***
My mom was driving, and a guy ran out in the road, so she stopped so she couldn’t hit him.
It was night time, so it was pretty dark out, and 3 other men emerged from the forest around, all trying to use the door handles of her car to get in. She locked them luckily, and gassed it to the nearest town.
Remember to always lock your car after you start it, because if it wasn’t unlocked who knows what would’ve happened to her.
***
My friend’s boss bought an Audi A4 convertible, back when they were new and interesting. One of the talking points was the pop-up roll hoops that were hidden unless you rolled it.
A few months after buying it he got to test those roll hoops out, as he lost control and skidded down a steep bank about 10m (~35ft) deep.
The roll hoops did their job, and he survived with just cuts and scratches from the bushes he’d plowed through. The car ended up the right way up and he got out, walked back up the bank to the side of the road, then got on the phone to the police to report the accident. While he was standing there a driver from a car that had seen the accident came over to speak to him.
Approaching from behind the other driver asked if he was okay. My friend’s boss turned around to reply and dropped dead. His neck had been fractured, but was in one piece right up until he turned his head, when it severed his spinal cord.
***
My mom’s friend had a small house and lived alone. She noticed weird things: a batch of soup depleting faster than usual, missing eggs, damp towels in the hamper when she hadn’t used any, extra dishes in the dishwasher, etc… This went on for months, she thought she was just being forgetful. One day she heard some thumping around in her attic and went to investigate. She found some make shift living quarters. Small radio, hot plate, sleeping bag, pillow, food wrappers, etc… She called the cops who came to keep an eye on the place. They ended up catching a homeless man climbing a tree, trying to sneak into her attic window. He had been doing this almost daily. He would wait for her to go to work, then go down stairs and help himself to food and amenities. The funny part about this story is they got to know each other throughout the ordeal, and the guy was actually very respectful, just down on his luck. She didn’t press charges, instead, let him move in, helped him get a job, and he lived in the attic until he got back on his feet. Creepy shit with a happy ending.
***
Various torture murders are probably the most horrific things I’ve read about:
Junko Furuta, who was a perfectly normal girl until she was kidnapped off the street by a gang for no reason (purely wrong place, wrong time, according to Japanese sources) and unimaginably raped and tortured to death over 44 days.
Kiki Camarena, a DEA agent in Mexico who was kidnapped by the Guadalajara Cartel and tortured to death over about three days. His story is the central focus of the show Narcos: Mexico, but from what I’ve read, his death was even more brutal than what they make it out to be. A detail consistent in both is that they brought in a doctor to revive him numerous times when he got too close to death, and keep him conscious so he couldn’t pass out from the pain.
Kelly Anne Bates, who was groomed from a young age by a scumbag who eventually killed her slowly over the course of about a month in their apartment. Her injuries were so horrific the jury at the guy’s trial had to get counseling. For example, her eyes were missing and there were stab wounds in the sockets.
Sylvia Likens, whose parents left her in the care of a woman who both personally and with the help of her children and their friends degraded, tortured, and killed over over several months.
The Hello Kitty murder in China, where a man and his about-13-year-old girlfriend kidnapped a prostitute who had supposedly stolen from him (even though sources say she had paid him back with interest), tortured her to death, and then stuffed her corpse into a Hello Kitty toy.
Baby Brianna, a newborn whose mother, father, and uncle tortured and raped her from the second they brought her home from the hospital until the second she died.
Baby P, a British toddler whose mother let her boyfriend torture him to death. His back was broken in his last days of life.
Honestly, there are just so many horrifically on par with each other, you could list them all day.
***
Artimus Pyle the drummer from Lynard Skynard survived a plane crash and walked to a nearby house only to be shot by the homeowner. The homeowner saw a bloody long-haired man and winged him. Pyle survived that as well and made a full recovery.
***
I work at a Max security prison and we have several inmates who are severely mentally ill. The ones that self harm wear a Fitbit kind of thing to monitor heart rate if there is a change we rush their room to stop whatever is happening. On top of this we also do visual inspections. On one round a coworker was doing cell checks and noticed this particular inmate had blood on their face but nothing came up on the monitors or anything. So he called to the inmates to ask if they were okay, the inmate had their eyes closed and just kept repeating, “it doesn’t hurt”. The inmate would not answer where the blood was from. We opened the cell to see what the situation was and it turns out the inmate had plucked out both of there eyes and they were laying on the floor. The inmates HR monitor never alerted and the inmate never screamed. Paramedics said the inmates vitals were normal and the inmate was fully responsive.
***
Before my Dad died, he once told me a story from when he was in Vietnam in the 1960s. He told me about a mission where he and one other American with five CIDG strikers (South Vietnamese villagers turned fighters) were tasked to emplace seismic ground sensors along a trail network deep in the jungle. He said they were about two days into the mission when he and two of the strikers split off from the main group to go watch a nearby trail intersection. He said the jungle was pretty quite that day, just the sounds of birds and bugs and an occasional monkey. He said they had been watching the trail intersection for about three or four hours and were deciding on whether to move further down the trail or to turn back and link up with the rest of the patrol. Before leaving the cover of the brush my Dad said he checked the trail ahead of them one last time and prepared his men to move. Now here is where the story gets interesting and he told this part with absolute dead seriousness. He said just as he started to step out onto the trail he sees a light skinned Black Union Cavalry Soldier in full battle gear laying alongside the trail just shy of the intersection. My Dad said the Union Soldier had two pistols, a Spencer rifle and a short curved club at his hip. As my Dad was trying to process what he was seeing, the Soldier looked directly at him and smiled. Then the Soldier slowly placed a finger up to his lips as if to tell him to be silent and then motioned my Dad back off the trail. My Dad said he signaled for his men to remain hidden and he recalled that as he slipped back into the jungle on one side of the trail, the Union Soldier did the same on his side of the trail. Less than 10 seconds later he said the lead element of a group of NVA (North Vietnamese Army Soldiers) walked right through the trail intersection some 30 feet away. My Dad estimated that the group was comprised of some 70 – 80 Soldiers equipped with automatic rifles, light machine guns and rocket propelled grenade launchers. He has no doubt that his entire team would have been wiped out on the spot. He said as soon as the enemy Soldiers had passed, he and his team beat feet out of there as fast and as quietly as they could and rejoined with the rest of the patrol. He reported the enemy Soldiers his team had encountered, but decided not to say anything about the Soldier he had seen. My Dad kept this secret for many many years; only telling me just before he passed and earlier only telling his Grandmother on her death bed in the 1970s. He said when he told his Grandmother, she smiled and without opening her eyes told him, “you saw Old Red Tom”. Red Tom was my Great Great Grandfather. He was a half Black / half Creek free man who was a scout for the Union Army during the Civil War and later served with the U.S. Cavalry in the American West. He was know for carrying two pistols, a Spencer rifle and a Creek warclub into battle.
***
Neishabur train dissaster is something that reminds me how death can come at any moment.
A train with 51 wagons of sulphur, fertiliser, petrol and cotton wool somehow broke loose and rolled down the track about twenty kilometers until it derailed in the town of Khayyam, Iran. There were no humans on board.
Chemical leaks ensued and authorities tried to extinguish whatever fires broke out.
At one point, the whole thing explodes. And it really explodes. The whole town of Khayyam is literally demolished, 3 nearby towns are badly damaged and it was heard 70 km away. The wreckage continued to explode for several days after. Around 300 people died and more than that injured.
An earthquake of 3.6 on Riechter scale was produced
***
When my aunt was about 16 she was working at a grocery store and had a boss in his mid twenties. One day he called the house and was begging her to sneak out and hang out with him. She was considering it because it was her boss and she didn’t want to say no. My mom, who is two years younger than her, always gets these incredibly spot on “gut feelings”. She had one that night and begged my aunt not to go out with him.
Thankfully she listened to my mom and told him no which made him really angry. He ended up going out that night and meeting another girl. He took her out to some cliffs and raped her and pushed her off. Somehow she lived through this and was able to get him sent to prison. I feel so sorry for that girl and so thankful for my mom and her gut feelings.
Always trust your gut.
***
I spent my first 10 years in New Delhi. Back then, we would find dead women (burnt with acid or set on fire) and it used to be so “normal”. Like oh look, another one of those dowry cases where her family didn’t pay the husband enough money so they killed her.
Many years later i revisited those memories and realised how insane that actually was! I’d totally forgotten about all that.
***
This is from South Africa. The woman is called Alison Botha and she was abducted, raped and then choked until she blacked out. She was driven into a secluded area, stabbed 30 times in the abdomen and 16 times in the throat and left for dead on the side of the road.
She had to use her shirt to keep her organs inside her body and hold her head up because of a damaged muscle in her neck and proceeded to crawl to the road where she was eventually spotted and rescued.
She survived the attack and now does motivational speaking I believe.
***
I worked for U-Haul when I was 18 and it was located in front of a club that was known for being really sketchy. I came in to open one morning and it was common for people to knock on the door hoping to get in early and get their truck.
On this day, I hear frantic knocking on the door. I’m there alone still so it kind of startled me. I look and there’s a women, completely naked, covered in what looks like blood. I called the cops and grabbed one of the moving blankets and went out side to cover her up. She smelled really bad and was a mess. Ended up being blood and her own shit she was covered in.
Found out later she was drugged at the club that night/early morning, raped and left blacked out in the alley. It was just a fucked up and surreal situation to be involved in.
***
One night my son (20 at the time) was brought home fall down drunk by his buddy James.
About a year later James got another friend drunk, checked them into a hotel, killed, dismembered and ate some of him.
***
Guy goes into a small building and dies. Later, investigator shows up and sees the body, calls 911 and then dies. Paramedics show up to help them, then die.
The reason? Oxygen levels at head height were normal. Oxygen levels went bent over was basically 0. Bending over in this room killed 4 people by asphyxiation.
***
I was in a crappy motel. the room had bedbugs. i was too exhausted to go to the front desk. i just needed to make it until the morning. i slept in the tub. hours later i hear someone breaking through the window. i had a big knife with me and ran out into the room to find a man halfway through my window. we stared for awhile at each other in shock. i think we both were scared. then he says,” is this your room?” im like,” yes, this is my room man!” more staring. then he slowly starts backing out while cursing me for leaving my window unlocked and not expecting him to break in.
motel on watt ave, sacramento.
***
Old janitor from high school, friendly Ecuadorian man who went by Ping.
Worked at the school for 20+ years and nobody had a problem with him
I guess his wife was leaving him and in the process of moving out
He caught her in bed with her new man. Next day, in the middle of town, he opened fire on her, the man and then killed himself before any cops had time to respond
***
My friend tripped and fell onto the tracks, landing his face onto the 3rd rail. We kinda stood there in absolute shock because we thought he was dead, but then he said, “can I move? Will I be electrocuted?” We told him to move instantly and he did, we got him off the tracks, and no less than 2 minutes later a train went zipping by. I think the 3rd rail turned on seconds after his face came off of it. I know that’s not scary to a lot of people, but to me it was because I would have lost a close friend back when I was about 12.
***
A guy i worked with was riding his dirt-bike through the woods and somebody hung a cable between two trees. My buddy caught his throat on it and saw the dude steal his dirt-bike. Woke up in the hospital with a lacerated throat and a broken larynx. Pretty crazy what somebody will do for something so cheap.
***
The story of Mary Vincent always stands out to me.
In 1978, 15 year old Mary was hitchhiking. A man named Lawrence Singleton picked her up.
He brutally raped her, and eventually made her get out of the car. She planned to run, but he noticed, and cut both her arms off. He threw her into a ditch/ravine and left her to die.
She packed her stumps with mud to stop the bleeding and spent all night crawling out.
She eventually makes it to the highway and starts walking, naked and covered in blood. The first car that saw her sped away in fear. The second car was a couple on their honeymoon. They picked her up and she survived.
***
The case of Elizabeth Smart. She was kidnapped, repeatedly raped, psychologically tortured, and then brought around in plain sight in heavy religious garb. She had brushes with people who could have helped her, but her kidnapper claimed she wasn’t allowed to speak in public or reveal her face for religious reasons.
The reason she was rescued is because her sister was awake during her kidnapping and pretended to be asleep. She knew she recognized the voice, but it took her nine months to remember is was a guy that used to do yard work for the family. The police didn’t believe her because of the elapsed time, but pursued it to appease the family.
***
Nutty Putty Cave in Utah was sealed up in 2009 after John Jones was trapped upside-down in a small crevice while spelunking. When rescue teams finally arrived he had been upside-down for so long that his legs were drained of blood.
The only possible way to have gotten him out was to break his legs, which would’ve sent him into fatal shock. He died after being trapped for 28 hours. His body’s still in the cave.
***
100% true as it happened to me. It’s probably more spooky than scary. I’ll let you be the judge….
Many years ago, before there were cell phones we had these things called pagers strapped to our hips. Someone would page you with their phone number and you would call them back when you got to a phone. As an “on call technician” working in the Audio Visual field, my pager would go off all the freaking time. Like most people who used pagers, our clients knew that if you followed up your number with a 911, that would indicate to the technician to stop what they were doing and call right away.
Although I was always busy I rarely if ever got 911’s. One afternoon traveling from Orlando to Saint Petersburg via Interstate 4, my pager goes off with a number I don’t recognize, followed by the 911. I find the first exit, and pull into a little truck stop looking place outside of Plant City, to use the pay phone. This takes maybe 3 minutes tops. I walk in, ask for some change and head to the wall where there are 4 pay phones to choose from. I pop my quarter in and dial the number displayed on my trusty pager. It rings…….. and rings…… and rings……. and rings. I’m thinking to myself WTF ?!?! Who would page me with a 911 and not answer their phone? it’s just about then that I notice another ringing sound in addition to the one in my ear….. I pull the handset from my ear and two phones over on the wall another pay phone is ringing, but with an incoming call. I hang up my the handset and the ringing stops on the other phone. I walk a few paces over, pick up the handset and look at the phone number printed above the buttons , I look at the number on my pager, I look at the number on the phone, I look at the number on my pager again, I look at the phone AGAIN….. except for the 911 they are identical. I kinda loose my breath for a second and then I make my way over to the girl at the counter and ask if she saw anyone use the pay phone. She said I was the the only person in the store in the last hour. The whole episode probably took 15 minutes, but man, I was freaked out! The hair on the back of my neck was standing straight up and I just wanted out of there!
I get about 10 miles down the Highway and come upon a scene that looked like a bomb went off…….4 car pile up involving a tractor trailer hauling a load of steel that had come loose, State Troopers and Paramedics just arriving. I pulled over to the side and helped the best I could, but it was all pretty much over once it began. I have no idea why I got that page or from whom or what but I’m convinced that if I hadn’t, I would not be alive to write this today.
***
There was a woman who worked in a science lab who spilled two drops of organic mercury on the back of her gloved hand. Those two drops destroyed her entire nervous system and brain.
***
The 1904 Cincinnati Privy Disaster. In 1904, nine schoolgirls drowned in an outhouse after the floor collapsed. They literally drowned in human waste.
***
There are some really big houses in the woods in my hometown. One of the owners went out drinking with his buddies and realized he forgot the key to the gate when he got home. So he decided to just climb the gate. While climbing in his drunken state he slips and his leg gets pierced by one of the spikes on the gate. He was hanging there but too afraid to call for his wife. Since he was sure she would just open the automatic gate from inside the house and since it was one of those gates that slides to the side it would just rip his leg off if she did.
He was hanging there the entire night until his wife woke up, saw him and called the fire deparment. My dad (who is one of the firefighters that showed up) said they had to saw of the spike to get him off.
Just imagine hanging from your own gate all night not being able to call for help.
***
When I was a baby, my dad played on a softball team. Typical social team, out for beers and pizza after with the guys, family event-type-thing. My parents were good friends with 2 of the other couples, both of them had young kids as well.
On this occasion, the other 2 couples had left their kids at one of their houses, with a baby sitter they were splitting. They invited my parents back to the house to have some more beers that night, but I was being fussy and my mom nixed the idea (though they would 100% have normally gone back to hang out)
Well, it turned out my fussiness on that day saved our lives. When the other parents got back to the house, they walked in on a home invasion. Two men had broken in, tied up the kids and the baby sitter (and her boyfriend), and were waiting for the parents. Took the parents hostage as well, and made the dads drive with them to banks/a grocery store where one dad was manager and clear out accounts/a safe.
They then came back to the house, and slaughtered both families, the baby sitter, and her boyfriend. Kids included.
They caught the 2 guys later on. My dad attended the trials, and said it was the first time he had ever had thoughts of supporting the death penalty. It still gives me chills to know how close we came to getting killed that day, too.
***
Years ago when I was 8 my family lived in this big weird house kind of on the edge of a small town. The school district was in the middle of a big restructuring so even though we were only a couple grades apart my brother and I went to different schools and took different buses. This left me as the last person to leave in the morning and the first person to get home in the afternoon, which meant it was my job to make sure all the lights were off and the door was locked.
One morning I noticed the basement door was open and the light was on so before I left I turned off the light and closed the door. When I got home that afternoon the light was on and the door was open again. I just assumed that I’d forgotten to actually take care of it when I noticed it in the morning so I went over to turn off the light and close the door. When I got to the top of the basement stairs I looked and there was a big shadowy male figure towards the bottom of the staircase. I freaked out, slammed the door and pushed a bunch of boxes against it and then went and hid in my closet. For months I didn’t tell my family because I was positive what I had seen was a ghost and didn’t think anyone would believe me.
Then about a year after that incident my mom and her boyfriend realized that small amounts of money had been going missing for months (totaling around $800-900, but never more than $60 at once). So we all walked around the house with flashlights trying to figure out how they could have gotten in. Turns out some creep was climbing in through a small hole in the outside of the house, shimmying through a crawl space, then coming up into the house through the basement. Realizing I had been alone in the house with him on at least one occasion was one of the worst, most terrifying moments I’ve ever had.
***
My wife called me while i was at walmart one day. She had a broken ankle and had just had surgery on a hernia. Her mobility was like 5 out of 100. And of course someone tried to break in. Her saving grace was yelling through the door that she was on the phone with cops. Really with me. Im on the way home. And i pass the guy. To the exact description my wife gave me and the cops. I swerved his ass off his bike, hopped out the car and sat my fat ass on top of him until the cops got to where i was. Guy had a gun, rope, lock tools. It couldve been bad. Luckily though he ran. And with even more luck we crossed paths. He couldve went anywhere when he left my yard but he came straight towards the walmart i was leaving that was about 3 min Away.
***
I used to run the boilers in a DOE building. Apparently at some point in the eighties, three people were murdered over involvement in a big vcr theft- vcrs meant for the school system had apparently been stolen out of this warehouse, it was an inside job, something went wrong- the head custodian was found shot to death, and later the bodies of the other two were reported buried in Monticello- but word is, they had first been incinerated.
In the boilers I was in charge of operating and maintaining.
There were three operational boilers, and one that wasn’t in service- no clue which one was supposedly used, but when you’re firing them up, you’re typically the only person in the building- not a single day went by that I fired them up and didn’t wonder which one was used. But that wasn’t what gave me the real Heebie jeebies.
You have to clean the interior of these boilers really well, otherwise the fire won’t transfer heat to the water very efficiently- especially with #6 oil, these boilers would build up a lot of soot. You have to suit up in a Tyvek suit, wear a mask, and climb right into the firebox- I found myself staring down the business end of that burner many times, wondering what that panic would feel like. (I’m reasonably sure these people were dead before getting put in the boiler though.) Once, I was actually in one boiler while another one was running- the valve that isolated my boiler from the main steam line wasn’t holding, and by the time I realized how warm it was getting, it was enough to panic- trying to lift myself up and belly crawl through the small opening, the metal was almost too hot to keep my hands on for long. Definitely creepy experience, considering the history of that boiler room.
***
The Lake Nyos Disaster. The lake periodically belches a cloud of invisible carbon dioxide gas that suffocates everything within a 16 mile radius. In 1986, over 1700 people and all their livestock died without even understanding what was happening to them.
***
Judy Kirby murdered six children and one adult by intentionally driving the wrong way on a divided highway in an attempt to commit suicide. She had been hospitalized for depression, but had also just ended a relationship with her ex husband’s brother and was by some reports involved in drug trafficking and fearing an imminent arrest.
She picked up her sister’s son, who was celebrating his tenth birthday that day. She then loaded her three children into the car, supposedly to pick up a gift for the nephew. Instead, she went missing with the carload of kids. A short time later, calls started coming in to 911 about a car going the wrong way down the highway at a high rate of speed. They made it about 90 seconds before a head-on collision with another vehicle, driven by a father with two children and another child along for the ride.
The crash annihilated both vehicles. The only survivors were Kirby herself, and the child who was along for the ride in the other car. There were pieces of children all over the highway. She was sentenced to 215 years in prison.
***
My grandfather was an engineer/architect for US Steel through the early 70s. One day a coworker who was getting divorced brought his young son and young daughter for a “tour” of a steel mill.
Proceeded to bypass the admittedly lax security of the 60s, picks up his kids and jumps, with them, into some molten steel.
People that kill kids are horrifying, but parents who kill their own kids, jesus…
***
My friend had this neighbor who was a retired mechanic. They lived on some properties with large front lawns and long driveways. His neighbor had a couple derelict cars parked up near his garage that he took parts from occasionally.
This neighbor of his started hearing noises while sitting in his living room, coming from his front yard. Every time he’d go to the window, there would be nothing there. He assumed it was a raccoon or a coyote or whatever. He kept hearing the noise so he’d go outside to look around but would find nothing. He’d put out traps and occasionally catch something, yet the noise persisted.
Soon, he started claiming that he was hearing voices coming from the front yard, like whispering. He’d go outside and look around the perimeter of his property but would find nothing. It was persistent so he’d started calling the cops. Every time the cops came and looked around and would find nothing. So they told him he needed to stop calling them for this, and perhaps get a security camera or whatever.
So this guy thought he was losing his mind. One summer evening he couldn’t sleep, so he went to the back patio to smoke a cigarette. Suddenly, he heard voices coming from the front of his house. He put his cig out and snuck around to the front and got there just in time to see the doors to his derelict conversion van silently shut. He ran back to the backyard and went inside his home and called the police to tell them what he had seen. The police arrived and approached cold (i.e. without lights/sirens) and when they approached the van, the doors swung open and a bunch of people ran out in every direction. Upon searching the van, the cops found syringes and paraphernalia and determined that people were shooting up in there.
***
Dude was working on a tuna steamer and they closed him in and steamed him. I can’t help but imagine that as anything but a truly terrifying and painful way to die.
One of the main reasons I never could bring myself to do real factory labor is because I don’t trust people enough to not tuna steam me.
***
3 sailors survived the sinking of the USS West Virgina at Pearl Harbor, only to die 16 days later, due to the lack of air. The Navy knew they were there, but couldn’t get to them.
***
My dad and some friends got drunk and went for a drive on some back roads and were going as fast as the truck would go as teenagers. My dad was slightly less drunk than the others and eventually demanded they let him get out. They pulled over and he and one other girl got out. He and the girl started walking to town while the other three sped off in the opposite direction.
Well less than a mile up the road from where they got out is an extremely sharp turn, which they missed and hit a tree going pretty close to triple digits (miles per hour). Two of them died on impact and the only reason the third survived is because they crashed in front of a house that two doctors lived in. The survivor was paralyzed and lost his leg and part of his arm and was in the hospital for eight months before dying. This was in the ‘60s so medical care wasn’t what it is today.
When I first got my permit my dad took me to that corner to explain the importance of safe driving. It gave me goosebumps about how close he was to being in the truck. He said that the dad of the driver got what remained of the truck to be hung up in the center of town for months after to be a warning to all.
***
One night, I was out at a bar with a friend I was visiting in New Rochelle, NY. We went outside for a cigarette, and a car came flying past the bar. The car burned through a red light, and started going up this hill that was on a curve. We watched as he veered over the double yellow, and smashed head on with another car coming from the other direction. Both car’s hind ends lifted up, then slammed down. The car that was driving correctly burst into flames. I ran inside and grabbed the fire extinguisher, then yelled to the bartender to call 911 and say there has been an accident.
My friend, a few other patrons, and me ran to the cars. Now, I used to think this was a fictional trope, but I was pretty drunk before this happened, and I swear it sobered me up instantly. I tried spraying the fire, but it did nothing. The fumes and heat were awful, and all we could do was stand back. The worst part was, and this will haunt me forever, was that the woman in the burning car was screaming as she died. My God, it was the worst sound ever.
The fire department came and put the fire out. The police took us back to the bar and took statements.
I found out the next day in the news, that the car that was not speeding was being driven by a young woman coming home late from work. She was a block away from home, and I think she was either newly married or a new mother. The rotten motherfucker driving the other car was some rich drunk cocksucker. He lost a leg, but otherwise was physically unharmed. I have no clue if he did time, as I left to go back home a day or so later.
I’m trying to find a link for the news story, but I can’t, as this was maybe 6 or 7 years back. I remember it being reported on Lo-Hud and Channel 12 News.
***
John List killed his whole family-wife, mother, daughter and two sons. He meticulously planned the whole thing-cancelling all delivery services, excusing the kids from school, and even turned the air conditioning as low as possible to preserve the bodies for as long as possible.
After he killed them all, he placed the bodies in sleeping bags and lined them up. He then wrote a letter to his pastor explaining why he had to kill them.
He then leaves and isn’t heard from again.
18 years later he’s remarried and doing the same job as before but this time he doesn’t have any children. He’s finally arrested after a tip was given to the FBI.
Crazy thing is that because he planned it so well, the bodies weren’t discovered until a month after the murders so he had a huge head start and essentially started a new life in the same career and was heavily involved in a new church down in Virginia. Took 18 years to capture him.
***
In my town in the early 90’s there was a notorious killer that had all of BC, Canada on watch. My wifes mother (years and years before I knew them) had been home alone while her Husband was in England doing tree surgeon work (arborist)
She was in her laundry room when a man walked up from her basement, completely scaring her, she freaked out and said what the hell are you doing here?
He said he was friends with her husband and was just coming to see if he was here, apparently he told him he could just walk in. Which she knew was bullshit.
She was smart enough to tell him that he was just at the store and would be back any minute. He said he would wait outside for him, as soon as he left she called the police, but he was long gone by the time they got here.
Two weeks later, the killer was caught, his mugshot put on TV and it was the guy in her house.
***
My family has a similar story and I’m pretty sure some of you serial killer buffs out there might figure out who it is before the reveal because their story is pretty unique.
When my parents were in college they went on a trip down to Florida. They had met through mutual friends and were down there together but hadn’t gone on a date yet. My dad and one of his friends were planing to meet my mom and some of her friends at a hotel but being the carefree college guys they were they lost track of time and realized it was impossible to get to the hotel on time by walking.
They decided the best solution to their problem was to hitch hike and a car with two women picked him up.
Everything seemed fine until the driver asked them if it was okay to stop for gas. My dad and his friend agreed it was no problem since they were making good time and she drove into a gas station. She then pumped her car full of gas before hopping back in and flooring it, basically stealing the gas with two hitch hikers in the back. My dad and his friend were beginning to freak out when she pulled a gun from under her seat and asked “are we gonna have a problem” or something like that.
My dad and his friend shook their heads vehemently because what else do you do in that situation.
She then drove them to the hotel and dropped them off without so much as a scratch and they kinda thought nothing of it until the news started reporting on a serial killer in Florida known as Aileen Wuornos. He took one look at her picture and instantly recognized her as the driver.
The only reason my dad thinks she didn’t straight up kill them was because they were supper polite and respectful to her and her victims where usually scumbag guys trying to take advantage of her.
***
I was around 11 years old and I woke up in the middle of the night to a man straddled on top of me with his hand over my mouth and nose. He told me to roll over and not scream. I rolled onto the floor and tried to scream bloody murder ( I say tried cause when you are truly terrified it can take a second to find your voice) my mom heard me screaming and came in and fought with the guy, he was at least 6′ she was 5’3″ and scared him enough with the fighting and screaming that he took off out the window he had come in through. Never did catch him.
***
My brothers ex-gf had two older sisters (they died before she was born).
One day they decided to play hide-and-seek or something, so anyway, they both climbed inside a chest and accidentally locked themselves in. They suffocated.
***
Was working the evening shift at a gas station. Man comes in all disoriented. I go to help him out. he has a gash on his head and doesn’t know where he was. I couldn’t see any crashes around so assumed he had fallen or something. Normally we are supposed to stay inside the glass shielded register area whenever anyone is in the store. I, being a nice human being, went to help while calling the police/EMS. They got there and checked him out. They thought his head may have been fractured. Took him to the ER. I went back to work. Cops stopped back by for some coffee a few hours later. They told me the guy got hit by a baseball bat trying to break into a little girl’s bedroom and was wanted for rape and murder in two other states. I never left the register area at night again.
***
Years ago my now husband worked for an industrial laundry company in their head office when a PR disaster happened that also mentally screwed up a number of people.
Their company collected laundry from large hospitals and medical type businesses eg care homes etc and cleaned them – you can imagine the sort of heavy duty cleaning, bleaching, boiling etc needed to remove those sort of biological contaminants.
One day a laundry cart went through the usual bleaching, boiling cycle before it dropped out into a conveyor belt to be sorted for drying/pressing when there was a horrid scream.
A small newborn baby’s body had been discovered tangled up amongst the sheets, it had been “cooked”. The laundry workers were distraught, the whole place had to be shut down, police called and the laundry tracked back to the hospital to discover what happened.
It turns out a (thankfully in some ways) stillborn baby had been left in the cot waiting to be taken down to the hospital mortuary after the parents had said their goodbyes and covered it with a blanket but somehow one of the nurses hadn’t realised (just on shift was the best guess) so just grabbed up all the linen out the cot and off the bed in the delivery room with the body bundled inside and emptied it into the laundry hamper/trolley thing. The other nurses/parents assumed the baby had been collected by the mortuary to be stored awaiting their funeral decisions.
The laundry was found not to be to blame but the parents were devastated and the hospital took a lot of flack. The poor laundry workers who discovered the body ended up being given counselling before eventually quitting. The laundry did amend its practice to individually emptying each laundry hamper into the industrial machines instead of just tipping them in to stop anything like that happening again.
***
Carol DaRonch was at a shopping mall in Salt Lake City in 1974 when she was approached by a man claiming to be a police officer. He said that someone had tried to break into her car and asked her to come with him. He then said he would drive her to the police station and she got into his car.
However, this guy was not a police officer and he did not drive her to the police station but rather, pulled into a parking lot. He then cuffed her, pulled out a gun and threatened to kill her if she resisted. Only, he messed up. He meant to cuff both of her wrist but only managed to cuff one.
She escaped and fought him off despite being hit over the head several times. Her kidnapper was Ted Bundy. He killed another woman just four hours later.
Her escape also helped identify Bundy and she is part of the reason he was eventually arrested.
***
My long-term partner decided to end his life suddenly and unexpectedly a few years ago. He was the happiest person I knew and even with 20/20 hindsight, videos, poring through old messages etc I wouldn’t be able to identify any warning signs.
***
An acquaintance of mine sent his son to triathlon camp in Texas.
A week later, his son came back from camp. The next day, the son was complaining of a headache. Four days later, he was dead. Healthy, happy, fit 12 year old one week, dead the next.
Turns out the lake had Naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba. Nothing scares me as irrationally as already being dead and waiting for your body to catch on.
***
A female friend in college disappeared from a party at another university in the city town 25ish miles north of our school. She had arrived with another friend who I believe had driven. At some point she split off to play corn hole or something and was later inexplicably gone. Phone calls went to voicemail, police were called, but she was simply missing.
About 10 days later she was found by a homeless man who witnessed her crawling up to a bus stop in the city, begging for help. She had broken a leg and an arm, and was in very bad shape.
At the (quite large party) she had her drink secretly drugged and was then led off by a group of men into their vehicle. She was taken to an apartment where she was drugged, repeatedly raped, and locked in a small room in between with a bucket to use as a bathroom. At one point after being injected with heroin and raped, she somehow managed to convince one of her captors to allow her to use the actual bathroom to clean herself up. This bathroom had a small window to the outside, and with the shower running, she managed to squeeze out and fell from the third story into a large hedge/bush. From there she crawled from the apartment complex to the road and bus stop, where the homeless man saw her and called police. Many cars stopped upon seeing her, making her captives unable to recapture her.
Three men were later arrested for the crime after surveillance cameras allowed police to locate the apartment which she jumped from. She returned to our university almost two years later, graduated, and became a nurse. She was obviously traumatised, never “partied” again, carried a gun everywhere she could, and somehow moved on with life. It was a terrifying tale none of us ever forgot. She was an 18 year old freshman when the incident happened.
***
The driver one of the Semis we took in on trade died in the truck. The sleeping area is a “bunk” with a mattress that can be flipped up and under it is a seat and a table. So during the day it’s a Dinet set up. And at night, you pull a lever and pull the bunk down to sleep. Well something happened and the bunk flipped up while the driver was sleeping and it pinned him against the wall. He couldn’t get it to drop back down and suffocated. He was stuck there for somewhere around 12 hours. Someone had noticed that he was parked for an unusually long amount of time for the kind of deliveries he did. The company that built the sleeper did something to the bunk so that couldn’t happen again and supposedly recalled all of that sleeper style.
***
I don’t regret many things in my life. But I regret this one deeply.
I was leaving work, 2001 I believe, so while cell phones were common, not everyone had them.
I worked in a small office building, you know those kind that rent out spaces to several small businesses. I had stayed late on day (only reason I feel as bad as I do). As I was leaving, I was the only other car in the lot. I noticed the property manager, an elderly lady and very sweet getting out of her car next to the dumpster holding a bag of trash.
I drove past her, turned the corner, and went home. This was on a Friday night.
Come to find out, she didn’t put her car in park. I get in Monday to the news that she was pinned between the dumpster and her car until found on SUNDAY. Our dumpster was not visible from any main road.
Had I been 30 seconds later in leaving, I would have seen it happen.
Being elderly, the low impact still pinned her and broke some bones. Even though she was found alive, she didn’t make it at the hospital.
I don’t know if I had seen it happen I would have been able to react fast enough to warn her, jump out and push the car (it wasn’t accelerating, just rolling slowly in neutral) or if I had would have even just been able to call 911 and her injuries treatable after not being outside for 2 days.
And I can’t imagine her mindset. We were in a commercial area, no real reason for anyone to be immediately within earshot if she called for help. Which I’m sure she did, many times. 
