Tell us an unsettling story

How'd you know he rode it every day? Did you ask him?

No r1. If I remember correctly, one of our chaperones struck up a conversation about him with one of the employees. They more or less tolerated him and let him stay on the ride without having to go to the end of the line.

He didn't strike me as the chatty type.

That is pretty weird, R2. Maybe he loved being weightless. Maybe he became an astronaut.

He was probably the ghost of a child who died on the ride, condemned to ride it forever!

Know what’s unsettling? I threw up on one of these rides when I was a kid. Thanks to centrifugal force, the other riders got an additional “thrill”.

He seemed old to my 13-year-old self, r3. Like over 40.

It was so weird.

Lol r4. r5 maybe that would have gotten him off the ride

When I was 18 I met a guy off of Craigslist and went over to his house. I didn't ask for a clear face pic or tell anyone where I was going. I rang the doorbell. The door opened to reveal a very dark house. He was standing behind the door so I could see his hand but not his face or body. I walked into the house. The guy was another 18 year old, as advertised. I wasn't attracted to him and we had mechanical sex. This event really unsettles me as an adult because I could have been walking into Buffalo Bill's house for all I knew. It blows my mind that I went into such a creepy situation just for sex.

The other day I was closing up my place of employment. It was around 4:30pm. The lights were off and the doors were locked. I was the only one in the building. There's this weird guy that sits around outside once or twice a week, listening to his boom box for hours. I was going through the building, doing closing-up things, and I realized he was peering through the front window. I don't know if he saw me see him, but I hid for a few moments, and then he wasn't at the window any more. I looked outside and he was back at the picnic table he'd been sitting at that day. I left quickly after that, but I know he saw me leave.

OMG, Mary R8, you're lucky to still be alive!

The guy gives me the creeps, R9. He's got a really intense energy. He rides his bike to where I work, and just sits out there for hours, listening to his awful music and staring at people. Sometimes he screams at people over the phone. I hate having to pass by him when I enter or exit the building. He doesn't think COVID is real. He uses our public restrooms, entering with a bandana over his mouth for a mask. He makes me uncomfortable and I just want him to go away.

I grew up in the UK and my mother was a nurse in the local city maternity hospital. It served the whole community so you would get patients ranging from posh lawyers wives to prostitutes, (maybe some were both, who knows). Anyway this was before medical privacy laws became so stringent and my mum would come home with all sorts of stories about the patients.

One of them was called "Tracey", and she was a drug addict who'd had about six kids by her mid twenties. She had such a bad record with child services that her babies were automatically taken from her when they were born and put into foster care. She was also a pyromaniac (sp?) basically she liked starting fires, including the maternity ward a couple of times.

We lived in a nearby town and my sister's friend's family had a bunch of foster kids. They grew fond of one of them they'd had since birth and decided to adopt her. My mother found out from the hospital social worker that it was crazy Tracey's kid who'd been taken at birth. Guess who had multiple fires in their home started by a certain doe eyed toddler. Yup. I guess that stuff can be hereditary. Of course we couldn't tell them the history of the mum, and they hadn't been told, they just thought it was the usual toddler mischief.

They moved away shortly after, so we never found out if she started any more fires. I just thought it was super creepy.

She had a moment of internet fame, r11. You must have missed it.

Every year there are approximately 25 million cruise ship passengers eating, drinking, frollicking, cruising, gambling, spa-ing, lazily along the oceans and seas.

Every year there are approximately 9 million deaths due to starvation.

These 2 thoughts are not connected. Or are they.?

Decades ago when I was working in northern Ontario, I was driving home for the weekend and decided to stop in a clearing to pee and finish my lunch.

As I was sitting on a stump eating my sandwich I heard rustling behind me. I knew this was bear country and slowly looked behind me expecting to see a black bear and hoping to God it wasn't a Grizzly.

What I saw looked like an ape standing on his hind legs and looking at me. I dropped everything and jumped into my vehicle and sped off.

Monday morning as I was driving back down the same road I stopped at the clearing and saw my stuff. The food was gone, but everything was piled together and covered in leaves and branches rather than scattered around.

R13 Well why don't those starving people just go on a cruise?

^^^Just to note, grizzly bears don't live in northern Ontario, but I didn't know that at the time.

I hate to tell this but...

I had an older, semi-feral male cat who stopped eating/drinking and was throwing-up. He also forgot where the litter box was, and started making messes. Then he couldn't walk. I thought he was dying, so I made a nice bed for him in an open closet. And watched and waited...

A previous cat illness had cost me thousands and then she just died anyway, so I didn't want a repeat of that (I live basically check to check). And I had developed a revulsion of having animals put to sleep; who am I to end someone's life?

But... he didn't die. Each day I came home from work and there he was in his bed, seemingly paralyzed but alive, his eyes blinking. I kept praying he would pass away but he just didn't.

Finally- about a week later- I came home and touched him on the back paw and it moved. I decided I would take him to the emergency hospital and pretend I found a sick stray cat so they wouldn't think I was a monster.

They examined him, did x-rays, etc. Kept him overnight for observation. When I went the next day they told me their prognosis: he apparently had developed a tooth infection that worked its way into his ear, then his brain- causing Alzheimers-type symptoms. He wasn't in any pain but he had lost his memory for good. But he looked so good after receiving fluids, etc. that I decided to take him home.

But he did not improve. He just laid peacefully in his cat bed oblivious to everything, and peed-out all the fluid they'd given him.

So I took him back to be put asleep. While we sat in the waiting room our eyes met for a while. Then he got up in his carrier and turned his back on me. They asked if I wanted to be with him while they gave him the shot and I said no.

I buried him in the backyard.

Bigfoot R14?

One time at an amusement park called "Disneyland", an 18-year old named Deborah Gail Stone was crushed to death between two walls of the moving "America Sings" stage. I read about it and it unsettled me.

Apparently, this guy is a legend. Who knew?

R18 I don't know. It wasn't super hairy like all the Bigfoot sightings say, but it had fur and human features and looked to be under six feet tall.

While throwing a frisbee with my dad, I flung it towards him & it froze about halfway between us & kept spinning in place for a few seconds, then dropped straight down to the ground. I wigged out & was convinced it was something demonic (I’d just seen Omen & the Exorcist & was a guilt-ridden Catholic); Dad said a cross current must’ve blown in the opposite direction at that exact second. He said it happens all the time (?) but I could tell by his expression that he just made it up to try & soothe me.

I worked at Geauga Lake the 1989 season. Lots of weirdos but they were a dream compared to the drunks. So, so many angry, sunburnt drunks.

In November of 2016 , a bloated , obese , narcisstic , man-child was elected POTUS OF THE USA .

r23 I want to hear stories!!!

I just found out about a person who is overly concerned about how other people live their lives

I don’t have too many stories. That summer, there was a Big Dipper crash (distracted staff) but the injuries weren’t serious. No one drowned in the wave pool that summer, thank God.

The drive to Aurora was too far for me to return the following summer. But I had fun while I was there. I operated a game.

When I was 12, I knew a kid who was hunting with his dad and "accidentally" shot his dad, dead. In the back. When he told me the story about what happened, the convoluted facts were all over the place, with gun falling over and firing when it hit the ground, and the physics made no sense. When I pointed that out to him, he burst into tears and ran into his house. I knew he killed is dad. And he knew that I knew. He never spoke to me again.

Wow R28. Do you have any idea what became of that kid?

OP, many autistics self-sooth with vestibular stimulation (usually through repetitive rocking movements). Maybe it settled his mind.

R5 Was that in Seaside Heights NJ? Years ago I was waiting on line and people coming off the Rotor said someone threw up and it stuck to the walls. They obviously had to shut the ride down for cleaning and I'm certain that happens occasionally especially if someone has been eating corn dogs, pizza, French fries or any of the junk food that is available at amusement parks.

R21, I’ll bet you a $100 it was my grandma.

R17 I have an unsettling cat story too, however I was a small child with no control of the situation. But let me say that the cat in the cellar with broken legs ( hit by a car) has haunted me for 60 years. My family finally had the cat “put to sleep “ but not until it had already gone through hell.

Thanks, r30. That makes sense.

I went on vacation with friends to Williamsburg VA in June 1994. I remember it specifically, because we watched the O.J. Bronco "chase" on live television.

Anyway, at Busch Gardens, there were very few lines, so we rode some coasters repeatedly. The third time around on The Loch Ness Monster, my over-the-shoulder restraint wouldn't latch. I yelled for assistance, but they apparently didn't hear me, because the train left the station anyway. I frantically tried to latch the restraint, with my friend's assistance. Still nothing. It WOULD NOT LOCK. This predates the franchise, but it was all very "Final Destination".

Exasperated, I FINALLY got it to lock as the train crested the first hill. I didn't ride it again after that.

This. I was afraid to go to amusement parks or let any of my family going any of the rides.

My mom always put us in day camp. One year we went to camp at this nun residence that had a pool. I remember doing arts and crafts in the garage, and we did go inside sometimes, which was nice because it was air conditioned. There was a big fat counselor girl who took us in the pool. One day she had me under the arms, kind of swinging me around in the water, and it was fun. And then she was swinging me around *under* the water and holding me under for a bit. She’d let me up and laugh and then do it again. It was terrifying because the more I panicked, the longer she held me under. I was crying and punching at her and finally she let me go, with a really evil look in her eye. “You are such a BABY” she said. Fucking psycho.

I didn’t tell my mother because the camp was free and she needed us to be somewhere while she worked.

Once in grade school, I went to sleep over at this kid's house. We were maybe 8 or 9. We watched some scary werewolf movie and were hanging out in his room. Much later in the night, after we had been nearly asleep, there was this creepy rustling sound coming from the closet. It was his stepdad trying to scare us, only he had to have been in there for a few hours at least for us not to have seen him go in there. The kid ended up moving away not long after.

I live across from a restaurant that has a small courtyard. As there are apartments above the restaurant the gates are left open through the night. Quite why no keypad etc was fitted I don’t know. Mostly people just walk by anyway. One very hot Saturday afternoon some creepy guy had been coming into the restaurant, talking to himself and randomly muttering threats at people. He had long hair, very angular features and dark eyes. Kind of like one of those characters in a film about the end of the world that appears and talks loudly about the Dark Lord coming, before it all gets going. We were sat in the garden have some beers. They had to throw him out a couple of times but eventually he seemingly went on his way.

Around 1am my partner and I were going to bed and I looked out of the window. The restaurant was closed. The creepy guy was pacing up and down in the courtyard, looking particularly demonic. Taking to himself but rapidly and angrily. Almost like chanting. I laughed and said to my partner ‘Oh, he’s back’. There was no way he could have heard but at that moment he stopped with his back to me and then slowly craned his neck round and looked right at me. Creepy as fuck so I then had to go downstairs and check the doors were fully locked.

When I was about 6 years old, I had a friend named Todd on the next street over, so I would ride my bike to his house and we would hang out and play. I remember his father was a preacher and both his parents were very nice to me. Anyway, they had an outdoor cat that got pregnant and had kittens, and I instantly fell madly in love with a little white one with black spots, one around its eye like a patch. I am calling the kitten "it" because I cannot recall if it was a boy or girl.

When the kitten was weaned and old enough, I was offered the kitten, but my mother hated cats, so it was a big, fat no. I was devastated.

Fortunately, Todd's parents let me come over and play with it as much as I wanted until it was adopted. One day, I placed the kitten in the basket of my bike and slowly rode around, making sure it was safe with one hand over it as I sang to it. Suddenly there was a loud noise, possibly a car peeling out, I can't quite remember, and the kitten squirmed out from under my protective hand and jumped out of the basket. Before I could do anything the front wheel of my bike ran over it. I still remember the squeak the kitten made, and the feeling of my tire over its tiny body. It darted off super fast into the backyard of Todd's house and after about half an hour looking for it, I sadly gave up. Todd and his parents had gone out for a bit so they weren't home to help. I finally gave up and rode home sobbing hard all the way. I prayed so hard it was okay.

After dinner, I rode back to Todd's house and knocked on the door, asking if I could play with the kitten, because it had to be okay! I prayed hard for it!! Todd's Dad sat me down, put his arm around me and told me they found the kitten in some bushes and it was no longer alive. I was too scared to tell him what happened.

To this day, it still destroys me. and I'm crying as I type this. Once I was an adult, I always had a cat. I now have 2 cats and I always give all of my kitties tons and tons of love and keep them indoors. This will haunt me forever. :(

Could we leave out the animal cruelty stories, please? Your failure to get medical help for animals does not constitute "unsettling" in my book, just cruel, selfish and irresponsible.

R41 I was 6 years old, you heartless douche!

When I was very little I went with my 4 years older sister to a building near the elementary school. An old man who appeared to be a janitor let me, my sister and 5 or 6 girls my sister's age into the building and let us each pick out a candy from a machine, which he paid for. I remember that I was so young that when asked to pick a candy I pointed to a package of instant soup because I didn't know it wasn't candy. I remember walking around the building, which must have been a school district office. How this all happened, a grown man letting a group of little girls into his workplace when no one else was around, bothers me. I was under the impression that he had done this regularly.

I hadn't realized Geauga Lake was now closed/abadoned. For a second I was sure Miss OP meant the Chippewa Lake park. Which WAS abandoned, and for years had coasters with weeds and woods growing around them.

My childhood home had a hole in the back of the yard as wide as a small table. My sister and I always dared each other to jump in it to see how far it went. One day we decided we'd actually jump, circling it and throwing little rocks down. Our mom stopped us and brought over a long tape measuerer instead. She unspooled all 25 ft... still didn't hit the bottom. Turns out that hole had once been a well over 100 ft deep in the ground. We'd have died, easily.

R45, Why wasn’t it covered, especially if your mom seemingly knew it was very deep?

We lived by the woods, it was out in the trees (a bit past our yard actually) and grown over with moss. The hole was deceptively narrow on top, could've fit a kid but not a grown man. That's why we didn't realize how deep it was.

My mother took me to see my first horror film in 1974. I'll never forget the excurciating screams when the monster appeared.

"Light the candles. Get the ice ouT. Roll the rugs UP. It's to-DAY!

[quote]brought over a long tape measuerer.

So, how long was the tape?

25 feet, R49, I already said. Was news to my parents, that's when they called inspectors and learned it had been a well

The amount of posts using the word "unsettling" is unsettling.

My high school acquaintance Luke Conner, a farmer's son, fell into a thrasher and was chopped to pieces.

He got his own 'In Memorium' page in the yearbook.

Several years ago, when I still lived in San Francisco, I was walking home late in the night on Halloween. The streets of Lower Nob Hill were pretty much deserted by then, I was high as a kite, and was coming from somewhere in Pacific Heights. I got to my street (Bush) and saw this old woman hobbling in my direction two blocks west from me. I thought nothing of it and turned east and headed up the street. Then she started screaming, no, bellowing, "FUCK YOU, GOD!.... YOU KILLED THEM!.... WHY DID YOU HAVE TO KILL THEM, GOD!?"

Her voice was so raw, so coarse, and so full of pure anguish. I still had a few blocks to walk, and the entire time I listened to this woman yelling and cursing at god. I walked as fast as I could back to my apartment, and as I got ready for bed, she passed by the building and I could hear her continue on. "YOU KILLED THEM!... WHY DID YOU HAVE TO KILL THEM, GOD!?" Eventually the sound of her voice faded out.

R41 so you are in charge of deciding what is and isn't unsettling to other people?

When I was about 10 years old mum took us into the city on the train for a day out shopping. We stopped to have a rest and do some "people watching." Mum sat with my two younger siblings on one bench and I sat adjacent to them on another. A little elderly Asian woman came and sat beside me, very close and I shuffled across. All of a sudden she was leaning into me, her face close to mine, her wrinkly old finger shaking and pointing at me and she was speaking slowly in a foreign language. Her nose had grotesque boogers coming out of each nostril. I was a very shy kid, terrified of making a scene so I just sat there uncomfortably. It couldn't have lasted more than 45 seconds but felt like an eternity. Mum realised what was going on, grabbed my siblings by the hand and then came and yanked me off the bench and we walked away briskly with the woman continuing to point and chant at me.

Mum said the woman was deranged, but I've always wondered if that old hag cursed me.

I lived in Russian area in L.A. and I would often smell off-putting smells in the hallway which was usually the neighbors cooking traditional Russian food, like Borscht. Well, there was this one week where the smell was daily and it was so gross. I just plugged my nose and scampered into my apartment to avoid the smell. Turns out, the smell was my decomposing neighbor in his apartment!!! He had died and all the Russian neighbors thought he was making Borscht!!!! So everyone ignored the smell until it became overwhelming!

Much love to you, R40. You obviously love animals. What happened was a tragedy, but you were a small child and kittens are wriggly little things. I hope you can forgive yourself.

Then you'll LOVE this story, if you haven't heard it already, R36. Caleb, the ten year old son of Kansas Republican State Representative Scott Schwab was decapitated, because the raft lifted off the track due to his light weight.

Caleb's brother had just gone down the slide ahead of him, and saw the entire thing happen.

"In Memorium"

Oh, dear!

When I was little, my older cousin tortured me. I was around 6 or 7, he was around 13. Once, in his backyard, there was a hole only a couple feet deep. He used to tell us that some demon lived in there. He made up elaborate scenarios that the demon was the devil's friend - stupid shit like that. But, when you're a little kid, you believe it. One day he dared me to just look into the hole. He held my face down over it while punching me and not letting me up, screaming that it was the devil holding me. He finally let me up, and I was petrified and freaked out. He just sat there laughing.

The best part is that he was hideously disfigured in a motorcycle accident. When my aunt (his mom) died, I went to the funeral and just smiled at him the whole time, while nodding my head. I wanted to plant the idea that I had something to do with it.

PUSH THAT BITCH DOWN THE WELL!

The summer before my freshman year in college, I hung out with a friend of mine who was a nanny. She took care of the 9-ish year old daughter of a wealthy local businessman who had full custody of the girl. He was never around so my friend was practically raising the girl herself. Anyway, the guy had a condo at the beach 2 hrs away and my friend would take the girl there to spend the weekend sometimes. One weekend I went along. It was me, my friend, and the girl. There were 2 bedrooms in the condo so I slept on the couch.

Around 2 in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of the front door opening. Someone quietly walked in, sat down on the chair next to the couch, and just sat there. I had NO idea who this person was, or if they even realized I was right there on the couch. Thinking he should know I’m there, I sort of roll over a bit and sigh, pretending to still be asleep. That didn’t scare him off. But I got a peek at the person and it was some random middle aged guy and he was looking at me. He lit a cigarette, smoked it, and left. Why I didn’t sit up and ask him who the fuck he was can be boiled down to me being a naive, scared 18 year old.

After he left, I ran into my friend’s room and told her what had just happened. She didn’t believe me and came out to the living room. The room smelled like cigarette smoke and there was a spent cigarette in the clean ashtray. (it was the late 80s and many people still had an ashtray in the living room whether they smoked or not.) None of us, including the condo owner smoked.

Never did learn who the guy was. I don’t even think my friend mentioned it to her boss because she was afraid she’d get in trouble for having a friend at the condo. I have no idea if the guy used a key to get it in or if we’d left the door unlocked.

To further emphasize what a stupid, naive 18 year old I was, after the shock wore off, I was very depressed. Why? Because in the back of my mind I assumed the guy didn’t rape me because I must have been too ugly for him. And that somehow this proved I really was unattractive. Which is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. That’s not how rape works at all, and regardless, I wasn’t unattractive at all. Just fucking stupid and naive.

Some time ago, I was going through what seemed to be an interminable lawsuit. I was the plaintiff and the other side kept launching appeal after appeal. I could not get out. The stress as well as the expense was taking an enormous toll on me. One night as I was drifting off to sleep, I started thinking about death. i thought to myself what a relief it would be, that at least I would be free of this awful lawsuit.

Suddenly I felt something shake me violently awake.

I posted an explicit Reddit post for a hookup several months ago. I received a reply from a cute dude at 4AM on May 17, 2021 via KIK saying “we should meet up, although you’re probably not in X city anymore”.

I replied at 7AM that same day that I just moved to another city (in February). He never opened the message.

Today, I was going through my KIK messages and got curious about this guy. He used what appeared to be his full name in his KIK profile so I Googled him. Turns out he died on May 19, less than two days after he randomly messaged me. He was only 31. Really freaked me out.

I have what is known as hypnopompic hallucinations. That is when you wake up but your brain is still dreaming, so effectively you are hallucinating your dreams. This has happened around four times that I can recall. The hallucinations seem completely real and can be frightening.

R64 what is KIK?

R65 I had delerium tremens a couple times when I was in my mid-20s, that sounds so much like what happened.

It is indeed much scarier than any nightmare I ever had.

Wait, maybe I didn't get DTs. I did used to get the shakes, and I woke up hallucinating twice about big fuzzy spiders in unnatural colors.

(Relatively soon after, I got my shit together.)

R65, I think this happened to me in 1994, I woke up from/during a sex dream & thought a ghost was molesting me (no joke). Is this different from sleep paralysis?

I was just coming off of drugs (for the LAST time, thank you... nine years ago) and was subleasing a room in an apartment. I had nothing to my name and I was sleeping on the floor. I was sleeping during the day and something woke me and it was a black guy opening my door and looking at me with a spooked look on his face. I smiled and went back to sleep lol. Roommate a few days later tells me the place was robbed. Then I get a little freaked out but I keep quiet. Anyway, the burglar lived on the floor above because he would give me death stares when I walked by. I was so fucking out of it at the time none of it meant anything to me and only makes sense in hindsight. It’s kind of freaky!

Jesus R39 that story legit gave me chills. I’ve read it three times with the same results.

When I was a youngster in the 60's and 70's I suffered from allergies and weekly sinus headaches, this was before there was over the counter medication so I usually tried to sleep it off. One time I was in bed before dinner time suffering from a bad headache and my father came into my darkened room, stood next to the bed, held out his arms in front of him at waist level and told me sit up and try pushing up on his arms. I did it a few times as he held his arms rigid, he went to the kitchen to eat dinner with my mom and I rested for a few minutes. Within a very short time all the pain was gone and I felt great so I got up and joined them for dinner. Nobody discussed it at the time, but the few times I mentioned it in the years since my dad always denied knowing anything about what happened. He would admit it if it actually happened, so to this day I don't know if I was dreaming or what I experienced, but it never happened again and my allergies remained bad for another 20 years until they suddenly went away.

When I was in college many decades ago, four of us, all friends, decided to go to a movie. Rather than taking the freeway, we decided to take a longer, but nicer, route on a two-lane back road that had no lights and was forest on both sides. We were out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

As we drove along, a car came speeding from the other direction and swerved into us, nearly knocking us of the road. All of us screamed at the same time, and all of us heard the screeching sound of metal on metal. Then, he sped off, not stopping to check if we were OK.

My friend, who was driving our car, jumped out and found a large portion of his side of the car now had a deep, wide scrape, taking off the white paint of his car, and leaving touches of blue paint from the other car. He decides that we're going to track that driver down and get him to pay for the damages. Off we went, speeding to catch up, when we came cross a small shopping center, and we decided to check there, as he could find a hiding place between cars. After a short search, we found the blue car, complete with matching scratches to our car, including white paint. The driver was nowhere to be seen.

There we were, standing in the parking lot, congratulating ourselves on finding the car and getting the license plate number, which we would turn over to police. Until that is, my friend, Bill, said:

"But the scratches are on the wrong side of the car."

Sure enough, all of us felt the two drivers side doors and back seat doors make contact, and we all heard the screech of metal on metal, but the blue car's scratches, which perfectly lined up with the scratches on our car, were on the passenger's side of the blue car. None of us could come up with an explanation.

I was a new driver and had always worn my seatbelt. I was taking a math course at a local college on the other side of the mountain and commuting there for it. On a restless night before a big test I also had a dream that was like I was running through the woods with trees, branches and sky flashing by and while it should have been scary, it was actually calm at the end.

The next morning I got into my 1978 Camero and something told me not to put on my seatbelt, though I had always used one. On the downside of the mountains in deep woods there was a dirt lane on to the road that had muddy tracks from all the rain we’d been having. My front tires hit the mud and I lost control, but then regained it. Then my back tires hit it and the car went end over end and landed on the roof.

The whole top of the car had been crushed in, but because I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt I slid under the steering wheel and it saved my life instead of being held in place by the seatbelt and obliterated. The last thing I saw was trees, branches and sky flashing by as if I was running. Despite the accident I remained very calm because of the dream. I turned off the car engine so the car wouldn’t explode. I was going to stay there and wait for the jaws of life, but I realized I was in the middle of the woods. Luckily, I was very thin and managed to shimmy out of the small space of the blown out windshield.

I knew a girl who told unsettling stories. But then she died.

I worked at my university library. We closed at 10pm, by which I mean all the borrowing ceased at 9:45 the lights switched off at 9:58 and we exited the building at 10pm.

One night when doing the floor checks, we saw a woman alighting the stairs at 9:55pm. She very politely refused to leave because the demons told her to go to the top floor and jump off the roof. By the time security called the police and the police called an ambulance to cart her off, it was almost midnight.

My mother always claimed to have ESP. We didn't always believe her.

She seldom used any "visions" to demand that we do something, but when my sister was a teenager, and wanted to go with a friend to ride horses, she had a vision and told my sister no, emphatically no. The next day my sister learned that the girl that went in her place was thrown from a horse and killed.

A few years later Mom would not let me go to the movies. She wouldn't give me the $20 to do it. My friend, a newly licensed driver, was going to take us all there. So he and another friend of ours went instead. When he took that friend home - on an unfamiliar rural road - he flipped the car. He survived, but his passenger, sitting where I would have been sitting, was killed.

I really think my mother had a power, or at least some sort of openness or radar reception to another layer of something out there.

Same ride OP and R5 went on, not so much unsettling as about a really upset stomach, a really pissed off little girl, and an offbeat - to say the least - mother but one more story with a DL twist. I wrote this here before but OP's post reminded me of something - and someone - besides Rotor Fred. I called it a Tilt-a-Whirl when I wrote what's below but looked a photo of one and it's not at all the same thing. So I checked with Marie, the source, and she confirmed I got it wrong the first time: it was The Rotor and it was the summer of 1967...

This story comes from a friend who does stand-up and has told this story on stage. When Marie was a kid, maybe seven or eight, she was with her family at Paragon Park in Nantasket, MA, an amusement park about 20 miles south of Boston. She'd been waiting and waiting in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl and I guess because of how they have to load it (balance?), she had to wait out a couple of rides until they had another kid her size and even then, she barely made it - she was the last person on board. Who was the other kid her size? Joey Luft. Judy and Lorna and Joey were at the park and Judy was strapped in next to her. If you see this coming, great, but back then my friend didn't: Judy hurled all over her from the motion of the ride. Or the drinking or the dieting or whatever. The most amazing thing, she said, was that Garland was in an all white outfit - slacks, sweater and shoes - and didn't get anything on herself but it went all over Marie. Judy just said, "Sorry, kid" and walked off with her kids when the ride was over. Her mother tried as best she could to clean her clothes off from a water fountain, but could only do so much, I guess. It ruined her night at the amusement park, but if that wasn't bad enough, she was mortified when they headed for home. Outdoors and by the ocean, it might not have seemed to smell so bad but when they started to get in the car, her father said to her mom, "Get a beach towel to cover her up, get her clothes off, and toss 'em - get rid of them. We can't have 'em in the car because they smell like puke and you can never get rid of the smell of puke."

Her mother hesitated, though: "But, but, but, I can't do that. I mean, it's Judy Garland's puke."

As someone commented then, "Can't wait for this to show up on "Antiques Roadshow."

Judy had been in town all summer, being seen by her doctors at the Peter Brent Brigham Hospital, drinking too much and living in the Prudential Center. She played to the biggest crowd of her career, over 100,000 people on the Boston Common, on the evening of August 31st, 1967, the start of the Labor Day weekend.

Shown below arriving on the train from NYC at Boston's Back Bay Station with son Joey Luft, August 30th, 1967. Judy looks pretty good and healthy here. Hard to believe she'd be dead 22 months later.

This story is unsettling to me because I really can't tell it to anyone.

I work as a professor on a college campus that is in the middle of an upscale suburb. There is only one main road that connects to the campus, and it is a busy four lanes of traffic. The parking garage for the campus is on one side of the road, and the campus is on the other. So commuting students and faculty have to wait at the stoplight to walk across the street and get on campus. The cars move fast and there is a curve so you don't have a lot of warning when another one is coming. It's a pain in the ass, because sometimes you have to wait a full two or three minutes for the light to turn red and traffic to stop so you can cross. Whenever anyone is late for class or a meeting, you always get the excuse, "I was waiting at the crosswalk." The culture of everyone on campus was to patiently wait at the crosswalk. Anyone who jaywalked or ran across the road without waiting for the signal was considered a bad example.

One time I was on campus with students as class was about to start and I realized I had forgotten something in my car. I went out to the intersection and couldn't wait for the signal. I was able to make it across and to my car, but on the way back I miscalculated my timing and because I ran into the traffic in the middle of the street and didn't wait for the crosswalk signal, I caused a three car accident that shut down all the traffic going one way. It was awful to witness it, but I was running late for class and just kept running to get inside the building. There were no other pedestrians on the street, so the only other people who witnessed the accident were the ones driving their cars.

I don't think anyone was seriously injured, but I have felt guilty about this incident ever since. "I caused a three car accident and faced no consequences for it."

Once upon a time, Donald Trump ran for President of the U.S.

Glad you did not get hit, R79. Next time, be late! Hope no one was injured.

[quote]25 feet, [R49], I already said.

No, you said tape measuerer which measures tape. A tape MEASURE measures size or distance.

[quote]"I caused a three car accident and faced no consequences for it."

Only because you have no moral core and didn't go to the POLICE who would have all the contact information you need to make proper apologies and restitution. But hey, confessing on DL is "almost" the same thing. (eye roll.)

I was five. Mom was finishing grocery shopping and I wandered off to the liquor department by the front door, where there was a spinner rack of comic books. Nose deep in a comic book, I heard a man say, "Well, hello."

I looked up. Total stranger. Big smile. "Don't you recognize me?" he asked. "I'm your uncle."

This was long before kids were taught "stranger danger."

I did the first thing that came to mind, which was replace the comic book and say, "Oh, hi. I gotta go," and run out the front door of the market, which was just a few feet away.

It wasn't until I was much older that I realized I could have been out that door with him and disappeared in under ten seconds.

And I never told my parents.

Is R62 Meg Griffin?

[quote] My childhood home had a hole in the back of the yard as wide as a small table. My sister and I always dared each other to jump in it to see how far it went. One day we decided we'd actually jump, circling it and throwing little rocks down. Our mom stopped us and brought over a long tape measuerer instead. She unspooled all 25 ft... still didn't hit the bottom. Turns out that hole had once been a well over 100 ft deep in the ground. We'd have died, easily.

I have to ask. Why would your parents buy a home with a huge hole in the ground? They had two small children. Were your friends allowed over? It's just such a huge liability. I can't believe you and your sister were allowed to run around it for thrill seeking purposes.

Glad you were ok, R84.

R84, is he there with you now? Are you there with the whore now?

You're right R82, I feel such a fool

R85, I actually laughed out loud at your comment.

worked with a guy who had such rank ass smell, it would permeate the chair. So everyday he would get up to leave and I would take the chair and switch it out with our bosses chair. One day, the boss had white pants on and after sitting on the swamp ass chair, got up to do a presentation with a huge stinky stain on her booty. She was a grade A cunt so me and the people who knew the deal laughed every time she turned to write on her board.

R91 did no one in HR or whatever bring up the smell? Why was someone permitted to go to work like that daily if it was that nasty?

I worked at an art gallery and one day a guy came in and said anyone who was a friend of our featured artist was a friend of his. I'm thinking I'll make a sale. He proceeds to hand me a piece of binder paper, folded in half, and says he needs me to send it to Cate Blanchett. I say okay, and he bolts out a side door. I open the paper and it's a bunch of primitive and violent drawings, with the address of her US representative written on it. Correct, btw. I call the artist and ask if she knows the guy, and she freaks out, sure the guy wants to kill her. I call the police, show them the paper, and they tell me to call the second I ever see him again.

Weeks pass, and suddenly he blasts through the front door and practically runs to my desk. He asks if I sent the letter. I lied and said yes, but I hadn't heard back. There is no way I can call 911, and he's so agitated I'm sure he's going to stab me. There were several stabbing images on the paper. He said, oh, okay, then bolts through the front door again. He never came back, but I was really scared for a long time he would, and blame me for no response from her.

[quote] “My high school acquaintance Luke Conner, a farmer's son, fell into a thrasher and was chopped to pieces. He got his own 'In Memorium' page in the yearbook.”

So sorry, R52. May he rest in…

^^^ It could have been worse, if he’d become chipper.

r91 never happened

Apparently, too, the Rotor Man kept track of how many times he rode the ride. When it stopped, he would write on the wall with his finger, "12,384 ... 12,385 ..."

I think the real reason it disturbed me is that I've always been bothered by extreme human behavior. Like, people doing crazy things to get into the Guinness Book of World Record.

I purchased my first home in a family neighborhood. All of my neighbors for several blocks had children or were planning to soon start a family. (I bought the house as an investment.) The house was on one level with my bedroom on the rear corner surrounded by a tall fence for security and privacy. Because of the fence, I had simple pull-down shades that really didn't block outside light or a view in.

I wasn't in a relationship so I spent a lot of time jacking off in that room. One night after I had just cleaned myself up, I heard this weird thump outside the window. I walked into the adjacent darkened kitchen just as a man in a hoodie walked around the corner from the backyard. He paused for a moment and although I couldn't clearly see his face, there was enough light that I could see that he was really attractive. Seeing this guy was both upsetting and kinda erotic.

For some stupid reason, I went back to my bedroom to grab my cell phone and call the police. When I returned, he was gone and the cops were there in like two minutes. They didn't catch anyone. The police told me it was probably a neighbor because he was able to disappear so quickly.

To this day, I wonder which neighbor might have been the peeping Tom, how many nights he'd been outside my window and would he had come in for a circle jerk if I had asked him.

Kind of hard to have a circle jerk with just two participants, R98.

[quote]Kind of hard to have a circle jerk with just two participants, R98.

But if the neighbor told two people, and they told two people, and they told two people . . .

Back in the 80s, a bunch of my high school friends and I decided to rent a cabin for a night during a holiday weekend when everyone was home from college. About 12-15 of us, girls and guys. It was a shitty little cabin at a shitty little state park. At some point, a bunch of the guys were hanging outside by the campfire talking to some random dude. I remember thinking the guy seemed sketchy. He said he was staying at one of the other cabins and they were sharing beer with him.

As the night progressed, some of the guys started coming inside the cabin and telling the rest of us that the dude was creepy, and that it didn't really seem like he was an actual camper. He eventually came in the cabin and we all realized there was something nuts about the guy. We somehow realized we needed to get rid of him, so a couple of the guys lured him outside and then ran back in the cabin and locked the door.

Crazy fucker proceeded to knock and bang on every window and door until the wee hours of the morning. Screaming he was going to kill us all. We were all freaked out as shit and cowered on the floor in our sleeping bags. I still don't know how he didn't manage to break out a window. He kept yelling that he had a gun, but I think that was a lie. Even the macho straight guys were scared shitless. There was no phone in the cabin so it wasn't like we could call for help.

We were pretty nervous creeping out of the cabin the next morning, but he had left, thankfully.

I was a teen on holiday in Toronto in the 80s and loving the glamour of the unfamiliar city. My older cousins and their cool French Canadian friends took me clubbing to this fucking dive full of weirdos called, appropriately, the Twilight Zone. There was a fairly quick group decision to leave. A call from a payphone to parents for a ride home was not successful - you wanted to go into the city, you figure it out.

We ended up having to sleep outside Union Station covered by newspaper. They slept, I didn’t. Exhausted early next morning we gained access to the station where two cousins proceeded to sleep on a bench. I’m still wide awake 1,000 yard stare. Station empty and we are sat on a platform. Out of the tunnel appears a figure in a clown suit (I swear this is real).

He comes up to me and introduces himself as Jesus the Clown - now I may been young but I wasn’t stupid. I start trying to subtly pinch cousins awake to no avail. Jesus not only guesses I’m from another country but WHERE I’m from without me saying a word. Then he makes me a balloon animal and as my cousins begun to stir disappears.

This really happened and I still had the balloon animal in my hand.

R45's yard presented hole! LMAO

R98 WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU CALL THE POLICE?????????

Jesus Christ on a cross, you were given the choicest chance in the world......

I believe I've told this here before. I'm in Seattle and was out sailing on Lake Union with a friend about 12 years ago. We were passing directly under a major bridge--quite high up--when something huge plummeted into the water just inches from the starboard side of the boat. The entire boat rocked hard to the side. My friend said "that was a person". I thought perhaps just a piece of the bridge had fallen, but he insisted it was a human. We were in shock for a moment--a couple more inches and whatever it was would have killed us--and then I called 911 and they seemed nonchalant about it as I couldn't identify what fell and there was no damage, so I called my marina/mooring office who contacted the water police. We moved the boat a ways away but waited around and they showed up about 20 minutes later.

While we waited for them, his body came to the surface a ways away. Young guy had jumped and died off the Aurora Bridge.

R105 MARY!

Later I told my mom the story, who replied, "Maybe he is autistic or schizophrenic." It bothered me for many years.

Maybe you are autistic or schizophrenic.

Or maybe….1/10

[quote] I was a teen on holiday in Toronto in the 80s and loving the glamour of the unfamiliar city.

Mary!

I know, I should have MARY’D myself! It was a fab holiday though.

I remember when I was in Toronto in the early 90s and thought it was the epitome of grace and glamour.

I was home from college for the summer and decided to take a walk at night. After about 30 minutes, I see this adorable older dog who proceeds to follow me for the rest of the walk. They were so sweet that I didn't mind. It was nice to have a companion. This dog follows me for about 30 more minutes until this car comes speeding down the residential street and I gulped. Something bad felt like it was about to happen. Before I knew what was happening, I heard the dog yelp as the car went speeding past.

I let out some sort of shriek and ran at the car full of teenagers saying something along the lines of "you pieces of shit! You fuckers!" I looked over where the dog had been and I see nothing. This dog had completely vanished. By this point, I had tears streaming down my face and was a complete wreck. Where could this poor dog have gone? Did it fall into a ditch somewhere and it was too dark to see them?

I ran home and told my mom and she'd never seen me look like that before. We got in her car and went looking for the dog and couldn't find a trace of them anywhere. To this day, I'm convinced I must have seen some sort of ghost dog.

I don't even understand r107. What part of my post is an EST? Clearly, "Rotor Man" was a real person who frequented Geauga Lake. And why would I lie about the conversation with my mother, 25+ years ago? I was 11 or 12 and I remember that very moment clearly.

But I assume r107 is a troll who lives to get a rise out of posters like me. So congratulations. You win.

Oh R101 made me remember another one.

A few years ago, my family decided to take a little trip to NJ and spend a night at a cabin in the Brendan Byrne State Forest Park and then drive to Six Flags. It was August, and we felt lucky that we were able to get a reservation for a cabin on the water!

So we drive to this state park and check in. There’s a nice little office with a gift shop. Driving in, we don’t see any other people in any of the campsites. No cars, no people, no tents. We go to the supermarket and buy hot dogs and stuff to eat, and when we come back, it’s a little later and still no one there. The cabins on either side of us are empty. Any other time we’ve been camping ANYwhere, there are always other people. Kids running around, maybe some people being a little too loud, music, etc. This place was silent and empty.

I could barely sleep all night because I was terrified. I slept with a knife (pathetic paring knife) under my pillow.

We all decided the next morning that we would check out early ASAP. On the way out, we drove through the entire park of campsites and we saw exactly one other site with a tent and a bunch of stuff on it. Coolers and a clothesline, and it looked as though someone was homesteading there.

There was NO ONE. In August.

Oh, and it’s near a psych facility.

R102 wins the thread

R101, these stories are the reason I am reluctant to go camping, even hiking in state parks there are some super sketchy people. Glad you were all ok.

This is more us freaking ourselves out, but in high school summer vacation my sister and I would sometimes watch a midnight broadcast of Unsolved Mysteries and take a late night walk around our safe, boring suburban neighborhood. One night as we rounded a nearby cul-de-sac where everything was quiet, a car that had looked empty and was totally dark suddenly turned on and started driving towards us. It was probably a coincidence that someone had been sitting there and turned it on then, but we ran home as fast as we could.

OP I remember going on that ride called the gravatron at theme parks and fairs; but I had no desire to go on this ride every day, or more than once or maybe twice-sometimes the ride operator would run it a second time before turning it off.

R116 = MARYest of all

can never see the appeal of that trainwreck nuisance Judy Garland

R86 Was trying to keep it short, but I left out some important context. We lived in the sticks of rural CT, out where the line is blurry between the yard and the woods. The well wasn't on anyone's property, it was out in the trees between our yard and the gravel road going up to the neighbor's. We weren't supposed to be there, we were brats who snuck away. My parents underestimated the danger cuz the hole looked too narrow on top to be that deep. And it was hard enough getting people up there to plow snow, fix the power, etc. My mom only freaked when she examined it closer, she thought it was a tunnel or something and called people to look at it.

R120 Did you learn nothing from baby Jessica or Radio Days?

We were the brattiest brats you could imagine, R121.

Saw a teenage girl who had just been hit by a car and smashed into its windshield, face first. She wasn’t terribly hurt, because she was able to sit up. But she was rocking back and forth on the curb screaming “why me” while blood poured from scores of cuts on her face. She still had pieces of glass in her face.

This would have been late 70s or early 80s. Still creepy to think about her.

R101 is part of the plot from Riley Sanger's Final Girls. Not saying it didn't happen, and glad the poster didn't end up like the book's title girl.

The power of unsettling stories- one of the best Woody Allen scenes.

The first time I traveled abroad I went to Croatia & while I was at some tourist site, what appeared to be a homeless/mentally ill man approached me. I figured it was the typical money shake down of tourists and he pulled him up sleeve to reveal a concentration camp number tattooed on his arm. I kind of gasped (I was pretty young at the time) and he growled at me "America did nothing! America did nothing!" I just kind of ran away. The locals didn't look surprised- he probably pulled this stunt on many people - but it was shocking at the time.

The true story with the irony that her father worked for power and light, had dug the well, and had testified earlier to have them cemented over.

About 10 yrs ago a tiny black cat used to show up at my exes small car lot. She was so affectionate and a real peoples cat. I took care of her when she would come and the it got to the point where she would pop out of where ever she was hiding as soon as my car pulled up at the lot. I figured she would be our "shop cat" and in my mind she was mine It turned outside was pregnant, had some kittens then I took her to the vet and had her spayed. I went back and forth in my mind whether or not I should just take her home. I just didn't really want a cat at my home at that point.

Hurricane Wilma came and low and behold a lost siamese cat showed up and refused to leave the lot. My ex took her home so I decided noe was enough and let the little black cat stay at the shop.

One Monday I went to the lot and she didnt come running when I showed up...where was she. ...well, it turned out she had been hit by a car and someone tossed her little body into a ditch..as I post this Im in tears. I should have taken her home...my guilt is unreal

I lost an eye on the wiry pubes of a Chinaman

None of these stories are unsettling.

This is unsettling.

Aww, r128, I'm sorry. That wasn't unsettling, that was heartbreaking. Forgive yourself.

I cant r132

In mid-November 1986 there was a bad snowstorm in my hometown in Connecticut. The heat and power were knocked out so my family slept downstairs in the living room in front of the wood stove. It was very quiet outside but then late at night we heard a kind of loud whirring noise. My dad said it must’ve been someone’s generator going, and that made sense to me so I didn’t think much of it.

Then we learned a few days or weeks later (don’t remember the exact dates) that a man, Richard Crafts, has killed his wife, dismembered her, and wood chipped her body into the river near our house. The sound my mom, dad, brother and I heard the night of the snowstorm was this psycho wood chipping his wife.

I asked my dad later if the noise could’ve been just a generator after all, and he said no way. Definitely a wood chipper. It wasn’t a noise like a generator’s hum, but a high pitched squeal. Creeped me right out.

And of course, none of us kids would swim in the river for a while because this poor woman was chopped up in there.

r134 closes thread

[quote] None of these stories are unsettling.

You have no soul.

meow.

meow.

meow.

MEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW

#128, I've fed dozens of stray cats through the years and had lots of sad endings. One froze to death; several poisoned (probably anti-freeze in a puddle); one attacked and killed by a former neighbor's pitbull; several hit by cars; kittens half-eaten by... something.

But I've also adopted several strays and given them good, healthy, long lives. We can't save them all.

When I was around 11 years old my family moved to a neighborhood about a mile away from where we had lived. The new house wasn't in the same school district as my elementary school, even though it was still within walking distance for me. Since there were only a few months left, they allowed me to finish the year there.

I was a latchkey kid and every day I walked to and from school. My parents left before I did and usually got home much later.

One day, right at the end of the school year, I noticed a person about 2 blocks behind me on this long, straight stretch of road into the neighborhood. The strange thing was I didn't see him when I passed that area, and it was pretty wide open.

At first, I didn't think much of it. But something didn't feel right. I looked over my shoulder and he was a little bit closer, so I picked up the pace. Glanced back again, and he was still gaining on me. Glanced back a third time, and I didn't see him. I figured he must have turned down one of the side streets. Just as I'm about to turn the corner, I see him poke his head from behind a bush and jump out, now just a block behind me. He starts walking very fast, and as soon as I turn the corner I start sprinting. I get to the next corner and see he is keeping pace, but hasn't gained much.

At this point I need to go about half a block to get to my street, and then to my house which is right in the middle. As I make the last turn, I see he has gained on me and is charging at me. Panic sets in and I summon some sort of superhuman speed. I think I ran faster that day than I ever had before or since. My house was just past a slight curve in the road, and I ducked behind the neighbor's truck and went through their yard to get to our back door. I let myself in, lock everything tight, and run up to the upstairs window.

I see the man, a very angry guy, pacing back and forth. He then stops and gets down in a hunched position, sneaking up to the neighbor's window. I see him carefully peek in their front room and slowly work his way around the house. I grab the phone and immediately call my mom, breathlessly telling her everything that's happened. She thinks I'm panicking, until he turns sideways and I tell her I can see a knife. She worked as a secretary, so she opened up one of their 2nd lines and called the police.

He finished snooping around the neighbor's house and must have figured out I wasn't in there. He then hopped the fence into our backyard and started looking around. We had several large bushes, and he was going through each of them, looking for me.

Just as he was beginning to approach the house, the police showed up. He must have heard them and hopped the fence to the neighbors behind us. As he did, he dropped his knife. It was curved and sharp, the kind you used to clean game.

The police then told us there had been reports of a man in the area peeping in windows for several months and they hadn't been able to find him. He also had exposed himself to several children in the area. They thought as I had walked home I may have passed by a house he was spying in on and thought I was going to tell someone.

They never caught him.

The funny part is I used to have these weird dreams that Batman was perched outside my window. In my kid brain he was watching over me, keeping me safe at night. After that day, I wondered if they weren't just dreams.

R130 here. I take it back as R134 wins.

R134 Was she frozen for the chipping? It seems so implausible unfrozen.

That's scary, R139!

It would make a huge mess, r141, but it's possible.

Thank you R143. I was trying to remember how it was done in Fargo.

....

That poor woman.

Terrifying experience, R139, glad you had good instincts and that you were a fast runner.

R145, the intent of this thread is not to google already assembled internet stories. You are to post your real life experience.

I posted it because some were wondering if the story was true. You are not the thread monitor so kindly fuck off!

Late 1970s. This kid and I bonded. We were both mixed race in a small town where you were either black or white. His Mom was white and loved the thuggy kind of black men. The guy she was married to turned up dead in the woods. Almost immediately another even thuggier guy moves in-he had a mean, evil look about him. I avoided him like the plague, but one day I was there, and I passed through a room he was sitting in and the thug gave me a hateful evil stare. He knew that I knew what had happened. The mother lured the husband to the woods where this thuggy guy shot And killed him. Everyone in town knew, or suspected. It was just weird and creepy. I broke off the friendship with that kid slowly.

My friend was a foster mother. I was visiting her one day, sitting on her sofa, as she made coffee in the kitchen. A newly fostered child, a five year old girl, came up to me and thrust her pelvis onto my knee and said 'fuck me!'. I hightailed it out of the living room into the kitchen not quite believing what she had said. I told my friend, who was not all that surprised. She went on to tell me how the girls' mother was a drug addict who'd pimped the girl out for money. The story was horrific, I won't relay it here, but it was truly unsettling. Another time the girl was up a tree and i told her to get down, that she would fall and hurt herself, she pointed to between her legs and said 'touch me'. I stopped visiting when the girl was home after that, it felt so wrong.

r137: may your future hospice nurse ignore your every request, and steal your morphine.

The boat/suicide guy at R105 kind of stopped me in my tracks. That's one of those "holy fuck" moments.

R150 I was at a restaurant once that had this sofa/coffee table set up in the middle of the restaurant that everyone could see. This boy about 7 was sitting on one of the couches and bouncing his maybe 4 or 5 year old sister on his lap. As in his sister was facing him while he held her and bounced. He had obviously seen something like that somewhere else. Everyone in the restaurant could see. All of the sudden you hear this gasp, and it is his mother coming over to tell them to stop and take them back to their table.

R40 / R42 - ignore them . You were indeed 6 years old and it is clear that what you wrote is heartfelt. Don’t allow others’ lack of empathy to upset you. Your sharing something that is clearly difficult for you to do so doesn’t warrant that reply. But, it’s DL.

R153, I'm sure that was unsettling, but that sounds hilarious if it means the kids spotted the parents' porn. I know it's not really funny, but people think they can do all kinds of things behind closed doors and then kids just put it all on Main Street.

Yes, I realize that parents should view their porn behind closed doors. Parents should also not fuck in front of their children.

Around 9am one morning I was awake in bed but reading. I was in my bedroom in my parents' house (where I lived temporarily after I dropped out of college for the second time). There was this tremendous BOOM that rattled the windows pretty severely for what seemed like a long time but must have only been 5-10 seconds. Nothing looked different outside. I wondered what it was but ended up just getting dressed and going downstairs to get some food.

The television was on in the living room and the newscasters were talking about a gas explosion in downtown OKC, which was around 17 miles from my parents' house. Over the course of the day the story changed. That was the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing.

I'm still shocked that the explosion was so powerful that the windows rattled as hard as they did, 17 miles away. I can't imagine having been downtown at the time. My friend had an apartment a few streets over and she said her windows all exploded and she and her fiance ducked behind the sofa.

Not necessarily unsettling, if like me, you like a good ghost tale:

Just out of college, I worked in a healthcare clinic for low-income folks. The site of the clinic was a large old home, rumored to be haunted. I can’t remember the ghost’s name, but staff called her Mrs. (blank), so let’s call her Mrs. X. She owned the home previously, and died in the home, by her own hand.

We kept inactive patient files in the basement, and given the sometimes transient nature of our clientele, we often had to go the basement to locate and retrieve the file of a patient who suddenly re-appeared at the clinic (keep in mind this was before computers became commonplace, the late 80s, early 90s).

Anyway, I was down in the basement, looking for a particular file of a patient who was coming to the clinic that day, combing boxes and boxes of files sorted by year and name. Finally I said out loud, mostly for fun, “Mrs. X, have YOU seen this patient’s file”? Not five seconds later, I pivoted, looked down, and the file was sitting on top of a box I had just moved. The file was dust free too, as if it had just been pulled from a box. Thanks Mrs. X.

Helpful? Yes. Paranormal? I think so. Unsettling? Maybe.

R141 yes, she was frozen. He killed her with a blow to the head and froze her body in an industrial sized freezer he bought a few days before. The the next day or so chopped her up and brought her body parts to the river to chip her.

I met him only once- a few days before he murdered her, his son was at my brother’s birthday party at our house. This guy came to pick his son up and he was dressed in a cop uniform (he was an auxiliary police man for the neighboring town). My dad was freaking out because he had been smoking pot in the basement and thought he was about to get busted (my mom was upstairs running the party, we weren’t unsupervised). My dad made me answer the door, but the guy just said he was there to get his son. He wasn’t particularly friendly and didn’t want to come inside, but he seemed like a regular guy. Then three days later he killed his wife.

I felt so bad for her and her three kids.

He’s out of prison now.

Have you seen him since?

I think this one might be the product of someone's imagination, but from my point of view this is how it happened.

In undergrad I lived in a fraternity, and as many frats did, we had a "little sister" program to keep the brothers social. One of the girls was named Jennifer, she was nice, a little plain, friendly but otherwise nondescript. She was likable, same age as me. She was around for several years. I can remember dancing with her at parties.

Years later, after we graduated, I was at a homecoming reunion at my frat and one of my frat brothers brought name came up. "Did you hear what happened to Jennifer?" At first I didn't who he meant, but then I remembered her. He told this story.

She had gotten married to an older man and they set up a home out in the country. Then she got involved with another guy who was shady and desperate. Her affections switched over to the shady dude, and the two of them decided to run off together. The husband went missing and she and the shady guy quickly and quietly moved out of state.

Some time later, one of the neighbors who lived had out in the country near them decided to take a swim in a nearby retention pond. You know, one of those ponds built next to a highway overpass. This woman swam in this pond regularly, and it was only about three feet deep in the middle. On this occasion, she happened to stop in the middle of her swim and put her feet down to the bottom of the pond. There was something under her foot that didn't feel right. She reached down with her hand to figure out what it was, and felt the contours of a human face.

Jennifer and her lover had dumped her husband's body in the retention pond and it was discovered by the neighbor. They were later apprehended and I don't know what happened after that.

[quote]decided to take a swim in a nearby retention pond. You know, one of those ponds built next to a highway overpass.

That is very unsettling.

When I was a kid we used to holiday in France and we'd travel from the UK by car and ferry. In both 1982 and 1983 we managed to hear and see not only one, but two terrorist bombings.

The M25 London Orbital motorway hadn't been built back then, so you had to drive through London itself and cross one of the bridges over the Thames to get to Dover. We were driving past Regents Park and dad was showing me where London Zoo was, when there was a huge explosion. The IRA had detonated a bomb under the bandstand in the park with the army band playing above. It killed 7 soldiers.

The second bombing we saw was in France itself. I love aircraft and my parents thought a trip to Orly airport would be nice to watch the planes take off and land. Well we parked the car and went into the terminal to see if I could pick up any airline timetables and souvenirs. We walked out and walked towards the car, as the bomb went off inside.

That was unsettling.

[/quote] Even the macho straight guys were scared shitless.

And you didn't have the gumption to hit him over the head with your Prada purse and show them who the real man was?

I was watching porn one night when there was a powerful earthquake. I was shaken not stirred.

R119 - she was the equivalent of a "wife" to many gay men. A beautiful voice and soul and a tragic life. She seemed to lack any ounce of bitchiness so, of course, gay men love her. Also, she had real-life gay husbands, her daughter became an icon who married gay men and Judy's own dad was gay. She is a part of gay history in a sense.

I was driving a bunch of coworkers home from a work event that was about 200 miles from our office. It was in the evening and we were on the interstate about halfway home. For about 3 miles, we could see the glowing eyes of deer looking out onto the interstate. Had to have been hundreds of them on that stretch. They just kept popping up. It was very weird. I have never seen that many deer in one huge space. I was scared as shit that one would run out onto the road. A huge section of the forest around that area had been dug up for some huge warehouse complex, and I guess the deer were all fucked up by it and looking for a place to go.

So Judy Garland is unsettling to some people? Not sure why she came up on this thread.

She puked one some kid upthread.

[quote]she was the equivalent of a "wife" to many gay men.

This is unsettling. In what possible way was a celebrity figure a "wife" to random fans? Sounds psycho.

[quote]She seemed to lack any ounce of bitchiness so, of course, gay men love her.

This, though... THIS is HILARIOUS. Okay, hon, sure! Gay men would NEVER like anyone "bitchy." Sure! We'll go with that!

R134, was the wife murderer hawt in his police uniform? DL loves a "hawt" wife murderer.

Let me tell you a story about a predatory wasp in the Palisades.

[quote] she was the equivalent of a "wife" to many gay men. A beautiful voice and soul and a tragic life. She seemed to lack any ounce of bitchiness so, of course, gay men love her. Also, she had real-life gay husbands, her daughter became an icon who married gay men and Judy's own dad was gay. She is a part of gay history in a sense.

Stop overthinking it and being a drama queen. JG is iconic to many gay men because she was ballsy and an overall hot mess. She didn't give a shit what you thought. Strong, ball busting women who dance like no one watching and don't blink are a lure. On that same list is Betty Broderick.

I wish Twitter had existed during Betty and Dan's break up and divorce. I have no doubt she would have tweeted a pic similar to this with her unsuspecting youngest son in front of a house they just happened to be driving by.

[quote]The story was horrific, I won't relay it here, but it was truly unsettling.

Oh just post it. We're all adults here.

R169 and R172 - you two are too young to understand how gay life was back when Judy was around or what she meant. I got it after listening to a couple of older guys I dated in the 1990's. You can't unless you heard it from them...

R169 - let me put it to you this way...if she had outed a lot of the gay men around her, she could have ruined their lives. She may have become annoyed at her husbands at various times, but she wasn't some nasty bitch like Angelina Jolie. In fact, at a time when gay men were oppressed and lived in fear, she was known to be one of the few true good straights despite her many problems. Sadly, she self-destructed.

[quote] I was driving a bunch of coworkers home from a work event that was about 200 miles from our office.

WTF? 200 miles away, at night. I'm sure drinking was involved. Company should have hired a minibus.

R175 She was also, in her way, their friends. She helped them with their secrets, and they answered the phone at 3 am when she needed someone to talk to.

Jesus, the "entertainment lawyer" just lifted the Judy Garland puke story nearly verbatim.

So he's trolling DL, stealing stories and pretending he wrote them or was somehow privvy to them?

As if I needed any further proof that CDAN was faux bullshit. Remember this next time someone posts something from the alleged "Entertainment lawyer".

Jesus, THAT is unsettling.

Not to mention theft.

Here is one that was majorly unsettling to a young gayling. One of our neighbors when I was growing up was a creepy old queen who smoked like a chimney and was a drunk (looked like one). One Armenian Lebanese lady, a beautiful ER nurse, came to my dad (he was the building manager) and tearfully told him that when she left for her evening shift, said queen would pull out his penis and urinate right in front of her....every night. My father politely told him to stop because if the cops saw him it would get him in trouble and if her Lebanese husband saw him, it would get him killed. Well he became vengeful and pasted a note to her car calling her a "stupid bitch" and "I will get you" after which he posted an apology note saying he was bipolar and under treatment. He had a very distinct fire-engine red convertible vintage Cadillac with cowhide upholstered chairs. One day, my sister (who looked a lot like this lady) was waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up a few blocks away from where we lived and the car drives by with just a young, insane-looking guy with long hair (not crazy old queen) who started yelling incoherent things at her and drove off. A few minutes later he reappeared out of nowhere with a crowbar walking swiftly towards her. She ran to a nearby gas station which was run by said Lebanese nurse's husband who had a gun, said he saw the whole thing and was ready to shoot. However, the guy vanished. When she and the Lebanese guy got back to our building, the old queen said his car was and had been parked there all day as he only drove it on weekends. Swore he had no clue, knew nobody like the crazy guy (he was elderly and a recluse and had lots of locks on his door), and was so visibly shaken by what he heard he started to shake and cry. A few weeks later, a more affluent gay couple's home across the street was broken into and all their antiques were stolen. A neighbor also said she saw a guy with long hair mumbling to himself on the street.

R181

0.00000002/10

R180 Thank you, Tully

R182 - it's true bitch. Lots of weird shit happened in Glendale, California in the 1990's. Suddenly the population became diverse, lots of drugs and gangs started appearing from the Echo Park area, lots of gays and elders moved away. By the time I finished high school, the place looked like a prison whereas it had been one of the best in LA county and one of the safest. My theory was that the guy was probably some escort/rough trade/drug dealer who also took advantage of these older queens. Probably the crazy old guy was shaking due to drugs and the realization his trick had actually tried to make off with his car. He probably didn't get away with the car because he notice the Lebanese guy saw him and fled. He did get away with the house burglary because he knew when those men were out and it was at night. Simple.

I bet that tough Lebanese husband was hawt. They usually are.

I think a childhood friend could be a serial killer and there's nothing I can do about it. In 5th Grade he and I took first place in a pottery competition. I went over to his house to watch TV. He pulled a BB gun out and starting shooting at his dog. I grappled for the gun but he kept it. "It doesn't hurt them." I ran into the kitchen and told his mother but she just got down on my level, looked me square in the eyes and said "You look like you've got a little of the devil in you too." I ran out. My mom said not to go over there anymore. Then all the pets started dying in our neighborhood, including our German Shepard Dinah. Later the kid and his family moved to Florida. A few decades go by. I click a link on the Drudge Report about a mass cat killing in Florida. It's gotten so bad they even have a map of all the bodies. I google his name. Not only is he an animal control officer, he's shot a disabled boy's dog and is under investigation. AND his address comes up smack in the middle of the map of the cat killings. After that, I wrote to the police liaison they had on the case. She thanked me and told me she'd reported my info to Animal Control. A couple of months later, the local kennel burned down, killing about 35 dogs and cats. He's still out there.

[quote] I ran into the kitchen and told his mother but she just got down on my level, looked me square in the eyes and said "You look like you've got a little of the devil in you too."

That last line would win Kathy Bates another Oscar.

What an awful story though R186. It's sad to think someone has never been caught and prosecuted for any of these crimes.

I'll just leave l this here.

" I click a link on the Drudge Report"

r157 must be like one of those douche bros in horror movies who makes fun of ghosts and their existence and gets killed first in their gang by the ghost.

R185 - oh he was hot when he was young. It wasn't so hot when they left and my dad found they had fought like crazy people to the point of breaking those awful sliding closet doors so popular in LA apartments and one of the doorknobs was yanked out. There was another Lebanese Armenian lady there as well who married some poor American construction manager. She wore French perfume, painted and always looked amazing. One day, while the husband was eating, she hit him on the side of the head with a pan in a fit of jealously to the point he bled and had to call the paramedics. After the robbery, they eldergays in the home across the street left for Palm Springs and rented their home to a Persian family where the husband was also always beating his wife in fits of jealousy. I don't want to imagine what they did in terms of decor.

[quote][R91] never happened.

Just the one, dear?

R186 - wow sounds like you need to also alert PETA. Terrible!

Talk about driving. I've seen some horrendous accidents. One time I was on foot and heard this huge scraping sound coming from the highway nearby. Saw a dump truck as it jumped up on the jersey barrier and then overturned. That's a sound I'll never forget.

Of course here in the Atlanta metro area I've seen some really bad accidents.

And the poster who mentioned ESP - it's called clairvoyance. The ability to foresee bad or things happening.

"An immense confusion bewilders me. It is as if I could not see things as they were. I see too deep and too much."

Last week I went to my first movie at a theater since COVID and was given a senior discount.

So you just ASSUMED I was a senior citizen????? Ageism! Literal violence!

"Teen on Holiday" sounds like a great title for a lurid pulp paperback from the '50s, R108!

In November, 1911, my nine year-old Grandma was playing in the fields of her Upcountry SC farm.

Suddenly, her beloved big brother came running up to her, gathered her in his arms, told her how much he loved her, and that this was goodbye. Grandma clung to his neck, begging him not to go. But big brother took off.

Several days later he was found several counties over. Tortured. Lynched.

Grandma died in 2004 at 102. She'd never gotten over it...and never told anyone about it until she was 101.

R197 That is truly heartbreaking, what is even more disturbing is that it was possible photographed and sold as a memento and that the image of his tortured and destroyed body is out there.

[quote]Later the kid and his family moved to Florida.

Where I'm sure they fit right in, R186.

[quote]So you just ASSUMED I was a senior citizen????? Ageism! Literal violence!

Are you 65 but look 35, like so many DL-ers?

Exactly, R198. I bought that book when it originally came out, and when I heard my aunt tell my mom Grandma had spoken about her brother for the first time, I took out the book to see if anything clicked with the story.

I had another relative lynched, this one on my dad's side. Louisiana,1850s. It was as evil and angrymaking as my great uncle's lynching.

Why on earth has this thread been greylined? CDAN trying to cover their tracks?

I swear, there's a handful of lunatics on this site that enjoy screwing things up for others.

Move the slider to “asbestos eyeballs” in the settings page and the gray goes away. You shouldn’t have to, though, and if they persist in trying to cover their tracks it’ll pop up somewhere else with further reference to how accurate his blinds are and how he sources them.

Shitty cut and paste job on his site, btw. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

R155 I heard my mother and my (future at the time) stepfather having sex when I was like 11 or something. We had a spiral staircase and they were in the living room. I got up because I could hear them talking. She was still in the process of divorcing my dad and was dating my stepfather (actually they had been seeing each other for a while - my dad took up a work assignment in Singapore and was gone for many months. Stepfather was in some sort of carpool for teachers). She kept mentioning my stepfather's name and saying "I love you so much, you take such good care of me....I love you so much...you take such good care of me"....over and over again. Then she started making these moaning sounds that sounded like a dying dog. Then she said "get over here and get in me". I ran to my room, traumatized forever.

Even I'm traumatized just from reading that story.

R204 MAAAARRRRRRYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!

r203 fwiw, I Just switched my settings to delicate flower and this thread isn't grey-lined for me.

Maybe because I'm the OP? I've never paid attention.

Also, who would F&F my OP?

CDAN guy did this! Thieving asshole…

I can’t tell if Grandma in r197 saw a ghost or not.

Once upon a time in a tall NYC building a living Satan rode down an escalator. That was how more than 200 years of democracy ended for a country once known as The United States of America.

Actually the true end of this country ended many years before that, in 1980 when a former actor and governor also a living Satan won an election that put everything in place that made the more current Satan win an election over 30 years later. That was the beginning of the end of the USA.

More horrible, frightening and definitely unsettling a story has never been, the worst part is that it's not fiction.

I almost fell out of a Geauga Lake ride because the lap bar didn't stay down. I have a scar on my left hip where a screw end was sticking out and dug into me as I was sliding up and out. It probably stopped me from completely flying out, but why the hell was the pointy end there in the first place?

On that same trip, my friend's dad almost drowned in the newly opened wave pool. A bunch of kids in inner tubes were holding hands so that they'd all stay together as a huge float, and when they washed over him during a wave, he couldn't get back to the surface until another wave moved them off of him.

This thread is making me long for my childhood

I was in college and had hurriedly eaten a baked potato for dinner before rushing out to go meet a study group. I drive into town (long drive) and find the home of the guy hosting the study group. Just as I get there my tummy starts to grumble... and cramp like a muther fucker!

I see my friend on the sidewalk and tell her I'm too sick to come in and I'm going home, all while wincing from the pain and cramps. I start suspecting what is coming. I race back to campus and as I'm pulling up to my dorm/apartment, I can't hold on.

I START CRAPPING MY PANTS!!!! All I can think about is my car's cloth upholstery!!!! I jump out of the car and start running, but my sphincter is losing the battle! As I start to lose the gamble with sharts, copious amounts of burning acid starts leaking from my terrified hole!

As I run, my asshole completely fails and gives up and opens wide, and I can feel hot liquid running down my legs and into my shoes! I throw open the door of my apartment and run to the toilet!!! (I should've run to the other bathroom, because that is where the shower was!) I throw myself on the bowl and finish the explosive release, all the while gagging from the smell and looking down at my bare legs covered in liquid feces!

Then.... I hear the front door open!!!!!!! My roommate is home!!!! AND HE'S WITH PEOPLE!!! I panic and strip from the waist down and roll my pants into a ball and hide them in the toilet paper cabinet! I grab a towel and wrap it around myself and rush to the other bathroom and hop in the shower. I'm showering but still pissing out my ass which made the clean up rather frustrating.

I finish up but then look at the towel and its covered in shit from the rush in, so I gingerly wrap myself with the "clean side" of the towel and head back to my room. As I rush passed the other bathroom, I see the door is closed and someone is in there!!! As I duck into my room and close the door, I hear the guy leave my bathroom, and say to my roommate, "Bro, someone took a nasty dump in that bathroom because it stinks like hell!!!" He responded, "Probably my roommate. He's a fuckin' vegetarian."

I hid in my bedroom for the next couple hours, waiting for the people to leave, so I could sneak my shit covered trousers out of the house and into the garbage. I also threw out the bath towel, which happened to be my roommate's towel! I told him I spilled stage blood on it and bought him a new one.

Moral of the story... If a baked potato has a funny taste, it's probably best to skip it!

How's THAT for an unsettling story!

The scat troll has a lot of time on her hands!

[quote]I can't tell if Grandma in R197 saw a ghost or not.

No, R209, she was just doing what a host of old black Americans did from 1619 to today: They'd pushed all that bad, evil shit, all those terrible memories, down, down, down deep in their bowels for years and years, until their ancient bodies could no longer contain it, kept it in and down deep until out tumbled all these sparkling diamonds of misery, of grief and tragedy.

When Grandma was about to turn 100, my aunt asked her if she was excited about it. Instead of happy, Grandma looked stricken. She shook her head and said, "No, baby. 100 years is too long for anybody to live." A year later, my aunt (who lived with Grandma) and uncle (who lived 5 minutes up the road) started hearing all these stories no living family member had ever heard. So many stories. The lynching of her brother was only one of them.

Age and utter weariness had finally lifted the veil and erased the filter that had allowed her to go on with life after some of the worst things that can happen to a person, had happened.

And that's how we found out about Uncle Will.

R215 I am so sorry.

For grandma, for Uncle Will. For the impacts it had for you and your generation.

My heart hurts for everyone murdered on American soil by evil supremacists.

My question was a prosaic one. Since the brother’s corpse shows up a few days later, was he on his way (as it were) to being killed when Grandma saw him, or was he already dead?

R217, interesting… so the brother was a ghost? Could be. In any case, OP, I’m with r216. I’m so sad your family had to go through that.

I once had a friend who would share unsettling stories online on gay fora

And then she died

Obviously Grandma's brother was on the run to escape the fate which befell him just days later.

My great-grandaunt was found dead on the family farm. There was some talk that a neighbor boy had raped and killed her, but no one knew for sure. When the family found her, she was being eaten by pigs.

Ugh, r221's post reminded me of having to read "Butcher's Boy" in freshman English. THAT was traumatizing.

Someone said my daddy wasn't a hero and I miscarried.

This thread has been greyed-out because it's nothing but Fake News designed to disparage minorities, including gays.

Boris is fabricating scary ways to present minority stereotypes and he's practically shit on them all.

Why would CDAN flame out threads if he needs them to loot for gossip?

The bipolar queen vs. Lebanese brutes and displaced Mexicans should have been the final nail in the credibility for you. But the black lynchings Boris is celebrating combined with the reparations "satire" should have clued-in even the dumbest DLer.

Of course Boris wants you to set your DL account to "Asbestos Eyeballs" because he wants you to see all his slurs against minorities and Fake News.

Keep your settings on whatever you're comfortable with. Use "Delicate Flower" if you want to avoid the racism, right-wing propaganda and Fake News.

I don't buy the Judy Garland story for a second. It's just an amusing way to troll the gays.

Thanks, R216. That means a lot, truly.

When I was in college in a small town in central NJ there was this really creepy guy who would walk into student housing and still small items, sometimes food (like a few eggs). I caught him several times in the kitchen area and reported him to the town police who waved it off. Did I say he was creepy looking? Frightening and stomach turning.

Three years after graduating I moved to NYC. Within the first week walking in Times Square who should pass in front of me so closely that our noses almost touched. I assume he had moved to city. O had no idea if he recognized me as the guy who called the police on him. I was unsettled.

However there is an addendum. I had started AA in my last years in college and there was a younger guy who actually descended into heroin addiction while going to AA (and taking a few other young members with him). On that move into NYC in the moving van coming out of the tunnel and taking a turn into the then very seedy part of town who should J see staring at my from the street with a bunch of other junkies? That guy! (I sorta liked him btw, we had shared a sponsor. I wonder sometimes if he made it. Never saw him in an AA meeting in NYC in 30 years.)

But what are the chances statistically both could happen within days?

Oh, now I see what you mean, R209/R217.

But still, no. Unfortunately there's a lot of backstory that'd bore you all to tears and derail the thread, so I just gave the shortest version. But the county where Grandma was born and lived til death was infamous statewide as the nastiest bit of the overall nasty Klan hotbed that was South Carolina. Black people would disappear, and it was known what happened. In Grandma's brother's case, a white man big in the local Klan (I know the family's name, but I won't put it out here) had been trying for years in various ways to steal prime farming acreage from Grandma's family. Her brother stood up to the man, in public. BIG no-no. Grandma's family tried to spirit him to safety, but not in time. So Will took it on the lam, but not before finding his baby sister and saying goodbye--she was his special person, so he HAD to. No one knows where they caught up to him, but his mutilated body later was found several counties away. Thrown away like garbage.

And that was that. "Person or persons unknown"--you know the drill.

[quote]How's THAT for an unsettling story!

An unsettling story that never happened.

I was there the night the lights went out in Georgia

Ive got quite a few but heres one yall have heard before. Way back in 1980 I was involved in dealing cocaine with a cousin of mine in Miami. I had just gotten out of prison after a 4 year stretch (LONG story) and I wanted to make some fast money and have fun doing it. My cousin had been dealing quite a few years at that point,so he was pretty well placed. I had the best time going up and down the state making 1000s a night sometimes and partying in all the bars ,but I digress. One day my cousin asked me if I wanted to tag along on a fishing trip ,so we left about 5 in the afternoon with 6 other guys,my cousin and me. not much fishing got done,but a hell of a lot of drugs and booze were consumed. Sometime during the night my body just shut down,and I passed out in the main cabin. Hard to do on coke but I did it.

The next morning I stumble out and theres my cousin and 3 guys sitting there,still partying. My cousin must have seen the puzzled look on my face because he shot me a look that screamed DONT say a word. It hit me instantly that something very bad had gone down and I knew that i had to act like nothing was wrong. I stagger over to the table,do a line and start drinking bloody marys,chatting and laughing and being all festive .Inside I was absolutely terrified that my cousin and I were next .That 4-5 hours it took to get back felt like an eternity .When we docked and my cousin and I were walking to the car I started to ask him what in the hell happened out there and he turned and looked at me and said "Dont ever mention that night again" . I never did,and the whole thing scared me so bad I realized I was playing a dangerous game with dangerous people and I immediately got out of it. Thankfully my cousin did too. Before that we were super close, since then Ive spoken to him maybe 3 times in 40 years.

I took it that the brother knew people were after him and was trying to get away when he said goodbye, but he didn't successfully elude his tormentors.

When I was 14 my father sent me to work on the farm of a friend of his, because I wasn't masculine enough and he had loved working on a farm when growing up. I was to share a bed with the 17-year-old son, who was built like Hercules and was a nasty bully. It took about three nights before he started to put the moves on me, with me being such a sissy. I was too young and he was mean. Finally he just overpowered me and fucked me. I was so ashamed and confused that I didn't say anything. It went on all summer. It became like a habit of abuse and I just didn't want to do anything to make him get rougher on me. I was confused because I was a gay kid, ignorant about what I was feeling, and I'd wake up in the middle of the night with him patting my head gently. He told his father I was a fairy when I was leaving, and something was said to my dad about it. We would visit them for several years afterwards and the guy would play up to my sister.

So years later I'm an adult, still working through what I realized was traumatic experiences. I worked things out and have had a pretty good life. At 41 I picked up a younger guy at a coffee shop. He was built and rather concrete in his thinking but sincere. He wanted to try being fucked. I obliged and he liked it. I started seeing him and giving him a course in bottoming and submitting, which he took to. Nothing too rough. He had been going to school but transferred elsewhere so we lost touch.

Meanwhile the farmer dad had died and I reconnected with the brute's mother and went out for a visit. I took her to dinner and she arranged to a stop at her son's so I could "see the family." I hadn't seen the prick since I was a senior in high school. And when I walked in there were the brute and his son, my hookup pal, at home for a visit. Over dessert and coffee I could see the bastard noticing something was up somewhere with his son, who was no poker player. The next day I got a call from my young friend. I didn't say anything about the past but he called his father an asshole. I didn't ask for an explanation but agreed. We've met up a few times since. The tone has changed and now it's the other side of the "daddy" thing, and I don't want him to be hurt.

Too long? Yeah. Unsettling? For me the coincidence was very unsettling. A part of me wanted to say something about his son's taking it like a man. I'm glad I didn't.

R213 - you are only encouraging the anti-vegetarian and anti-vegan queens so prevalent on DL.

r228 left out the part where his redneck hairy daddy with a big beer gut used to tell him that story in a white hood and robe while holding r228 in his lap and stroking r228's puny cocklet as a youngster.

I thought for a moment that R233 was going to throw in a mention of a puny cocklet.

R233 that story is Nifty.

This thread is getting more interesting. Thanks R231 and R233. Usually, I don't read long posts like that.

R231, yes, that story does sound familiar, but worth repeating. I have had some close calls in my drug and alcohol days, but nothing like that. My God.

I was studying abroad in Taiwan once and lived on top of this mountain in a school there. It was freezing cold, there was nothing good to eat, and they never had hot water. I had this big, painful bump on my nose. It hurt like hell. I went to my dorm bathroom and squeezed it. A small bit of clear liquid came out. I squeezed it again, and all of a sudden all this white shit shot out all over the mirror. It looked like that fake snow they spray on department store windows at Christmas. I squeezed it again, and got an encore. My nose was still a bit painful but got better afterwards. No idea what that was.

I now understand about Grandma and her brother—in the context of a thread that included paranormal experiences I got muddled. AND I just read an excellent children’s novel where a kid is warned to hide by her father, and she only finds out later that he had already been lynched before he came to warn her.

My grandmother was born in 1914. When she was 18, a contemporary of hers got pregnant and had a baby. The father may have been a boy from a circus that was visiting town, I'm not sure. The boy was placed for adoption and was adopted in another country. The girl's family decided to punish her by locking her into her bedroom, where she remained for 26 years or thereabouts. Her meals were left outside the door by her mother, who seems to have been the chief enforcer. Maybe it was her mother's death that caused the family to release her, I don't know. Anyway, she lived to be very old (99 or 100) and I saw her when she was in her mid-nineties in a nursing home. She was with an elderly English man who, I was told, was the son she'd given up almost eighty years before.

Shit r241. That’s just sad…

Did I miss blocking the troll at r235? I guess someone cleared its cookies.

Not unsettling but cute. My dad was in and out of hospitals since I was a very little boy, for long stretches of time. He had been in an ICU in Boston and we eventually got to know the entire staff of nurses that took care of him. He wavered in an out of consciousness and was on a lot of painkillers near the end. There were many visits he’d be sleeping or passed out.

When one of the nurses discovered I was in cosmetology school, she told me how she had saved up an obscene amount of money and went to one of the finest salons on Newbury street- and gotten her hair cut by one of the “Best Of Boston” hairdressers at the time. She went home that night and her husband didn’t notice any difference and didn’t say anything. She had hung out with friends for lunch early in the week, then to her hospital shifts, and no one gave her a compliment or even noticed. By Friday she felt angry and stupid for spending so.much.

That night after she had checked on my sleeping father, when she turned away he called her name, sat up and said, “Nice haircut!”

I love that r244! Made me smile.

Fun, R233. The only thing hotter than fucking a bully later in life is fucking his son!

This story is more unsettling in the sense of disturbing than eerie. About 75 years ago, a few miles from my homeplace, a farmer's wife had stillborn twins. He felt dishonoured and ashamed at the fact that his offspring had been unable to survive, so he punished her by placing a dead baby on either side of her head, at her pillow. I think he may also have tied her down so that she couldn't escape from the shame he said she had brought on him. She was committed to an "insane asylum" not long after, where she lived for the rest of her life.

[quote]He felt dishonoured and ashamed at the fact that his offspring had been unable to survive, so he punished her by placing a dead baby on either side of her head, at her pillow.

And that man's name was ... John Legend.

R224 = DL's village idiot with zero comprehension skills who lives in Flyoverstan and resorts to the same Boris routine on each thread. We need to F&F the bitch. I didn't say the Lebanese husband did anything to the old bipolar queen moron. I said it was obvious the old man was off his meds, there was a predator in the area who these eldergays were probably hiring, and their cars and homes were being broken into by this shady guy. Yes, there were LOTS of Lebanese Armenians in Glendale...why? They fled the war in Lebanon and Glendale became full of Armenian people in the 1980's and 1990's. There was also an aging gay community composed of nurses, doctors (my late partner), and places like Brand Bookshop and the Alex Theater were meccas of gay life. Cultures co-existed, many in the medical field and those who escaped Lebanon and Iran came to the U.S. with entrepreneurial ambitions and opened markets, took over franchises, etc.