elämän pelottavin kokemus, the American style

"This is my DL horror story that I tell on occasions like this. I used to get my hair cut at a barber on Santa Monica blvd. I was sitting in my barber's chair and he turned me and I was suddenly face to face with the guy in the next chair. He had the most terrifying look and his eyes seemed like he was staring right into my soul. It was hypnotizing and not in a good way. I averted my eyes but not before thinking that this guy was going to kill me. After I was finished, I paid and almost literally ran to my car for fear he'd follow me and knife me. I didn't go back for a while. When I did go back, everyone was talking about the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez who had been caught the previous night. He was a regular there and he was the guy who stared me down. The realization that I was that physically close to a mass murderer was equally scary as the incident itself. When I saw the photos in the newspapers and TV of him, it never came close to capturing his aura of evil."

"I got caught in a tornado last fall. I was at home and jumped in the bathtub with only a large pillow to cover me. I remember hearing the sirens wailing and the rain and wind outside getting louder and louder. Then it all stopped, even the sirens, and there was complete eerie silence. I started to get out of the tub, when suddenly it picked up again from zero to a hundred in what felt like seconds. I could feel the house shaking as if it was sitting right next to a train track (reflecting on it later I was reminded of the scene in Close Encounters when the boy is abducted). I could hear crashing outside at first, then inside...and I knew it had breached either the roof or outside walls. I just sunk further and further beneath the pillow, praying not to die."

voi voi...

"I was home alone with my parents out for the night. I was only 11 years old and I was petrified of our basement and the entrance was an old barndoor. All night I kept hearing noises in the house. Then the phone rang and I picked it up and a voice said "good evening" in a voice that implied Dracula. I hesitated and the voice said, "it's your grandpa, what's the matter"". Thank God I was potty trained."

"Finding out I spent a week trying to return a wallet to a serial killer. ...

I found a wallet one evening on the way home from a bar in the late 80s. There wasn't money in it, but there was ID with a local address, and I knew the neighborhood it was in. I got the number from 411, left a couple of messages. No return call. Tried, once, to drop it off, but no one answered. I finally dropped it in the mail.

A few months later, he was caught, and I caught it on the news. Scary motherfucker. I always wondered if he used his wallet as a lure for ex-Boy Scouts like me. It wasn't Dahmer or anyone you'd have heard of, unless you were local."