(1916, Kentucky Appalachians) The Horrifying Story of Rosie Hale

So, back in 1998, I was just 14 and living here in Leeds in the UK. I liked football. I like my mom’s shepherd pie. And I like throwing sticks for our dog down at the park. Now, what I didn’t like, like most people, was school. I couldn’t stand it, in fact. But I had my best mate, Danny, to get me through the day there. Now, me and Danny used to get the bus together at the end of school.

And no matter how much of a bad day I’d had, he’d always find a way to cheer me up. At least until one day when Dany was suddenly the one who needed cheering up. So, Danny was a good lad. He was never late for school. He did all of his homework on time and he generally kept himself out of trouble.

And then one day while walking out of the boy’s toilets, Dany accidentally bumped into a teacher named Mr. Carter, sending hot tea all over the front of Carter’s nice white shirt. Dany apologized, but Mr. Carter was absolutely livid. Carter acted like he’d done it on purpose and then sent Dany straight to referral, which was even worse than being given straight detention.

He then told the school’s head teacher that Dany had deliberately spilled a scalding hot drink all over him. And this elevated the seriousness of the incident to a health and safety issue whereby somebody could have been really hurt. And as a result, the head teacher wanted Dany expelled. Dy’s parents basically begged the head teacher not to expel him.

And in the end, they managed to whittle down the punishment to 2 weeks of hourly after school detention, including 2 hours on Saturday mornings. Dany said they believed that he hadn’t meant to hurt Mr. Carter. But being fully aware of how unfair life could be, they advised him to keep his mouth shut, take the punishment, and put it behind him. Danny’s brother, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so philosophical about it.

Paul, who was almost a whole 3 years older than us, wanted revenge. Although he’d never been personally picked on by him, Paul had hated Mr. Carter during his own spell at school, and having his little brother treated so unfairly sent him right around the bend. But while he promised that we’d get Carter back, he told us revenge was a dish best served cold.

At the time, I had no idea what he’d meant by that. So Paul explained himself. If we rode our bikes past Mr. Carter’s house that very same day and pelted it with two dozen rotten eggs, he’d know who it was right away. But wait a couple of months and make him think that you’re all good and sorry and all of that, and he’d have no bloody idea who it was.

On top of that, Carter would have even less of an idea of who egged his house if we did something on a night of the year when all sorts of stuff like that is happening. That night being mischief. Now, for those that don’t know, and to be fair, I didn’t really know this myself till I Googled it. Mischief Night is a tradition that stretches back hundreds of years.

Historically, it’s taken place on different days of the year depending on which area of the world you’re in, but the premise is always the same. The night before some sort of religious festival, kids take to the streets to perform acts of mischief. In the distant past, the mischief involved robbing cabbages from nearby farms. But more recently, in places like the United Kingdom and America, kids throw eggs or sometimes whole rolls of toilet paper over houses and trees till they’re completely covered. It used to take place on the 30th of April. Then I know

at one point in parts of England, it used to happen on the night before bonfire night, but these days on both sides of the Atlantic, the date seems to have settled on the 30th of October, the night before Halloween. And it’s this night that Paul picked out for our revenge.

Another reason Paul told us to be patient was so he could work out a way of really hurting Mr. Carter. Now, I don’t mean physically hurt him. Paul was a good lad like his brother. So, the thought of actually harming the guy never seriously crossed his mind, but we needed a way of getting back at him for picking on Danny like he did, and that wasn’t going to work with just a few eggs or some toilet paper. It was weeks before Paul came up with something.

But then one afternoon, Paul shared his idea with us, and by gum did it seem like a good. Mr. Carter was into classic cars big time, too. So much so that he invested a hell of a lot of money into a first series Jaguar Eype that he kept locked into his garage. That car was his pride and joy, the thing that got him out of bed in the morning, and we were going to wreck it.

It was early October when we started planning, but right from the beginning, we knew it’d be no easy task. We couldn’t just break in during the small hours of the morning. Mr. Carter or a neighbor would wake up and call the police. So, we discussed some more silent options. We considered slashing the car’s leather seats or spray painting Carter as a knob on the side of it, but that just wasn’t going to cut it for Paul. He wanted Carter to suffer. I mean, really suffer.

And a deeply embittered Dany signed off on whatever he came up with. So, we got creative. The first phase of the plan involved asking one of Paul’s mates to do us a favor, or more like two dozen favors, actually. Almost every night for about 3 weeks, Paul’s mate, Marvin, would ride over to Mr.

Carter’s house, and then after knocking on his door really loudly, he’d hop back on his bike and ride off. He’d give us little reports on it, too, how Carter was getting angrier and angrier every time he did it. And by the time Mischief Night came round, Carter had taken to running down the street after a frantically pedalling Marvin, screaming that he’d give him a bloody good hiding once he got his hands on him.

Now, everything was going according to plan, or at least according to Paul it was. All we had to do was wait until mischief night and we’d make Mr. Carter suffer big time. And on the morning of the 30th, I was buzzing with excitement. All the kids at school were asking each other what they were getting up to that night, and both me and Danny had to put on poker faces when we said, “Uh, not much.

Just keeping out of trouble.” Neither of us had any classes with Mr. Carter, but I saw him in the corridor at one point, and I swear that I felt the color drain from my face as we passed each other. I got it into my head that if he saw me looking shifty, he’d know that we were up to something.

So, I was hugely relieved when 3:15 rolled around and it was time to go home. As me and Danny walked to the bus stop, we went over that evening’s plan of action. Paul had everything organized and planned out meticulously. All I had to do was show up at their place at 7:00 p.m. When I told Danny I was nervous, he said he felt the same way.

But he had also thanked me for helping out and told me that I was the best friend he’d ever had. Even if I had been harboring serious doubts, that last line would have obliterated them. And so, needless to say, there was no turning back then. A couple of hours later, all four of us were just around the corner from Mr. Carter’s house.

Riding in a group like that with the two older lads, all my nerves were left behind me, and I was keen as mustard to knock seven shades of crap out of Mr. Carter’s old Jag. We hid our bikes down the street behind the car as Marvin snuck up Carter’s path. And then after banging on the front door, Marvin ran back toward the street and climbed on his bike.

But then instead of pedaling off right away, he waited until Carter had opened his front door. And then he shouted, “Catch me if you can, toss spot.” And then started pedaling like mad. Carter went berserk. Marvin had told us how angry the knock a door dash was making him. But seeing it for himself was something else. He screamed something we couldn’t make out and then ran for his car. Not the Jag, but his everyday car.

And then after wildly backing out of his driveway, he sped off down the road in pursuit of Marvin. We were elated. The plan had worked perfectly, but we also knew that we only had about 15 minutes before Carter would return home. Marvin said it got to the point where he’d chase him in his car and then after easily escaping pursuit using the neighborhood’s alleyways, Carter would drive up and down looking for him for a while, and we wasted no time in putting on our gloves and running up Carter’s driveway and toward the garage. Paul then took out a

towel from his bag, and after Danny held it up against the small side window, he punched it through so it broke nice and quietly. Paul knocked out the rest of the glass and then laid the towel over the bottom of the frame. And then we climbed inside before someone switched on the light.

But when the light came on, there was no bloody car. We couldn’t believe it. This was a big open space where the car used to be, but for whatever reason, it just wasn’t there. Months of planning had amounted to nothing. And even if we manage to break a few windows or trample his flower beds, it wouldn’t be as satisfying as smashing that jaguar.

I remember suggesting that we just leave and maybe break one of Carter’s front windows on the way out. Danny said that wasn’t a bad idea, but Paul was having none of it. He said there had to be something in that garage that we could break or steal that’ really get to Mr. Carter, and he wasn’t leaving till we found it.

Even Danny thought that it was a bit much and that we ended up getting caught if we stuck around too long. But Paul had already had something picked out. There seemed to be a foot locker, like the old military kind with a padlock, and as soon as Dany pointed it out, I knew what he was thinking. Inside would be Carter’s old army and navy stuff, precious artifacts from his time in the forces.

He’d be devastated if anything like that went missing. So that’s what we were going to take. There were a pair of rusty old bolt cutters mounted on a tool rack nearby. And then after Paul took them down, he and Danny got to work clipping the padlock off the foot locker.

I remember how loud the bolt cutters were when they finally cut through. And then Paul and Danny dropped down, flipped open the lid, and started rummaging through the foot locker’s contents. Looking over the shoulders, all I could see were white envelopes. At first, I thought that they might have had money in them, seeing as they look stuffed, but all they contained were pages of handwritten letters. There were a few pieces of jewelry, and Danny stuffed those into his pockets.

But then Paul pulled out a framed photograph of a young woman along with a small glass jar containing a lock of brown hair. I remember thinking the girl must have been Carter’s niece or something because he didn’t have a family as far as we knew.

But then after looking at the photo for a few seconds, Paul dropped it back in the locker like it was radioactive. Danny asked him what the matter was and Paul told him to put the jewelry back immediately. Danny asked why, but Paul just walked over toward the broken window and told us we needed to leave. Danny started giving it loads about not leaving without getting Carter back, but Paul growled a reply of, “No, Danny,” to let us know how serious he was.

We hopped out of the window, grabbed the towel, and then ran out into the street and towards where we’d stashed our bikes. The last thing Paul said was, “Follow me, and don’t stop until I do.” And then we rode like hell till Paul finally slowed down. Now, we were all out of breath, legs burning from the wild pedaling that we just done.

And me and Danny were still proper confused why Paul had suddenly reacted the way he did. We wanted to know what had scared him so much about a picture of a girl. But it wasn’t the girl. It was what happened to her that scared him. Now, like I mentioned, Paul was a couple of years older than us, so there were a few things he remembered, odds and sods that were just before mine and Danny’s time. And one of those things involved a young lady gone missing on Ilkley Moore.

He told us that there was a big search for her and that her picture had been all over the local papers around the time she went missing. The girl in the photo frame that was in Carter’s foot locker looked almost exactly like the girl had gone missing. Danny started arguing the toss, asking his brother if he was sure that it was the same girl, but Paul was positive.

He told us how no one had ever found a body. She was only assumed to be dead, but he was absolutely positively 110% sure it was the same girl in the photo and that that lock of hair and those pieces of jewelry had almost certainly belonged to her. I couldn’t believe it, as in I literally couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

I didn’t think Paul was lying or making anything up, but it was also like my brain just couldn’t process what I was hearing. I thought that there just had to be some kind of mistake. That maybe this missing girl was one of Carter’s relatives in some capacity, and what we’d seen was nothing but just some keepsake.

But Paul wasn’t an idiot, and he wasn’t a coward, either. He wouldn’t have pulled us out of Carter’s garbage unless he was deadly serious about something. I just couldn’t bring myself to accept what he was suggesting. It only felt truly real once we arrived at a phone box outside of a row of shops and Paul went inside, called 999, and then anonymously reported Carter for what we’d found in his foot locker.

He didn’t say how he knew that jewelry and that lock of hair were in there, only that he’d seen them with his own eyes. Then, after giving Carter’s address, he hung up and we rode off again. And that’s when it properly sunk in what had happened that night. The police report made it real.

And just like when Danny said I was his best friend, there was no turning back now. We thought there’d be a ton of police cars outside Carter’s house within a few hours. Maybe a helicopter and a TV crew. But all that happened was a police constable knocking at his door.

Took a look around his garbage and then just buggered off again, satisfied that there was nothing to concern himself with. It was only then we realized that what was intended as a deeply serious report had been mistaken for some mischief night shenanigans. Breaking into Carter’s garage and then into his foot locker had also given him advanced warning that someone had discovered what was potentially his deepest, darkest secret.

So by the time a policeman was having a mooch around his garbage, he’d probably scrub the place from top to bottom and rehidden that foot locker if he hadn’t disposed of it completely. And in the weeks that followed, I thought Carter was going to be arrested at any moment. I couldn’t bring myself to even look in his direction, as I feared that one look at my face and he’d know it was us who broke into his garage.

Paul kept telling us to be patient again, that investigations took time and that Carter would be arrested eventually, but he wasn’t. Nothing ever happened. Or rather, the only thing that happened is that Carter got away with it. And just after Christmas, once we were all back in school, there was an announcement in the school’s assembly.

Carter was leaving, not just at another school somewhere in England, but to teach at some international school in Hong Kong. The head teacher treated it like Carter was moving up in the world, going on some grand adventure to the Orient. Only me, Danny, and Paul, and Marvin knew the real reason Carter was moving.

We talked about it once or twice and Danny mentioned something about extradition. He didn’t know the word for it at the time. He just asked about the potential of Hong Kong handing Carter over once his crimes came to light. But then Paul shared his theory on why Carter had picked Hong Kong over just about anywhere else in the world.

It might have been an ex-British colony and it might have still had plenty of English-speaking institutions, but Hong Kong had been handed over to China that previous year. If it was no longer British territory, and since the UK didn’t have an extradition treaty with China, Carter wouldn’t have to return home.

Even if they found a smoking gun on his property, there was nothing the police or government could do to bring him to justice. And the worst part, it was all our fault. By breaking into that foot locker, all we’d done is give him advanced warning. He might have come across her at some point and if the police raided his house, they’d have found the same thing we did, but any chance of that happening were scuppered the moment that we decided to cut the padlock off.

Smash his car and maybe the police find the foot locker while they’re following up on a vandalism report. But by making an anonymous report on mischief night of all the bloody nights, all we’d really done was make sure Carter could escape justice. And to this day, I still feel this deep twinge of shame and regret.

Paul had it the worst, what with it being his idea. He got mad and to booze as he got older and was an out of work alcoholic by the time he was 30. People thought he was just a loser, someone who couldn’t deal with the everyday working world. But me and Danny no different because it’s the same shame and guilt we only barely managed to fight off that ended up completely consuming him.

[Music] I grew up in a place called Shallow Water, a little northwest Texas town about 10 mi outside of Leach. When I was 19, I had a job at the XFAB plant, and I used to get a ride to work with a couple of co-workers. Every morning, we’d stop at this little coffee place called Hebrews to get some cups of go juice.

And it’s there that I met a girl named Rita. We got to talking about the donuts and which ones were our favorite. And then, after confirming she was single, we swapped phone numbers and started texting back and forth. We went on a couple of dates throughout October and then towards the end of the month.

And with Halloween coming up, I asked Rita if she had any plans for it. And she said that she was headed to a Halloween party up towards the country club and that if I wanted to go, I could tag along with her and her friends. Now, I was wild about this girl at the time, and none of my friends had any plans outside of sitting at home probably playing PUBG.

So, I figured, why the hell not? So, I put together a pretty basic Ghost Face costume, the same thing that I’d worn a couple of years before. And then I took the opportunity to show Rita that I actually had some social skills by winning over her friends. It made for a pretty fun night, at least until Rita went to the bathroom, then came back faster with this very worried look on her face.

She said that her ex had showed up completely out of the blue, too. He was supposed to be away working on some oil rigs out in the Gulf, but apparently there had been a change of plan, and it meant that I needed to get out of there. In short, Rita’s ex was an a-hole, and if I stuck around, there would 100% be a fight once he worked out who she was with. I didn’t want to leave, but I also didn’t want to fight that guy.

So, I said goodbye to Rita and her friends, and then figured that I could slip out without any issues. But then, right as I’m walking down the driveway of this big old house, I hear someone yelling from behind me saying, “That’s right. You get the hell out of here before I kick your ass.

Now, I looked over my shoulder to see some angryl looking dickwad being held back by his douchy looking buddies, and he just kept on yelling stuff at me as I turned out of the driveway and hit the road. I intended on walking back to shallow water, which would take a couple of hours, but I didn’t mind.

I was too obsessed to care about walking all that way, and thoughts of Rita kept me warm before my phone suddenly buzzed in my pocket. It was Rita and she said that her ex was pissed. After starting another fight, he and his buddies had been kicked out of the party. They were mad as hell and they intended on catching up with me so they could give me that little ass whooping.

Now, I had this gut feeling of uh-oh. And as I realized that they were driving and I was on foot, it was only a matter of time before they caught up with me. I lost my ghost face mask at the party, but I was still wearing that raggedy kind of black gown thing as I started jogging down the side of the highway. It seems kind of dumb looking back on it, but at the time I couldn’t think of anything else that would help.

I needed to get home, or at least get out of the area so I could make it harder for Rita’s ex and his boys to find me. And so there I am, jogging along the side of the highway in my Halloween costume. And every so often, I’m looking over my shoulder and approaching cars, thinking, “Please do not be a Rita’s ex.

” And they all keep passing me one by one until one of them slows down right alongside me. And I think, “This is it.” I turned to look at the car, expecting to see a car full of jerkoffs ready to kick the crap out of me. But it was a lone woman who rolled down her passenger side window and called out to me, asking if I needed a ride.

She looked like your typical soccer mom in her SUV and purple sweater and followed up by saying that she figured if I was running alongside of the road that I most likely needed to ride someplace. And I told her that she was a godsend, that I’d never needed to ride so much in my entire life.

And then after making sure that she was headed my way, I hopped in the passenger seat and we took off down the road. Now, she introduced herself as Deborah and asked why I’ve been running down the side of the road in the first place. I didn’t know what else to tell her, so I just told her the truth.

I told her all about Rita, how her ex had shown up at the Halloween party that we were at, and how I was running because she texted me saying he was out to kick my butt. I also tied that into why I was so grateful that she stopped for me. At which point, Deborah laughed and told me it was no problem. But she did say that’s what I got for dipping my toes into the dating pool.

Now, I could not have agreed more, but I didn’t agree when she said that I should be finding a nice girl to settle down with. I mean, I agreed with the nice girl part, but settle down and get married at 19. That kind of sounded like a nightmare. Now, I only politely disagreed, and she laughed again like she knew I would.

And then we just kept on driving while talking about this and that, and we’d already established that I was headed over to Shallow Water, and Deborah had said that she was going the same way. So when she turned off the highway and started heading straight east, I figured that there had been some confusion at first. So I reminded her of where I was headed, she said that she hadn’t forgotten.

She just had to make a stop at a friend’s place on the way back. Since she was giving me a ride out of the kindness of her heart, I wasn’t about to complain about the pit stop. So I just kept on with the small talk as we drove down this very dark, dirt road. But when she suddenly stopped the car, the mood shifted completely. I asked Deborah why she suddenly stopped, but she didn’t reply.

She just reached into the compartment of her door. Then the next thing I knew, I had a gun pointed at me. I just froze up at first, partially in fear, partially in complete disbelief. Deborah then tossed a small sack at me, one made of a black cloth, and she told me to put it over my head. I thought it was a joke. Just a really bad joke.

So, I told her, “This has to be a joke.” But Deborah wasn’t joking. Not at all. And she said that I could either put the bag over my head, or she’d shoot me in the head, call 911, and tell the cops I tried to violate her. Again, I was just stunned. It was a waking nightmare. had to come out of nowhere.

So, I just couldn’t find the words till she says, “Are you deaf? Put the bag over your head before I shoot you dead.” I asked where she was going to take me and what she was going to do with me. But more of an act of defiance, if anything. I knew she wasn’t going to tell me. It was all just a way of delaying the inevitable. Then, when Deborah told me one more time to put the bag over my head, I did as I was told.

Once my face was covered and I was almost completely blind, Deborah got us moving again. I kept asking where we were going and what she was going to do with me. But whenever she did speak, Deborah only said stuff like, “Shut up, demon. I ain’t got ears for none of your lies.” And she kept referring to me that way, as a demon. when we stopped the car and she ordered me out.

I couldn’t see where I was walking, but she kept the gun to my back until I recognized that we’d walked inside someplace. The next thing, she’s told me to put my arms out, and she’s tying my wrists around some sort of metal support that felt cold on my wrists. After that, she took the hood off, and I could see that I was in a barn. Deborah told me if I did anything funny, she’d kill me when she came back.

Then she left the barn for what felt like forever before coming back with what looked to be her younger daughter or something. She still had that gun pointed at me as she told her kid how I was a demon. And if they both said a prayer, I’d reveal myself as the monster I was. The whole time I’m trying to reason with her, telling her I’m a good person, and then I say my prayers, too. Stuff like that.

But Deborah keeps telling her daughter things like, “Now hear that? Those are the devil’s lies. And we don’t have ears for the devil’s lies, do we, sweetie?” She had that kid trained pretty good. She barely even looked at me. Just kept her eyes on her mama, nodding yes or no whenever she asked a question like, “And you know what we do with demons, don’t you, sweetie? That’s right. We destroy them.

Then both of them together started praying. And no matter how much I begged them both to see some sense, they wouldn’t listen. When I got louder, they got louder until we were all screaming so loud it seemed crazy that no one could hear us. But no one could hear us. And so no one showed up to help me. And when I was done screaming and Deborah was done praying, she told her daughter to look at me and see the demon that’s been revealed.

That kid saved my life because she took one look at me crying and begging for my life and sobs and said, “I don’t see a demon, mommy.” Now Deborah responds, “Of course you do, sweetie. Look harder.” But her kid just shook her head and repeated herself. And I’ll never forget the look on that woman’s face when she gave me a kind of second look or like she looked at me for the first time all over again.

She looked like she was studying me and then she looked very surprised and then finally she looked very sad. She turned to her kid and said something along the lines of, “Mommy made a mistake.” And I joined in. Yes, a mistake. as if that’s all that happened. Everyone makes mistakes. Please let me go. Please let me go. But again, Deborah didn’t seem to listen.

Her little girl’s eyes were fixed on me, all wide and afraid, but glassy, like she was right on the verge of tears. But Deborah didn’t look. Not at first. She just kept saying how sorry she was before offering to take her back inside. I had to wait another God knows how long before Deborah showed up again. Still holding that gun and with a black bag in her hand again.

I felt this deep feeling of relief seeing the bag because I knew that it meant that she was going to drive me someplace again or maybe walk me someplace. Either way, she wasn’t going to shoot me, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t threaten to. She gave me some big speech about how she was doing God’s work out there and how sometimes she made mistakes in identifying demons or devil worshippers.

She was very sorry that she put me through all that, but she also couldn’t leave me alone unless I promised not to tell anyone about what she’d done. Right there, with either the gun or the black bag on offer, I’d have said just about anything she asked me to. So, I promised her I promised to God that I’d never breathe a word of what happened that night to another living soul.

And then Deborah put the bag back on my head, untied my hands, and then directed me back towards her car. And the next time she took the bag off my head, we were on a dark stretch of highway that I couldn’t identify. Deborah said it was roughly where she’d picked me up.

And as much as I couldn’t be sure, I was too relieved to be out of that barn and out of her car to give a good god damn where I was exactly. And before she drove off, she actually said, “God bless you.” and explained how God would reward me in heaven if I kept my mouth shut. Well, I didn’t keep my mouth shut. And after I walked all the way back to Shallow Water, I called the county sheriff and filed a report.

I knew it wouldn’t be an openandshot case obviously, but the cops got back to me and the prognosis was probably worse than I thought. Without any witnesses or anything like that, any kind of legal proceeding would be a sort of case of he said, she said, Deborah’s version of events were obviously entirely different from mine. But it wasn’t just they were different, they were varied wildly.

She said that she did the Christian thing of giving me a ride home and I tried to take advantage after stopping at her home so she could give me a bite to eat. She said that I was drunk, which admittedly I was, and the fact that I’ve been partying beforehand would look real bad if it was just put in front of a judge.

And then on the off chance that they did manage to pin a charge on her, it might not be anything big like kidnapping. Because if she convinced a court that she was in fear for her life, they might not even convict her for reckless endangerment and she might just walk.

And in the end, the best advice the cops would give me was, “Don’t get in the cars with any more strangers. And to save myself the stress, I just chose not to press charges.” Needless to say, I had one hell of a story to tell Rita. and she thought that it was crazy not to press charges.

At least until I explained how it might potentially have my name dragged through the mud. If I tried to get Deborah locked up, which wasn’t even her real name, by the way, she could make the counter claim that I was just some drunk pervert who tried attacking her after showing me kindness. This was right on the cusp of stuff like MySpace getting big, too.

So, the idea that people could look me up and assume that I was some kind of predator, that would be like a whole second nightmare I had the power to avoid. Sometimes I regret it, especially when I think about her doing the same thing to other people because I get a sick feeling in my stomach that some people didn’t get to walk away. [Music] So, I’m an Italian American on both sides of my family, and my dad’s side has lived in Brooklyn since the 1930s.

My grandpa, Luca, came over on his ship when he was still in his 20s, and as long as I knew him, he was the most deeply Catholic man I’d ever known. He carried rosary beads around with him. He never missed a mass or confession.

and he sprinkled holy water in his bedroom every night to protect against evil spirits while he slept. But there was one aspect of his faith that he didn’t pay much mind to, and that was the obligation for pilgrimage. My maternal grandmother always prided herself on her visits to the sanctuary of the Madonna Dorito and the Mont Santangelo, but Grandpa Luca had absolutely no intention of returning to Italy for any reason whatsoever.

During one of the many conversations I had with him, I asked him why that was, why a man so proud of his culture and cuisine could be so averse to seeing his homeland again. He replied that as much as there were things he disliked about America, it was a new place where the things of the old world couldn’t follow him. I was never quite sure what he meant by that.

if it was heartbreak or debt or the mafia that drove him to America. But one day when I was old enough, he saw it good to actually tell me a story. And I realized why he’d stayed so quiet about it in the past. So born in 1911, Grandpa Luca was 11 years old when Mussolini and his fascists came to power.

He grew up in a very poor area of southern Italy, a place where the fascists had a lot of support. So when grandpa turned 17, he was proud to enlist in a very prominent paramilitary organization. I don’t want to turn this into a whole history lesson, so I won’t go into it too much in detail regarding which organization Grandpa joined, but let’s just say it was a very brutal, very fanatical one that ran their own secret prisons on behalf of the state.

And being a dictatorship, the government had to disappear a lot of people to keep hold of said power. But they also needed a place for these people to disappear, too. And that’s how they ended up setting up their own secret prisons around the Italian countryside. My grandpa was young and keen to do his part for his country.

And he never envisioned himself guarding the jail cells of artists or poets, but he never complained either. And then when he proved himself capable, he got moved to a place where more dangerous prisoners were kept. And these weren’t just prisoners of conscience. And some of them were hardened partisans who’d taken up arms against the state. But there were other kinds of prisoners, too.

You see, one of the ways the fascists kept their grip on power was by partnering with the Catholic Church. But this partnership had its conditions. The church had to tell everyone that Mussolini was a good guy. Then in return, the fascists would wield their power to crush the church’s enemies.

But who did the Catholic Church call its enemies? Well, to put it bluntly, religious cults. And when I heard cult, I thought of the branch devidians at Waco or Jim Jones and company drinking the Kool-Aid down in South America. But we only heard about the bad religious cults, and there happened to be some that aren’t nearly so sinister. A religious cult might form around a particular saint, for example, or a group might practice mild forms of flagagillation. The latter is all well and good if it’s sanctioned by the church.

But if it’s done without strict adherence to doctrine or without their explicit permission, it’s considered a grave sin. And as much as they probably like to, the Catholic Church can’t just go around arresting and detaining people for committing sins. But that’s where the fascists came in. Thugs who would do things that would get their hands dirty.

Instead of poets, artists, and resistance fighters, Grandpa found himself guarding the cells of sweet old priests or harmless hermits who posed a threat to the church’s control. It seemed almost every day some harmless old fruitcake was dragged in, broken, and bleeding. And every single time, my grandpa would wonder why. But then came the day when they dragged a man in with no name.

And Grandpa didn’t wonder anymore. Even the most withered and isolated hermits gave a name when beaten hard enough. But this man, who was stick thin and with long black hair, only said, “I don’t have a name.” Even after a time in the prison’s torture chamber, and since he headed up one of those more sinister cults I mentioned earlier, who practiced ritual slaughter on All Hallow’s Eve, he was considered a very dangerous man.

And so unlike most of the prisoners who were kept in large and communal containment areas, the man with no name was kept in constant solitary confinement. And for the first time, Grandpa Luca understood why. The man with no name had a dark, almost nauseating aura about him. And it was said that he’d done terrible things as the leader of his cult.

So for the first time in a long time, Grandpa understood the need for such stringent security. and he was glad for it. The prison was a brutal, unforgiving place, but like any prison, the people in charge needed ways of keeping the inmates placid. They were allowed cigarettes.

They were allowed to play soccer, and they were allowed to put on plays or shows so long as they weren’t of a political nature. Aside from a handful of fascist approved titles, the prisoners weren’t allowed any books, and they weren’t allowed to have any writing materials either.

But they were allowed things like chess sets, playing cards, and other such ways of entertaining themselves. The prisoners in solitary confinement were no different. They too needed mental stimulation to prevent restlessness, and this was how the guards ended up honoring an odd request from the man with no name.

He didn’t accept any of the books, cigarettes, or playing cards offered to him and seemed content to stare blankly at the wall of his cell all day. But this made the guards worry that he was going insane, so they asked if there was anything they could bring him to keep him occupied. Some prisoners asked for a ball to bounce, and others asked for a Bible. But in the case of the man with no name, he asked for a rock and a strip of sandpaper to shape it with.

The request made it all the way up to the warden who decided that there was no harm in allowing the prisoner such objects so long as nothing sharp or bladed was given to him. And so that same day, a guard stopped by his cell and gave him a rock and some sandpaper. And over the next few weeks, the man with no name started shaping that rock.

Guards would stop by his cell to check in on him every so often or to deliver his daily bread and water, and they’d see his progress. They’d see how that jagged piece of stone was smoothed off and then worn away in certain sections until it was smooth and shiny all over. And then right about the same time the rock started to get very smooth and oblong, like an almost oversized pill, the general prisoner population got more and more rowdy.

They were making demands about exercise and food, saying they needed more of both, that they were going to riot. Guards beat unruly prisoners mercilessly if they attacked each other and denied food to those who attacked guards, but nothing seemed to calm their tempers, and the unrest got worse and worse.

Every night, the prisoners would congregate in the courtyard where they normally played soccer, and they’d chant slogans about a free Italy. The guards had tried everything except shooting the prisoners to calm them down. And the warden still only had the mandate for a prison, not a death camp. So they couldn’t just shoot anyone who refused orders.

But nor could they carry on with the beating and starvation because those kinds of punishments only made the general population more violent. Instead, the warden tried to make a deal with them. On all Hallow’s Eve, the night before Halloween, the warden gathered the prisoners to make an announcement. If they stopped demonstrating, he would arrange a delivery of fresh bread to the prison along with several cases of good wine so each prisoner could have a whole cupful to themselves. I guess they considered that the nuclear option, the thing that

had put the demonstrations to bed. But to the warden’s surprise, the offer did nothing to quell the unrest. I guess the warden got mad that the prisoners rejected his offer. So he went right back to offering beatings and starvation only double as much. But this not only caused another demonstration, but it escalated into a fullcale prison riot.

Grandpa said that he’d never seen violence like it before or since. He said it was like the prisoners were in a rapid frenzy, that they weren’t just attacking prison guards and trying to tear the prison itself apart, but they were killing each other, too.

Prisoners who had once been friendly with each other were now literally at each other’s throats, ripping each other apart with their bare hands. It was chaos. Pure blood soaked chaos. And the prison guards had no choice but to withdraw, surround the prison, and kill anyone who broke out and tried to escape. All night long, the riot lasted from dusk until dawn.

But only a single prisoner breached the outer wall to be shot by the waiting guards. The next morning, the guards walked back into the prison and were greeted by a scene from a nightmare. There were dead bodies lying all over the prison’s courtyard, and there was so much blood that had formed big puddles on parts of the yard.

Most of the prisoners were back in their cells, either completely exhausted, frightened out of their minds, or nursing some severe wounds. Most were accounted for in one way or another. But once they completed their body count, the guards realized someone was missing, but there was no time wasted in figuring out who because only one of the cells was empty.

The cell belonging to the man with no name. Grandpa corrected himself after saying the cell was empty because that wasn’t strictly true. It just didn’t have anyone living inside of it. Lying on the floor of the cell in a pool of his own blood was a prisoner.

One who had no apparent connection between himself and the man with no name. His heart had been torn out, ripped clean out of his chest, and the man with no name was nowhere to be found. The guards searched the prison from top to bottom, certain that the man had to be hiding somewhere, but they couldn’t find him.

And in the end, they do accept that somehow the man with no name had escaped. Grandpa said a big investigation followed because the warden was convinced that he couldn’t have escaped without the assistance of a guard. He said one of them was either a member of the man with no names cult or he’d been bribed or threatened into helping him escape by the man’s acolytes.

Grandpa said all of them were dragged into interview rooms and then threatened with imprisonment or worse if they didn’t confess. But not a single guard showed any hint of being involved, and the warden was forced to come to an alternative conclusion to save his skin.

The official report stated that to the best of the warden’s knowledge, the man with no name had died during the riot and that his remains were too mutilated to properly identify. And this was way more acceptable to the warden superiors because he wouldn’t exactly go around saying the man had disappeared. But disappeared is exactly what the guards thought happened.

They just had to keep their mouth shut about it. And that wasn’t the only thing that they were ordered to keep quiet about. Some of the guards started saying that the unrest only started happening when the man with no name took to shaping that stone of his and how it got worse and worse as the stone got smooth and then started to take shape.

One of the guards added that on the morning of October 31st, the man finally completed his little project. He turned that jagged rock into a small but perfectly formed figure of a man. And hours later the demonstrations turned nasty. The warden had his offer rejected and that terrible slaughter had started.

And such things were not allowed to be discussed and nor were the guards permitted to leave or transfer their posts lest somebody suspect that the warden’s version of events be anything less than truthful. Grandpa realized that if he was going to escape his life as a prison guard, he’d have to escape the entire country. And so that’s what he did. He went awall, smuggled himself into France, and then was on a ship headed for New York by his first week of December.

He spent his first Christmas in New York alone and not being able to speak English. But he didn’t mind because America was a place where the things of the old world couldn’t follow him. [Music] I could get in a lot of trouble for posting this, so I’d like to remain as anonymous and nondescript as possible. Now, I’m sorry if this gets annoying while reading this, but I’m confident you’ll understand my reasoning once you reach the end.

So, I work as a teacher in an English-speaking country teaching 7 to 11 year olds. And let’s just say that I’ve got a few years experience under my belt. I have no regrets. I love my profession and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat given the chance.

But while the highs have been high, the lows have been lows in ways that I’m not sure other people can imagine. You see, when you work with kids, you get to be part of some pretty incredible things sometimes. But there’s a dark side of it, too. And sometimes you end up privy to things that quite literally haunt you. One day, right at the start of our term, we had a kid that I’ll just call Arive in my class.

A was from a non-English-speaking country, and although they struggled with communication at first, extra English lessons really helped him out. And it only took a couple of weeks before his personality started to shine through. A was also from a country that didn’t celebrate Halloween, at least not nearly in the same way that we do in the West nowadays.

So as September rolled into October and the Halloween decoration started going up, the level of enthusiasm with which we celebrated it came as quite a surprise. You see, A came from a very conservative culture, one that took things like ghosts and ghouls and witches very seriously. So he found the whole thing quite scary at first.

Then once it was explained to him that it was all just a bit of fun and we were taking things that scare us and making them not so scary anymore, he started to see the fun side. The kids in my class made me so proud of them that term because they welcomed A into the fold with open arms. They asked a lot of very awkward questions about his accent and his background and stuff, but only in the way that kids are prone to do.

So there was nothing that I’d have labeled bullying. But then once they got to know him a little bit more, A was quite a popular young man. And around Halloween, some of them took it upon themselves to teach him all about it. They taught him about vampires, about zombies and werewolves.

But the creature A found particularly enchanting was that of Dracula. I asked him why, and he said he liked the idea of staying up all night and being able to turn into something that could fly, i.e. a bat. It was adorable. Seeing him bonding with his peers and conquering his fears all at once.

And having him really enthusiastic about a new thing was great for his English. Slightly odd that some of his first advanced English words were things like undead and trans, but whatever it takes, I suppose. Halloween that year was on a Friday, and after lunchtime, me and my class played dress up. We put on masks and makeup and scary costumes and had a pretty good laugh about having an impromptu Halloween party.

A wore a pair of plastic fangs that I bought and a torn bin liner as a cape. And then he spent the whole time creeping around and hissing at the other kids from behind his shiny black plastic cape. They thought it was a riot and once again a was a joy to watch.

Then at the end of the day, he insisted on going home still wearing his cape and fangs. I told my boyfriend about it that weekend and agreed that A sounded like a really nice kid. And then come Monday morning, I was excited to find out his little vampire routine had survived the weekend. But A wasn’t in class that morning. We had to have the headmaster call his family at home to find out where he was.

And it was only then we found out that he was sick. The headmaster asked his parents to make sure they informed us of illness in the future. And they said, “Sure, fine. No problem. And then that was that. The next morning, A still hadn’t returned to school, so his headmaster called his family again to ask for an update.

Their English wasn’t fantastic, but they could speak enough to get across that A still needed bed rest and would return to school as soon as he was able. Again, this was no problem. But then, after not showing up all week and not showing up the first two days of the next week, we started to worry.

The headmaster placed a third call to A’s family. But after he got the same response of he’s sick and needs bed rest, the headmaster asked if they had taken A to a doctor. His parents said no. They hadn’t taken him to a doctor. But the reasons for not taking him were lost in translation. And that was the first time that the words social services cropped up into the conversation and things escalated from there.

A full 2 weeks after A was absent from school, a social worker knocked on the door of his family home. The same conversation played out again with the social worker being told that A was sick and the social worker asked if she could come inside to see him, but A’s parents refused. The social worker said that she had the power to come back with a police officer and they’d be arrested if they barred her access to A, but either they didn’t understand what she was saying or they didn’t care.

In an ideal world, the police should have gone over to the house immediately to perform a wellness check. But red tape meant the social worker couldn’t get a specially trained member of the community outreach team until a full 3 weeks after a’s initial absence.

And then, and only then, could they access A’s family home, and what they found inside must have shaken them to their very foundations. A was lying in his bed, nothing more than skin and bones. There was evidence his family were trying to take care of him, but he was still dangerously ill. So after an ambulance was summoned, A was rushed to the hospital.

And upon his arrival, there was a mad dash to find out what was wrong with him because he really was on death’s door with him being so skinny. But doctors soon worked out why he was so ill. A hadn’t eaten in nearly three whole weeks and had only been given the bare minimum of water to keep him alive. Once they realized it was a case of starvation, A was nursed back to health and the police moved to arrest his parents.

But from what I heard, A’s parents behaved unlike any the police officers had dealt with before, at least when it came to child neglect cases anyway. They seemed like good, hardworking, honest to god people. And they were absolutely devastated that their son was so ill. But when the police asked why A was so malnourished, his parents couldn’t understand what the issue was.

In their view, they’ done the exact thing a local holy man had advised them to do, which was feed A as little as possible in order to starve the demonic spirit that had possessed his body. And I can only imagine how stunned the people were when they heard A’s parents say that. But say it, they did.

They were absolutely steadfast in their belief that their son was possessed by a demonic entity. And the first clue that they gotten was his sudden and intense interest in the macob. They went to that local holy man that I mentioned and he gave them their assessment and then they did what they thought was best for their son. But in reality, it almost killed him.

During the third week when A was really starting to waste away, his parents arranged for the holy man to come over so he could give a an exorcism. I don’t think it was the kind from the film, you know, with holy water being flung all over the show and the power of Christ compels you being yelled in tandem.

But they did something, some kind of ritual designed to expel demonic forces from A’s little body. But I guess from their perspective, it didn’t work. So, the starvation diet only continued. Hearing all that was easily the most frighteningly shocking thing I’d heard in my career, and nothing’s stopped it since.

The thought of that poor little boy lying in that bed wasting away, and all while believing that there was some demon inside of him. It breaks my heart just as much as it sends a shiver down my spine. A’s parents ended up going to prison. Not for long, but I know they got custodial sentences while A went to live with a foster family in another part of the country. I’d so look forward to seeing him that Monday morning to see if he was still obsessed with Dracula.

I had no idea that I was never going to see little A ever again. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday and Thursday at 9:00 p.m. EST. And there are super fun live streams on Sundays and Wednesday nights.

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