Today, we have a very special bonus episode for you guys. It's a collection of five true scary stories about real people who come face to face with real life monsters. Now, these five fan favorites have all been completely re-edited for today's episode.
So even if you've seen or heard some of them before, this is going to feel like a totally new viewing experience. But before we get into today's five stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload once a week. So if that's of interest to you, please secretly reverse the like buttons car
blinkers so when they signal left, the right one comes on and vice versa. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's five stories. In 1978, 16-year-old Bridget Geiger was waiting outside her home in Ohio for a boy named Jeffrey to take her to prom. She wasn't particularly excited to go to prom with Jeffrey. He was known to be really nervous around girls, and so she figured it was going to be a pretty
awkward date. But nobody else had asked her to go, and she really wanted to go to prom, so she figured it was going to be a pretty awkward date. But nobody else had asked her to go and she really wanted to go to prom so she said yes. When Jeffrey showed up she was immediately disappointed. He was wearing this odd ensemble of vest and bow tie as opposed to the standard tuxedo that she was anticipating him wearing. And so now they weren't going to match. He was also so nervous that he was visibly shaking and couldn't pin her corsage to her dress. And so Bridget's mom had to come out
and put the corsage on. After the corsage was on, Bridget's mom would take a couple of very awkward photos of them kind of stiffly standing in front of her house before they ultimately got in Jeff's car and headed for the prom.
When they arrived, Bridget wanted to go on the dance floor to see her other friends, to kind of lighten the mood because she was not having a good time with Jeffrey so far. But she did stay with him, and it was clear that Jeffrey hated being at the prom. He hated being around this swarming group of teenagers. Bridget felt kind of bad and said, hey Jeffrey, do you want to go sit down and just grab a bite to eat over at the little food cart they have here. Jeffrey's very relieved and says, yes I'd love to do that, and the pair leave the dance floor and walk over to the little food court area. As they're about to sit
down, Jeffrey pulls the chair out for Bridget. She sits down, he kind of pushes her in like a gentleman, but then instead of sitting down with her, he just walks away without telling her where he's going. Bridget assumed he was just going to the bathroom, but after a really long amount of time had passed, and it was clear he had not just gone to the bathroom, she got up to go look for him. And so she went on the dance floor, she can't find him in the building, and so she goes outside to see if maybe his car's not there anymore. go back into the prom, she sees Jeffrey sitting on a curb just eating McDonald's cheeseburgers. And she goes over to him and she's like, what are you doing out here? And so he told her that
he just wanted to step outside and get a couple cheeseburgers and then come back and he would sit with her while she ate, but they wouldn't let him back in. And so he just went and got more cheeseburgers and thought he would wait here until she came outside. And now that she was outside, she couldn't get back in either. So she just says, hey, I'd like to just go home. And so Jeffrey is mortified and he tells her, I'm so sorry.
I wanted this to be a nice evening for you. I'm sorry it wasn't. He drives her home. He says goodbye. She walks into her house. He drives off and that was that. Bridget only saw Jeffrey one more time after that. It was about a week after prom and Jeffrey actually invited her to come over his house for
what he was calling a house party. And Bridget's like, there's no way this kid's throwing a house party. He can barely stand to be around just me, let alone a crowd of people. But she was polite and said, sure I'd love to come to your house party. She gets there and there's no food, there's no music, there's like three people there, and as soon as she walks in all Jeffrey wanted to do was have a seance and communicate with the devil. She was so immediately creeped out by Jeffrey's behavior that after only a couple of minutes she just turned
around and left his house party and did not see him again. Well, until 13 years later when she would read about him in the newspaper. 13 years later on July 22, 1991, Milwaukee, Wisconsin police spot a man named Tracy Edwards running down the road in handcuffs. They run over to him and they say, what's going on? And he says that a man was holding him hostage in his apartment, that he threatened to kill me.
I was able to overpower him and escape and here I am. The police go to this apartment that he apparently escaped from and they knock on the door. The door opens and the police are confronted by this tall man who introduces himself as Jeffrey. He tells police this is all a big misunderstanding and that Tracy Edwards is a friend of his and I don't know what's gotten into him and the police were actually close to believing him.
They would even say he was really convincing. But as they're talking to him, one of the officers kind of looks behind Jeffrey into his apartment and he sees on the coffee table what are clearly pictures of dismembered body parts. And so they arrest Jeffrey and when his apartment was fully searched, a house of horrors is revealed. In addition to photos of body parts, the apartment itself was littered with human remains. There were several human heads in the freezer and the refrigerator, and in his bedroom was a 57-gallon drum containing
more dead bodies that were decomposing in chemicals. There was also evidence that suggested Jeffrey was eating these people. Now Jeffrey lived in a crowded apartment complex, and so other neighbors had complained about this awful smell coming from his room, but he had been able to explain it away and convince everybody that it was just some bad meat. However, the most horrifying revelation
about how Jeffrey was able to conceal these horrible crimes he was committing in the middle of a city apartment would come a few days later. Apparently, two months before Tracy Edwards had run out of Jeffrey's apartment in handcuffs
and flagged those officers down, another boy had left the apartment in handcuffs and was running down the road and police stopped him. But the boy couldn't really speak. He wasn't able to articulate why he was there or what he was doing.
And as police are talking to him, Jeffrey comes running up the road, flags the officers down and thanks them for finding his boyfriend. They had gotten into a lover's quarrel and that everything was just fine. And so the police shrug it off and say,
"'No problem, we'll even give you a ride back to your apartment.'" And so they drive the boy and Jeffrey back to Jeffrey's apartment. They watch them go inside and the police had paid a little bit more attention, they would have seen there was a hole drilled in the back of his head by Jeffrey. He had been pouring acid into this kid's head
to try to control him, and that was why this boy couldn't speak. And as soon as the police let them go back into the apartment, Jeffrey killed the boy because Jeffrey, Bridget's prom date, turned out to be none other than infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who
killed 17 people over a 13 year period. Just days after this picture was taken of Jeffrey and Bridget, right before they headed off to prom together, Jeffrey would kill his first victim and start that 13 year killing spree. Dahmer was ultimately given a life sentence, but was killed by another inmate. In 2004, 16 year old Misty Tasker was a typical American teenager living in
Live Oak, Florida, which is a small rural town right in the middle of the state. One Saturday evening in January, she and her mother attended a church service. Afterwards, they hopped in her mother's truck and they got on the country highway and began making their way home. Their house was just 20 minutes down this highway.
It was a straight shot. And this highway was pretty desolate. There were no streetlights. It was actually a dirt road, despite being a highway. And it was just thick forest on both sides of the road the entire way. There were no buildings or houses
between the church and their neighborhood. Misty's mother was already a very anxious driver who would keep both hands on the wheel. She would sit up and kind of hunch over the wheel and keep her eyes intently focused on the road, but at night her driving anxiety would shoot through the roof because she had really bad eyesight.
And so she would go to great lengths to not drive at night to avoid that high level of anxiety. But the church service they had just come from had run a little bit long, and so now Misty's mother is driving with the sun starting to set, and she's going as fast as she can to try to get home before it gets too dark. And so as they're bombing down this road at about 55 miles an hour despite it being about a 40 mile per hour zone, Misty who's in
the passenger seat just happens to look over at her mother for no particular reason and as she's looking at her she notices out her mother's window it looks like there's a little girl sitting on the side of the road. What's a child doing out here in the middle of nowhere? She says to her mom, I think I just saw a little girl. And Misty's mother, who's high up on the wheel, she did not hear Misty the first time. She's just focused on driving and trying to get home. And so Misty says again, I think I just saw a not prepared to turn the car around. That means staying out later and it means she's gonna be
driving in even darker conditions and so she's like, did you really see someone? Because we got to get home and Misty's like, mom I'm pretty sure I saw a little girl we have to go back. And so finally Misty's mother, she's very annoyed but she stops the car, she does a three-point turn and she begins driving back up the road where they came from towards this girl. Now they had only made it about a half mile from where Misty believed she had seen this girl. And so pretty quickly they slowed down because Misty said, I think she's in this area.
And they both began scanning the right side of the road because that's where she's gonna be now that they've turned around. Now it was starting to get very dark outside, but there was enough light and they had headlights. They were pretty confident they'd be able to spot this girl. And so as they're slow rolling down the road, they both see this girl a little ways up on the right-hand side. Her back was to the road. She had her knees tucked up to her chest and she was rocking back and forth. Misty's mother made a comment that it was a little bit surprising that this girl was out here. I mean there's really nothing around here. There's no houses, there's no buildings, there's no trails to be walking in in this forest on either side. It was just
kind of thick forest and so she just thought it was very strange that this girl would even be out here, especially because there's not any traffic on this road. And so Misty's mother began slowly rolling up to her and she told her daughter that instead of just stopping right away, let's just drive past her and get a look at her and then we'll turn around and see if she needs any help." And so as they got right up next to her, they realized she was not a little girl. She was a young teenager, but she was not a young, young child. And as they drove right past her, they would expect her to
turn around and acknowledge the car creeping up on her, considering there's no other traffic in the area and you're just some person sitting on the side of the road, you should definitely turn around and see what's behind you. But the girl did not acknowledge them. She just continued to have her knees up to her chest and rocked back and forth. And so Misty and her mother are a little bit freaked out by this, but they drive past her about 50 meters. Misty's mother does a three-point turn and when they're looking back down the road where the girl should now be on their left-hand side, they're oriented back towards their house now, she wasn't there anymore.
But there were no streetlights. It was now almost completely pitch dark outside. And so all they had was the headlights. And so Misty told her mom, you know, drive up a little ways. Maybe the girl stood up and moved
and we just can't see her because she's not in the headlights. And so Misty's mom began driving down the road and kind of turning slightly towards the left to shine the light more to the left, but there was no sign of this girl. For good measure, they turned right slightly to shine the lights more to the right-hand side of the road, but there was no sign of this girl. And so Misty and her mother just slow roll back down the road, kind of keeping their eye out on both sides. But after traveling for several minutes, going about five, 10 miles an hour and seeing no sign of this girl,
they decided that, well, she must've just gone back into the woods and gone back to wherever it was she came from. And so Misty's mom began picking up speed and before long they had gone maybe two or three miles away from where they'd seen this girl
and they were coming up to this four-way intersection with stop signs all around. And as they were getting close, Misty's mother gasped because on the other side of the intersection, on the right-hand side, was this girl sitting on the side of the road. She's got her back to the road, her knees are up, and she's rocking back and forth. And so Misty's mother pulls up the stop sign and then just sits there. And both women are just
stunned at what they're looking at. They had just seen her two, three miles back down the road. It wasn't possible for her to get all the way up here. And so Misty's mother looks at her daughter and says, you know, do you think it's a different girl? And Misty's like, no, that's the same girl. And so they just sat there for a minute
until Misty started to panic. And she said to her mom, mom, don't stop. I got a bad feeling about this girl. I don't know what's going on, but you can't stop next to this girl. But Misty's mom, she was definitely weirded out by the situation, no doubt. But she didn't feel good about abandoning this girl
in the middle of the night on the side of the highway. And so even though she felt a little bit hesitant herself, she told Misty, you know, we have to at least drive past her and ask if she's okay. That's, that's the least we can do. And Misty was not having it. She said, mom, do not stop.
I got a bad feeling about this. Don't stop near this girl. But Misty's mom let up off the brake and began slow rolling past this intersection. And now at this point, Misty is just absolutely terrified. seat belt off and she goes down into the footwell right in front of her seat and she closes her eyes and covers her ears and she just continues to beg her mother to just please keep going don't stop but her mother just continues on until she stops right next to this girl who's still just sitting on the side of the
road with her back to the road she's got her knees up she's rocking back and forth she's not acknowledging Misty or her mother And so Misty's mother turns to her daughter and says, please roll down your window. And Misty refuses. She's still down in the footwell, still in the fetal position. She's crying and she's still begging her mother
to please just go home. And so Misty's mother, frustrated, reaches across the passenger seat and grabs the knob to roll down the window manually. So she rolls the window down and Misty who's down in the footwell all she remembers is sitting there covering up her ears and she's crying and she opens her eyes and she's looking up towards her mom who's reaching over the seat and her mom yells
out to this girl and Misty remembers looking at her mom who suddenly recoils in horror and screams and then they take off like crazy flying down the road. Misty jumps out of the footwell and she's looking at her mom and she's like, what's happening? What just happened? What did you see? And her mom's got her hand over her mouth
and she's speeding down the road and she's crying now. And she's looking at Misty and she just doesn't have the words to describe what she just saw. And so Misty's asking her mom, what did you see? What happened? she didn't have a face. She didn't have a face. It was hollow. There was nothing on her face when she looked at me.
And so Misty screams and she's crying and her mom is crying and they speed home. They're home just a couple of minutes later and they run inside, practically falling over each other to get in the house. And as soon as they get inside, Misty's mom calls 911
and she didn't even know how to describe what she just saw, but she knew it was too embarrassing to try to describe it as some girl without a face sitting by the highway. And so she just told the police that they had seen a girl they think needs help. And so the police, they went out and they searched that entire stretch of highway.
They looked for any sign of anybody out there, but there wasn't. There was never any trace of that girl. In 2018, a 21-year-old brand new police officer named Derek was dumped by his longtime girlfriend. This breakup caught him by surprise because he had actually just recently moved to Colorado in order to be closer to his girlfriend, so naturally he was
devastated. After a few weeks of being so depressed and kind of just moping around and going through the motions in his life at this point, one of his very close friends suggested to him like, hey man look, why don't you just make a profile on Tinder, the online dating service, and just put yourself out there again. You have no idea who's out there. Clearly your ex-girlfriend was not the one. Derek had met his ex-girlfriend in a bar and every other girlfriend he had
ever had he had met in person. So online dating was definitely not on his radar. But he was so lonely and sad he figured, know what I got nothing to lose and so he made himself a Tinder profile. Derek quickly matched with a woman on Tinder named Leah that he said was way out of his league but he wasn't complaining. They chatted for a couple of weeks and they got on great and so they wanted to get together and actually meet each other in person but Leah lived well over an hour away from Derek's. There wasn't a natural meeting place, and they're going back and forth
about where they wanna go, and finally Leah just says, hey, why don't you just come to my town? There's this great park that I go running in all the time, and they have this awesome field that's on a slope, and you can lay on it and look up through the trees,
and you can see the stars. go stargazing together. So the date night finally came and Derek was really excited. He was nervous too because even though they talked on the phone, this is the first time they're gonna see each other. And so the plan was he was gonna drive out to her town and actually pick her up from her work. She worked at a hair salon and from there they would make their way over to this park. And so Derek pulls up to the hair salon right as Leah is coming outside and she's waving to him. She runs over and she gets in the car and they hug and kiss on the cheek. It's like they knew each other but they didn't know each other because their entire relationship was online or via
texting or a phone call. It's like they had history but they didn't. But either way, Derek was really happy and it seemed like Leah was too. From the hair salon, it was a pretty short drive to this access road that was gonna bring them into this park and when Leah told him to make this turn it didn't look like a very well marked trail or even a marked park. It looked like this kind of random access road that Derek would not have associated with a big public park. But he doesn't know the area and so he turns and he starts heading down this road and the road went from cement to
dirt pretty quickly and this whole time he's thinking to himself like did I take a wrong turn? Does she know like where she's going? This does not feel like the way you drive into a big park the way she was describing. Finally they land back on cement and they're actually on this road that's right up against this huge field. And so right away Derek's stress is gone because now it's confirmed in his mind that okay that's a weird way to get into this park, but here's this huge, amazing field, and we're back on a real road, and everything's good again. Derek asked Leah, you know, where should I park?
Because they're on this really narrow road, and there didn't appear to be a parking lot. There also didn't appear to be anybody else on this field or on this road. It's this huge, open, beautiful space, but it did not look well-traveled, but she said just go right up there. There's a small lot you can pull into. And so Derek starts going up this road and he sees
maybe 300 feet ahead of him are dim headlights of another car making their way down the road towards him. And now it was dark enough that he couldn't really make out what kind of vehicle it was and so he didn't know if it was gonna be some big truck or something like that. And so what he did is he just pulled over as far to the side of the road as he could to allow this vehicle to pass, even though there was a fair amount of distance
they would need to cover before they were passing him. He figured, just give them the right of the road. And so as they start moving forward, you can see that it's actually this big van and they're moving pretty slowly and he's just kind of waiting for them to pass He's not thinking anything of this. He's thinking that this is just another person at the park. And this van, instead of passing him,
actually turns at the last second and almost goes bumper to bumper with Derek's car. He doesn't crash into it, but he stops just in front of Derek's car. And so Derek is a cop. He's a brand new cop and he's super aggressive.
You know, he really believes in his training. And so as soon as this guy stopped in front of him and blocked the path for him, red flags are going up for Derek and he knows something's wrong with this van and instinctively he says, Leah stay here. He grabs his flashlight that he kept right in the center console and he jumped out of the car and went right to the driver's side door of this van to confront this guy and when he got up to the driver's side door it was this really big guy who looked pretty startled to see Derek come charging up to him with his flashlight and Derek's like what are you doing man what are you blocking me in for
and the guy's like oh hey sorry i'm the caretaker here of this whole property and we've had an issue with poachers in the area and i was concerned you guys were poachers it doesn't look like you're poachers though and Derek's like no we're not poachers we're're going stargazing. I'm on my first date here." and the caretaker's like, I am so sorry, please get back in your car, go and enjoy your night. and at that he backed up, did a three-point turn, and drove right back up that road where he came from and disappeared down on the other side of the hill. Derek stood in front of his car for a couple of minutes making sure
this guy was gone and then he turned around and he got back in the car and he kind of joked with Leah. He's like, yeah, he thought we were poachers. I guess you look like a poacher to him and that's why he stopped us. But when he looked over at Leah to react to his hilarious joke, she wasn't paying attention to him. She was just furiously typing away on her phone, which Derek did think was a little bit odd. You'd think that she'd be more interested in this strange thing that just happened. Some weird guy just blocked us in and I'm confronting him. You'd think she'd be interested in that on some level. She might want to know what I said to the guy and what he said to me, but she didn't seem to care. She was just really invested in whoever
she was typing on her phone. And so Derek thinks whatever and just throws the car back in drive and continues up the trail the way they were going before they were stopped. So Derek continues down the road just a little ways until he sees a little dirt lot that's butted up against this huge field they're gonna be hanging out on for the night. And so he pulls into the lot, backs into a space, and he and Leah get out and they put a blanket out right next to the car but on the grass on the hill. And they get their food out and their wine out and they sit down and very quickly they start swapping stories and they're
laughing and they're stargazing and they're having some wine and everything's really great. After about an hour, it's totally dark outside and Derek is laying on the hill facing back towards his car and towards the road they were on. And he notices to his left, up at the top of the hill. So the same area where the van had come from originally and where it went back to after they spoke that one time.
Derek is looking out there and he sees headlights and it's the van. And now the van is driving down the road, not leisurely like it was before, but they are flying down the hill. And before Derek or Leah have a chance to react to this van barreling down on them, it comes flying into the parking lot and practically hits his car and comes to a stop where it's boxed his car in.
So even if he got in his car, he couldn't drive away. And so Derek jumps up, Leah jumps up, and the guy, the caretaker, the nice caretaker he talked to before, he hops out of the driver's seat and he walks around the front of the van. He's got this pipe in his hand and he looks at Derek and he's like, but he doesn't do anything at first. He just looks at this guy and he shows him that I'm not just gonna fall over because he told me to. But then Derek has given a huge curveball when
Leah, his date, stands up and runs over to this guy and stands next to him and turns around and looks at Derek and goes, come on, give us your keys and wallet. And Derek's like, great, I'm getting set up by my date who I've spent the past two hours with, who I was, I had a connection with this girl. And so now Derek is just standing there doing nothing, not to be tough, but because he's in shock. He feels so betrayed by Leah. And he just feels like how could this have happened? Leo walks to the back of the van and she gets a metal pipe. She comes back around and she goes, Derek give us your keys and your wallet. We don't want to have to hurt you. And this is when Derek looks at them both and he goes, no. And as soon as he said that, the big guy tackles him. He gets thrown to the ground but Derek
could handle himself and very quickly he was able to get up and he drew his concealed carry pistol and he's aiming it at the big guy and then back at Leah and he's like, yeah, I'm a cop. Go ahead and put your hands up now. As soon as they saw the gun, they both dropped their pipes and put their hands up. And so as he's holding them both at gunpoint,
he's looking over at Leah like, really?
You did this to me?
Are you kidding me right now?
As he's doing that, 911 and then called dispatch and had to say who he was, what his badge number was, what happened, and where he is. And where he is was difficult to describe. And so as he's trying to explain these directions and he's saying, yo, yep go left at the light and then there's a gas station there, you're gonna go up this field, you're gonna see me, I got these two people at gunpoint. As he's doing that, Leah and the caretaker look at each other and they just turn around and bolt. They figure he's distracted. We can at least get behind the van and run into the forest before he's going to catch us.
And so instinctively, he takes off running after them and he chases them for about 30 seconds into the tree line before he starts hearing gunshots. And they weren't his. Someone's shooting at him. And he sees the muzzle flash I'm not doing this. He turns around, runs back to his vehicle. He starts it up and he has to basically smash into the van, back into the fence over and over again, like Austin Powers, like a 25 point turn
before he was barely able to grind his way out and peel out of this park. And so Derek pulls into the nearest gas station. He calls up dispatch and he says, hey, I just called 911 like five, ten minutes ago, and I dropped the call because I was chasing somebody. Here's my name. Here's my badge number I'm now at this gas station. Can you send a couple of police officers over to my location now?
And they said yep We'll send some to you and so a police cruiser shows up with two officers inside that Derek recognized they were senior to him And they got out and he explained again what happened and they kind of gave him a hard time for forgetting catfished It's very prostate for getting catfished on his very first date, but at the same time they knew it could have gone really badly and so they decide they're gonna load up in the police cruiser together, all three of them, and drive back up to the park. And so they get up to the park and Derek points ahead and he goes, that's the van,
it's still here. And so they drive up and they stop short of the van and the two uniformed officers, they turn to Derek and they you know, guns drawn. They're looking all around, they're clearing behind the vehicle, they're looking in the wood line. There's nobody there and at some point he sees them put their pistols away and they go in the van. They're kind of shining with their flashlights all around, they're looking in the back, looking in the front, and then after a few minutes they walk back And as soon as they got in, Derek could tell there was just something off about how they were acting. When they were down at the gas station, they were kind of joking around with him.
Now, whatever they had seen in the van was definitely not something they were going to joke about. And they turned to him and they're like, the back of the van, it was just knives and saws and pistols and rifles and lighter fluid and chains and handcuffs and duct tape. It was just awful. And it looks like there might even be blood on the ground. The two officers immediately called in additional backup. And before long, it was a full-fledged circus around the span of a crime scene investigation unit
and other police officers, spotlights set up. And they went out looking in the woods for these people, but they never found the guy. They never found the girl. And Derek would tell the other investigators, hey she works at this hair salon like right down the road, I picked her up there. And so they went over to the hair salon and they wound up
talking to the people there and they said we've never heard of Leah. And when they showed them a picture of Leah, they were like we've never seen her before. And so they came back and they told Derek, look she's a con artist and this thing, your whole relationship with her has been her setting you up in some way, shape, or form. The entire thing. That's all it ever was. And so for Derek, that was crushing, and he swore off Tinder immediately.
He did not want to do any more online dating. But what really haunts him more than just being taken advantage of is, what would have happened if I wasn't concealed carrying? Would I have wound up in the back of that van? Simply put, a goth is someone who finds beauty in things that most other people consider to be pretty dark.
But most Americans tend to associate the term goth with the teenagers of the late 90s and early 2000s that wore all black and wore heavy black boots and would hang out in cemeteries. And while that representation of goth culture is of course limited, it is a good representation of the two protagonists in today's story, best friends Rachel and Molly. In the 1990s, Rachel and Molly were
full-blown
Goths. They had black hair, black makeup, black clothes, they had the black heavy combat boots, and at one point they and their other Goth friends started hanging out in a cemetery to be kind of ironic and funny, like look at us we're Goth, we hang out in cemeteries, and then they actually enjoyed it and began hanging out in a cemetery like every weekend. One Friday night Molly calls Rachel to go hang out in the cemetery and as it happened Rachel was just sitting at home and she was bored out of her mind and so the
call came at a perfect time and so Rachel's like yeah I'd love to go. So she flies downstairs and she sits on her front step and she's waiting for Molly to show up and eventually Molly's car rolls down the street and Rachel immediately recognizes that Molly is the only one in the car. And Rachel, whenever she would go to the cemetery at night with Molly, they were always there with a group of at least four people. Even though they liked hanging out in the cemetery, they did recognize that it's a
little bit creepy at night to be out there and so they liked kind of rolling in a fairly big group. And so Rachel hops in the car and her first question to Molly is, where is everybody? Are they meeting us there? And Molly said, oh no, everybody else is either working or they're kind of hung over from the party from last night. So it's just us two.
I hope that's okay. And at the time, Rachel actually in her head was like, no, I don't really want to do this anymore. Oh yeah, that's fine. Yeah, we'll just go, just the two of us, it'll be fine. Molly takes off from Rachel's house and she makes the familiar kind of winding commute to the front gate of this enormous cemetery that sits right in the center of town. They drive underneath this massive wrought iron gate
that looks very medieval, very foreboding. It looks like it's out of a cheesy horror movie, this like cliche entrance to a cemetery. And so they go through there and they're on this road that stretches all the way down through the cemetery and basically splits it in two. On the left side as you're driving in was an area closest to town and also it butted up against a major public university. And then on this side of the cemetery you had a bunch of residential houses that butted up
against the side of the cemetery. And where Molly and Rachel and their crew like to go was on the right side all the way back in the corner because there was a section that was kind of situated between these two hills where not only were they obscured from the cemetery road and the main road once they were down in this little depression there was also no houses that happened to look over that spot. So it was kind of like the hidden section of the cemetery and there was also this big boulder that people sat on and a big tree you could lean up against. So that was their spot. So Molly drives in the gates, she heads down that road and she turns right onto
a dead-end road. She takes that down about a couple hundred meters till it dead-ends and they park and then the girls get out of the car, they light up cigarettes and they walk down this hill that's just beyond where this dead end comes to an end. And so they walk down this hill and it brings them to this clearing where this big rock and tree is. Rachel hops up on the rock and she turns around so she's facing back up the hill they just walk down and Molly is right next to her on her right leaning up against the tree and for the next hour
or so,
they just crushed cigarettes and talked about their various boyfriend drama and life drama and whatever else they wanted to talk about. After a while, the girls started to smell a bonfire. And from where they were sitting, they could see a hill in front of them
and there was actually another hill over here. And so their view is pretty obscured out of this little valley they're in. So they can't see any fires anywhere. And so they assumed that what they're smelling was a fire coming from the other side of the cemetery because there's that huge university over there.
And they knew sometimes the college kids would come onto the cemetery and they would light fires over there. And inevitably the police would get called and they would break up the fire because you're not allowed to have a fire on the cemetery and whenever they did that the police would actually make
rounds around the entire cemetery and historically basically if you were there hanging out they would tell you to leave. And so they think okay this is probably a good time to leave because probably in the next 30 minutes to an hour the police are gonna be here they're gonna come over here see our car and they're gonna ask what we're doing and we're gonna have to leave so let's just let's just leave now. So Rachel hops off the rock and the two of them begin meandering their way back up the hill towards the car. When they
get about halfway up the hill they notice to their right something bright. Now because they were higher up they could actually see over the hill to their right and what they were seeing was the top of a bonfire. So the girls take a couple more steps up the hill to gain some elevation to hopefully be able to see better down into where this fire is, but even when they're up almost at the top of the hill that fire is too far down on the other side of that hill that they can't see any people and they can't really tell how big the fire is. They're just basically seeing
the top flickers of it. Even though they don't know anything about the people over there at this fire, what they do know is when they showed up there was no fire over there. They would have recognized it. So whoever's over there had to have shown up and built this fire while Rachel and Molly were down at the rock and tree, which means there's a pretty good chance they didn't see Rachel and Molly. This is a pretty private area. Their car was parked a little bit off to the side of the trail. And so Molly picks up on this and she says to Rachel, hey let's let's sneak back down and walk up their hill and
look down and see who's here. I bet it's a bunch of college kids. It'll be funny to see what they're doing. But Rachel had a weird feeling about it. She's thinking to herself, if this is college kids, why would they have their bonfire this far away from campus? I mean this is literally the farthest point away from the side of the cemetery that's close to their campus. If they're having a party over here, there's a good chance that anybody going to it is going to need to drive, and that just doesn't make sense if you can just walk to the other side of the campus and have a bonfire
over there. And so Rachel is logically deducing that this is probably not college kids, but who else is having a bonfire in the secret section of the cemetery in the middle of the night? And Rachel's thinking that now if the police come here they're definitely gonna see us because we're so close to this bonfire and so it's probably not a good idea to stick around much longer. But despite Rachel's hesitations she is intrigued and she does want to see what's going on over there. So the two girls walk down the hill, they make it down to the rock and the tree, then they turn left and
they begin walking up this other hill, the hill that's gonna bring them up to this fire. And so they only get a few steps up this hill when they are suddenly hit with this disgusting putrid smell that just encompasses them and it makes them gag and they're covering their mouth and their nose and Rachel exclaims, oh my god what is that? and then as soon as she says it she realizes she was really loud and she's like... and Molly's like... and they both freeze wondering if the people on the
other side of the hill have heard them and after a little bit of silence Molly's like, you want to keep going? And Rachel's like, no we got to go. Between the horrible smell that's obviously coming from this weird fire and the fact that Rachel basically just gave them away and so for all we know these people on the other side of this hill have heard us and now they're waiting for us to come over the edge and it's gonna be really awkward if we suddenly crash their bonfire. Rachel, she's thinking about
these things and so she's like let's go we got to go. Molly's disappointed but she gets it and the two girls turn around and begin walking back and so they walk past the tree and the rock on their left they turn right and they're about to walk up the hill that's gonna bring them to their car when Rachel just turns around to look at the hill towards the fire where they were headed before. And standing at the top of that hill is a man just looking down at them and the fire is illuminating him from behind and they can clearly tell it's a man standing there looking at them. And
immediately the girls felt really uncomfortable. It was almost like they had just been caught spying even though they didn't actually get caught spying. It was what they were gonna go do and so they felt like they had almost been caught red-handed, and so Molly and Rachel just turn and begin walking up the hill kind of with their heads down. They just felt kind of awkward. And so they move a few more steps up this hill and Rachel looks again at where this guy was standing and
he's now gone, and Rachel's relieved, but then she realizes he's gone because he's now gone and Rachel's relieved but then she realizes he's gone because he's walking, power walking down the hill towards them and Rachel gasps and she grabs Molly and pushes her and says go go go go go and they start running up the hill and Rachel looks around and now this guy is running towards them he's down now at the rock and the tree he's gaining on them they sprint up over the top they run to Molly's car and Molly's fumbling with her keys to get the car open and Rachel's yelling, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. Finally she gets it open and they both
jump inside. Rachel locks the car doors and as Molly is turning the key over Rachel's looking out the back and she's waiting to see this guy and sure enough as they pull off she sees his head come up over the ridgeline just enough that he can clearly see them leaving and then he ducks back down and he disappears. And the two of them speed down the road, they make a left onto that main drive and they speed out of the cemetery. For the first few minutes of their drive neither of them say anything. This was just a very traumatic experience and it was
also very confusing because they thought they were going over to spy on college kids having a bonfire and then they're hit with that horrible smell like what was that horrible smell and then they leave and there's this guy who did not look like he was a college kid he looked like he was probably in his 40s and then he's chasing them you know what was that and when they did start talking about it they couldn't
really come to any sort of rational conclusion of what had just happened and so they were both very spooked and they decide let's just go home and talk about this tomorrow. And so Molly drops Rachel off at her house and Molly goes home and both girls go to bed. The next morning Rachel gets up and she heads down to the kitchen where her mom is already there having her morning coffee and Rachel sits down and you know, she's not a big talker. She's not about to start by saying, hey, guess what happened to me last night at the cemetery.
Instead, she just sits there and for a little bit, her mom just kind of rambles about work and what she's doing that day. And then all of a sudden her mom, it's like she has this epiphany and she goes, Rachel, Rachel, did you what? And her mom's like, someone I work with, I don't know her personally, but she works in the same building as me.
She got kidnapped from the parking garage where I parked my car. I have seen her park her car in this lot and she got kidnapped. And Rachel's like, oh my God, really? Like, what happened to her?
Did they find her? And her mom was like, yeah, but it was too late. The person who had kidnapped her had killed her and then tried to dispose of her body at the cemetery by burning her in a bonfire. Rachel suddenly felt sick because now she knew what was happening last night and she knows what that smell was. Rachel immediately pours her heart out about everything that happened the night before and her mom is totally horrified but she's in particular horrified that they clearly had been there when the killer had arrived and set up shop
and began burning this body. They were just literally 50 meters away the whole time. And so her mom tells her, you and Molly have to go to the police station
and make a statement.
They have not caught this person yet. You've seen this person, you gotta tell them. And so Rachel calls Molly and breaks the news about what was actually happening the night before and who was actually chasing them to their car and says we have to go to the police station. And so they agree, they go down to the police station and they tell them what happened, but they didn't get a great look at him. They could only say that he was
maybe in his 40s and maybe average height. And so the police wrote it all down but they basically said look if you can think of more details we would love to hear those because this isn't really enough to go on. And so the girls go back home and they're thinking to themselves did he see us? Does he know that we saw him? Do you think he knows that we know he's a killer now? And so they're freaking out but luckily within 48 hours the police actually caught this guy because he was driving around in the murder victim's car and someone spotted him. They pulled him over and he confessed and so he went to jail. Needless to say, Rachel and Molly thanked their lucky stars that when they started ascending that hill
and they were hit with that smell that Rachel said, let's not go any farther. Let's leave. Because had they continued and gone to the other side, they could have wound up in the bonfire too. The following stories all take place in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. On New Year's Eve 1980, 20-year-old Karen Potak was out at a bar with her friends celebrating and at some point in the night she slipped out. She didn't want to stay any later and she began walking home. Now she didn't have a jacket on and it was very cold outside
just kind of stumbling through the streets and a man sees her and pulls over and offers to give her a ride home. She's kind of intoxicated, and so she agrees to get in his car, and they drive off. A couple hours later, around 3 a.m., the police receive this phone call.
Yes, please, this is an emergency. Police on a squad that's pissed on the road. Maldenburg Manufacturing Company, machine shop. Please, there's an ambulance too, and there's a girl who's dead. Can you tell me what happened to her? There's two of you, she's laying on the ground in the back by the railroad tracks, by the edge of the tree.
What's the address?
I don't know.
Who are you?
Using this information from the caller, the police arrive in the back of that building and they find Karen Potak. She had been repeatedly bludgeoned over the head with a tire iron and then left for dead. Miraculously, she would survive, but because of her head injury, she forgot almost everything about that night, including the description of the guy who picked her up and who probably attacked her and who probably was the one who called police. So the police tried to interview some people in the area around where she was found,
but it was a really deserted area and no one knew anything and there was no physical evidence left at the scene, so the case went cold. Then five months later the police receive another phone call. At this point the police were not connecting this call with the call that immediately preceded finding Karen Potak, meaning they did not think that was the same person. And since in this call there were no instructions on where to find this person, they didn't really have anything to go on, so they took note of it but ultimately kind of disregarded it. But just a few hours later, a group of
teenagers were walking through the forest when they found a dead body. The body belonged to 18 year old Kimberly Compton who had literally just moved to Minnesota. She graduated high school and decided she wanted to start fresh in Minnesota. She hopped on a bus, she goes to Minnesota, she gets off the bus, she goes into the first restaurant she sees which is a diner, she sits down by herself, she's eating some food and a man approaches her and says, "'Hey, can I sit down with you?' And so she lets him sit down and he asks,
"'Who are you? What are you doing here?' And she says, "'Oh, you know, I just moved here.'" And this guy offers to drive her around town and show her the sights. And she's like, great. 15 minutes later, he would kill her with an ice pick. who keeps calling them immediately before they're finding women that have been attacked might be the
same person. And two days after Compton was killed, they get another call that confirms this. I'm so upset about it.
I keep getting drunk every day and I can't believe it. It seems like a big dream. I can't think of being locked up. If I get locked up, I'd kill myself. I'd rather kill myself than get locked up. I'll try not to kill anybody else.
From this point forward, they referred to this caller as the weepy voiced killer and even though they had his voice recorded they didn't have any physical evidence because he didn't leave any at the scene with Compton either so they didn't have much to go on. The police would go to the diner and they would talk to the staff that was there and they would give a general description of the weepy voice killer but it wasn't enough to pinpoint a suspect so once again this case went cold too. Six months later, the police received yet another call.
Fire emergency.
Please don't talk this way. I'm sorry I killed that girl. I stabbed her 40 times. Kimberly Thompson was the first one on my team. I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm sick.
I'm gonna kill myself, I'm thinking. Where are you? I'm just gonna, if somebody dies with a red t-shirt on, it's me, I killed both of you. I'm sorry, I'll never make it to heaven.
A day later, they find the body of 40-year-old Barbara Simons floating in the Mississippi River tucked up against some brush. The night before, Barbara had been out at a bar and she'd offered a cigarette to a man she hadn't met before. They began flirting and kind of hit it off and at one point they were gonna leave together and before they left, Barbara turns to one of the waitresses and kind of jokingly says, boy I hope he's nice because I'm leaving
with him. And the waitress, for whatever reason, had a really bad feeling about it and made a point of getting a really good look at the man she was leaving with. And that man, of course, would turn out to be the Wee Pee Boys killer, and as soon as he and Barbara left the bar, he would stab her to death and throw her in the Mississippi River. After the police began investigating this, they came to the bar and they interviewed that waitress, and she said, I got a really good look at this guy.
And so the police show her 100 different mugshots of previously convicted felons in the area, and she immediately identifies 38-year-old Paul Stefani and says, that's the guy. Paul had been convicted for aggravated assault, and he also had a history of mental illness. Paul is immediately put under surveillance, but within 24 hours, he manages to ditch his tail and goes straight into downtown Minneapolis, where he picks up 19-year-old street worker Denise Williams.
Paul took her down a dark alleyway, and she kind of sensed something was wrong and so she grabbed a glass bottle that was sitting on the floor of the car and when he went to attack her she managed to hit him in the head and cut his face really really badly and she managed to protect herself enough that she could get out of the car and run away and save her own life. And a neighbor saw her running out of the car and kind of saw the whole exchange, didn't like how it looked, so they called 911. When police showed up, Paul was long gone.
That same night, police get another call from the weepy voice killer. This one's a little bit different. He's actually asking for help for himself.
I need an ambulance.
Where? 1505 Westminster. 1505?
Yeah. Now, by the time this call is being made, the audio recordings of his previous phone calls had been made public. They were aired on radio shows, on TV, people had heard his voice and it's fairly distinctive and the dispatcher recognized his voice and told police there's a chance the weepy voice killer just called us. So an ambulance comes and picks up Paul Stefani and brings him to the hospital and when he's sitting in his hospital
bed police walk in and they apprehend him. He pled not guilty and prosecutors did not actually have that much evidence connecting him to each of these attacks. They had these audio recordings, but that was about it. And so ultimately he got 58 years in prison, not a life sentence. But considering his age,
it wound up functioning like a life sentence. 12 years into that sentence, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was told he only had a year to live. And so it was at this point that he confessed to all of the attacks, including one they didn't know about.
He murdered 33-year-old Kathleen Greening in her own home. He just didn't make a phone call to police afterwards. Paul would die shortly after his confessions. Thank you so much for watching. Let me know what you thought of today's episode in the comments. And remember, we have hundreds of videos for you to binge right now.
But if you're looking for a recommendation from me of that one video that's worth your time, well, it's this one right here. So give it a watch. So give it a watch. All right, until next time, see ya.
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