Scary Stories For A Rainy Night - Ep. 318 - Twisted, Bloody Hair

Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I am so crazy, unbelievably excited to tell you that tickets for Gale Yellow Brick Road are now on sale. Click the link in the description, or you can go to fathomentertainment.com or Fandango. Just type Gale, the movie will come up. You'll be able to find a theater near you. It's in over 800 theaters across America, so you should be able to find one close to you. So I just want to say, if you really, really want to support this podcast, if you want to support me, if you want to say thank you for all of the podcast episodes, if you're familiar with my YouTube channel, I have over 300 videos on there. If you want to say thank you, please go to Fandango, go to fathomentertainment.com, type in Gale, or click the link in the description and buy a movie ticket, buy one for your friend. If you really like horror films, dark fantasy thriller. It's not a slasher. It's not a gimmick. It's not like some other public domain popular IP movies that have come out recently. It actually has heart. It has a really good story. We put passion and everything that we had into making this film, and your support would mean absolutely the world to me. Please, please buy a ticket. Go support the film, I know you're going to love it. A dark Wizard of Oz film, and I promise you're not going to want to miss it. It's only in theaters for one day, February 11th. If you miss it, it's gone. It's over. Don't miss it. Get your tickets now. Oh, one last thing. Did I mention that I'm in the movie? So if you've been waiting for a face reveal, this is the ultimate face reveal. If you can spot me in the movie, and comment if you're one of the first people to comment who I play in the movie. I might just send you a little surprise. Thank you so much for listening, and I really, really hope you enjoy this episode. This happened in late October of last year in Ottawa, Ontario. I was visiting my old city to see my parents, which is always a strenuous endeavor. So I generally try to be in their house as little as possible when I'm over. To kill some boredom one night, I decided to go for a jog around the neighborhood I grew up in, around 10.30pm. I was really pushing myself as I quit drinking and was desperately trying to burn off the excess belly fat from being drunk and lazy during lockdown. I ran basically a huge circuit around the neighborhood, taking me through three parks. The third park I had to run through has no street lights. It has one right in the middle, but Ottawa has a thing where random lights shut off, and this alternates across the city's power grid to save money and electricity. Nine times out of ten, it isn't shining. Now, this park is extremely dark, especially on a quiet October night, with clear skies and dry ground. The road leading into it is well illuminated. This is a quaint, quiet, peaceful suburb. There has been some sketchy stuff that has happened in this little suburb, though. For example, just a six-minute walk from my parents' house was one of the biggest drug busts our city has ever seen. Some gang with automatic illegal weapons, the whole shebang. There were also a couple of stabbings in other areas, but very spaced apart and generally resolved by the law immediately. All in all, it's a very quaint, safe and clean place to raise a family. If I ever have kids or retire, Kanata would be an ample place to do it. I have never once felt unsafe, especially in the neighborhood my parents lived in, as it's full of some very nice houses. Through the darkness I entered the park and passed through the first part of it, which is a play structure meant for little kids. Pretty much just a wooden mini house that's next to a bouncy spring. This leads to a bigger part of the park with a basketball court, jungle gym, and a much larger play structure with a big green triceratops made of plastic in the sandbox. All this eventually leads to a path that runs behind my old elementary school. At the end of this path is my street. I almost finished my run, running through the dark spooky park as I have passed through hundreds of times before. Now, I got into the habit of falling asleep to creepy stories and have been watching a lot of horror movies lately. As I'm breaking into the blackness from the adjacent street, leading into the park, I am on the fence about taking a break and walking, but I remember I was trying to push myself. I carry on as I think, jokingly to myself. Gee, I sure hope nothing spooky happens. But as I am rounding the corner to the other half of the park, I heard a distant scraping sound. I noticed a light from somebody's cell phone shining in the sandbox. As I ran closer, I heard this scraping getting louder. I got even closer and I noticed through the moonlight that it is a man holding one of those hard rakes with the sharp tines grooming the sandbox. Now, some internal intuition told me that I know this is super weird. Why is there some guy grooming the sandbox at almost 11pm with a flashlight? As I approach further, however, I notice it isn't just a man holding a sharp rake. It's a man wearing an all-black sweatsuit, with the hood up, and a white hospital mask. He is standing underneath the play structure, using the tines of the rake to push a pink horse with wheels on it back and forth, and so on and so forth. He heard the stride of my footsteps approaching, and his head jerked upright in my direction. He quickly moved out from underneath the play structure, and shined the light on me, right into my eyes. This is really weird, I thought to myself as I flashed him an utterly exhausted, awkward wave. I have asthma, and my quads and lungs are giving out. I try super hard to up the pace, because I am fairly creeped out at this point. In a flash, he kills his light, and I cannot see a single thing anymore. My heart jumps into my throat, and I am very tuckered out at this point, ready to collapse. I heard a soft shuffling in the sand as I passed him, followed by rapid footsteps in between my strides getting closer and louder. instantaneously it clicks that this guy is charging me with the rake. It's crazy what fear and adrenaline can do, because I went from zero to a hundred real quick, sprinting faster than I would be able to normally. My whole body is burning, especially my lungs, as I cleared the park onto the well-lit path. I was moving so fast and panting so loud, I couldn't even tell if he was following me or not. I didn't look back. I cleared the end of the path and saw some guy getting out of his car. With him as my witness, I turned around, panting myself to death and wheezing. He was gone. I walked back to my street and went into my house, packing up disgusting amounts of phlegm, absolutely drenched in sweat. I avoided telling my parents this story at first, just to avoid their reaction, but everyone else in my life knew pretty quick. I don't care for police, so calling them wasn't even something that crossed my mind. Later, when I reconnected with an old friend, one who never left Ottawa, she informed me that my old elementary school converts to a homeless shelter at night. They set up cots in the gymnasium and kick them out at 6am. Her reaction was to rationalize that it was probably a mentally ill, homeless person who was bored and couldn't sleep. But what if he had a different intention? Was he waiting for a jogger to pass by? Was he trying to scare people just for the fun of it? Or was he really in a violent mood? I guess I will never know. I have been working for an independent hotel for just over four years now. We are the number one rated hotel in our city, and proud of it. I mostly work in housekeeping, but I've done some time at the front desk as well. I love my job, and have always said that my bosses are great. Now, being a housekeeper, I have seen some things. I have seen a room where someone snuck in their dog, kitten, and chicken. We don't allow pets. I once had a room that I was cleaning as a stayover that had tripods set up around the bed, professional camera equipment cases, an adult-sized pacifier, on-site, and XL-sized children's diapers. The two people that were in that room were in their early 20s. I even had a room once that we had to call the cops on for a raid because we found drugs. They found a lot of drugs and weapons in that room. Today is the first time I have ever actually felt scared to be in a guest's room. As I'm working on a room that's already been vacated, a man in the next room over catches me at my supply cart. He is set to be staying for several days and tells me, You can go ahead and clean my room now. I'm going down for breakfast. Excellent. I love getting my stayovers done early on. It makes things easier for the people working laundry the sooner we get the dirty laundry down to them. So, I pop over into his room, opening it up and propping the door open with a stopper, like we always do. The first thing I notice is that he has around 20 prescription bottles lined up on one of the two beds, along with insulin and needles. I'm nosy, I'll admit it, and I wanted to see what he was on. Oddly, it was only two different types of medication, for all twenty bottles. About two-thirds were a diabetes medication, and the rest were a cholesterol medication. That's a little weird that he has so many bottles of the same meds, but whatever. I go to make the bed and see that some of the bedding has been stained, and I sigh, knowing now that I'll have to change all the bedding instead of just being able to turn down the sheets and blankets. So, I leave the room, closing it behind me to get the linens I need, and then head right back to the room. I prop the door open again and head to set the clean linens on the desk chair. When I see out of the corner of my eye, two notes sitting on the TV armoire. It wouldn't mean anything, except I caught the word, kill, scrawled on it. I dropped the linens and took a closer look. What I read on the first note made my blood run cold. You don't have to forgive her. You just can't kill her. You are here to take money and alcohol away from you. Get over having to kill her and you can safely leave. My heart was pounding. My eyes went to the second note, which had just looked like a to-do list at first glance, but in the end made my stomach churn. Spray and wash. Apply for Medicare. Insubordination. The soul is healed by being with children. Bank card follow-up. Inheritance. Savings. Kawaii Pop, 10,500. Map, Montana. There will be a day of reckoning. Did you tell mom what I said? How did Bev get my address? It was too much. I quickly snapped pictures of them on my phone so I could show my boss why I would not clean his room. I left the room quickly, closing it up behind me. As the door closes, I turn, and I see the man just ten feet away from me, coming back to his room. My heart is in my throat, but I manage a smile and tell him, I need more supplies. I'll be back to your room in a bit. I take off straight for the elevator, having noticed our maintenance man waiting for the slow transport. In a hushed tone, I tell him what I found, and he sees I am shaken, not a normal state for me. He rides down with me, and I go straight to my boss and tell her that for the first time in all these years, I am not comfortable being in a guest room. I show her the pictures, and her face is still and pale. She goes to the front desk and asks our general manager for a minute of her time, and brings her into the office to show her. She agreed this was not a safe situation and took our maintenance man with her to go inform the man that he had one hour to get his belongings and leave the hotel, and he was not welcome back. I spent a few minutes in the laundry room, trying to calm down. Then my boss went back up with me to the floor until the man was officially out of the hotel. When I was about nine years old, my family used to live in a remote area on the outskirts of town. Considering the location of the suburb, that area was surrounded by warehouses and such. At the time, my family did not have a phone in the house, and neither did our neighbors. There were no cell phones back then, or they were a luxury and not everyone could afford one. This took place in the end of the 90s. So, if I needed to call my mom whilst she was at work, I had to either go to my dad's work, or a company next to his, which was closer, to make a phone call. My dad's work was a relatively short walk from our house, probably 30 minutes or less. My dad was working at a huge unloading dock for metallurgical, natural resources shipments. In order to get to my dad's work, I had to walk past another adjacent company, just like the one where my dad was working. I will call it Docks 2. My dad's work, as well as Docks 2, had a sort of watchtower. It is just a cabin mounted at the top of a tall platform, and you need to go up a decent amount of stairs to get to the top. There was always a guard inside overseeing the whole yard from the top, during the day and night, to make sure no one is in danger, and no break-ins. The phones were located only on sight watchtowers at the time. Docks 2 were much closer to our house, about a ten minute walk. One day, as I have done many times before, I went to Docks 2 to make a call. I climbed the stairs, knocked on the door, and was welcomed in by a guard I used to see quite often, and knew well. However, that day he wasn't alone. The new guy, who was 28 at the time, was there. Apparently he was a new employee hired to work shifts. He was this very tanned man, always wearing military style outfits. I was just an average looking child looking exactly my age. My hair was very blonde, which made my cheeks always appear rosy red and give me even more of a childish appearance. When the new guy saw me that day, he would not take his eyes off me. As soon as I was about to finish my call with my mom, the new guy went outside to smoke. When I came out, he smiled at me and asked me what my name is, and whether I came there often to make calls. I don't remember what I said, but I felt very shy, because he was staring deeply into my eyes. I will call him The Creep. Fast forward a few days, and I came to that tower again to make a call. And there he was again, but that time he was alone. I spoke to my mom, and as I was about to leave, he asked me if I won any tea, to which I refused. He then proceeded to ask how my school was going, and things like that. He offered to help me with my homework, however I told him I have got it all sorted. Harmless, but strange. On a side note, I just want to say that what gave me shivers when I was near him, is whenever he looked at me, he looked drunk. which was very unsettling. Mind you, he wasn't actually drunk, but his eyes would get so hazy and his face flush red. Sometime later I saw him again. That time I was walking to my dad's work with my friend and he was doing some digging in docks too. When he saw me through the metal fence that was separating us, he just leaned against his shovel and stared at me. He didn't say hi or anything. After those encounters, for quite some time I took alternative routes to see my dad, or play with puppies at my dad's work, or make calls to my mom, because he really creeped me out. However, one day I had to call my mom urgently. My dad's work phone didn't work, so I had to go to Docks 2 Tower, hoping I wouldn't see him. The creep was there, and oh boy was he so happy I came. He was complaining how I don't come anymore to see him. As I was making a call, he grabbed another chair and sat right next to me, very close. It took a while for my mom to get on the phone, because she was busy with something, and someone went to get her whilst I was on the line. It felt like hours waiting, and the creep was just seated next to me, looking at me and smiling. When my mom finally got to the phone, he got up and went to make me tea and brought some biscuits. When I was done talking, he insisted I have some tea with him, which I didn't, and he just kept on trying to strike a conversation, but this time the tone of conversation was different. He asked me how old exactly I was, and I told him 12. I have no idea why I lied. He told me his age, and although I knew he was much older, I felt really weirded out that he wanted to talk to me so badly, or had any interest in me. My alarms did go off every time I was around him, but I guess I didn't feel overly in danger. He then proceeded to tell me that I was beautiful, and asked me whether I had a boyfriend. He asked me if I have already dated boys and what type of boys I liked. I was so uncomfortable and so eager to leave at that point, but he would just keep dragging me into these weird conversations. I could tell he was drinking that day. When I began moving towards the door, he followed me. Eventually we both were outside. However, in order to get down from the tower, you need to walk this narrow path towards the stairs. He stood blocking it so I couldn't leave. He got very close to me, and I was freaking out. The only escape tactic I could come up with as a child was to pretend that I'm seeing someone from the top of the tower. So I began waving my hand at the road down at the bottom and towards houses in the distance, pretending I see someone I know and saying, Oh look, that's my uncle, he's waving. The creep looked in that direction, but either didn't care or could tell that I was lying. I kept on telling him that the uncle who waved back is a very big, angry man, and if I don't come down this instance and go home, we both are going to be in trouble. The creep didn't budge. He got even closer and eventually pressed me against the railing. He kept on asking me his weird questions whilst I was terrified to move, because I didn't want to move my body against his, if that makes any sense. So, I just froze. He asked me if I would go on a date with him and that he is looking for a girlfriend, and at that particular moment, someone was coming up the stairs to the tower, so he let me go, but asked me to come back. I have not told anyone about this encounter at that stage because I was afraid that my parents would get angry. I also felt very embarrassed and thought that people would judge me for what's happened. Sometime later I was home, and it was around 9pm. I know what time it was because it was my bedtime. Suddenly, a car pulled into our driveway. I came to see who it was through the front room window, and I could see it was the creep, but this time with other guys, blasting music in his car and shouting my name. I have no idea how he knew where I lived. He must have followed me one day. My dad was outraged. He asked me who these people were, but before I could even answer, he rushed outside. Apparently, the creep wanted me to go out with him and his friends. My dad obviously refused, saying that I am a child and too young to hang out with them or go out at this time of night, and that if he sees any one of them ever again, he will beat the living heck out of them. So, they drove away. I was so upset with my dad that he called me a child in front of them. I think because we lived so far away from everything, I was really keen to make friends, as there were no kids around as such. For a while after that, I had not seen the creep again, or heard of him. A significant time later, I was walking to my dad's work again, and I have completely forgotten about this creep. He was working in docks too with his friends. Maybe those that came with him that night in the car. Or maybe these were just his co-workers. I got scared when I saw him and even though he shouted hi to me, I pretended to not hear it. He said something to his friends and I remember so clearly how one of his friends exclaimed loudly, Her? I guess he told them about me. or his interest in me, but no one expected me to be a child. I looked at the guy that exclaimed. He was staring at me in utter disbelief. He must have been 20 to 25 or so, I think, and the creep was saying something to him. His friend screamed at him. Have you lost your mind? Clearly the creep didn't see me as a child like everyone else did. Fast forward again, maybe half a year later. One day I was home alone in the evening, waiting for my parents to come back from work We lived in a very safe community so sometimes I be home by myself for a little bit after school until my parents got home I was playing a game whereby I was a singer I had this stage created in the living room and I was performing in front of the chairs pretending chairs were my live audience. It was pitch black outside. At some point during my performance, I see someone staring at me through the living room window. That person must have been crouching down as only the top of their face could be seen from the bottom. As soon as that person realized I saw them, they ran. I was so embarrassed that someone saw me performing, scared and shocked at the same time, that I was glued to the floor. I don't know if that was him. Our dog didn't react at all, maybe because the music was playing very loud. I was scared to go outside the house and check, but I peered through the window, and no one was there. That person had to climb over a wooden fence to get to our living room window. I told my parents about it. I have also asked my friend whether it was him who came around, but he said it wasn't. I don't know if my friend felt shy to admit he was watching me, or whether it was the creep. In closing, one day I went to docks too with my dad, as my dad needed something from there for work. I saw the old guard that I knew well and asked about the creep, and was told that he doesn't work there anymore. I don't know whatever became of him. This incident happened just a few hours earlier, and I am telling this story currently at my workplace. I work in the garden area of a home improvement store. I don't work the cash registers, and my manager doesn't even let me water the flowers, so a lot of the time, I have nothing to do. This results in me taking extremely long bathroom breaks, where I just scroll on my phone. I know it sounds bad, but it's better than standing around trying to look busy. Today was the same as any other with me wasting time in the bathroom. Nothing of interest happened until my work phone buzzed at the same time as the stall next to mine. This becomes important later. A few seconds later, I see that the guy in the next stall had his hand stretched to the ground with his palm facing up. I at first thought he had run out of toilet paper and was asking for mine. He just stayed silent for a while, so I ignored him after that. Then he started moving that hand uncomfortably close to my leg, so I immediately scooted away and prepared to leave. Once the man noticed that, he hurriedly got out of his stall before I could leave. Another few seconds of silence. I took a peek out from the gap of the stall door to see what he was doing, and just like a scene from a horror movie, our eyes connected. He was barely an inch away from my door, trying to peek inside. My blood ran cold. If you're wondering why I didn't immediately open the door and cuss the guy out, I really hate confrontation. I avoid it whenever possible and I do my best to not draw attention to myself. I stood sideways by the door so he wouldn't be able to see me. That's when the whispering started. I don't know what the first thing he said was, but it sounded like moaning. The next part was a bit more audible. He said something along the lines of wanting to see more of my unflushed toilet paper. I was thoroughly disgusted. This guy was a complete creep, and I was alone in the bathroom with him. My heart was beating faster by the second. I knew I had to stay there until another person came into the bathroom. No way was I going to confront him alone. Probably a minute later, someone finally arrives, and I take this as my chance to wash my hands and get out of there. Thankfully, the presence of the other person made the man quit his creepy behavior. As I was about to leave, he blocked my path for a quick second before stepping aside. The weird thing was, I don't even think he works at the store, because he wasn't wearing any vest. My store is extremely lenient about uniform, but most workers at least wear a vest or something connected to the store. He just looked like a regular customer. I am certain I heard two phone dings echo in that bathroom. The phones have a signature ring to them, so it couldn't have been a coincidence. Either way, he only started creeping on me once the phone ring made it clear that I was an employee. The situation really creeped me out, and I have been totally unfocused on my work since then. I kept prowling in the garden area, looking for any man wearing a similar outfit to the creeper. I have an incredibly hard time distinguishing faces, so I probably wouldn't even recognize him if I did see him again. This happened to me when I was 21, after I tried to take my own life. I woke up in the hospital in the middle of the night to a nurse saying he needed to replace my IV. He jabs me two or three times, but doesn't hit a vein. So I ask if he can get someone else to try. He says no and keeps going. As he is doing this, he is pushing and wiggling the needles around under my skin, saying he is trying to get the vein. By the seventh or eighth needle, it registers that he is intentionally trying to hurt me. I ask him, Why are you doing this? He just says back, It's your own fault that you're here. I was too weak to fight back, and it was in the middle of the night. there was no one else around I could call out to. I have no idea how many times he ended up puncturing me in the end. The next day, a different nurse was taking out my IV. She was horrified because she said it was the biggest needle she had ever seen using on a living patient. Not sure why you would use needles on a dead patient, but that's what she said. A lot of people shrug this off when I tell them about it, but it was so terrifying being alone. Helpless, and knowing that the person who was supposed to care for you hated you and wanted to cause you pain. This happened a few years ago when I was about 15 years old. It was a pretty common occurrence at the time for my family and the families of my two best friends to go out for dinner. During one such time, my best friends and I decided that it would be more adult and cool for us to sit away from the rest of our families, and to just eat and chat at a separate table. We were a couple of young teens having a fun time. That's when one of my friends, Jenny, whispered that the guy sitting at the table next to us seemed to be staring at me. I slightly turned my head and realized that he did seem to be looking my way. but I brushed it off. I mean, we were at a restaurant. People looking around seemed normal and innocent enough. As the time progressed, my other friend Gabby also noticed the man staring at me, and we began to get a little more concerned. He had seemed to have finished his food a long time ago, but just continued to sit there watching us. Especially me. The man seemed to be in his 30s, and his expression was starting to creep the three of us out, but we decided not to do anything in case it was just us overthinking. Eventually the man did pay and leave, and we felt relieved. But as soon as I took my first bite of food, Jenny motioned to me frantically. We were sitting by a window, and as it turned out, the man had left the restaurant, but he hadn't fully left the premises. He was standing outside the window, staring at me. At this point we realized this wasn't normal behavior, but we also didn't want to alert our families and cause a scene, so we kept eating, but also kept our attention on the window. By the time we were all done with dinner and our bill had been paid, the man was still outside. We were worried he would try something, so we stayed close to our dads on the way out. He followed us as we walked to our cars from a distance, but eventually changed direction and left. The whole ordeal was super creepy to us, but we let it go because it was over, or so we thought. Three months later, the three of us decided to visit the busy downtown area of our city for fun. We were standing on a street corner trying to figure out where to go next, when I felt Gabby tapping my shoulder. At first, I didn't respond, but when she continued, I looked up, and I felt like my heart stopped. It was the same guy from the restaurant. The restaurant had been nowhere near where we were currently standing, yet somehow, by sheer coincidence, we had ran into him again in a city of huge population. The guy made eye contact with me, and I could tell he recognized us. We immediately walked away as fast as we could and he started to follow but after a few minutes eventually we did lose him. We tried to then continue on with our plans and did end up having a good time all things considered. However, just when we had decided to head back home we ran into the guy and one of his friends again. This time we were really freaked out. He spotted us again and this time, him and his friend followed us. Gabby said maybe he won't come after us if we go into a makeup store. We tried that, but nope. They walked right inside after us. At this point, Jenny was ready to call the police, but we decided to try and lose them one last time by ducking into a toy store. We stayed in the store for a while and kept an eye out outside. They walked back and forth for a few minutes looking for us, but eventually they left the area and we decided now was the time to make our move and leave. This time we lost them for good, but the whole ordeal was beyond stressful. The three of us never told anyone else what happened. I still don't know what he wanted for me, or what would have happened if he had caught up to us, but I am glad I haven't seen the guy since. All these years later, my friends and I think back to this incident, and still think about how crazy the odds were to meet the same creep more than once, in two completely different, random places. I was 12 years old. It was the summer between grade 6 and grade 7. My family had rented this really awesome cottage by the ocean in Prince Edward Island. Big cottage with a jacuzzi, a field of fresh barley growing in the backyard, which, if you walked to the end of the field, there was a little wooden path that took you into kilometers worth of our own private beach. It was easily one of the nicest cottages I ever stayed at. Prince Edward Island is a beautiful province too, by the way. Definitely go if you have the chance. I remember asking about sharks in the water to my parents, and they just laughed and told me to worry more about jellyfish, because the water is too cold for sharks, but there are a few jellies that can get you in the shallows if you aren't careful. They aren't aggressive, though. Anyway, the beach we had was really cool. So many types of crabs and jellyfish that are actually fun to play with. all just sprawled out for kilometers of beautiful red sand decorated with tide pools. When you finally walk all the way out to the ocean in low tide, you could continue walking for miles through the surf. Unfortunately, I found this out soon enough. It was a normal day at the beach with my family, filming videos and exploring. My brother and I ditched our parents and decided to go for a swim. The water in this beach was about as warm as the Atlantic water gets. I swear, in the more shallow water, it felt just like a public swimming pool on a very hot day. I was wrestling my brother for a bit. I slapped him in the back, performing what we called a five-star. He got upset and started throwing me around the water. He then threw a jellyfish at me, stinging me in my chest, and threatened to pee on me, where I then threw the jellyfish back at him, and a jellyfish fight erupted. My parents had reconvened to our location on the shore and motioned to my brother and I that they had brought lunches. Later, my brother said to me while making an L on his forehead and making a face. My parents called me over, but I wanted to keep swimming. This water was barely up to my waist, so I kept walking further out to get to where it became deeper. I kept walking out until the water was just up to my nipples and started doing a front crawl. I did a couple backflips underwater and bobbed up and down a bit. I then decided I was cold and turned to head back to the shore. What I thought were seabirds turned out to be my family hooting and hollering for me to come back. They looked like tiny little specks off in the distance. I could barely make out that my dad was waving his arms in the air. This instantly freaked me out, because I had no idea I traveled that far in such a short amount of time. Being a 12-year-old child, I had no idea anything about undertoes or riptides. I just knew I had to get back to shore like my life depended on it. Because it did. The resistance of the undertow was fierce. Having gone surfing since this incident, I now know if you are caught in a riptide to remain calm and swim parallel to the shore until you get out of the riptide. That simple. I did not know this at the time. Full panic ensued. Thank my lucky stars, in my panic, I ended up splashing myself out of the current. This was because I was a bad swimmer. If it kept taking me further, I would have definitely drowned, and the water was becoming deeper. The undertow at my feet was still very strong, although manageable enough to slowly move through, creating lots of resistance and making me work extra hard. Almost drowning is quite the workout. I knew I was slowly but surely making my way back to shore. My parents saw that I was heading back, so they continued to eat lunch. I was becoming exhausted, just trying to march and swim my way back into shore. I was still very far away when something forced me to stop doing everything I was doing and listen to the sound of my pounding heartbeat. Something slippery and soft brushed up against my leg. I looked around, tried to make out the ocean floor below the waist-deep water I was standing in, still fighting the waves. There was no seaweed below me. Must have been a jellyfish or some sort of fish. I tried to reassure myself as I began moving forward again. As I am thinking this and trying to make out what's underneath the waves, I thought I saw a shadow in the water. A wave obstructed whatever it was and before I could even think about anything. I felt the force of that same slippery sensation slide across my entire body. Something was in the water with me, and it was gigantic. Soft, but gigantic and terrifying at the same time. I could barely breathe, I was so shook. In some fit of hysterical panic, I started trying to swim away as fast and explosively as I could. First, front crawl, but switched to a backstroke to see behind me before I pretty much had an asthma attack and was forced to stop. I could barely breathe properly and was shaking with fear. I remembered in school that sharks have a sort of ESP and can sense fear. They respond to panicking humans like they are wounded prey. I kept scanning all around me. I could barely see anything through the waves until the sun poked out. Inside a particularly big wave was a giant, black, 10-12 foot long sea monster. It swam diagonally in my direction so fast it was like it almost vanished into thin air. I was still far from the shore. I decided to slowly walk one foot at a time, planting my feet and fighting the undertow. I was still in waist-deep water. I remembered on Shark Week that sharks can swim at 40 kilometers and most shark attacks occur in waist-deep water. I thought a wave looked like a shark fin and I immediately shifted position to face my demise. Then I noticed, in this level of fear, almost every wave looks like a shark fin. As I looked around frantically, the sun went behind another cloud, removing the glare. And I swear, about ten feet away from me was a dark shadow twice my size. I froze, as it disappeared out of sight again. I did a 360 and couldn't see it anywhere. The same level of fear took over me, where I decided to stop taking my time and start backstroking as fast as I could, like some sort of water strider insect. I had seen jaws at this point in my life, and every time my legs would kick together, a little V of wake would form on the water's surface, looking almost exactly like the shark nose as it is surfacing the water and attacking people. Periodically, I would abandon swimming altogether and start screaming and kicking my legs viciously in front of me In the hopes that I'd get its nose I wasn't even sure if it was around me anymore, in hindsight But at that very moment, that shark was going to bite my balls off any second My heel brushed something again, and again I was scraping bottom The water level was now down to my knees I stood up and sprinted as fast as I could to shore. I kissed the sand as I got out of the water. My parents began scolding me about going out that far, telling me about riptides, etc. Great, now they tell me, I thought. I was shivering, shaking, utterly exhausted, and so emotionally and mentally rattled, I just disassociated and said nothing as they gave me crap. I did not tell my parents or my brother about any of this. My brother could be a huge jerk, and I almost knew for a fact that none of them would really believe me. I could hear them already. There's no sharks in these waters. It must have been seaweed. My brother making chicken gestures at me. I saved myself the trouble. I just said nothing, ate my lunch, drank some juice, and decided to go back to the cottage after. Sharks rarely attack humans. If they did, people wouldn't go swimming. Beaches in Florida would be a bloodbath of slaughtered surfers. It's even more rare to find big sharks in Prince Edward Island. That isn't a lie. My parents reassured me repeatedly on the road trip down and after getting to the cottage. that you will never find a shark in the Maritimes, because the water is just too cold. Any sharks you see will be super small and restricted to the gulf and very shallow bays. As we were driving to another beach days later, the radio DJ gave a shout-out to the largest white shark ever recorded. It was a female just over six meters long, caught in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, off the coast of Prince Edward Island. I decided to stay dry and catch some sun that day. Thank you. Thank you. 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