of the night feeling like i'm about to have a full on anxiety attack and it only takes me about a second before i realize that i can't breathe i brought a hand to my face and felt that my nasal cannula was still in my nostrils but when i rolled over in bed i saw my pee pap machine was dark now under any other circumstances i could just unplug from the machine walk into the spare bedroom and plug into the battery-powered oxygen tank but since i was so tired and whatever had happened to cut the power had happened when i was asleep i'd lost a vulnerable time to make the transition so picture the scene i feel like i'm about to pass out i can't see a thing because it's dark and i have to make it all the way across the hall and into the spare room when i feel like i can't make it three steps in front of me it was the most scared i'd ever been in my life i had a matter of seconds to get to the battery tank i'm making all these wheezing sounds and i can just feel myself getting weaker and weaker as i made it out of my bedroom and took my first steps into the hallway i only make it a few paces before i just feel my knees buckling underneath me i try to crawl but i just can't and that's about all i remember until the next thing i know i'm sucking air through the cannula like a crazy person coughing and sputtering with my mom's voice in my ear i must have made a whole bunch of noise on the way out of my bedroom and thank god too because it woke my mom up she must have found me lying there figured out what the deal was then just dragged me far enough toward the spare bedroom that she could plug in my oxygen tube i just remember lying there taking these huge deep breaths until i felt sort of okay again but that only lasted a moment or two until the memory of that fear came rushing back to me and i just burst into tears we had to drive to the hospital to get me looked over by a doctor you can get some nasty health complications if you're deprived of oxygen like that and it's not just the obvious stuff either like it can cause blood clots in your arteries from the strain and those can be pretty fatal but yeah i got checked over and although i was pretty shaken up i was otherwise okay but then the whole thing comes out about the blackouts and that caused a lot of controversy for those that don't know here in california was discovered that some equipment owned by a bunch of electrical companies was causing forest fires there was this huge fire where almost 100 people died the fire department found it was started by a power line that had fallen over then companies then catch a ton of crap from the federal government and as a result they basically made the decision to just cut power off to a bunch of people's homes during wildfire season unfortunately for us our home was one of them we got lucky though like one guy actually died because he was on home life support or something the power went off and boom massive organ failure the power cuts affected other stuff too like nebulizers dialysis machines refrigerators that kept insulin fresh power companies said they'd been warning people for months about it and they should make preparations but i don't remember hearing anything about it but yeah scariest moment in my life right there straight up thinking that i was gonna die but like so many times before in my life my mom was there to stop me from slipping away i started my new job at will rogers airport i say new job but i was really just moved to a different airline and working on the same ramp agent position now i have to tell you that i have a crippling fear of heights and my least favorite part of being ramp agent is when i have to climb in a cargo bin or rear loading plane because it's about 20 feet above the ground the first thing is it was raining not just light raining but pouring rain with a few scattered lightning flashes and random power surges every now and then we have dead bodies transported into cargo bins this was one of those occasions and tonight was my lucky night apparently because my manager told me i was throwing this plane throwing me i was pulling the cargo out of the bin it was the last plane for the night and wasn't very much cargo besides the body my co-worker john pulled the ramp loader to the plane and raised it up so i can walk up to the conveyor belt to enter the bin about four other co-workers come over with a baggage tug for the cargo i say to everyone in a louder than normal tone because the rain was loudly smacking the metal shell of the airplane i hope you all are ready i'm not trying to be out here all night john laughed and said don't worry about it maybe you can find a new friend in there in reference to the bodies i didn't think it was funny but i chuckled and told him to shut up and let's get going i climbed into the small and cramped space and set in the bin as far from the human size white cardboard box as i could and pull my phone out of my pocket to select a playlist to listen to while i throw the bin i find the good one and i start working the conveyor belt moves at a snail's pace and you have to wait until they scan each individual package so i can't just throw them as fast as i want to to get out of there about 10 minutes into it i'm getting closer and closer to this box and my music stops playing i've had earbuds that short out when they get wet so in the front of my mind i automatically assume that the rain somehow got on it and i just needed to shake the little water out of them but they were bowling dry i checked spotify to see if it was a glitch or a problem with the app and i see i have an unread text did i get a notification and forget in the midst of my rap fuel baggage handling the way my phone is set up when i get a message it will tell you who it is from but it won't display the message you have to access them and read it the message was from an unknown number which was odd because very few people have my number i clicked the notification and i read the message and all it said was hi i sent a text back and i said uh who is this my phone displayed that whoever sent the message saw mine immediately after it sent i waited in no response i started my playlist back up and got back to my job shortly after a crash of thunder that was so loud the plane shook made me jump at first but i quickly rationalized it and returned to work i noticed the conveyor belt was no longer moving i yelled to john what the hell is going on up there why did it stop he told me to sit tight they're gonna drop off this load i think to myself where else am i gonna go about one minute later it got cold like i could see my breath code i wrote it off as just a cold front i reach over for some stranger's luggage to lean on while i wait as i look over for a bag to grab lightning went across the sky and i saw a quick flash of a little boy eleven maybe 12 years old sitting on a white box staring at me with this eerily happy smile and his head turned slightly to the side my heart sunk and i froze never taking my eyes off that box for what felt like hours i was startled by the replacement conveyor belt starting up right next to the plane i darted to the moving conveyor crawling as fast as i could trying to keep my balance and panic at the same time i hit the ground and looked at john and said nope i'm done you're gonna have to go in there i didn't want to explain exactly what i saw but john knew something scared me so he asked me what was wrong and who was it i stuttered a little bit and i walked away before i could say anything then i got a new text message notification that i heard loud and clear this time it responds from an unknown sender saying it's your new friend my neighbor gary has lived across the street from our house ever since we moved in he's a nice guy like perennially nice never has a bad word to say about anyone always sees the best in people he never fails to see things in a positive light and has been a welcome fixture at every barbecue or block party we've ever thrown but this latest crisis has been pretty hard on gary and his family and over the past few weeks i've noticed some pretty disturbing changes in his behavior changes that have meant that gary went from being the ned flanders personality clone we love so much to being someone that i'm quite frankly terrified of i remember when we first heard rumors of the lockdown coming gary came over to talk about it he was his usual jolly self laughing off the scare mongering coming from the media but as we talked about a shortage on food and hand sanitizer becoming a reality he grew unsettled in a way i'd never really seen before gary has two young kids but he also has his elderly mother living with him he once told me he just didn't have the heart to put her in a home how that seemed way too much like abandonment gary was just that kind of guy at least he was that kind of guy i only really started noticing the change when he came home one day with a trunk loaded with groceries not just the trunk either the back seat of his suv was overloaded with paper grocery bags some were loaded with meat and vegetables some stacked entirely full of canned goods but it was the box full of hand sanitizer that really made me take notice gary was the polar opposite of a germaphobe like polar opposite he routinely ignored the five second rule when it came to barbecue items dropped into lawn grass and was very much of the opinion that letting kids play outside letting them eat a little dirt from time to time was just good for their immune system it'd make them tough in a way that playing with screens just wouldn't we actually used to laugh at people who kept those little purell bottles and hip holsters overly paranoid losers who would drive their cars off a bridge if they really knew how many microorganisms lived in their eyelashes alone but here gary was unloading an entire pallet of hand sanitizer from his truck got some despair huh buddy i shouted over for my porch at the prices i just paid he replied seems innocuous i know but if you knew gary you'd be just as interested to note that this reply didn't come with a smile or a chuckle he barely even looked at me as he took the supplies inside but things only really took a turn for the worse when one of gary's kids took a tumble while playing in the street outside their house they were playing on the new bike riding around in circles when i guess they just lost their balance and fell hard onto the concrete you tell it was a bad fall from the way they let out this pained shocked cry before bursting into tears my wife was out on the porch at the time sipping an iced tea and saw the whole thing i had heard the scream but wasn't sure what happened until i saw my wife grabbing the first aid kit we keep in a kitchen cabinet i followed her outside into the street but as she approached gary's kid the man himself was stood in his front doorway in the sternous voice i'd ever heard of the man he told my wife to get away from his kid i guess she understand what he meant as she stopped just short of the crying child took a few steps back and then slid the first aid kit across the concrete in her direction gary's other kid was old enough to know what that first aid kit was but as he tried to pick it up off the ground gary erupted at him to not touch that freaking thing and to get back inside the house my wife apologized for her hastiness but a short gary she had the best of intentions and for the first time in four or five years since we moved into the neighborhood i actually found myself getting angry with him he didn't even acknowledge my wife's apology giving us both a contemptuous look as he closed and locked the front door behind him a few days later we saw the same kid who fell wearing a makeshift sling and looked pretty miserable it took us a while to put two and two together but we did and we realized that gary hadn't nor had any intention of taking his kid to the hospital to get their arm looked at by a doctor it was only then did it really hit me just how bad this whole pandemic thing was affecting him he wasn't just taking precautions as the rest of us were he seemed to be going full on survivalist like the guy's entire personality had shifted over what was apparently just the course of a week or so it was disconcerting to say the least then just a few nights ago my wife shook me awake to tell me she could smell something burning i literally fell out of bed thinking she was telling me our house was on fire but she assured me it wasn't and that she could just smell something as my senses came to life i began to be able to smell it too this acreage smokey smell that was obviously something being burned it only took me one look out of our bedroom window to tell me where it was coming from an orange glow emanating from across the street there was a fire in gary's backyard the smell wasn't just bothering us either almost every bedroom light of every house in the block was switched on and i could see some similarly irritated neighbors floating by their windows trying to find out where the stench was coming from i decided to just suck it up go over and ask him to put the fire out god knows what he was burning but i knew from the smell that it wasn't healthy but no sooner had i crossed onto gary's half of the street he appears from his backyard gate at least i figured it was gary i couldn't see his face it was covered up with one of those old gulf war era gas masks the kind with the big round glass eyes that made him look more simian than human that along with the 12 gauge shotgun that he had firmly in his grip sent a shiver of fear running through me get away from my house martin his words were muffled by the mask but it was clear what he said gary buddy that fires get away from my house martin he never called me martin always marty it was the first time i'd ever heard him call me by my actual name i just did the smart thing i backed off hands raised slow enough to keep him from freaking out and shooting me dead right there in the street i haven't talked to or seen gary for the past few days and i'm more than willing to give him the space he and his family need if that's what it takes for him to stay sane but please if any of your neighbors are suffering right now please reach out to see if they're okay if they need anything at all even if it is just for you to keep your distance i'm sure gary will be fine in time when all this stuff has calmed down i hope he returns to be the man i once knew and loved [Music] have you all been following all these zoom and skype dates that have been happening since the lockdown started as you imagine the use of dating apps have skyrocketed since the government had ordered us all inside for the foreseeable future those who would usually flaunt their game in the club or at the gym are now forced to use the same tactics as the less socially adept of us and dating apps and although i'm not entirely happy with the increased competition i'd be lying if i said my match count hasn't bumped up a little silver linings right anyway instead of using tinder or hinge with their increased emphasis on physical appearances definitely not my strong point given i'm about 30 pounds overweight right now i opted for reddit's r for r form which is full of posts from those who want to hook up for conversation flirting and occasionally even more so i put up this pretty dumb post basically asking if there were any girls that wanted to have like a lockdown date or whatever i listed a bunch of my interests mainly horror movies and a few political issues close to my heart and implored anyone who identified with them to get in touch one or two girls did and i feel mean admitting this but they just didn't seem particularly engaging nice yes charming one really was but our talks didn't light a fire in me not like the message i got in the wee small hours of the morning when i was up way past my usual bedtime the message from a girl named amber who wrote eloquently and charmingly about how she too was looking for something of a lockdown bae herself she was highly politically involved as she put it which definitely sparked my interest and sharp comparison with the two other girls who wrote back to me who didn't seem interested in politics she was also extremely intelligent the way she was able to articulate her thoughts was something i had rarely encountered in online interactions which is also why i was so shocked when i found out she was only 18 11 years my junior only when she described herself i started to get suspicious she seemed perfect too perfect she told me she was 5'7 asian american fit and toned from yoga and spin class in her own words she was pretty cute catfish was the first thought that came to my mind there was absolutely no way a girl is cute sounding as that would be getting in contact with me so i just made a joke about it well a joke that wasn't really a joke i basically called her out on it how she didn't have to pretend to be some hot asian girl just to get my attention not with the kind of conversational skills that she did the next message was just a link to an imgur photo a risky click if ever there was one as there was absolutely nothing in the way of a caption to clue me into what the picture was of but i suppose curiosity just got the better of me and i just clicked for those that don't already know a verification photo is when a person hand writes their username or other pertinent information on a piece of paper to prove that they are indeed who they say they are and yep you guessed it the picture was verification as it turned out amber was exactly who she claimed to be young asian and impossibly gorgeous i mean i was literally stunned when i saw that picture of her i just stopped and stared for what seemed like minutes when it came to returning the favor i was terrified i am not in the least but confident about my appearance as i've made clear and the idea of trying to take a selfie something i'd never even done before that evening was almost too much to bear but i did it anyway i comb my hair wash my face then went over my beard with the barely used trimmer my mom bought me for my 28th birthday basically her way of telling me to get that stuff off my face then when i was done i found my angle took the photo and then sent it over the suspense the raw suspense oh my god i honestly think the last time i was that nervous was before my first date i ever went on as a 17 year old in high school i'm talking that heart racing sweaty palm time slowing down nervous that makes you feel sick to your stomach i was convinced i'd never hear from her again that she'd see how mismatched this whole thing was and just up and goes me only she didn't she actually replied saying that i was cute that was three weeks ago now we've talked every single day since then sometimes having multiple hour long phone calls that run into the wee small hours of the morning and the more we talked the more serious things became at one point amber asked where she saw this going after lockdown was over she told me she was living in portland whereas i was all the way over in the greater boston area pretty much opposite ends of the country to one another but she pretty much straight up raised the issue of us needing to act on the chemistry we had i told her that money was no object that she was legit the most beautiful charming young woman i'd ever met in my entire life it was true i meant every word of it but i understood when she told me that she heard that kind of thing all the time that they'd tell her just about anything to get the chance to sleep with her and i believe that too she asked me how far i'd be willing to go to prove myself to her i told her as far as she needed me to go at that she just laughed telling me how she doubted it i was indignant i'd do anything everything she asked just to make her believe it that's when she told me to get a knife i'm ashamed to say that there was barely any hesitation i just trusted her i trusted that she knew what was best for me she already seemed to be able to read me like a book she asked if i had an envelope handy i told her yes that i had a pack of about a hundred crisp white envelopes she told me to open it i obeyed she told me to place the blade of the knife onto my palm i obeyed and when she finally gave me the order i pulled the blade across my flesh and let fresh blood flow onto the open envelope it didn't even hurt it was the strangest thing but for the first few minutes there was no pain at all just this dull hot feeling as i watched the blood flow from the open wound staining the perfect white of the paper a deep crimson i held everything up to the webcam showing her exactly how far i was willing to go for her and oh my god the look on her face the way her pretty almond eyes seemed to light up it just filled me with joy i don't really know why i'm telling you this i know it's making me sound crazy just as much as it's making her sound toxic but in that moment it all just made so much sense words are cheap actions count for something and there's no dearer currency than our own lifeblood it seemed like the purest act of devotion imaginable and for a while i saw nothing wrong with it and had zero regrets when it was done she told me to buy a larger plastic envelope one that'll properly conceal the blood-filled paper one then i was to mail it to her again it made a lot of sense it was possible to fake something like that i mean pretty easily so the idea that she wanted to see for herself to verify that i'd be true to her it was just second nature as instructed i paid extra for next day delivery a lot extra but it would be worth it i felt like every penny i spent on this girl was worth it money can't buy something like we shared at least that's the way it felt at the time i remember being so excited that the prospect of her opening that envelope of seeing her satisfaction at knowing what i'd done for her and when she saw when she showed me her opening that thing over webcam it was every bit as disgustingly glorious as i imagined her eyes lit up in that same adorable way and she smiled in a way i'd never quite seen before such a wide white smile she giggled as she held it up bringing a hand to her mouth and in one fluid motion she brought the blood-stained envelope to her lips and kissed it only she didn't just kiss it i watched transfixed as she began to lick at the dried blood stains spitting on them and lathering them with her tongue until the dried mess hydrated and formed a sticky crimson residue now writing this now it's really obviously disgusting but at the time it seemed like love it was the purest act of acceptance of another living being i'd ever witnessed she was purporting to adore the very blood that ran through my veins that even in a dried up crusty state she could invigorate it it said so much with so little the next day we got into a conversation about cats amber loved kitties as she put it she had a bunch of clothes with cat designs on them hair accessories that resembled catgirls it was a whole theme for her but since she was in college living in a dorm room that she was basically trapped in due to lockdown there was no way of her getting to own one now for the first time being away i confess that since my last girlfriend had broken up with me and moved out i'd strongly been considering getting a pet to combat the crushing loneliness that came with a lifestyle such as mine this revelation delighted her and she asked if i would go get her one i was confused at first thinking we meant she wanted me to like send her a cat i didn't think this was entirely out of the question i mean animal shelters would still need to run despite the covet thing there had to be a way i could find an animal shelter in her area and arrange to have one dropped off but obviously that's not what she meant at all she wanted me to get a cat i acquiesced to the idea pretty quickly it did suit my plans after all but then the conversation took a weird turn she asked me if i love kitties so i told her yes the truth is i don't like them as much as dogs but i wasn't about to over complicate the situation by saying that then she asked me which i liked more her or cats again i said her then she asked if i loved enough to hurt something innocent i hesitated but again i said yes then came those fatal words that now don't seem so loving anymore it she told me in no uncertain terms that she wanted me to prove that i loved her more than any other living creature she didn't want me to get into any trouble to ruin my career by getting a criminal record or anything but she still wanted proof it was horrifying listening to her talk she'd obviously thought this out maybe even long in advance she told me i could get a really old cat from a rescue center one that was near the end of its life anyway one that might well be suffering from joint pain or breathing trouble she told me to look at it like an act of mercy one that would prove i was the right man for her one that could make difficult decisions and own them too and i'm ashamed to admit i agreed to every word i found that local animal shelters in my area were still indeed operating i called one to ask them a few questions regarding the adoption process and found it would be infinitely easier than i even expected i could pay them a visit and leave with a cat the very same day then it came to asking my own rather tailored set of questions i told her i wanted to give an older kitty a comfortable time in its twilight years that i was something of a feline philanthropist and had been doing so for many years it was heart-wrenching hearing that rescue center worker telling me what a good person i was how no one wanted to adopt the older cats and how one would be so so happy to have finally found someone to take care of them i think that's what did it the sobering moment that made me realize how stupid i'd been these past few weeks how lust and desire and loneliness had driven me to the point where i was willing to relinquish my entire humanity i had never heard so much as a fly in my entire life and there i was planning to hurt an innocent essentially defenseless animal i knew i had to do something i opted for a clean break i thought about writing her a long goodbye message explaining how i'd come to that decision hoping it wouldn't hurt her feelings too much but then it occurred to me that she didn't really have feelings not like you or i might do she had a fixation on what she could do it all made sense in that context she got off on power on manipulation in any way she could achieve that was justified i blocked her on discord deleted the email account i'd used to send her long stream of consciousness letters from it hurt it hurt really really bad at first but once i told myself she'd easily find a new partner a new victim the decisions became much much easier to deal with so please people learn from my stupid short-sighted mistakes don't let this lock down loneliness get the better of you because there are people out there bad people just waiting to exploit it i live here in new zealand and late in 2018 i was feeling sort of lonely so i decided to download the dating app tinder to try and find myself a nice guy to go on a few dates with maybe even find myself a long-term boyfriend out of it i ended up matching with this guy who'd come over from australia and we chatted for two weeks before we finally met up the conversation was quite light nothing too heavy and it was fun like i said i was from australia so we talked about aussie things and i remember telling him how much i wanted to visit melbourne he said that he'd been there once or twice and started making recommendations for some great coffee shops that he knew of he seemed like a nice normal guy and when we agreed to meet i was happy to do that but then maybe five days or so before we were due to meet he got really persistent and impatient he would text me multiple times in a day and if i didn't reply straight away he would ask if something was wrong i thought it was weird that he was being so clingy after starting off so confident he kept trying to bring the date forward so we could meet up sooner and would totally forget if i had told him i was busy on a particular day almost like he wasn't paying attention or didn't care about what i had to say it was honestly really unusual for someone to be that persistent with me i've had guys before who are maybe a bit persistent but only out of a nervous excitement a different kind of excited than this aussie guy seemed to be i just couldn't understand why it was that he could not possibly wait until the sunday that we'd arranged to meet it felt very narcissistic and i should have seen it as the red flag that it was and just not met up with him at all i had the messages saved on my phone for a while so i have a record of the exact dates and times that he sent some of his messages so on the 2nd of december he messaged me just after 9am saying good morning how is you and again about an hour and a half later i didn't reply to the first message because i was asleep and i think he took it the wrong way because he said it was fine if i'd changed my mind and didn't feel like going on the date that was when i messaged him back and confirmed that i would meet him later on that day we met up and went to a place called revelry it's a very standard bar very popular and lots of people go there but it's definitely more of a nighttime bar i had never drunk there during the afternoon or the daytime but it was open seemed like it had a chill atmosphere and he wanted to go there so that's where we went he was a bit bigger than the pictures on his tinder profile showed and it was obvious that he had put on a little bit of weight he had big distinctive eyes and he was very very clean cut i mean like his clothes look freshly washed and ironed he was also very well groomed obviously took good care of his skin and stuff like that like he was really good looking i remember asking him a lot of different questions and he just sort of talked to me he tried to ask me a few questions but they weren't very in-depth ones i thought he was a bit nervous to be honest but that's not unusual for a first date but things started to sort of unravel at one point because he had said one thing in messages about where he worked and a different thing on the date i started to feel a bit uneasy like i wanted to trust him but as soon as he started to put on some inconsistencies i began to wonder if he was just lying about stuff to impress me because he was from australia i asked him the whereabouts that he had met his kiwi friends and he told me that all of his friends were police officers or somehow involved in law enforcement he said how he had met with them while out drinking in various bars have they gotten to know each other over time and they regularly invited him back to their places for barbecues and stuff like that he also mentioned that his best friend from australia was coming over to be a crown court prosecutor that's when i noticed that a lot of the stuff that he was talking about kind of had this running theme to it it kind of seemed like he was obsessed with that sort of thing which in hindsight explains an awful lot i think he was sort of trying to process some of the things that he had been up to over the previous few days and it came out in his conversation style he obviously thought an awful lot about policemen dead bodies and ways people can be killed prosecution justice and the court system and it just came out in a very strange way like that on our first date like i said before we talked quite a lot about him being friends with lots of different policemen and he went into quite a bit of depths regarding the details of certain investigations that they'd apparently shared with him he said they were having a really tough time around that time because of bodies going missing in the waitakere ranges he told me that police corp sniffing dogs can only detect decaying flesh about four feet deep under the soil so if the bodies are buried any deeper than that the police won't be able to find them i thought it was a bit of a morbid thing to talk about on a first date but it was an interesting fact nonetheless we also got into a conversation about all the different kinds of poisonous snakes in australia and he became quite animated about that he obviously had a passion for the natural world it was quite out there but i thought it was cute i love animals too so i was glad we had something in common and it made me feel a bit more relaxed again but then right as i started feeling comfortable with him again he started telling me this really bizarre and creepy story he told me how crazy it is that a guy can make one little mistake and then go to jail for the rest of his life for it he went on to tell me about this guy he knew back in oz who had consensual intimacy involving choking with his girlfriend and had ended up accidentally killing her in the process he assured me that the whole thing was a horrible tragic accident how things just went wrong suddenly and how the guy was really upset because he loved her and would never hurt her on purpose but still the guy got done for manslaughter and was sent to prison for a long long time what i know now is this could have been him testing out a story on me when he was able to see that i was a bit uncomfortable with what he was saying he tried to change the subject so we could talk about more mundane things i didn't try to make a swift exit or anything i am quite used to dealing with all sorts of people and i'm not seeing people who talk about dark things on the first date or like bad people or anything but it was definitely weird we hung out for a while but after about three hours or so i made some excuse as to why i had to leave and we said goodbye as we were parting ways he said my car is this way and pointed off down a particular road my car was down that same road but by that stage i was feeling uneasy and my instincts had just kicked in telling me to walk a different way he was also a lot bigger than me so if something went wrong i knew i wouldn't be able to defend myself in hindsight it was a good decision it was my intuition sense my brain was saying this was strange that was strange and looking back on it now it is really strange to think of who he actually was i don't think it is in the realm of what normal human brains can comprehend but just the day before we met up the guy i was out on that first date with had murdered a girl in his hotel room a british girl called grace mullane the reason he brought up his friend accidentally strangling his girlfriend is because that's exactly how he'd killed her although whether or not it was on purpose is another question entirely also the reason he'd mention the waitakere mountain range is because that's where he ended up disposing of her body and all that other stuff about sniffer dogs was research that he'd been doing the previous night that was still sort of consuming his mind it is hard to look back and think that that had just happened to her from what i understand while we were on our date her body was still in that hotel room of his hidden under the bed or something wrapped in a blanket there's nothing i could have done and i know that now but it is still really hard to come to terms with that i do think if it had been a date in the evening potentially i could have been a victim i take a lot of solace in the fact that i do have my wits about me and do take safety and online dating quite seriously and that is nothing against any women who are willing to go home with someone on the first date but i do want to say to young women to take one more step in your thinking when you're on a date to see how well you know this person actually since then i have been on dates with lovely trustworthy men but think how well do i really know them it has made me go a little slower and divulge a little less personal information to them i know in modern dating it is quite common to give people your instagram handle but you are giving people access to a lot of personal information it is really dangerous and i just want to encourage people to take a step back and think before they do that there's nothing wrong with taking a step back taking it slow and pacing yourself a bit alcohol has a big effect it is a part of the social fabric of dating and part of life these days but it still comes with a massive risk women need to be really aware of how much they are drinking on dates and unfortunately drinks are sometimes spiked we live in this world where people are still idealistic about how things should be on dates but incidents like these take things back 10 or 20 years where women are still having to grip their keys between their fingers or can't leave a drink on the table we aren't as developed as we think we are in areas such as dating technology has got ahead of us i think people are as they always are i think with the advancement of technology we thought we would become more refined but we are just the same but with new technology i think the invention of dating apps is a wonderful thing and i wouldn't want to live in a world without that but i just wish for a world where women don't have to think about their safety all the time

Channel: Mort

Views: 1,234,683

Keywords: horror story, instagram horror story, mcdonalds horror story, animated story, horror stories animated, animated stories compilation, horror stories compilation, animated stories, creepy stories, horror stories, horror story animated, facebook horror story

Id: TwZuiCfM-po

Length: 193min 2sec (11582 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021