When I was 21 I transferred to a college in San Francisco.
I checked out a room for rent on Craigslist.
It was in a really nice two bedroom apartment.
It was cheap rent and close to campus, so it was the ideal spot.
The girl who lived there was 29 and her name was Beth.
She was tall and wide, and she had jet black hair and wore pale makeup.
She seemed nice, although a little quiet.
But she seemed to like me, and agreed to let me move in.
So far, so good.
My first night there we went out for pizza, and that's when I could tell that something
was a little bit off with her.
Throughout dinner she kept telling me how much I look like Shia LaBeouf.
I didn't know what to say, so I just shrugged it off with a - Thanks?
I mean, I look nothing like Shia LaBeouf, so it just didn't make any sense to me.
When we got back home she asked if I had seen her room yet.
I said no, and so she took me to see it.
Her walls were covered in posters of Shia LaBeouf.
She even had printed out photos of him all over her mirror.
She owned all his movies.
I didn't know what to make of it.
It was creepy.
The whole night she had been saying I look like him, and now it's obvious to me that
she's obsessed with the guy.
A few weeks passed, and I never really saw her that much.
We didn't spend any time together really.
She would come home from work and practically run to her room.
She would spend the whole night in there.
She had this creepy high pitched giggle, and I would hear her giggling through the walls
all night.
I wondered what the hell she could possibly be doing.
Occasionally she would come out and talk for like 2 minutes, and she would always be slurring
her words - so I suspected she was drinking a lot.
Sometimes she wouldn't say anything and she would just stand in the hallway and watch
me in the living room.
I would turn and see her and be surprised and say "hello beth" and then there would
be this long awkward pause and she would give out her creepy high pitched giggle.
It was uncomfortable being around her.
She gave me the chills.
One night I woke up at around 2am because I heard what sounded like the front door being
unlocked.
I came out of my bedroom, and all the lights were off, but I could still see Beth standing
at the front door.
She had her face against it, and she was turning the lock back and forth over and over again.
And every time she turned the bolt she mumbled my name!!!
"Max Barker....Max Barker...Max Barker...".
Seeing her standing in the dark, and mumbling my name, really freaked me out.
And it doesn't help that she kinda looks like a bigger version of the girl from The Ring.
I just quietly went back to my room and tried to sleep.
One night I was watching Gladiator and she stumbled out of her room and turned on the
living room light, forcing me to pause the movie - which was annoying.
She then asked me if I wanted to hear about her ex-boyfriend.
It was an uneasy segue into the topic, but I just said sure and then awkwardly sat back
to listen to her.
Ten minutes into her story and she was so riled up.
She was screaming at the top of her lungs about their breakup.
I was worried that the neighbors were going to call the cops - and she wasn't listening
to me when I was asking her to lower the volume.
Amidst all of her screaming, one thing she said really freaked me out - she was in such
a fit and yelled: I'll slit his fucking throat.
That was a big game changer.
Suddenly I had no idea what this girl was capable of.
She was practically a stranger, and everything I had seen was becoming alarmingly disturbing.
After a few more minutes she told me thanks for listening and she startled doing her giggle.
I got out of there pretty fast, and went to my room to go to sleep.
I had a pretty unsettled feeling about being in the house with her, and what's worse is
that there was no lock on my bedroom door.
I pushed the edge of my dresser in front of it, to act as a little barricade.
I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my dresser scraping against the floor.
Beth was pushing the door open!
I turned on my light - shouting at her to stop.
I could see her through the opening of the door.
She was so drunk, and had this insane look in her eyes.
I pushed the door closed, and yelled at her to go to bed.
I could hear her walk back to her room, but I couldn't fall back asleep.
The next morning when I went out into the hallway my heart dropped.
I saw one of her steak knives was on the floor by my door.
I got goosebumps all over my arms.
All I could think about was her saying she would slit that guy's throat.
I confronted her about it, and she said she didn't remember trying to push my door open.
She said she didn't even remember telling me about her ex.
I had enough.
My lease was month-to-month, so I found a new spot and moved out.
About a month after I moved out she contacted me.
I was at the movies, and my phone was off.
When I got out I turned my phone on - and to my shock I received in 40+ text messages
that she had sent me over the past two hours.
They were all just insane texts that ranged from everything between "Hi how are you?"
to "I fucking hate you!".
It was insane.
I didn't respond, and I never heard from her again.
I always wonder if I hadn't set my dresser in front of my door, would she have quietly
come into my room and slit my throat?
It freaks me out.
When I was 22, I moved 1,000 miles away from my Midwest home to the beautiful foothills
of Tennessee.
I had a new job, new car, and a nice apartment, but didn't know a soul outside of work.
If my phone rang, I expected to hear a far-away family member or my long-distance boyfriend
- still in college.
This was a landline; no cellphones yet.
Despite being very alone, I was managing well with the excitement of all the new things
in my life.
I had only lived there about 2 weeks when the unwanted calls started.
The first call: A man's friendly voice asked what I was doing.
I couldn't place him, and thought maybe it was one of my cousins or uncles.
(I have a huge extended family.)
I ask his name; he laughs a little, and his tone gets dark, a bit angry.
He says, "You know exactly who this is, Darlin'."
I pause, deciding if this guy simply called the wrong number or is a creep.
I choose the former, laugh, and politely tell him he has the wrong number.
He then recites my brand-new unlisted/unpublished phone number AND my name.
WTF?!
An intense chill races through me.
I've only given my new number to my parents, sister, boyfriend, apartment manager, and
employer.
I'm new to this city and this lovely southern state.
He does NOT like it when I tell him he called the wrong number, and starts yelling at me,
then tells me in a much calmer voice the many vulgar things he's going to do to me.
I hang up and brush it off.
He calls again around 1:00 AM; I tell him to f** himself and hang up.
He keeps calling, so I unplug the phone and return to sleep.
However, as days go by the calls continue, and escalate.
He starts mentioning personal things about me... said he liked the white quilt on my
bed, knew what was in my fridge, that he's allergic to cats (I had one) and then asked
me if I was in love with Mari.
As I listened to his words, I was standing in my kitchen looking at the calendar taped
to the fridge.
It had "Mari" written in pink on the 17th with a heart around it, because Mari is my
sister and the 17th is her birthday.
I started shaking and crying, because suddenly I realized this creep has been in my apartment!
I was alone, with no friends or family to run to for the night.
It was me versus a creepy mystery man.
I didn't sleep much that night.
Early the next morning, I talk to the apartment complex manager before heading to work, telling
her what happened and that I want the locks changed that day.
She gets a weird look on her face, and after a long pause, says SHE KNOWS WHO HAS BEEN
IN MY APARTMENT, and that "it won't happen again."
WHAAAT???
Turns out she had a creepy, rapey maintenance guy who noticed a young woman moving into
an apartment alone, and thought I was his new pet.
She had the locks changed immediately, and promised that she would personally keep the
other key.
Although the calls stopped, I was paranoid for a year as I came and went from my apartment,
because I never even knew what this guy looked like.
I moved out the moment my lease was up.
Only after thinking about it years later did I realize that her weird expression likely
meant that it had happened before.
Plus, she didn't even fire him.
I regret not calling the cops; I was young and naive.
When I was about twelve, my great-uncle John came from Ukraine to visit us in Canada.
He had a lot of stories, but this was the one that stood out.
In the late 1960's, John was traveling by train from his village to another to visit
family.
He had to change trains at one point, and was dropped off at what amounted to a platform
and a hut in the middle of nowhere.
There was no one else at the station, and other than a dirt road that led off into the
surrounding woods, there was nothing there.
He waited for some time, but no train came.
It was winter and getting colder and darker, and just about the time he started worrying
about a place to stay and some food to eat, an old woman appeared out of the twilight.
She asked if he was waiting for such and such a train, and when he said he was, she said
it wouldn't be along until the following day.
She asked if he needed a bed for the night, and offered him a meal and room at her house,
which she said was about an hour's walk from the station.
Lodging with locals was more or less the standard when traveling in this part of the USSR, and
great-uncle John wasn't looking forward to a hungry night on a cold platform, so he was
glad to accept her offer.
He took his suitcase and they set off together down the dark road into the forest.
It was more than an hour away -- more like two -- and by the time they arrived at the
woman's small, two-story house, John was tired and hungry.
They went inside and the woman lit some oil lamps and warmed some borscht for them.
It was the first time John was able to see the woman clearly, and he was a bit startled
to realize that the old woman was actually a man.
Not wanting to pry, and to tired to care, John finished his soup and asked where he
would be sleeping.
She led him up the stairs to a tiny room with a window that contained a single bed and nothing
else.
He thanked her, they said goodnight, and she closed the door.
Then she locked it, leaving him in the dark.
Somewhat creeped out by this, John called to her, but she didn't answer and he heard
nothing else.
Figuring he would deal with it in the morning, and that she had probably done it by mistake,
John set his suitcase down and laid on the bed, deciding to make the best of it and get
some sleep.
Before he could fall asleep, though, he felt the urge to pee, and got out of bed, hoping
to find a chamber pot or something he could pee in.
He got onto his hands and knees and began to feel under the bed in the darkness, thinking
that's where the pot would be if there was one.
Instead, he found a body.
"Nope," great-uncle John said, and went right to the window to see if he could exit the
room that way.
It was nailed shut.
He knew that if he remained in the room, he was probably a dead man.
But if he broke the window and tried to get out that way, there was a good chance that
the "old woman" (and who knows who else was there) would hear him and come into the room
before he could get away.
So he did the only thing he could do.
He pulled the body from under the bed, heaved it onto the mattress and covered it with the
blanket.
Then he got under the bed and waited.
Sure enough, about an hour later, he heard footsteps coming slowly up the stairs and
then toward the room.
The lock clicked, and the knob turned slowly.
In the gloom, John saw someone move toward the bed.
Then he heard several terrific and sickening thuds.
The person had bashed the body on the bed with a large crowbar, which they then dropped
onto the floor right in front of John.
There was silence, then the person went out of the room, and the door was shut again.
The footsteps when down the stairs, and then there was silence again.
John moved out from under the bed, took the crowbar and was able to slowly pry the window
open.
He didn't say, but I imagine he was shitting bricks the entire time.
When the window was up, he threw his suitcase out, then dove through himself, not caring
what was below him, only worried about what was behind.
He landed without too much injury, and began to run into a field behind the house toward
some lights in the far distance.
It turned out to be a highway with some military and transport trucks on it, and John was able
to get a ride to another village where he could catch a train.
He didn't bother reporting what had happened to the authorities, since at that time in
the USSR, there was a distinct chance he would have been the one who got into trouble.
He just thanked God he escaped and decided that the next time he traveled to visit relatives,
he would take another way.
Hey everyone, this is me letting you know that lately I've been having a ton of health
problems again.
I'm not going to go in depth, because this isn't the place for that, but I just wanted
you to be aware.
Things like not being able to sit down for more than 30mins at a time
will probably effect when videos are able to be released, and how likely you are to
have heard some of these stories before.
as you could tell by this video being late, and some of these stories being older, because
it takes me longer to make a video.
And for all that I apologize, but i'm doing the best I can.
Anyways, like I said, this isn't the place for me to go more in depth, and I may do another
live stream in the future where that wouldn't be the focal point, but
I probably would update you guys on that.
I'm not asking for sympathy, in fact I don't want it, I just wanted to give an explanation.
I've gotten past this before, and i'll do it again.
I just ask that you're understanding and watch my videos as you normally would
as, YouTube's current algorithm is already extremely hard to progress in
If you'd like to keep up with videos and me personally, I have all my social media in
the description.
I hope you had a good new year, stay safe and have an awesome day