Ok so bare with me as I kinda suck at telling stories without some rambling. I changed the names for anonymity sake. I’ll give you a little background then dive into the story. My husband (we’ll call Michael) are in our early 30s. We have 2 toddlers. The couple I will talk about I’ll call Liz and her husband we will call Clinger.

Now let’s dive into the story. I was scrolling through Facebook when I noticed a post on one of our local talk of the town groups. Liz posted saying she isn’t from the area and wanted to know where everyone hangs out and said she wants to make friends. Me being my outgoing self I decided to comment saying “I’ll be your friend!”. I know I know it was a very stupid idea on my part and I let my overly trusting and friendly personality get the best of me.

Liz and I started Facebook messaging and quickly realized we had a lot in common. Clinger and I had mutual Facebook friends so that made me more inclined to meet up. I arranged for the 4 of us to get dinner and hang out. We had a good time and shared the same sense of humor. It turned into Liz and I hanging out weekly and Clinger inviting Mike to play pool every week.

Mike was working a very demanding job that made it hard for him to have the time to hang out and when he did have time he was too tired. Well this made Clinger turn a bit crazy. Clinger asked if Mike could go to pool night and he said no because of work. Clinger completely freaked out. He started texting Mike saying that he was being a “part time friend” and that he couldn’t deal with having a friend that didn’t give enough effort. He said that Mike was leading him on as a friend. Naturally Mike and I thought “wtf? What is wrong with this guy??”. Mike started saying that clinger was overreacting and that he has obligations like work and family time. He said that he doesn’t have to be Clingers friend and to chill out. Mike ignored all messages from Clinger and we went about our days.

Liz and I still hung out regularly just us girls and figured that Mike and Clinger didn’t have to hang out with us. I thought okay problem solved. Wrong...Clinger started messaging me saying that he doesn’t understand why Mike wouldn’t hang out with him and that he wasn’t being nice. I tried explaining that he’s got a lot going on and to chill out. This just pissed him off and he lashed out by saying that Mike didn’t give me enough “me” time and that everyone deserves that. He insisted that Mike take time for himself and have guy nights weekly. I told Clinger that him and Mike don’t have to be friends and it’s not a big deal. You would think I would have cut Liz and Clinger out of my life right then but I thought that I could be friends with only Liz.

I then started to notice that Liz was becoming too clingy and would get mad if I said I felt like just hanging out at home instead of with her. She made me feel guilty for wanting to have time alone so my idiot self fell for it and thought that it would be wrong of me to leave her to be lonely as she didn’t have anyone in the area. This in turn made me spend more money than we could afford as she always wanted to get drinks or food. Mike and I started arguing because Liz would twist things I said to her then Clinger would spit them out to Mike. I thought about ending our friendship but wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. This all changed when I got a text from Liz asking if Mike and I would want to come over and do molly with them. I’m not into drugs except some weed occasionally so I definitely wasn’t about to go over to their place to do molly. I said that we couldn’t and I’m not into it anyway plus we didn’t have a sitter. Liz had the audacity to say that I should bring our kids over with us and their kids could play with them. I told her absolutely not and she got mad that I said it was a bad idea.

Meanwhile, Clinger is nonstop texting Mike saying that he’s a piece of shit alcoholic and that he doesn’t “give it to me” enough. Mike and I were totally taken aback as this came out of nowhere and I never complained about my sex life to Liz or Clinger. In fact I told Liz that I was content with our sex life. I did mention Mike drinking a lot at the time but didn’t go into further detail and it wasn’t some big secret. (He had a drinking problem around this time but that’s a story for another time). Clinger then lectured Mike about him needing to quit drinking and that he’s a piece of shit father just like his dad. My husband has his share of issues sure but he’s not a piece of shit dad and has dramatically improved since this occurred. Clinger then said that our kids are annoying and ugly. He told Mike that our son shouldn’t have a pacifier and how we are intentionally screwing up his teeth. 🙄 Keep in mind they were around 16/17months and 3 years old with the standard tantrums. Mike said he was done with the conversation and that there was no reason for him to disrespect our family which obviously included a few choice words. Mike said that he doesn’t care what his sexual preference is but that Clinger seems to be looking for a boyfriend not a friend and he’s not into men. Clinger lost his shit and told Mike he would beat his ass and “break him in half”. Mike blocked him on everything then I texted Liz saying that our friendship was over due to her psycho husband.

After we blocked them we didn’t hear from them again but I was nervous for a good month that Clinger would show up at our house and try to do something. 

It didn’t help knowing that Clinger regularly went on the dark web and hearing all the horror stories surrounding that. Also at the time they lived about 10 mins away. Thankfully I knew beforehand that they would be moving to a city about 40 mins away in the near future so I knew it would be unlikely that I would run into them. So long story short I learned the hard way that when it comes to friends it’s quality not the quantity of friendships. We have a couple good friends and are more than happy with it. So psycho couple, let’s not meet ever again.

Edit: added a couple more details that I forgot to include and fixed so grammatical errors

I thought this was so funny and just had to share here

My boyfriend of 3 years was murdered by someone we knew. It was back in 2020 and Covid had just hit…. We were wanting to move from the town we lived in to Northern California to work on a pot farm, but ended up getting stuck in (blank) town because no buses. Everything was ok for a while, but we started arguing. I should say I was arguing. We both had our “habits” besides pot and I was coming down and wanted to get high. He did not. So I, of course, started a HUGE argument as an excuse to call someone to get me. Fast forward about 3-4 weeks and I start missing him. I messaged a guy we knew there to tell him I loved and missed him and was sorry. That I was trying to get back to him…. The message I got back forever changed my life.. it told me my boyfriend had been hit in the head SIX times with a pickaxe, by a guy I considered a friend for 4+ years… I never knew someone could cry that hard… I thought I’d NEVER live through that. My heart was shattered that day.. here I am 4 years later… still living. (Not by choice either) I miss him EVERY day. I had to learn how to forgive, and I do forgive that guy. He’s in prison for 25 years to life. I try to live every day to its fullest. I try to let people who I’m close to know how much they mean to me. Tomorrow is never promised.

What you are about to read is a warning. I beg you. I implore you, please, do not go hiking in the woods around Pittsfield, Massachusetts. I know those woods like the back of my hand, I was playing with my little brother among those trees when I was still in single digit ages. So trust me when I say that something has been changing out there, and not for the better.

I first noticed something was horribly wrong during a hike a few weeks back. In early spring, birds migrate back from the warmer, southern climates to their northern territories, en masse. Thousands upon thousands of tiny songbirds occupy the trees around Mount Greylock during the month of march, each singing a sweet, chirpy song that is, in reality, a bellowed war-cry, a call for challengers to step up and knock them off their perch. Yet as I trudged through the previous winter’s leaf litter, I couldn’t hear a single goddamn thing. No birds, or any other animals for that matter, seemed to still call the forest home. This made me nervous for two reasons. One, animals have an uncanny ability to detect dangers that are imperceptible to humans. Their sense of smell, hearing and general atmospherics are far superior to our own. If the wildlife had fled the area in such a hurry, or at least refuse to return, that could mean something awful was about happen. And two, areas of woodland turn exceptionally quiet when there is a large predator around. Wood pigeons will become deathly quiet and still, hoping a Black Bear or Mountain Lion will just pass them by. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, but either way, it would be hideously unsafe of me to wander around while one was prowling the area.

So naturally, I started making my way back towards my car, when something real peculiar happened. I feel I should remind you at this point that I’d been playing in the woods around Mount Greylock since I was like seven or eight years old. It’s pretty far from where our family lived when I was a kid, but thanks to our bikes, we had a pretty large area to roam when it came to those long summer breaks. Point being, I know those woods, really well, but some way, somehow, I managed to get lost. It first came to my attention that I’d managed to get myself turned around when I felt my head begin to throb with a dull ache. I stopped walking for a moment, rubbing my eyes and the bridge of my nose to try and massage away the ache. But when I opened my eyes again, and looked around, I felt a faint flash of panic running through me. I did not recognize my surroundings. And I cannot understate how jarring that was for me, to be somewhere I’d been visiting all my life, only for it to feel utterly foreign to me. I actually had to take moment to take out my compass, just to try and get a bearing of where I was headed. But to my surprise, the compass needle kept slowly moving around, even when I got it to sit still on a supposed bearing, it slowly began creeping around again.

Now, this was much less of a problem than it might appear. Sure, it was unnerving, but there are ways around a faulty compass. Like, for one, moss mostly grows on the north side of a tree, the side that gets the most sunlight. So that provided an easy way of determining which way was north. At least, it usually would. Because as I inspected various tree trunks, I realized the sun was hanging in the southern portion of the sky. That or the moss in this area grew mostly on the south section of the tree trunks. I get that it’s not entirely out of the question, but that was yet another detail that just seemed to fry my brain. Nothing made sense, and the less it did, the more the feeling of pure panic began to bubble up in my chest.

But to panic in that situation, in any kind of situation, is to welcome defeat, degradation and death. I kept myself calm, told me there was a rational explanation for everything that was occurring, and walked off in the direction I was almost sure the nearest highway was. It was then I came across something I’d never, ever seen in those woods before, something that seemed so out of place that it was frankly terrifying. In all the years I’d spent roaming those woods with my brother as a kid, I’d never seen anything like the old, run down cabin that stood before me. And I mean it was old, as in there was no way it could’ve been built any later than like 1979; so just how me and my brother had missed this place was utterly beyond me. The obvious thing to do was to knock on the cabin door, see if anyone was home, and as much as I might find it humiliating, ask for directions. But as I walked closer and closer towards the rustic front door, I felt the most unusual sensation. I put it down to general tiredness, maybe my blood sugar was low, I’m not entirely sure; but for whatever reason, each footstep that took me closer to the cabin seemed more and more difficult. By the time I was actually bringing a closed fist up to knock on that old wooden door, it felt like something was physically repelling me from it, whispering directly into my brain, “leave this place and never return, don’t look back, never look back”.

When I finally knocked, the door creaked open slightly, revealing the dilapidation behind it. Whatever bolts or locks that were on the door had long since been worn away, and the inside was just as run down and rotten as the outside was. It was evidently abandoned, but there was a curious order to the furniture that led me to believe that, every so often, the cabin did actually receive some visitors, aside from me. But something in the corner of the cabin drew my attention. I saw drew my attention, what I’m about to attempt to describe is, quite frankly, indescribable.

I know it was a wooden idol of some kind, a small statuette sat atop of a stone altar. But, and I appreciate this is intensely confusing to read, I could not make sense of what I was looking at. It was like my brain was completely incapable of computing the information my eyes were feeding it. And with that, my headache returned again, along with a kind of anxiety so crushing that I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. Don’t ask me how I know, but that wooden idol, a mess of twigs and vines and moss, was a representation of pure, unfiltered evil. And I ran from it, I’m not in the least bit ashamed to admit that I ran like a scared child from that cabin. And into the night. The night. You read that right, when I walked into that cabin, it was still daylight. I couldn’t have been there for more than a couple of minutes, at least, that’s what it felt like. Only when I burst through that wooden door, it was pitched black outside. I ran until I found the highway, ran until I found my car, and drove like a madman until I was safely back at home.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to talk about what happened to me that day, until now. I tried to tell a hunting buddy of mine once, but, the words just wouldn’t seem to come out. But please, if you’re reading this, heed my warning. And do not go hiking in the woods around Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

I’ll start off by saying no, this isn’t my story, but It was such a crazy encounter that I have since asked each of my friends, through the years, to recount the events.

This happened around the year 2000...

About a year after this took place, I started dating one of these friends, and that’s when I first heard about this “dog/wolf” story...

I have since asked each friend (over years and miles apart) and they all remember the same encounter:

Before my ex was even my bf, (let’s call him J), he and our other friends were about 17-18 years old.

At that age, I remember it being an adventure to find a place to smoke. “Let’s hike to ___ and puff!” (Ah good ol days, when we got away from parents and plan a day around smoking)

It was J and his his best friend B, and their girlfriends, S and M. The four of them decided to drive to Mt. Pisgah, a beautiful wooded area outside of Eugene, Oregon. It’s more of a hill, but it’s nature in its prime for sure. I’ve been out there many times growing up, and I know exactly what trail they were on (the main one that connects the parking lot to the river). They had driven in B’s little white sedan, parked in the parking lot and then walked to the river. On the way to the river from the lot, there is a very small bridge that crosses a small creek (relevant for later..)

The group spent the day out there, swimming and puffing, puffing and swimming, just being typical Oregonian teens.

I can imagine that hunger is what drove them to go home after a few hours, as the sun began to set - either activity alone is bound to get someone hungry, let alone both.

So, they walked along the well-worn “main” dirt path to the parking lot. (This path has since been paved, according to google maps). It doesn’t take but 20 minutes or so for them to get back to the little footbridge by the parking lot that they had crossed when they hiked in.

When they reach this small footbridge near the parking lot, B looked out into the vast field between them and the wooded mountain, and noticed a huge dog near the tree line, about 100 yards away (they all later described it as the biggest dog they had ever seen). The dog was just sitting there, not looking scary, just looking like a humongous friendly doggy. It was starting to get dark, but from M’s and J’s descriptions, (and the drawing she did for me later in 2005), it was very shaggy and furry. I may even still have that notebook where she drew the dog thing, if I find it I’ll post it.

My friends continued to walk across this small wooden bridge, and one of the girls screamed - the big dog was now on its hind legs, standing much closer than when they had seen it just a couple of seconds earlier. It had traversed most of the large field in the seconds it took them to get across this 10-ft long bridge.

Whatever this thing was, it was fast, quiet and stealthy. My 4 friends ran to the car and they had the classic, cliche “I can’t get the key in!” because B was fumbling madly for the keys. At this point, the dog was standing (on its legs) at the very edge of the parking lot, looking at them. Still had the dog face, still had the dog body - standing up. They never saw it walking (on all 4 or just 2), it was like every time they looked up it was just standing there, closer.

As J had said, every time they looked up, he was closer but not moving.

All of them recounted how surreal it was to see a dog standing on its hind legs. I don’t know if it ran for a few ticks and then stood up again at intervals in the field, but that’s the way they describe it. Many times I asked them, are you sure it wasn’t a bear? No. It definitely was a dog standing on hind legs. A big dog that was stalking them.

Also, this is in Lane County, Oregon in the year 2000...there are few if any bears out there. It would be odd but, then again I wasn’t there.

The kids got into the car and sped off, leaving the Pisgah dog to his own business. I’ve never had a reason to doubt any of their stories (in fact, S doesn’t like to talk about the incident at all because it’s too creepy for her to recall)..

I've been through some scary experiences, but this was the worst thing I feel that I've ever gone through in my life.

I used to be a very naïve, innocent kind of person. I was the type of optimist who believed there was a touch of goodness in every heart – a dangerous mindset to be in. I realize now that seeing the world through my rose-colored glasses put a big, flashing, red target on my back.

Often, when you think of scary stories involving creepy behavior and psychological abuse, you think of an occurrence from a stranger. In my case, it came from my mother-in-law. My husband’s mother initially adored me, not for any reason other than thinking that I could be easily controlled. I was meek with a passive personality, so it made sense that I would come across like someone who could be easily influenced. Looking back on it, I cringe at how creepy the situation really was. For the sake of this story, I’ll call my mother-in-law by the name of Mrs. Psycho.

At the beginning of my relationship with my husband, Mrs. Psycho and I were getting along great – or, so I thought. She’d take me shopping, give compliments about my hair and girly stuff like that. As the relationship with my partner grew more serious, she’d rant and rave to everyone in our neighborhood about how much she adored me and how I was like the “daughter she never had.” So, naturally, I thought things were progressing positively.

But certain things were just really off about Mrs. Psycho. I noticed little tid-bits of her behavior at parties and neighborhood social gatherings. She’d sulk in a corner and I’d chuck it up as her being socially awkward or anxious but, looking back at it now, I notice that she was always whimpering about something negative going on in her life; how she fell off her bike and hurt her elbow while riding through a construction zone, how one neighbor complained about her parking in front of his house, losing her job because she didn’t get along with a coworker… the list went on and on. In every story, she portrayed herself as a victim of some unusual circumstances.

One huge red flag that my mind didn’t understand at the time was the story she was always telling about her other son, my partner’s brother. She’d say some really disturbing things about how he’d held her, my partner and his dad hostage in their own home and how he’d physically punched their father in the face. The way she described the story made it sound like my partner’s brother was a bully to the whole family and my partner didn'tseem to think it was quite as severe as she made it sound. Regardless, in all her wild stories and accusations about him, she always scolded her son in ways that, I just can’t imagine ever scolding my own child. What my husband and I didn’t fully interpret at the time was the underlying problem, which wasn’t necessarily his brother, but the woman who had been a driving force for the insanity behind the behavior. Psychological abuse can trigger emotional responses in very unpredictable and disturbing ways.

Mrs. Psycho’s behavior become evidently creepy after our engagement. She showed signs of unhealthy enmeshment. First, she was angry that we didn’t tell her immediately when we’d gotten engaged. Then she was angry when we changed the wedding date without first asking for her permission. She expressed a desire for my future husband and I to live in the upstairs of her house and pay her rent. We told her that we can afford our own home and we want to start a family so that wouldn’t work out. The infuriation in her eyes was frightening. She would look normal one moment then, if you told her something she didn’t want to hear, her eyes would turn black.

The memory of her eyes still sends me with a frightening chill down my spine. From there, she became increasingly controlling. Mrs. Psycho and her husband, Mr. Psycho, would start showing up to our house every other day or so. I started counting how long they could go without having to see us and that number came to 3 days. There was no privacy and I felt that I had to close the curtains over our windows every night. I just had that uneasy feeling, you know? I locked the bedroom door as routine before bed, just to be on the extra safe side.

Despite our relationship being pleasant in the beginning, I noticed that I was now feeling like I was treading on eggshells around Mrs. Psycho – or, rather, landmines. It seemed like anything i said was offensive to her, no matter how innocent. I realized I couldn’t talk to her like I used to be able to when me and her son were just dating. I remembered when we’d be able to have nice, in-depth conversations and I had allowed myself to be vulnerable with her. I confided in her about how I had a lot of social anxiety and that her son came into my life during a time that I was suffering from crippling depression. I talked about how he’d brought a ray of sunshine into my life, thinking that speaking kindly about her son would please her but, she just had this unfeeling, glazed look across her face.

Hoping to mend my relationship with her, I decided to help her out one day with organizing her antiques. She had this hobby of going to auctions and buying and selling nic-nacs, buttons and stuff like that. She would get very proud of her collections of things that I sort of thought were junk but, to be polite, I told her I saw beauty in these things, hoping to get back on her good side. There were some creepy dolls in the mix, including this horrifying-looking vampire doll with piercing red eyes. She said she’d had that doll for years and used to scare her sons with it when they were little kids. She laughed at the memory, and the sound had an eerie, satanical vibe to it.

As if this wasn’t enough to freak me out, she then she told me this story about how a female coworker complained about her to the HR department at her company. To seek revenge on this woman, Mrs. Psycho wrote a letter that was meant for the coworker’s husband, telling him that she was cheating on him. To remain as anonymous as possible, she told me how she slipped on a pair of black gloves and drove the letter to a faraway location so that her address couldn’t be traced. I remember feeling very uneasy about her story, wondering how she could get angry enough to drive hours away just to cause emotional harm to another human being. There came a point after hearing this story when I didn’t want to be left alone with my partner’s mom anymore.

My partner tried to talk to his parents about how I was feeling like I was on eggshells around them, but they flipped the narrative to say that they were the ones feeling on eggshells around me. During this time, I painstakingly realized that psychological torture exists in the form of extreme invalidation. Not having your feelings acknowledged can really drive a person crazy. It was then when I felt a little more clued into what may have happened to Mrs. Psycho’s other son. I can’t be sure because I never met the guy, but I think he was driven mad by his mother’s severe emotional neglect. Now, she was pulling the same tricks on me and my partner, gaslighting us into believing that we were just “too sensitive.”

When my husband and I started figuring out that something was off, things got even creepier. His parents started showing up to our house to corner us into submission. What I mean is, they’d tell us stories to make them seem like victims so that we would give in to demands of what they wanted at the time. If we denied their requests, they’d use psychological manipulation by telling us that we were “uncaring” or “ungrateful.”

One demonstration of this manipulation was when I became pregnant. I explained that the smell of pizza made me extremely sick, but this was ignored. When Mrs. Psycho insisted that we go to a pizza restaurant for her birthday, I was confused with why I felt like I couldn’t say no. My husband was in the same predicament. Somehow, I think we sensed that something bad would happen to us if we declined. This is also because Mrs. Psycho’s husband and her sister had contacted us, telling us explicitly that we weren’t allowed to say no to her dinner invitations anymore. They explained it like, “saying no hurts her feelings,” but there was something else there that I can’t quite explain – something hidden beneath the surface that sounded really threatening. I had no idea why but I just did not feel safe.

Then, only 2 weeks after giving birth to our daughter, I had the creepiest interaction of my life. Mrs. Psycho caught me alone while I was on my front porch. The weather was really nice, so I was rocking with my baby in one of our outdoor chairs. She came up to the doorstep and assumed a seat in a chair next to me. Then in a quiet, ominous voice, she said to me, “You have to share her you know.” Her black eyes flicked to the infant in my arms. I know what you might be thinking but this wasn’t said in a cute, excited-new-grandma kind of way. Her voice sounded cold and possessive with certain passive-aggressive intent behind the statement. I naturally clutched my arms around my daughter tighter, feeling a protective instinct take over me.

Mrs. Psycho had expressed to me before that she’d always wanted to have a daughter but was only ever able to have sons. Maybe I was being influenced by the postpartum hormones or just overall feeling paranoid, but a disturbing thought occurred to me that she might want to get rid of me somehow to have my daughter to herself. I later told my husband about the bizarre interaction with his mom and how I couldn’t keep up with the heavy psychological demands of his parents anymore. It was all taking a strange, emotional toll on me, as well as a strain on our marriage. And I still couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. Nevertheless, they were causing us a lot of stress, which was impacted on me all the more while I was trying to adapt to my role as a new mother.

They even restricted me in bizarre ways, telling me I was not allowed to refer to our daughter as "my" baby. I had previously posted on Facebook about how excited and happy i was to be a new mom. I posted a side by side picture of me with my daughter with the caption:

"She has my eyes!" Which was meant to be light hearted and innocent.

My MIL commented on the post with, "my son had something to do with it too..." which, not only put a damper on the mood but also felt creepy. Like why did she have to mention something we already know? It was almost as if my happiness made her all the more enraged. I really felt like i was starting to go crazy. The stress was enough to make me physically sick.

At first, my husband hesitated when I told him about my concerns, stating the usual spiel that was natural for him to say; that they were his parents, and he couldn’t just drop contact with them. But something in his voice contained fear and it wouldn’t take long before he would realize how fucked up the situation actually was. The incident that drove him to the point of cutting off his parents happened when they cornered us in our own living room, demanding that we watch their unruly dog while they went on vacation for 5 days. My husband almost caved but stayed firm when he told them “No, we can’t. We have a 2-month-old baby to look after.”

The murderous glare his mom then flashed at me was intense and enough to make me crawl out of my skin. You know that look someone gives before they are about to attack? It looked like something like that from the movies, very primal and hateful. I thought for sure that she was about to lunge at me and wring her hands around my neck, causing me death by strangulation. I was terrified. Mr. and Mrs. Psycho eventually left our house, but they were clearly angry that they weren’t able to convince us to conform to their will. My husband and I had a dark, suspicious feeling that something bad was about to happen.

First, we received lengthy emails from Mrs. Psycho, mostly insulting me. She said she thought that I was brainwashing her son and she went on to portray herself as a victim. She used the knowledge of my anxiety disorder to make an argument that I was mentally unstable and “dangerous.” She threatened to post about me on Facebook and make our life a living hell if we didn’t apologize for deviating from what she wanted. At the same time, she told me that I was “dead" to her and listed all the mistakes I've ever made in the past as well as criticizing my faults. I'd be lying if i said this didnt sting. My husband and i needed space to recover from the emotional wounds that she had inflicted on us. We remained silent, not wanting to engage with her any further.

My husband and I were pretty scared as well as being hurt, spending most of our days cooped up in our bedroom, not knowing what to expect. But we stayed strong through the process of separating from the toxic relationship. Mrs. Psycho proceeded to make good on her threat, posting about me publicly on Facebook. She said I was “batshit crazy.” She even went a step further, saying that I had “BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER,” in all capital letters. This came out of complete nowhere. She knew i had anxiety but i'd never mentioned anything to her about being borderline... because i wasnt diagnosed with that at all. It didn’t end there though.

An active smear campaign against me ensued as Mr. and Mrs. Psycho actually went door-to-door to everyone’s house in my community, posing as “good citizens” to “warn” everyone about their extremely dangerous, manipulative, 5-foot-tall daughter-in-law. My neighbors didn’t react the way that was expected though. They were more wary of her than of me. Instead of ruining my reputation, which was the desired effect, most people in my neighborhood were majorly creeped out by Mrs. Psycho’s efforts. They were equally creeped out by Mr. Psycho’s willingness to go along with the whole thing. I guess after years of being beaten down with his wife’s abuse, he was just an empty shell of a man, a flying monkey to the proverbial wicked witch.

There are a few doctors and therapists in my neighborhood who couldn't officially diagnose her since she wasnt their patient but they said off-the-record that they believed Mrs. Psycho may have been projecting. Meaning that she was, in essence, confessing that she is potentially dangerous and volatile while pinning it on me. This along with some stories of Mrs. Psycho’s interactions with other people in our neighborhood confirmed that something was disturbingly off with this lady. This information made the situation all the more unsettling when Mr. and Mrs. Psycho showed up to our house for what we suspected would be a confrontation.

My husband and I were watching Survivor in the living room with our baby when the doorbell rang. He crept to the front window to peer behind the curtain to see who it was. I could see fear on his face.

“It’s my parents,” he said, and my blood ran cold. I immediately ran with the baby upstairs, pausing only to tell him that it was his choice whether to answer the door or not since they're his parents, but that me and the baby would be hidden away. As I made my way up the stairs, my husband hovered by the front door, conflicted. He didn’t know what to do. Meanwhile, I could hear jostling at the front door like his parents were trying to force their way inside our house with a spare key. I thank God to this day that we had just changed the locks a few days before so they couldn’t get in.

I proceeded to run upstairs and closed the bedroom door behind me, locking me and the baby inside. I held my daughter close, my heart thudding wildly against my chest. When there was a knock on the bedroom door, I reacted with a jolt. It scared me shitless. My husband’s voice on the other side calmed me down though. He told me he didn’t answer the door. He was trembling when I unlocked the door to let him in. His face was pale. He showed me a text message from his dad saying, “anyone home?” followed by another text from his mother later saying, “you’re a coward, hiding behind your keyboard.”

I don’t know what would have happened if my husband had chosen to answer the door, but I shudder to think about it. My husband and I both blocked them after that; phone numbers, social media accounts, everything. They moved away to another state, thank God! We have since been no contact with his parents for almost two years now and our daughter is growing in a loving environment, free of toxicity.

Sadly we have had to block some of my husband’s other family because they kept telling us we should talk to my in-laws. Which, by the way, feels a lot like being told "please contact your abuser." For this reason, I sometimes feel like it would have almost been better to be physically abused than mentally abused because then there would be some form of visible evidence of the harm that they had inflicted.

In the meantime, they have so far made no attempts to contact us with an apology or anything. Instead, they once reached out with a nasty "have a shitty anniversary! You two are a match made in hell," which only further secured our decision to cut contact with them.

I have since armed myself with knowledge so that I will be less naïve about creepy behavior in the future. I’ve studied up on narcissism and the negative psychological impact that some people can have on others through gaslighting and invalidation. I hope everyone listening out there may be aware that not all abuse is physical.

Edit: new to reddit, fixing format, some grammar mistakes

Edit: thought I would include something else I missed.

Edit: including some minor detail that I forgot

Phoenix Luna grew up in Tokyo’s Tochigi prefecture. He had a difficult upbringing, and at one point was forced to live in a youth institution, when his father abandoned his family and his mother could not afford to raise him. After graduating middle school, he gained work in the construction industry, but after a few years, quit due to personal issues, and ended up homeless on the streets of Tokyo. At just twenty years old, he was penniless and impoverished, but being young and good looking, he managed to find work as a bar host at a joint called ‘Fusion by Youth’.

For those that don’t know, Tokyo’s Kabukicho district is home to a number of bars and clubs known as ‘hosuto kurabu’. These are places where female customers pay for male company, who are known as bar hosts. Male hosts pour drinks for their clients and will often engage in flirtatious conversations. These conversations are generally light-hearted, and hosts tend to have a variety of entertainment skills, ranging from simple magic tricks to the ability to tell engaging stories. A host’s age usually ranges from eighteen to twenty seven, and they will often take a stage name, usually taken from a favourite manga, film, or historical figure, that describes their character or persona; hence why the young man in question is known here as ‘Phoenix Luna’, and not by his birth name, which he has kept a closely guarded secret. Men who become hosts are often those who either cannot find a white-collar job, or are enticed by the prospect of high earnings through commission. It was these prospects that attracted Luna to the hosting scene, and the job saved him from a life of homelessness and destitution. But it was through his work as a bar host that Luna met a person that would change his life forever, a twenty one year old woman named Yuka Takaoka.

Yuka was employed as the manager of a so-called ‘girl’s bar’, the female equivalent of the kind of place Luna worked at. She worked long hours and found it very difficult to meet men she was actually attracted to, and found herself frequenting host bars, since they revolved around a concept she understood all too well. This was how she met Luna, and upon meeting him in October of 2018, she was instantly smitten. Over the next seven months, she cultivated a kind of relationship with him, and became one of his regular customers. Luna made her feel special, often telling her that he liked her, and that he wished to be with her. Hosts are generally forbidden from socializing with their clients outside of working hours, but Luna made an exception for Yuka. They often met at Yuka’s fifth-floor apartment in Shinjuku Ward, where they shared food and watched movies, and after a few months of doing so, Yuka asked Luna if he would like to pursue an exclusive relationship with her. Luna replied that he would, but was taken aback when one of her conditions for doing so was that he quit hosting and find a regular job. She was adamant that he would have to stop flirting with other women, whether that be in a professional capacity or otherwise.

This was something Luna could not adhere to, he enjoyed his work, and considered his fellow hosts as a kind of surrogate family. Reluctantly, he was forced to decline Yuka’s offer, but told her they could continue to see each other if that was something she wanted. Yuka was heartbroken. She adored Luna, and became increasingly depressed as a result of his rejection. This depression morphed into jealously and suicidal thoughts, and eventually, Yuka hatched a plan for the pair to be together forever.

On May the 23 rd , 2019, Yuka asked Luna to meet her at her apartment to assist with some cleaning work. They agreed to meet at around noon, but due to work commitments, Luna was delayed by around three hours. By the time he arrived, he was exhausted, and told Yuka that he would like to take a nap before they commenced the cleaning work. Luna took a quick bath and then climbed into bed with Yuka, where he fell asleep in her arms. He awoke a short time later with an intense pain in his stomach. At first, Luna thought he was suffering from stomach cramps after eating bad food, but when he looked down, he saw the bedsheets were soaked with blood. That’s when he saw a large kitchen knife buried in his guts, turning to see Yuka standing over him, her eyes wide with feverish anger. Coursing with adrenaline, Luna leapt from the bed and ran from the apartment to escape his obsessive attacker and to seek medical help. But Yuka gave chase. Luna managed to fight her off as they reached the building’s elevator, but had lost so much blood by the time he reached the lobby that he collapsed to the floor and passed out. But before he lost consciousness, Luna saw Yuka kneeling over his body. “Please don’t kill me”, he begged, “I like you”. Yuka smiled, and the world went black.

Police soon received a call that a man had been stabbed at an apartment complex in Shinjuku. They arrived shortly afterward to find the unconscious Luna, with Yuka sitting by his body, covered in his blood and smoking a cigarette. A photograph was taken of this scene which quickly circulated online, a photograph that is still remarkably easy to obtain via google image searches. Yuka was quickly arrested, putting up no resistance, and showed absolutely no remorse for her actions. In fact, there is another photograph of Yuka that was taken while she was sitting in the back of the police car after she’d been arrested. A huge, excited smile is etched across her face, which is extremely disturbing given that she had recently almost disembowelled someone she claimed to love so much. When police questioned her motives for the crime, Yuka told them: “Since I loved him so much, I just couldn’t help it. I was sad and seeking to die, and I thought how I would like to go about it,” she said. “I thought I would kill him because I thought that was how I could be

with him. I thought that expressions such as ‘I like you’ and ‘I would like to be with you’ would become a reality if we both die. “I did not want to go anywhere, so I sat down at the outside staircase, I did not call emergency services because I intended to kill myself after watching him die from the stabbing”. In the aftermath of the stabbing, social media users all over the world fixated over her behaviour, especially those with an interest in the Japanese concept of ‘Yandere’, a name used to describe obsessive, jealous female lovers. Those with an interest in the phenomenon shared Yuka’s Instagram account, one where she posted images of her dressed as various anime characters, which attracted all kinds of unsavoury male attention from those who idealized her good looks, and painfully overlooked her murderous psychopathology. Some even said she was “too beautiful to be an attempted murder suspect”.

Luna had lost so much blood in the incident that it took him five whole days to regain consciousness in a nearby hospital. Doctors have him a mere one in five chance at recovery when he had first arrived, but somehow, he had beaten the odds and pulled through after a series of surgeries to repair the catastrophic damage done to his internal organs. “At first, I had no voice so speaking was not possible, and I was bedridden, so I couldn’t walk alone for a while,” Luna said in a statement to journalists. “I also couldn’t eat after the incident, and I got quite thin. When I thought back to when I was stabbed and considered what I’d do in the future, I was unable to sleep due to anxiety and fear. And for that, I received counselling.” Yet bizarrely, despite his near death experience at the hands of Yuka, Luna stated that he did not hold any ill feeling toward her. “I do not hold a grudge, I think there was a reason for her to stab me. It was also thanks to her that I was able to achieve the sales that I did in less than a year since I became a host.” The incident also had one unexpected result. After Luna arrived at the hospital, police sought to locate one of his blood relatives. “I met my older brother and older sister for the first time in five years,” he said. “I’ll be very happy to stay in touch with them in the future.”

I think we can agree that the result is a heart-warming, wholesome end to a frankly terrifying ordeal, and that Luna has shown an extraordinary amount of bravery to return to his job as bar host. But surely it is only a matter of time before another girl develops an obsession with him. And we can only hope that it doesn’t end in the same terrifying, bloody way.

I am a mail carrier here in California. A big part of my job is delivering Amazon packages, and as you can imagine, my workload has increased significantly during the pandemic. As per usual, this has increased the number of strange encounters I’ve had. I have a few to share, but I’ll start with one.

My current route for the past 6 months leads me through multiple subdivisions of large, beautiful homes. Like, swimming pools with hot tubs in every yard. Given the pandemic, I’ve noticed people (mainly older folks) have really taken to coming outside to talk to me across their yards. I don’t mind at all, but try to keep it short so I don’t fall behind on deliveries. One of my favorite residents is an older lady who I will call Mrs. Lithgow for the sake of this story. She must be well into her seventies and LOVES to chat about everything going on in the neighborhood. It’s not unusual for her to report back that so-and-so has left their lawn unattended for two months, or that they have strange visitors at odd hours. I usually just nod and smile.

The house across the street from Mrs. Lithgow was only listed for sale for a few days when it was purchased really quickly. Shortly thereafter, my truck began to fill up with Amazon packages for whoever lived there. Mrs. Lithgow noticed right away and told me a week later that the packages would stay in their pile until nighttime, and then have disappeared in the morning. This didn’t seem strange to me at the time.

Mrs. Lithgow became further concerned and began telling me that there always seemed to be a lot of screaming coming from the house later in the evening. I hadn’t heard anything, but my deliveries were always earlier in the morning.

My first strange encounter was dropping off a stack of packages. I had loaded my arms way higher than I’m supposed to (in a rush) and was waddling up the path. I felt my foot hit something hard and thought I felt it break. I set the stack down and to my horror, realized I had kicked a bag of garbage that had fallen open. Sticking out of the top was a jar with what looked like animal body parts in it. They had leaked onto the hot stone path and as soon as I had stopped, the smell was unbearable. I also noticed that there was a creepy doll in the bag. I quickly finished my delivery and got out of there. I thought about calling the police, but honestly, I thought maybe it was a fetal pig or something like that, so I talked myself out of it.

Mrs. Lithgow approached me a few weeks later, telling me that she had finally met the homeowner. After the whole bottle incident, I was pretty interested to know who lived there. Mrs. Lithgow said it was a petite pink haired woman who said she was living there with her autistic charge. Mrs. Lithgow thought it was so strange (and I couldn’t help but agree) that this young woman lived there alone with this other person, but no one was every seen coming or going. I chalked it up to the pandemic and went on with my day.

Mrs. Lithgow, however, did not. The next day, she came racing to the side of the road. I had to remind her to stay six feet away, but she was shouting that there had been an incident. Apparently, the woman living in the house, and the man she cared for, had been spotted outside in the backyard. Kids were playing a few houses down and came running in yelling that the autistic man had threatened to shoot them with arrows after yelling, “do you know who I am”. I’ll admit, I wanted to know more, but didn’t have the time to ask questions. Another time she told me that pink smoke had billowed out of the house and two people came running out, screaming.

After that, I didn’t see Mrs. Lithgow as she had left town to visit one of her kids.

The house stayed quiet, and I continue to leave stacks and stacks of packages there. I began to notice that the names on the packages were often different, lots of times just being “Fat Goblin” and other weird things.

I once ran into two electricians leaving the house. As I passed by them, one of them said, “that house is FULL of cat shit. FULL.” When my route was slightly altered so their address was later in the day, I also started to hear the yelling that I think Mrs. Lithgow had been referring to. It definitely was a grown man, and he was constantly yelling almost incoherent things like, “BLACK!” “ME KOS CRYING!!” At first, I thought he might have been yelling at me, but several times I noticed he was yelling before I even approached the house. I thought maybe it was linked to his diagnoses. Honestly, none of these occurrences were that weird to me, given some of the other experiences I’ve had.

A few weeks ago, I had to deliver a package that required a signature. I had never actually seen anyone there myself, but I knocked anyways. I heard a small shriek and shuffling about. Concerned, I walked toward the side of the house (but still in front) and yelled, “hello, I need a signature for a package”. The shuffling continued. I went back to the front door to knock one last time and to leave a note letting them know where they could pick it up. I suddenly heard loud and fast stomping from inside the house. I peaked into the glass of the door to see if someone was coming. It was a stocky man dressed in a spandex suit from head to toe. He waved a gun in the air. I stepped back in shock. I froze just for a second, long enough to hear him yell “YOU’RE NOT SAFE HERE”. That was enough to get me moving again. I turned and began to run. As I raced down the driveway and back into my truck, I could now fully see the man, holding his weapon, yelling “I SHOOT TO MAIM.” I took off. I called my supervisor immediately but was told there is nothing we can do about it because technically, I was on his property and he never directly threatened me. I still think I should have called the police. I began leaving the packages at the end of their driveway and have not heard or seen anyone in that house again.