"Lets Read" - Lengthy Scary Stories Podcast - Sharing My Own Scary Stories - Part 1

Recently, I have gotten really frustrated with YouTube putting advertising every 3 minutes of play during videos and then the advertising is long videos if you aren't close enough to click "Skip" you have to listen to a five minute video every three minutes of actual content play. 

I have shared many times how I like listening to books on audio while I work. Here is a post about that. With the advent of Netflix, and YouTube, I would listen to those as I would work. However, Netflix keeps promoting their own shows and in the middle of some non-threatening show, they will throw a very graphic lesbian scene, or full nudity which makes me have to run and hit stop and then find something else to watch. 

I don't think they are doing this is for entertainment, I believe they are trying to get people addicted to the porn content, getting more and more graphic in their story-line and even the most innocent of shows now have nudity, graphic language, and controversial story-lines. 

Between the YouTube advertising, and the Netflix garbage, I have gotten really frustrated and have recently found a podcast on YouTube where a guy reads listeners scary stories. He has about 100 over 3 hour videos where he is just reading personal listeners stories. 

 I like it because I don't have to watch it, and don't get side tracked watching a show. I haven't watched Netflix in the past week as I have been working while listening to this show. While listening, I began to realize that I have had quite a few somewhat scary situations in my life. I thought I would do my own posts of "Lets Read" typing up some of those scary stories in the hopes that maybe sharing them can help someone else avoid the same type of scary situation. 

While thinking about it, I know that my Father in Heaven has had my guardian angels on overtime keeping me safe as I don't think that most people have this many scary situations. There are a few situations I won't share as they are a bit more private, but will share the stories that I think may help keep others safe. I will also share links to a few posts where I may have shared stories before on my blog. 

When I was a young mother, we lived in an East Coast city on the boarder between two states. It had a HIGH level of people in the city on assistance and there were many housing projects in the city and in the cities near us. The street we lived on was very quiet for the most part but was a dead end street that overlooked a large river near where it entered the ocean. We had a staircase at the end of our dead end street. It went down to a street that went along the river bank. In the near ten years I lived on that street, I NEVER went down that staircase. Only ONE time, my spouse and I drove down that street lining the river, and it was full of shady people and it scared me that they lived a block away from me, probably less than 150 steps. What saved us was that there were no stores or anything in our area so there was no reason for them to use those steps and come up our street. Only one or two times do I remember seeing anyone use the steps and once it was two poor dirty neglected children about 6 and 4 walking up barefoot and filthy with a large dog covered with ticks asking for food which I gave them. I thought of calling the police, but the children were confident in themselves and said they lived just down the stairs. I never saw them again but that one time. 

Late at night about once every two weeks, we would hear very loud speed boat with large motors come out of the ocean directions up the river to just down those stairs, stop for a few minutes and then speed off back down to the ocean. I knew it was drug runners as I think that was why that street was the way it was.  

 One night, I left my girls and husband at home and ran to the store to get some groceries. In order to get to the stores, I had to drive through a housing project and my daughter went to school with the children living in that project. It was part of our life living in that city and we couldn't afford to move to the smaller towns as the cost of living in them on the East Coast was much higher than we could afford and still have me stay home with our girls. 

On the way home from the store, I was driving down on end of the project and I see a boy laying on the street edge with one knee bent back and his arms out like he had been hit by a car. I drove past and realized what I had seen on the dark street, (knocked out street lamps was a thing near the project.) Being a nurse, I have always had a desire to help people so I flipped a U-turn and rolled my window down just enough to see if he was "OK?" 

I asked if he was OK and he told me he was fine. At this point, I look in my passenger side mirror as I see something, and there are at least three men sneaking up on that side of the car crouching but moving very fast as on the opposite side of the street from the project was a tree filled area / filled with trash and grass. They had been hiding in the trees. 

I let out a little scream and realized my door was unlocked and the kid laying down was getting up. I hurried to try and lock the car door, roll up the window, and pull forward as fast as I could. I was totally in panic mode. 

Thank heavens I saw that movement or I don't know what would have happened. When I arrived home, we called the police and they laughed asking what I would like them to do as no crime had been committed. Thus, I NEVER drove that way to the store and would take the long way around avoiding that street at night, but my daughters elementary school was literally on that same street a few blocks up and across the street from that same housing project! The PTA purchased a swing set for that school as it had NO playground, but each night the swings would be stolen, so they had to take the swings in at the end of the day each day giving the entire elementary school one swing to play on. 

I have not missed living in that area at all since we left, and know my children have gotten a much happier upbringing and education than when we lived in that area. 

Years later, I got an email saying to be aware that some gangs use a hurt person laying in the street to lure you into stopping and then the gang will attack the car raping or killing the driver as a gang initiation. It was sharing that you shouldn't stop to help, but instead, call the police to help to keep yourself safe. Because of my situation having that happen 10 years prior, I forwarded that email to all of my email friends and had one woman attack me for forwarding "not real" stories to scare people. I was taken back by her strong feelings about it and shared that the exact thing in the email had happened to me and then she proceeded to tell me than I shouldn't "forward" other peoples stories, but if I felt that strongly, I should write up my own story and send that out to everyone rather than forwarding things I for sure didn't know were true. 

Let me share that I didn't forward a ton of things and wasn't "that person" but did forward things I felt had good and logical information. From that time on, I would just not include that woman in my forwarding list. I wondered why she got so upset about that email in particular but realized that she grew up in a similar neighborhood in the East near ours and perhaps had some event that brought out that emotion. Either way, I was grateful that my guardian angels were with me that day!