5 True Scary Backpacking / Travel Horror Stories

[Music] as part of his import export business an old friend of my dads had a place out on the island nation of sri lanka located in the indian ocean southwest of the bay of bengal sri lanka is remarkably similar to its neighbor india in many ways but is also considerably more chill making it a great holiday destination more relax and enjoy instead of the mind-expanding experience of india with all of its temples festivals and bustling market districts so back in 2012 my dad's mate told me his house over there would be empty for a few months during the winter he usually rents it out to taurus but there was a little gap in the bookings and suggested that for a considerable discount i could rent that place out and get some long overdue traveling done obviously i jumped at the opportunity and blew all the meager savings i had on plane tickets in the rent i knew i was in for the adventure of a lifetime but i had no idea how truly memorable it would turn out to be for me and not for the right reasons either so a little bit of background the place i ended up staying in a little town called hikadua is a huge tourist destination it's full of backpackers from all over the western world like you can't swing a cat in hika without hitting some white dude with dreadlocks who's playing bob marley from a bluetooth speaker as a result i found myself issuing all the hippie haunts and the starbucks rip off that dotted hikadua's main drag in favor of the little roti shops and curry houses that only ever seem to cater to the local sri lankan that's how i met lassie one of the things i noticed about the local food was how mild it was i actually commented on this to a waiter in one of the swankier tourist places i went to on my first night there and he laughed before saying something along the lines of this is just for the tourists real sri lankan food is much spicier so when i ended up in this little curry place where i was the only white guy to be seen i made the mistake of asking for what they call over their home style when it arrived at my table i realized that everyone in the entire place was staring at me with grins on their faces just waiting for me to try the food not one to back down from a challenge i tucked in early spooning a few mouthfuls of rice and curry sauce into my face before all of a sudden the heat kicked in it was like nothing i'd ever felt my entire life like a bomb had gone off in my mouth i was coughing spluttering reaching for my glass bottle of coke but the sugary liquid only seemed to wash the taste around my mouth making it worse i'm not joking when i say my actual eyebrows were sweating by the time this long-haired sri lankan guy one about the same age as me starts patting me on the back and ask him if i'm okay i give him a wordless nod just trying not to embarrass myself any further listening to the gentle teetering of the locals around me who were clearly very amused by the woeful display of western weakness the guy then says something in sinhala at the guy manning the counter who swiftly brings over a glass of what looked like milk but turned out to have the consistency of yogurt this drink has my name the guy said in almost perfect english as he sat down opposite me it's called lassie try it i took a drink of it and instantly felt the pain in my mouth start to ebb away apparently something about dairy counteracts the spiciness of things and in a state of absolute relief i thanked him profusely that's how me and lassie started hanging out he introduced me to his friends who played pool together most nights showed me the surf school they ran together and taught me a few words in sinhala the local language then one day lassie tells me that there's this beach party going on over the weekend and says since he knows the owners of the bar it's taking place at that he could get me in for free instead of having to pay the ludicrous ticket prices that were given to taurus it did sound like a good laugh so i agreed to go so cut to a few nights later when they head down to the pool hall where lassie and his mates were hanging out we sink a few cheap lion beers i mean insanely cheap 75 cents for a pint bottle cheap play a few games a pool then head down to the beach bar the police was jumping tourists and backpackers from all over hicka duo had just ascended on the place for the night and the air thumped with the base that came from the set of huge speakers near a dj booth because he was cousins or friends with the owner lassie and his mates got us in for free just as he promised but aside from that the disparity between the locals and the tourists mounted considerably anyone with a white face was allowed past the line to pay for tickets which amounted to a month's wages to a sri lankan person so not many of the locals could get in the only sri lankans that could afford to pay for tickets were those rich kids that had come down from the capital colombo these guys were instantly recognizable compared to lossy and his mates they wore surf shorts and old hand-me-down t-shirts while the rich kids from colombo had expensive shirts and jewelry on idiots lossy said at one point gesturing to a group of colombo kids throwing money around near the bar they look down on us like we're rats i would not have invited you if i had known they were going to be here why not they're just some dumb rich kids we got those two in the uk i told them nah wait and see lassie replied then said something that started off a kind of tension that grew and grew as the night went on there will be trouble so i feel like i should make a disclaimer at this point in my experience every sri lankan i had met aside from these rich idiots from colombo were perfectly nice and polite none of the girls i spoke to while i was there complained of being harassed by sri lankans or spoke to in any way other than gentlemanly but these colombo kids were different and the explanation of their behavior is something i'm pretty much quoting from lassie despite being buddhist sri lanka is still quite a conservative society like he never saw any young sri lankan girls anywhere other than the markets when they were doing their shopping they were never at any of the bars at night except for when they were working and they didn't hang around the beaches like their male counterports were allowed to sri lankan girls are chased but the view among certain sections of sri lankan was the western girls were not lassie and his friends knew better than to go creeping on white girls on the beaches wearing their little bikinis but the same could not be said for the rich kids from colombo and they weren't just overly flirtatious with the western girls they were downright pervy with them at one point i see this drunk jewelry dripping idiot just straight up pinch this western girl's bottom it was seriously gross he didn't just pinch it as the expression goes he actually groped her she gave the guy a dirty look and the guy just laughed i'm kind of ashamed to say it now but i didn't say anything to lassie where his mates mood was getting pretty tense by that point and i didn't want anything to kick off but it seems by that time that ship had sailed we're just sitting around the table drinking at one point when one of lassie's mates this guy dinesh stands up and starts shouting something in sinhala over the colombo kids he just witnessed one of them groping a western girl again and had absolutely lost his cool with the sight of it yo they give us a bad name he said to me at one point turning back to the columbo kids and shouting something in his language at them they made some insulting gesture back to him and brushed off his reproach and after that the situation just got worse and worse eventually some western girl actually starts shouting in the face of one of the colombo kids there had been another incident only this time she hadn't taken it lying down i think the girl was german or norwegian or something as she was proper screaming in this lad's face but i couldn't quite make out what she was saying a little crowd gathers to watch the german girl shove the rich colombo kid in the chest which would normally go without a response back in the west but the whole crowd gasped when the rich kid just straight up slaps the girl i turned to lassie and his mates to be like what is going on did you just see that but they're already sprinting over to the rich kids i run after them to try and stop what was about to unfold but it was way too late the biggest bar fight i'd ever seen was about to kick off it was like something out of the film i mean it went from zero to a hundred in a few seconds the good vibes over the sandy dance floor went from chill to tense and straight up violent in just a few moments as the columbo kids in the lossy group just all started fighting each other not a single taurus tried to do anything about it which i understand no one wants to get thrown into a foreign jail only there was one big problem from my perspective lossy and his mates were only about four or five in number whereas there was at least 12 to 15 of these columbo kids and they seriously outnumber the lads i'd gotten friendly with i had two choices not get involved watch them get the life kicked out of them and have to live with being a complete coward for the rest of my time there or get involved get my butt kicked and potentially face getting arrested and thrown into a sri lankan prison for assault i chose the latter and seriously suffered for it you see i'm not much of a fighter never have been so not only did i take a few serious punches during the brawl but i wasn't prepared for the level these guys were willing to take it not only were these lads hurling beer bottles at each other but there was this big pile of wooden sticks that were fueling this big bonfire on the beach they started grabbing those and just swinging them at each other i remember rushing in to grab one of the sticks from one of the columbo kids then taking a whack on the head from what i can only assume was another it was like a cartoon my head was literally spinning from the impact and i staggered away for a few paces like literally seeing stars having to shake off the impact before i could turn around and get involved again only by the time i do lossy and was just laying there on the sand with the other hika guys just trying to fight off like three guys each putting up a good fight but eventually being overcome that's when i see one of the columbo kids with a bottle in his hand he hands over lassie and just brings the empty bottle down on his face as hard as he could jesus the sound of that thing shattering on his forehead i can still hear it crystal clear to this day they're not done there either they start smashing him in the head with the wooden sticks well he already has this broken glass all over his face and head i remember the sick feeling i felt at the time thinking they're actually gonna try and kill him not like the fights in the uk which are pretty posturing these guys were legit trying to finish lassie off as he lay there in the sand covered in glass i didn't know what else to do i just kind of put myself in between their sticks and lossy's head letting the blows rain down on my arms which i was using to cover my head it was probably the dumbest thing i'd ever done i know i could have come off so much worse and it was honestly the most incredible stroke of luck that right as i'm thinking these dudes are going to beat me to death that the sri lankan police turned up and had the columbo kids running away the aftermath was just absolutely horrific like something out of a war movie or something there was broken glass everywhere blood soaking into the sand the music from the dj was off at that point so the whole thing was soundtracked by the sobbing of the girls who'd witnessed such an extreme display of physical violence i could barely keep a straight thought in my head the adrenaline was still coursing through me the only thing i could think of was the word ambulance which i repeated over and over to the sri lankan policeman that viewed the scene with a disturbing kind of apathy it was like they saw this kind of thing all the time or at least so many times that it didn't move them in any way no ambulance tooktook one of them said meaning that we'd have to carry the wounded to one of the waiting rickshaw taxis that floated around the bars every night waiting to ferry drunken taurus back to their hostels i started trying to wake lassie up to at least get him onto his feet but even as he roused backed into consciousness he couldn't move i tried to lift him up tried enlisting the help of others when i failed to do so but for some reason they were huddled around another of lassie's friends i was furious lassie might be blind from the impact of that glass bottle yet they were crowded around another for some reason only when they lifted him up and ran across the sand with his body hoisted up did i realize that he was hurt far far worse the mob that held him aloft left a trail of blood in their wake i've never seen blood trails like that before and i never want to again eventually they came back for losses and we trudged across the sand with him held up in our arms jesus christ the sand made it so much harder to carry him it would have been hard enough on the road but but the lack of resistance made my thighs burn by the time we got outside the bar into a waiting tuk-tuk it took until we were in the street lights of the road outside the bar to see how bad the damage was really done there were shards of glass wedged all up and down the right side of his face the shards that glittered in the bright white roadside lights i had no idea if any had gotten into his eye which was swollen shut from the impact of the wooden sticks i had no idea if the impact of the sticks had caused a skull fracture or a brain bleed or any other number of things that might mean he wouldn't make it through the night i tried to go to the hospital with him but the other sri lankans pushed me away from the tuk-tuk so there was room for those that knew him better i didn't even speak enough sinhala to be able to properly ask where any of the wounded were headed i was a lost frightened boy in a place i didn't belong and i'd never felt so alone in my whole life in the end it turns out that lassie got lucky none of the glass had made its way into his eye and he had somehow avoided any kind of skull fracture from the impact of the huge wooden sticks the doctors were able to remove some of the larger glass chunks from his face but he would be left permanently scarred one of his friends however the guy called dinesh was not so lucky he had been stabbed in the throat with a piece of broken bottle and lost so much blood that it took him three days to wake up in the hospital the events of that night consumed the last few days of my trip in sri lanka discussing how it went down talking about wounds and recovery times i felt guilty for having gotten off so slightly and i thought my new sri lankan friends might resent me for having escaped worse injuries but the friendship wasn't soured quite the opposite in fact it was only strengthened by what happened that night me and lassie still keep in touch he ended up marrying a swedish girl and moving over to sweden with her and they have a little girl together now occasionally we reminisce about that night and he thanks me for saving him but i don't think i did anything of the sort i just regret not doing more to defend him violence is a strange thing despite its capacity to destroy it forms bonds between people that can never be broken but still i hope i never have to go through anything similar to what happened that night ever again because next time i might not be so lucky [Music] i'm a dog person a serious dog person i'm that girl who stops in the street to talk to dogs in a weird cartoon voice asking them how their day was stroking their little floofs and calling them chunky boys i get some weird looks from their owners sometimes but i don't mind it's worth it as it never ever fails to brighten my day but one thing i've learned is that there's a huge huge difference in the way we treat animals here in america probably european countries too and how they treat animals in the rest of the world it's not just people's attitude towards animals that differs either it's the animals attitudes towards people too i've never ever met a bad dog here in florida like i'm sure they're out there but i've always been fortunate enough to never have to run into one but i can't say the same for when i was in thailand and this might not seem like a straight-up horror story but it was legit one of the scariest episodes in my entire life so i was doing some solo traveling around southeast asia just after i graduated from college it was always a dream of mine to see that area of the world and i was lucky enough to have my mom and dad pay for flights as a graduation present i didn't even have to save up that much spending money because the us dollar goes a long way in places like that so i was able to stay for quite a while without worrying too much about finances like seriously you can get a decent bowl of pad thai for like 30 baht in some places which if i remember right is just less than a dollar anyway i spent a good deal of time exploring the more metropolitan and tourist places like bangkok and chiang mai so at one point i decided to get off the beaten path and explore a little more of rural thailand it was so beautiful and people in the smaller villages might be poor but they are so very very friendly and welcoming plus if you think the food in the cities is good just try going out to the countryside where you'll find home-cooked meals that have been perfected over generations that stuff is absolutely mind-blowing only this one day in question i'm walking from village to village on this lonesome dirt road when i see a pack of dogs come out from the bushes at the side of the road me being me i'm absolutely overjoyed to see this group of like four or five doggos appear out of nowhere like they were a gift from god sent to brighten up what had been a pretty tiring track at that point so i basically start squealing like a mad thing pull out my phone and start taking pictures of the dogs with a view to getting some selfies with them but pretty much as soon as i approach they start growling like this instant hostility came out of them which i was totally not expecting and not just like low growls telling me to go away they're baring their teeth at me barking furiously like i'd never experience that kind of hostility from a dog in the states before a little barking at first sure but they always calm down when you show them you don't mean any harm i just start backing away slowly hands up with flat palms to be like sorry poppers i wasn't here to bother you guys anymore then when i've got a fairly safe distance away from them i turn my back and start walking away properly only i can still hear them barking and growling a short distance behind me when i look over my shoulder i actually see that the pack of dogs is following me trailing me on the dirt road and getting closer all the time that's when i start actually getting scared first i was just nervous and a little shocked that such good boys and girls could be so aggressive and i was more than willing to just leave them alone but now it seemed like they weren't quite willing to return the favor in that respect and before i knew it i heard one of them growling really close behind me they were testing the limits seeing how close they could get before i did anything i turned and shouted at them to leave me alone clapping my hands and making random noises in the hopes that it might scare them off they did it first they backed off a little but it didn't last long i tried to keep walking but two approached from the rear that time and i caught one actually trying to bite at the backs of my exposed legs i was so scared by that point i was almost in tears and i started the same routine of shouting and clapping at them to get them to back off but they seem to just know that i didn't have it in me to just straight up hit them and each minute that went by they got more and more bold i tried walking off once more but they were on me pretty much as soon as my back was turned that's when i started running just sprinting off down that dirt road in the hopes of finding some way to escape them then out of nowhere i feel the teeth of one of the dogs rip at the flesh of one of my calves the pain shot through me like fire and i knew it was bad enough of a bite to make me bleed there's just this cacophony of barks behind me when i see this little house at the side of the road and i start screaming for help while running towards it feeling the dogs nipping at my heels the whole way i was only a few feet away when this tie guy comes out of the front yard with a stick in his hand obviously having heard the barks and yelps as well as my cries for help he just rushes towards me skips around and starts wailing on the dogs behind me with a stick i mean really brutally beating them and shouting at them in thai that did the trick they were yelping and running away with their tails between their legs just a few seconds later and i found myself collapsing in the dirt with relief checking the backs of my legs for wounds as i just sobbed i knew the bite was bad the moment i felt it but it was only when i actually saw how bad i was bleeding that i started to panic they were wild dogs so they could have all kinds of diseases that were passed on through their saliva and i was seriously panicking about it begging the thai guy to take me to a hospital nearby i don't think he really spoke much english but we didn't need any kind of mutual language to know what it was that i needed the next thing i know i'm hearing a motorcycle engine starting up and the guy drives out into the road handing me a spare helmet before helping me clamber onto the back of his bike i don't know how long the ride to the hospital really was but it felt like hours by the time we arrived there my leg was so swollen i could hardly put any weight on it at all not many of the staff there spoke english so i was really really lucky that i had the thai guy drive me there i tried to give him some gas money as a thank you but he actually straight up refused it this might sound super first world of me but that just blew my mind this guy seemed really really poor but still he wouldn't take any money i'm assuming just because he knew it was the right thing to do luckily i had a rabies vaccination before i went traveling so after the initial treatment i only had to go back to the hospital once more in order to get the other shot i needed instead of going through the agony of having like four different shots over the course of a month i mean i heard you even have to get one of them in your stomach with this big needle whether or not that's true i'm not actually sure but it's still absolutely terrifying but the actual effects of contracting rabies make all that seem like child's play here i took this from a website that describes what happens in the first week or so of contracting the ribbies virus confusion or aggressive behavior seeing or hearing things hallucinations producing lots of saliva or frothing at the mouth muscle spasms difficulty swallowing and breathing inability to move paralysis once symptoms appears rabies is almost always fatal i mean what kind of evil super virus can turn someone aggressive like that it's like something out of a zombie movie and one so powerful that even with being vaccinated beforehand you still need shots after a bite to ensure you don't get the disease so i hope you all understand why i was so completely terrified of getting such a disease after those dog bites i know i was vaccinated and thank god that thai guy drove me to a hospital as quick as he could but all that was in my mind as we were on the way there was the fear of getting such a horrific brutal and fatal disease i appreciate this might not be as scary as people who say they saw ghosts at temples or whatever i understand that must have been absolutely terrifying but getting bit by that dog was something so tangibly scary that it definitely ranks as the most terrifying thing that happened to me while i was traveling around southeast asia [Music] i'm going to take you back to the early 90s for this just after i did my a level exams here in the uk i got the grades i wanted which was brilliant but on the advice of my parents i decided to take a gap year and do some traveling before i settled down to study at manchester university a few of my mates had made a decision to buy these euro pass rail card things that they could catch trains all around europe on but that seemed a little too tame for me i had my sights set on somewhere far more exotic india i could only afford to go because i worked my butt off at marks and spencers every weekend for almost two years straight spending very little of that money as i strove to save as much as i could being on a 16 hour flight almost drove me mental and i couldn't wait to land in dab dabalam so i could get to relaxing and exploring but no such luck despite being one of india's sleepier states goa proved to be just as mental to 18 year old me the nearest city of vasco de gama might as well have been another planet i was from some quiet little manchester suburb and then there i was in the old portuguese colonial capital and it was honestly mind-blowing after taking some time to adjust to my surroundings not to mention having to get over a really bad of gastroenteritis i ended up making my way down to a place called kerala on india's southernmost coast it was a pretty wild place as far as from the indian capital as it was possible to get and it's also the place where my story occurs so once i had a little bit of hindi under my belt and could generally make myself understood i decided to do some actual exploring adventure tourism as you might call it really getting away from the old tourist trails to see parts of india that other people generally didn't that's how i ended up in the middle of nowhere about 20 miles outside of the city of kalam i was wandering around the countryside trying to find an ancient temple known as mundayer mahadeva temple don't ask me why i was trying to find it i think i was on some kind of personal spiritual journey whatever that means but i was a deaf teenager i know i was and i figured that spending time in these little places would bring me some kind of spiritual or emotional enlightenment so at one point i got a wee bit lost and under the baking indian sun i started to get extremely thirsty i spy this little village across an open set of grasslands so i start wandering across it completely and utterly ignorant of the kinds of dangers that could be lurking in the long grass if i'd have known what i'd run into i swear i'd have just kept walking thirst can't kill you nearly as quickly as what came out of the long grass and stared me in the face out of absolutely nowhere coming out of the grass right in the direction i was walking rises up the biggest snake i'd ever seen in my life not just any old snake either it was a cobra a king cobra and i could honestly instantly tell from the distinctive hood and the black and white markings below its head it was like seeing an alien or something to this day i've never felt fear like that seeing something so utterly deadly looking so different from any kind of animal we have in the uk it was like a shard of ice just drove its way through my intestines when something like that happens and you're not used to seeing cobras or snakes in general it's like something deep and primal happens to your body in the initial moments after seeing it and i know this sounds mental but it was like all my ancestors were screaming at me that thing's gonna kill you and it's gonna kill you fast the lessons of hundreds of thousands of snake bitten souls pass through my dna or something like i'm trying my best to describe the intensity of the fear and still think none of this even comes close the way it hissed too jesus christ it was like seeing a mythical creature or something like i knew these things existed but seeing one that close up knowing it was in striking distance i went from looking for a religious experience that afternoon and i found one only it wasn't god i found in rural kerala it was the devil and i was staring it in the face then as absolutely crazy as this sounds the king cobra just sort of explodes in front of me like its hood just sort of ripped open and i saw this little spray of fluid before it collapsed back in the grass i'm still just about peeing my pants when i see these two indian lads running through the open towards me and one of them has like this pipe in his hand i had absolutely no idea what just happened and they start talking to me in malayalam the local language which i didn't understand at all i tried speaking my terrible hindi but i could barely remember any and even when i managed to get the words out they just shook their heads to tell me they barely spoke any of that but they did understand one word danyabad thank you like i said i had no idea what happened with that cobra only that the indian lads had something to do with it that's when i noticed exactly what one of the lads had in their hand it was a bloody homemade rifle from what i could tell it had a pretty basic firing mechanism and was breach loaded like an old napoleonic war musket or something it looked all sorts of dodgy like that thing could have actually just blown up in his face at any time but in the moment i didn't give a monkey's bottom what he had in his hand all i knew was that i was pretty sure that he just saved my life with it they ended up walking me back to their village and giving me some well water and i stuck around long enough to try one of their mom's rice and doll i never ended up finding that temple but actually had one of the best experiences i had whilst traveling around india getting to stay in a tiny village and live life like a rural indian for a day before i walked back to the train station to catch the train back to kalam and like i said i didn't need to find that temple to have a kind of spiritual experience staring death in the eyes for a moment was all i needed to give me a new and bold appreciation for life in general i'd recommend anyone get out to india if they can but i definitely recommend against walking in tallgrass because cobras aren't the only thing lurking in it that'll seriously ruin your day [Music] on the 23rd of june of the year 2000 at around 1 o'clock in the morning a guest at childers palace backpackers hostel in queensland australia found themselves stirring from their sleep bleary-eyed and confused they were initially annoyed that they could hear some kind of banging sound coming from the hall outside and wondered just who could be inconsiderate enough to make so much noise in the middle of the night but as they sat up in bed they detected the scent of something distinct in the air around them what might have been comforting if they had known that there were log fireplaces present in the hostel only there weren't and the smell of burning wood was accompanied by thick black smoke trickling into the room from the crack underneath the door frame as the guest threw himself out of bed and shook awake his girlfriend who was sleeping in the bottom bunk the realization only really hit him as the words passed his lips get up get up the hostels on fire but as the pair attempted to escape the building crawling on their hands and knees to avoid inhaling the deadly black smoke they pounded on the doors of their neighbors in an attempt to save as many lives as they could there were no fire alarms blaring to warn the guests that anything was wrong guests were only roused from their sleep by the warnings of others and for some of them those warnings came far too late it was later reported that the hostel's owner had actually installed fire alarms in the building but they had all been deactivated in the weeks prior to the fire due to the system's malfunctioning which had caused numerous false alarms to compensate the hostel's owners had placed fire notes on the walls of the building which showed the best escape route and it was these that allowed the surviving guests to navigate their way out of the burning building but the palace backpackers hostel was a hundred-year-old two-story timber building and the fire spread through the old wooden structure with terrifying speed the guest and his girlfriend fought their way out onto a first floor balcony and luckily it was not too high of a jump so they left a safety on the ground below tucking and rolling as they landed to ensure that they were not injured in the fall they found their feet and looked back onto the chaotic scene behind them those that couldn't fight their way down to the ground floor exits were forced to leap from balconies and windows onto the roofs of neighboring buildings some were too weak to make the jumps and landed in heaps of broken bones the screams of pain only added to the frenzy of flame and smoke around 70 backpackers managed to escape the hostile that night with only 10 of them suffering minor burns the final escapees only managed to do so by the swift arrival of the local fire department who raised ladders to the top floors in order for those trapped by the flames to climb down however 15 backpackers from all over the world were not so lucky immediately after the fire residents of the local town of childress donated food blankets and backpacks to the survivors the picnic bench in front of the building became something of a shrine to those lost in the fire complete with flowers heartfelt letters from those that survived and fruit from the local farms twenty of the survivors returned a few days later to hold an impromptu memorial service with a local catholic priest at the shrine the service was broadcast all over the world and made a huge impact in the news media so much so that princess anne of the british royal family visited childers on the 2nd of july just a week after the blaze to offer emotional support for the surviving backpackers and others involved in the disaster the surviving backpackers were taken to a nearby cultural center that had the facilities to accommodate them where they were subsequently questioned by local firefighters as to how the blaze could have started many of the survivors told them that they had simply woken up in the middle of the chaos and had no idea how the fire could have started there were no exposed flames no candles or fireplaces in the entire hostel but one survivor came forward with information regarding a strange figure who had been hanging around outside in the wee small hours of the morning shortly before the flames ripped through the building the guest told firefighters how he had woken up just after midnight to use the bathroom when they had seen somebody standing outside by a burning trash can after notice that they were being watched the figure extinguished the fire and the guests went back to bed only to be awakened again about an hour later to banging shouting and black smoke the investigation quickly shifted from focusing on an accidental fire to one of deliberate arson and guests were then questioned by the police regarding any unusual characters that had been hanging around the hostel many then mentioned an aggressive local fruit picker by the name of robert long who had been involved in a couple of run-ins with his fellow guests and was said to have a general disdain for backpackers and tourists investigators also discovered that 38 year old long had recently been evicted from the hostel after falling behind on the rent and had vowed some form of revenge against the owners although it is assumed that it was all just blustering and that he didn't have it in him to actually seek retribution police then publicly announced that they wish to question robert long regarding with the involvement of the fire and asked the general public to come forward if they happen to know of its whereabouts five days later an anonymous caller quickly tipped off local authorities that long was camped out in some bushland less than 20 miles from the town where the blaze took place police then drove out to the area searching with a police dog until they found the suspected arsonist campsite they approached the man calmly asking if they could ask him a few questions surrounding the nature of the fire as well as the threats he'd made against the hostile in the days prior long denied that he was there on the day of the fire insisting that he had left the hostel on good terms and the owners were trying to make some kind of scapegoat out of him but this contradicted the stories of many of the survivors and police then told long he was going to be arrested on suspicion of arson after hearing this long took out a knife and threatened the lives of the arresting officers the police dog that accompanied them was then set on the suspect but long slashed the dog so badly that the dog retreated from him and collapsed into the dirt the officers then followed up the dog attack trying to subdue the knife-wielding arson suspect before he could manage to escape one of the officers was stabbed in the chin during the arrest and was extremely lucky that long didn't find their jugular vein it was then that the other officer took out their sidearm took aim and put a bullet into long shoulder to send him crashing to the ground disarming him of the knife in the process he then put handcuffs on the wounded suspect and dragged him to the waiting police car so he could be taken into custody all the while his colleague tried to stop the bleeding from their own wound while comforting the injured police dog just less than two years later in march of 2002 robert long was found guilty of two charges of murder and arson and then sentenced to life in prison by a jury of his peers the trial judge said long should serve a minimum of 20 years in jail for his callous and cruel crime although 15 individuals died in the fire long had only been charged with two deaths in order to expedite the proceedings to allow for other charges to be brought in the event of an acquittal shockingly enough and in the face of overwhelming evidence long actually insisted on his innocence and quickly lodged an appeal which was thankfully swiftly denied however in june of this year long became eligible for parole although there has been no news regarding any parole hearings or any subsequent release date being confirmed as a tribute to those who lost their lives in such a senseless act of premeditated violence sydney artist jazonia palladis was commissioned to paint portraits of those who died in the fire drazonia said it was the most technically challenging and emotionally charged portrait i've ever undertaken perhaps the artist's greatest challenge was to do the victim's appearance justice given that all she had were photos of them provided by their families it was a painstaking process but gizonia managed to arrange them in realistic poses while maintaining the precise images from the photos the background was researched by her to be typical of the children's area fields where they had worked picking crops it was a fitting tribute to the poor unfortunate souls that ended up trapped in the children's palace backpackers hostel on the night it burned down a horrifying avoidable tragedy perpetrated by a callous evil man who took the lives of 15 innocents in a selfish childish fit of rage i was born and raised here in the uk but my parents are from libya they left in the 1970s so way before any of the current strife but but every so often we go over to visit extended family who live in the capital city of tripoli since the fall of gaddafi and the conflicts between rival militias they have pretty much destroyed the country our visits obviously dropped off to almost nothing but last year there was a big family wedding being held in the city and naturally we got an invite i was really unsure about going at first like the fighting has died down an awful lot in the past couple of years but the place is still basically a war zone but to my surprise my parents announced that they were fully committed to going i could stay at home miss the wedding and worry about the safety and well-being of my parents or i could join them and at least be able to keep an eye on them so i chose the latter tripoli is an incredible city there are roman ruins all kind of italian style architecture from during the time when libya was part of the italian empire and the food is absolutely incredible but the signs of the recent conflict were everywhere there were bullet holes and shell craters all over the city that still hadn't been repaired yet large memorials to people that had died during attacks in years gone by it was haunting but for the time being the city seems safe so as weird as it sounds we just sort of forget about the whole thing as soon as we were reunited with family and i got to see my distant cousins who i hadn't seen in years all the anxiety and worry about the trip just seemed to sort of fade into the background the wedding was fantastic we all had so much fun and after the ceremony we were due to spend a week just hanging around the family and soaking up the atmosphere visiting libya was always a huge part of my youth and i do feel a huge connection with the country so i was just happy that there was enough peace in the country to be able to enjoy it for the first time in a while but one night as we sit down to another huge dinner with our extended family i start to hear a few pops from outside the window i remember hoping with all my heart that they were just fireworks but the way my cousins reacted told me otherwise something was happening in tripoli something violent and terrible all the food that was laid out for us was bundled up and taken down into the basement of the house i hadn't been down there the entire time i've been staying with them so i didn't see the veritable bunker that they'd set up there were bottles of water all kinds of bedding everything they might need to survive a night or two should anything commence what followed was the most terrifying night in my entire life the booms and cracks of bombs and guns going off above us kept us awake all night every minute i just expected a group of armed men to just burst into the basement and drag us out or shoot us my cousin tried to reassure me that we weren't in much danger of that but the fear in their voices didn't make it any easier to bear they were actually used to that sort of thing as much as a person can be and they were still terrified eventually the noises from upstairs died down but we were all too terrified to sleep and after a while my uncle ventured upstairs to try and get news of what had happened it turned out that a local militia group who had held the city were under attack from rivals that they had pushed out years before it was not some minor skirmish and it was likely that the violence would start again that night we had to get out of tripoli our family arranged a mini van taxi that would drive us over the border into tunisia so that we could catch a flight home from the capitol tunis and that's how we left a whole week early to avoid the fighting it was horrible having to leave our family behind in a city that was doomed to descend into violence and at one point my dad actually offered to fly them back to the uk to seek refugee status but they refused they were too proud to leave and it broke my heart that we had to leave them behind we've not been back to libya since but i kept in touch with my cousins as much as i could to make sure that they were all safe which thank god they were i had nightmares about that night for months and i still thank god that we all got out alive but the fact is that it was just one night for me but for my cousins that was their entire life hey friends thanks for listening click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations if you get a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit r let's read official and give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video and join my discord to interact with me and other listeners directly and if you want to support me even more grab early access to all future narrations for just one dollar a month on patreon and maybe even pick up some let's read merch on spreadshirt and check out the 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Channel: Lets Read!

Views: 111,808

Rating: 4.880969 out of 5

Keywords: backpacking stories, backpacking, back packing stories, backpacker stories, travel stories, Horror Stories From Reddit, Stories From Reddit, Reddit Horror Stories, True Scary Stories, True Scary Stories from Reddit, Reddit letsnotmeet, Lets Read Scary Stories, true scary stories reddit, scary true stories, True Creepy Encounters, True Creepy Stories, True Creepy Encounters From Reddit, real horror stories, backpacking horror stories

Id: WRNstOPiImk

Length: 47min 2sec (2822 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020