Real Scary Stories About Evil Kids

0:00You're having a good time, you're out drinking with the boys, now it's time to pay the tab. Well, there are court costs, attorney fees, higher insurance costs, damage to your car, do you why fines? Not to mention the damage to your social life, plan a sober ride or pay the price. Drinking and driving costs more than your drinks, it could cost a life. One more at What'sTheDamage.org, brought to you by Virginia DMV. At the UPS store, reinsure your small viz stand out with a variety of high quality paper stock options, banners, posters for stores and more. Most locations are independent leoed, product services pricing and hours of operation may fear. See center for details. The UPS store. Be unstoppable. Come into your local store today and get your print on. Hello, I'm Wilkins, stories all the time. The lads are here. Let's get into it. Now I have a Halloween trick-or-treating story for you about a not only terrifying child nowhere is if you decide to run it outside of the Halloween season though because it

1:02ticks place actually in February. So that's what made it so hurry at first. The knock on the door, then the little kid standing there in some ghost costume saying trick-or-treat and holding out his battered pumpkin pale. A lone kid trick-or-treating in a classic ghost costume is kind of creepy on Halloween anyway, but at least it's supposed to be. This was a Friday night in early February, nine of them exactly. Now in that moment I was just a bit speechless. I couldn't see what the kid looked like under. His little sheet goes costume, but he was the height and build of a small six year old. He sounded like a boy and they just kind of dummy repeated trick-or-treat at him and he nodded enthusiastically and said yeah, and shook his little bucket in such a very enduring way. And when he shook it, I could see that he had some other candy in there, I guess, for my nearest neighbors. See, I lived in a very rural sub-reproptee when this all went down and the houses weren't super close together, but far enough apart that it could feasibly walk around a small neighbor or trick-or-treating. At least, that's how the kids did it on Halloween. I hadn't really dealt with one in February before, nor one lone kid this little who wasn't actually accompanied by his parents.

2:03I told him to just wait in the porch and then close the screen door and went back inside and pulled up some Reese's pieces and put the bag inside of his bucket. And the little kid thanked me extremely politely actually and then said, see you tomorrow, mister. Oh, you would, would you? I thought to myself. I know I spent the next day occasionally sort of laughing to myself at what a clever little scam this kid had cooked up. It was a friendly neighborhood. Who was going to say no to an adorable tiny sheet goes trick-or-treating in February? I'd it was so silly and so obvious that it was almost surprising to me that more kids don't try this. And by telling me, see you tomorrow, he'd given me fair warning to make sure that I had a fresh stalk of candy in. And I made sure to grab extra while I was at the store, actually. And it vaguely occurred to me that as a guy who lived alone in his mid-ministreters, giving candy to strange-loan kids could probably end up being an issue. And I figured as long as the kids stuck to the porch and full view of the neighbors, and since everyone in the area knew each other, it would be fine to give the kid a little bit of candy for his little scam. And besides, my girlfriend stayed over some nights, and she was just away for the next

3:04while. But I didn't expect the scam to even last until she got back. I figured that there couldn't be any harm in actually entertaining it. My boy was I wrong. But in ways that I couldn't ever predict. Now that night at 9 o'clock on the dot, the doorbell rang, and the little sheet ghost kids stood there. Trick or treat, Mr. And then he held up that pale and shook it. He had a decent hole already it looked like, although nowhere close to what he'd have gotten on Halloween. I laughed, nodded my approval, and then dropped some candy into his bucket, and he thanked me and left with another, see you tomorrow, Mr. Now this ritual repeated itself for the next week, and by the time the following Friday came around and the doorbell went to ring at 9 o'clock, I was starting to get a little frustrated actually. My girlfriend was set to come back into town the next day, and I had to actually get her from the airport, so I needed to be up at like four of them. And I'd also somehow convinced myself that this kid's candy scam, no matter how sweet ten and dear ring it actually was, would last exactly seven days and be over by the time my girl got back. I hadn't mentioned the weird ghost kid to her in her calls, and now it felt kind of odd having to explain that a kid was trick or treating at our house almost every night in February.

4:08And yeah, it had been happening while you were away. And no, I didn't mention it because, reasons I guess. Really, I could have just explained exactly this, that I expected the kid to get bored before he did, but I was looking for reasons to be annoyed that night. Now, when I opened the door, the kid said his usual trick or treat and held up his bucket. And when he shook it, I saw that he had a whole bunch of candy this time. Now, I rolled my eyes and said something about how this gown was clearly paying off, buddy. And the kid made a sort of confused, huh? And against my better judgment, it caused me to snap a little. I told him that it had been cute and funny to start with, but that I'd give him a bunch of candy so he could at least respect my intelligence and acknowledge that it's a natural scam. And I told him that you don't trick or treat in February and asked him to confirm that he knew it wasn't actually Halloween, right? And when I asked this question, a kid then lowered his bucket and then lowered his head like he was sad. And through his little ghost costume, I just heard him mutter that I wasn't supposed to ask that. I spent years wishing we told someone. If only it had been some kind of supernatural curse story, then maybe I wouldn't be dealing

5:08with injuries that I have to this day instead. The kid looked back up at me through his little ghost costume and began laughing in a way that was clearly tormenting and cruel. And then I heard a creak from the porch on my right and another much older kid stepped around the side of the house and said, you don't ask that because I said so. And then before I could react, this tall, wirey teenager started punching me with some kind of brass knuckle made out of a chain and the blow was wagony. I immediately fell to the ground and then took a flurry of these kicks. And the whole time, that obnoxious ghost child, I could hear laughing with some type of glee. I'd been so bi-insighted by the attack that I hadn't even thought to yell or scream. And now I finally did and the teen attacking me responded by stomping on my spine, kicking me in the ribs and leaping off of the porch. I vaguely saw the little ghost kid climb onto the teenagers back like some type of piggyback ride and then they run off into the darkness. And as quick as I could, I started to drag myself to my feet and call the cops. They got this surprisingly fast for it where I was an eventually accompanied me to the local hospital so I could get checked out. I had a couple broken ribs and my spines never been quite right since that attack, I think.

6:10The cops said that it was the third similar report of kids doing this in the county and when we checked with my immediate neighbours, none of them had actually been visited by the ghost kid or his violent older brother. And so it seemed like the whole thing had been targeted at my place. At first, I was completely baffled because the kids didn't steal anything. The older one just beat me violently and then they both left and the only thing they've really gotten out of it was just a little bit of free candy. Now I kept harassing the cops saying maybe I was in danger, maybe the kids would come back and eventually a detective did come to visit me and told me that he wasn't strictly supposed to let me notice but he would if it would set my mind at ease. Basically the working theory was that it was some kind of gang initiation. The teenager who beat on me would accompany the little kid and tell their target challenge them in the fact that it wasn't Halloween and then there'd be an attack and the attacker would be initiated into sick Anne. But from what the cops were working on, the attacker in each kiss had been a different guy but the ghost kid, they thought that that was the same little kid each time. The detective told me on the download that they suspected that the ghost kid was the gang leaders on son and supposedly as much of a psycho as his old man.

7:12So this class act was getting his own little kid to lead gang initiations and I'd just been an unknowing slug who was in their own place at the wrong time. Now I never really heard any more about it or any more reports of this kind of gang initiation so maybe they realised that it drew too much attention. I guess I've got to be thankful that they settled on something a little childish and not actually fatal instead of the usual murder guy and your own kind of thing. On the other hand, it kind of sucks to think about the kids being initiated into these gangs in the first place, even older teenagers. But when I think about the ghost kid laughing as I got panned on and beaten, there's no doubt in my mind that this kid's mind was already long gone into the darkness and I pity anyone who encounters him as he becomes an adult. So I've got a story for you about a time when I was a young kid myself and we encountered a strange child. I think this is genuinely the scariest thing this ever actually happened to me and if I get sick like a fever or anything this is always the thing I have nightmares about if I'm going to have them. So I figured that I'd try and exercise them by writing to you about it. So this was back in the 90s which was the best time to be a kid because it just was. This happened in like 97 and life was just simpler and more relaxed back then.

8:14Things really changed everywhere after the beginning of the 2000s. I think we all know why and it's not just in the souls of talking. For me things changed before that this summer of 97 though. I'm where I think back on it I picture it like a movie. Me and my four buddies, three other guys, one girl, we didn't have some cool nickname like the losers club and IT or the goonies and I don't even remember if the kids were called the goonies in that movie. But anyway we didn't have a cool team name, we were just kind to the gang. It was me, James, Barry, Pat and Kendall. That summer we spent most of the time exploring our rural neighbourhood playing various made up games and fields and forests and just having a good time. We built a fort, we made a dam, we rode our bikes, we had picnics. We were all aged 8 to 10 and wanted the summer to last forever. Or at least until our quarters ran out of the locator at Goon Cold or one of us almost died. Unfortunately it's the last one that brought an end to our summer fun. We met the strange kid on a Monday. We knew him for five days. He said his name was Russell. At the time we were finishing up our fort in the forest so we let Russell tag along because

9:17he asked. Now he seemed younger than us and he said that he just moved into the area. He had a pretty cool new bike which at the time I didn't find suspicious. And now when I look back on it though I think Russell probably stole that bike. You see, Russell was a super-enkempton scruffy kid. Like his clothes we're almost rags. I don't mean like some old Victorian kid just typical normal 9-tiskie clothes but they was super-torn and dirty and hand me down. It made Russell look like he came from a family that my sister would have called Dipper. Russell came to hang out with us every day at a week and disappeared at dinner time like clockwork. Now when Barry and I mentioned Russell in front of my mom she said that she thought that he must be part of the farming family who'd moved into the farm down the way. He wasn't as it turns out but it was a good guess. He was just some of the random neighborhood kid who'd recently started hanging around. You're having a good time, you're out drinking with the boys, now it's time to pay the tab. Well, there are court costs, attorney fees, higher insurance costs, damage to your car,

10:19do you why finds? Not to mention the damage to your social life, plan a sober ride or pay the price, drinking and driving costs more than your drinks. It could cost a life. Learn more at what'sthedamage.org, brought to you by Virginia DMV. Every day the world gets a little weirder, and a lot more awesome. Cool stuff daily takes a look at everything from mining in space to the latest in the fight against cancer to how AI is basically changing everything. It's all the cool stuff you didn't know you needed to know. Join us for cool stuff daily as we take a quick look at science, tech and the wait what stories that make you sound way smarter at dinner. On Friday, Russell baked and pleaded with us to come with him and see something called that he'd found. We had plans to carve our initials into the trees the day, but it could wait so we let Russell lead us around the outskirts of some fields that we weren't really supposed

11:21to cut through. Eventually, after we crossed the little area of trees we'd never been in and had to balance our way over a small stream, we reached the destination Russell had in mind. It was a massive sinkhole. But heard about the sinkhole in the area, we'd all been vague who warned to stay away from it, but none of us actually knew where it was. Now Russell had let us write to it a more to the point he was sort of waxing poetic about how he lived down in the hole. No you don't, Candle said to him. Russell insisted that yes he did. He lived down in the sinkhole. According to him, you jumped into the sinkhole and a teleporter duties her a magical place called Salt City where they had arcade machines on free play and it was super awesome. And then he said he'd show us, as long as one of us jumped down the sinkhole. Of course, we all knew this was insane. None of us wanted to go near the sinkhole, let alone jump down in it and we were way too old to believe in magical teleporters to place his called Salt City. A guest Russell, a towed to name Salt Lake City before and decided Salt City sounded like an appealing alternative. But when you think about it, it's hardly the magical kingdom of Turbithia, is it?

12:22Salt City, I mean come on. Now anyways, Russell was fruting and hollering about the Salt City this and Salt City that and demanding that we jump down in that sinkhole to go there with him. At first, it didn't dawn on us to ask why Russell wanted to throw ourselves down a hole which would most certainly result in our deaths. So we started playing along, grueling him about the Salt City as we walked around the edges of the sinkhole. Not too close though, vaguely aware that there was a danger Russell might try and push one of us in. Why wouldn't he jump in, we asked. Because he was saving the teleports for us, he said. How did he leave each day to play with us? Magic, etc. And it was all just complete nonsense. And eventually Kendall whispered to me that maybe it was a bit dangerous that Russell wanted us to do this and we should probably tell an adult. I agreed, so I tried to get the other tree to come with us. James had gotten real argumentative with Russell though and was trying to get him to jump down if he was so insistent. I whispered to James that if Russell actually did, it would be in a lot of trouble and that's when I think James finally grasped the gravity of the situation. Russell was trying to persuade us to do something extremely dangerous to ourselves and

13:24any kid who would do that wasn't someone we wanted to be friends with obviously. We decided to leave Russell to his little hole. And unfortunately Russell got really angry and belligerent about this and tried to grab James and actually drag him back towards that sinkhole. Like suddenly this little kid went all feral, deciding I guess that he was going to throw James down this sinkhole and be responsible for whatever came after. I have no idea. I do know that I realised James was in severe and immediate danger because despite being younger than us, Russell was stronger than he looked. He was managing to actually drag James towards the sinkhole and none of us wanted to rush in and get too close in case the hole started to widen. And so I did the only thing that I could think to do. I grabbed the nearest thing I could off the ground which happened to be a small log and threw it at Russell when I had an opening and my aim was true. The log hit Russell square in the temple and sent him reeling and staggering back. So much so, in fact, that he'd staggered right towards the edge of the sinkhole itself. Thankfully, James managed to grab Russell's arm and pull him forward. Russell collapsed onto the ground and the edge of the sinkhole and we all crept over

14:25to see the damage. Russell seemed to be unconscious. This temple was bloody where the log had hit him and a little bit of blood was also coming out of the corner of his mouth. And in that moment, we made a decision. This kid had been trying to persuade us to do something incredibly cruel and then tried to potentially murder James. We had no idea who he was or who his family was. On the other hand, we'd get in the whole mountain of trouble if we told anyone that we'd been to that sinkhole and it was our word against Russell's about what had happened. We decided to just leave him unconscious at the sinkhole and run away. We carried that secret for years and it ate it as the whole time. I spent five years with a secret weighing on us with no idea if we'd killed Russell or if we could have saved him or anything. Five years of nightmares, guilt and terror when Russell was simply not around the next day or the next or the next. And by then we were all too scared to say anything. It became our secret, something we all avoided mentioning to each other unless we absolutely had to. And by the time high school rolled around, we were absolutely certain that we'd killed a kid in the summer of 1997 and it would be our secret that we took to the grave.

15:28After two years of high school, when most of us were in our junior year, the freshman class started and Russell was among them. We found out because this kid with a mullet and a scorpion's t-shirt came up to us during lunch and was like, hey, aren't you the kids that I had a fight with that one summer and nearly threw into a sinkhole? So sorry about that guys. Now Russell's theory was that he had teased Rick or something that day because he has no idea why he tried to persuade us to jump down the sinkhole. He just genuinely enjoyed hanging with us that weekend that day. He just says that he had this strong severe compulsion to lead us to the hole and tell us that nonsensical story. And we'd spent the previous five years believing that we killed him and being too scared of getting in trouble to try and find out who he was. He spent the previous five years feeling so guilty that he'd never tried to find out who we were. And we all just kind of laughed about it in the end and even hung out with Russell a bunch after that, although not often because he had his own group of friends and we were different ages. It was such a strange relief. How much worse things could have been for all of us if any of the events have played out differently? How stupid of us it was to just leave Russell there. But also, I think most of all, I get haunted by the story Russell told us how that day,

16:31maybe because of heave's truck, he just said this strong, pressing compulsion to tell us all to jump in that hole. It makes me wonder whether if we'd walked closer to that edge, we would have felt the pull of the abyss too. A man of many names and shifting identities, the figure later called the chameleon killer drifted across states and decades, quietly weaving himself into the lives of unspitting families. Each move left frame traces, odd disappearances, unanswered questions, and a puzzle that investigators were struggled to connect for years. Who he really was remained a mystery long after he was gone. Next is a story that happened to a little kid back in the 1990s. Let's take it from the child's view. This whole thing torsed a big rift in my family at the time for reasons that it'll soon see, and it involved my single auntie who was my dad's sister, and her daughter Serena and my cousin, my parents, weren't mad when they had me in for a long time. They said they didn't need some official piece of paper to show their commitment to one another. Well, eventually I guess they did in fact need some official piece of paper for some reason or another, so they decided that if they were going to get mad, they'd do it properly. I was a little bridesmaid to my own mom, and it was a little bell's dream the whole day felt like so much a fairy tale. The only part of the memory that I have that feels more like a nightmare is remembering

17:33my cousin Serena lurking in the outskirts of the wedding. Just in black and sort of scaling at me. I remember her whispering to me that it physically hurt her to be inside the church for the service, and then later the reception, telling me that she was never going to get mad, and people who got married were lame, and she'd never commit to one person except for her one true lord, Satan. Serena was a 15 year old and motine. I was a 6 year old princess wannabe, and so I believed every where my older, and therefore obviously smart a cousin told me. Also, mom and dad told me that I had to become friends with Serena because I was going to be staying with her in Antigene while they went on their honeymoon, so it was like Serena would be my sister for a while. Serena had been there when they said this, and she acted very excited and happy about it, and didn't mention Satan or how being in church hurt her soul, or any of the insanity that was to follow. Her dressing in black was a bit of an eccentricity, my dad said a word that I didn't know at the time, but I kind of liked. And he said that Antigene had been like that when she was a kid too, and now Antigene was the nicest, sweetest person we knew, wasn't she? I agreed.

18:33Antigene was lovely and nice and sweet, and I remembered Serena being nice and sweet too, and she hadn't worn black or even scaled to other times that had met her. And this was a recent thing. At the wedding, I asked her if it had always burned her soul to go inside a church, like she was claiming, and she said yes. But I knew that she had been at my baptism when I was a baby, and I never heard about her getting burned then. She told me that the only reason she didn't catch fire at the wedding is because she'd perform sacred rights to protect her soul from God. I didn't really understand any of this at the time, but I knew that I'd been taught that God was good and loving, so I was very confused why Serena would be scared of him. I think, even at six, I knew she was lying to some degree and maybe just sort of play acting. I definitely didn't take it seriously or think it was scary or even think much of it at all, though. I thought she was cool, and I was excited to spend the next nearly three weeks with her on Antigene in a house on Milburg Road where Antigene and Serena promised me to made me an exciting bedroom that would be mine for the whole time that I was there. I'd previously been told that I was going to share it with Serena, so I was a little bit disappointed that I'd have my own room instead, but when I mentioned this to Mom and

19:34Deb Mom just said that Antigene had told them it would be for the best if I had the guest room. The first couple of days of my aunt and cousin were just normal, more fun days. I either spent time being fostered by Antigene or Serena when Antigene had to go out to work. It was some of occasion, but not for Antigene, obviously. Antigene sometimes worked in the evenings, and then Serena would have to babysit me sort of. Antigene said that she tried to switch to as many day shifts as possible, but there would be some nights when she wasn't there. It was on the third day staying there that I had my first of a night with Serena, and it's when she dimmed her living room lights and told me to scooch and close and listen real good because she had to tell me something important. I listened, excited to hear what she was going to say, and she told me their house was haunted. Now I assume this was some kind of game because Mom and Dad had told me many times that ghosts weren't real so I played along and acted shocked. Serena didn't seem to think that I was taking it very seriously, though so she tried to stress how scary and dangerous it was. When I kept Gidlin and talking about ghosts that I'd seen in curtains she switched it up telling me that ghosts were working for demons and of course demons came from house so I had to take these seriously otherwise Satan would claim my soul.

20:36I reminded her that she told me that she'd pledged her soul to Satan at the wedding and she called me a smart-ass. And then she got all very serious and told me that I had to really believe her now. She said that she'd pledged her soul to Satan in order to save me because someone she didn't know who was planning to sacrifice me to the demons. And eventually this started to upset me a little bit and I guess Serena got the reaction she wanted because the more upset I got the more she continued. I don't remember these exact details but she started telling me some very dark horror movie things how the demons were going to take me down to hell and slowly peel my skin off, eat my soul and it would be because someone had sold my soul to Satan. Serena said that she pledged her own soul to Satan to protect me and that's where she avoided churches and why she dressed in black. And then she showed me a pentagram that she tore her arm and shot that and told me it was the Dark Lord's mark. It was all very silly but you know when you're a little kid and an older kid is trying to upset you so it does even though you don't really believe them or care. I think that's what happened at first anyway. And then Serena said it was really important that we work out who had sold my soul to Satan because the only way we could have both of our souls would be to break their pact.

21:38That night Serena let me stay up too late so I was overly tired anyway. I remember I had nightmares and kept waking up afraid of bumps in the night and ghosts in the house. I was a really rational, grounded child but even I was starting to wonder if there was something to Serena's story. After all, why would she be lying about this? Over the next few days I spent a lot of time with Antigun. Serena wasn't around much and when she was her and Antigun kept having arguments that escalated into screaming. And whenever these would begin June would send me into the other room to watch TV or ask me to do some sure in a garden but I had enough to hear Serena accusing June of being wicked evil and controlling on the next time Serena babysit from me doing one of June's night shift she told me that her mother was an evil woman who mistreated her and that she thought that it was her who'd sought my soul to say it. Now I found this very hard to believe because June was lovely and kind to me and she could be pretty scary when she was arguing with Serena that was true. I told Serena my skepticism while also trying not to offend her and she looked upset and said that she understood because Serena's minions are very convincing. It still confused me to Serena had claimed to be Serena's minion at the wedding but I

22:40guess I was too young to maybe start triple guessing the user but who was behind with demonic pact, especially when I didn't really believe in any of it other than that people were mad at each other and wanted me to be scared about something. And just over a week had passed when Serena babysit me again and this time she told me that she had definitive proof that Auntie June had been the one to sell my soul to Satan. In the last few days I'd spent a lot of time with June out of the house and she'd even taken me to the store the day before and bought me a new tie so I was pretty convinced that she hadn't sold my soul to Satan. I also hadn't seen any evidence of the go-so demons that apparently infested the house according to Serena but again she explained that this was because she'd signed her own pact with Satan to protect us. I had overheard June and Serena arguing about me there. Serena had accused her of giving me a lot of attention and trying to get her claws into me which did sound scary admittedly. It was very hard to know who to believe when in my eyes they were both adults. Obviously now I know that I should have just told June what was going on right away but hey I was a kid. And so that night Serena took us into Auntie June's bedroom which is where we weren't supposed to go. It was always locked but Serena knew a way to pick the lock using magic as she said.

23:44Although when she told me to look away so my soul wouldn't be corrupted I saw her slip a key out of her pocket. Inside she showed me the evidence. June had horror novels on her bookshelf and on a board in her room there was an old Polaroid photo of Auntie June dressed as a witch standing next to a devil who looks especially like my dad in a Halloween costume. Serena insisted this was real for a graphic evidence of her mother at an old-carbon meeting where she committed herself to Satan though and I was less impressed by the horror novels. Some of the covers were generally very scary to me and I didn't understand how someone like Auntie June would want to allow things like that in a house. I'm really not quite sure why this was the deciding piece of evidence for me that began to sway me but it was. I've been serrational and sensible up till then but seeing all the terrifying imagery sitting on June's bookshelf somehow Serena was able to persuade me that it did in fact prove there was an evil side to Auntie June. I still didn't believe any of the Satan nonsense or about the packs of selling my soul or anything like that. I think Serena knew that though because she changed the angle of her story a bit and now it was more about stopping Auntie June from doing bad things to us in general and

24:45that she was secretly a wicked abusive woman and that we had to help her purify her soul. We left the bedroom and Serena locked it up behind her again making me look away to save my soul while she did the magic and then she took me into my bedroom. We never went into Serena's bedroom either. She said that it was because that's where the ghost congregated and it was scary to see all the things that she had to surround herself with due to herself as packed with Satan. She told me to sit in the bed and wait while she went to her room and got something. And while she was gone I heard some bangs and crashes in a hallway that I think was supposed to sound like ghosts but were clearly just Serena. And then eventually she returned and had a small baggy with three berries in it. She held them up and left me very seriously in the face and told me that these were holy berries blessed by God and that we needed to make sure Auntie June ingested them. But because I always did the cooking with her lately I had to let them into her food somehow. Serena made me promise that I would. She made me swear on my life in the lives of my mother and father. I kept my toes crossed in swore and now like I said I wasn't a stupid kid. I knew that whatever Serena was asking me to do here wasn't a great idea.

25:49I also knew that berries could be dangerous. The part that I couldn't really get my head around is why Serena would want me a cousin who she was supposed to love to harm her mother who she was supposed to love. It didn't really compute to me that they could be really dangerous and that's why I didn't take things as seriously as I should have. Also I was like six remember. I wish I could say in Serena's defense here that I really can't be sure that she intended for me to go ahead with it. I want to remember there being some hesitance that she was unsure maybe told me to just do it if I was able to, etc. But I can't. She was very strongly adamant that I'd do it. Like I said she made me swear. She told me specifically to put them into the fruit salad that Auntie June made which only she ate because there would be blueberries in there. But she also told me that if anything happened she wouldn't tell me what she just said that I'd know then I had to say that it was me who gave Auntie June the berries, otherwise it wouldn't do the breaking of the pact. So Serena had very clearly set me up to get in trouble and then coach me into taking the blame. The problem was simply that I didn't know how serious it all was. What I did was wait until late that night when everyone had gone to bed and then I went

26:52to use the bathroom and took the baguette with me. And my plan was to simply flush them away and then tell Serena that I'd done what she asked and nobody would be any the wiser. And I even thought that I was really smart because I'd thought ahead and knew that if I just dropped the berries down the toilet they might not flush away. So I crushed them in my hand and wiped them all off and flushed it away. And I even tasted a little, a little taste of the juice on my tongue, just in case they had actually been blueberries all along. And they were not. And then I made sure I scrubbed my hands very clean of any evidence of the purple staining and went to bed. And the next thing I clearly remember is waking up in a hospital with these terrible terrible stomach pains and barely being able to breathe. And then I remembered drifting in and out of consciousness and doctors and nurses in a panic. And at one point, Aunty June pacing back and forth asking me if I'd eaten anything I shouldn't have. And at this point, I was just about coherent enough to tell her the story about Serena and the berries, even though I felt awful telling on my cousin. I told her I hadn't eaten them though and just crushed it and licked it a little bit so I didn't think that's why I was so sick. Again, memories continue to be vague here, but I remember Aunty June and Serena screaming

27:55at each other in the hospital and then another voice yelling at both of them. I remember having to drink some disgusting black liquid and everyone acting a little relieved, even though I didn't feel like I was getting any better at all. I spent a couple of days very sad and scared and struggling in that hospital until my parents came back early from their honeymoon and I'd never been more relieved to see them. So yeah, my cousin Serena tried to get me to poison my aunt with deadly nightshade, and because that was too sensible and serious a kid to let her convince me to do it, but too naive to believe that it could be anything too dangerous, I ended up giving myself some very minor deadly nightj poisoning. I could have been a hell of a lot worse. I could have ended myself, or worse, I could have ended up killing my aunt and I'm not sure that I would have ever forgiven myself for that. No matter how much people tell me that it wouldn't have been my fault, I'm not sure that I would have been able to accept that it's true. One thing that was true though was that Serena had tried to convince me to poison her mother and her actions had led me to getting mildly poisoned instead. So of course everyone wanted to know why and what the hell had happened. I didn't really follow or understand what was going on at the time being so young.

28:55I just recovered in the hospital and was told that I wouldn't be seeing Serena or Antigen again. Later this changed, but that's what Dad told me pretty angry at the time, and I think a part of me had become scared of Antigen after all the things Serena told me in the horror novels on her bookshelf because I just remember being glad that I wouldn't have to deal with any of it again while I was focused on just getting better. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz, I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a long time reporter and an on-air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going to come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Josh Speagle, host of the podcast, Lunatic in the newsroom. If you enjoy journalism that drifts into my old panic, wild overthinking and a guaranteed

29:58nervous breakdown, Lunatic in the newsroom is for you. It's news like you've never heard before. The only newsroom with a panic button, you'll laugh, you'll cry, and gasp and horror as the show spirals completely out of control. It's not just news, it's emotionally unstable. Lunatic in the newsroom. And here's how everything eventually played out there. It turned out that Auntie June had been severely struggling with Serena for about a year. Out of the blue, she'd gone from a well behaved and kind girl into a monster. She was barely coping with her, but didn't want to admit it to anyone in case they judged her. She knew that Serena had always genuinely cared about her little cousin, so she thought that me going to stay there during my parents hung him in my cave the roof between them, and instead it made things worse. My dad was extremely angry at his sister for withholding how serious Serena's behavior had become. But apparently Serena had used physical violence against June shortly before my stay, and all dad could focus on was the fact that I had been endangered. It didn't take long to realize he was being harsh on Auntie June.

31:00Serena wasn't just a troubled teen, it turned out. She was eventually diagnosed with a handful of serious mental illnesses and underwent prolonged psychiatric impassioned treatment. At one point early on, dad was adamant that they pushed for an attempted murder charge against Serena, especially because she seemed extremely unrepentant at the time, and when it was discovered how mentally sick and suffering she was, that was soon dropped. Eventually, the riffs mended. Life was very hard for Serena, but she eventually overcame her demons actually joke about this, and leads a somewhat normal, if in conventional life. A lot of people have stories about that one kid from their school days who was just the freaking worst my story goes place as the kid in question was too was scary, he wanted to be scary, he wanted to be really intimidating, and he wanted the rest of us to be scared of him, he was new to school and a proper short ass little guy, alone on a new place in the middle of year 7, so I can see why he decided to run, and he was such an oddball. So this kid was new at our school, and he had an attitude that stunk and he decided he wasn't going to fit in. He wasn't going to try and be anybody's friend. Instead he wanted us to fear him, so he picked someone to emulate that he thought we'd

32:00find badass and scary. Unfortunately, that person was Fred Durst. Now let me set the scene. I was just an average year 7 girl doing average things, watching all of this play out. Durst was this short, puny little year 7 who was short for even our 11minus 12 year old ages. He had a baby face and blonde hair, and he'd storm around the school doing the nuky walk from the lint biscuit video, literally acting like Fred Durst, just scowling at people and saying the f-word if you got too close. The teacher said that he had behavioral issues, but as you can probably guess, as little kids we found Durst hilarious. And yes, he didn't insist that everyone call him Durst. Durst and Biscuit is kind of hard to explain to anyone who was a kid during that era. They were a really weird band and that they were pretty universally regarded as terrible. All their early albums received mid-terrible reviews, and they were voted worst band of 2000 by some magazine, I remember. Even among the metalheads, the new metalheads, the corn and slugnut fans, then Biscuit was not particularly considered cool or good. This also took place in 2004, so their fourth album had just come out, the one with behind

33:02blue eyes on it. Durst only had this second album, significant other, and then later chocolate starfish in the hot dog, Flavoured Water, which is a key plot point in the story. Now basically, if you were in between in 2004, let me try and explain. The kid was obsessed with the rebel band and tried to use them as a source of fear and coolness, three years after they'd stopped being particularly musically relevant. And many of us believe this would last forever and that they'd never have a revival. Well Fred Durst and Butters have proven us all wrong in 2024 and 25 with the lint biscuit renaissance. His off-ren Durst get a similar revival. Well, you'll find out. So this little kid was struck through the corridors of our secondary school, snarling and scowling at people, wearing a red baseball cap that no teacher could get him to take off for love nor money. He prided himself on singing along to lint biscuit's second album, significant other, which he played through a battery powered portable CD player with terrible tiny coke speakers attached in a headphone port. And no matter how many times the teachers tried to confiscate Durst's CD player or ban him from listening to lint biscuit, he somehow managed to steal it back within a day and would

34:02have returned to blasting significant other through the corridors, hallways and classrooms of our secondary school. I think the teachers would have taken him more seriously if the rest of us hadn't constantly mocked and made fun of him. And eventually Durst didn't care that we weren't afraid of him. He went from trying to be how to try and to be the class clown. Any attention was good attention to him, and we would constantly go to him and bait him into making himself look like an idiot. And for his part, he was getting easy and free attention like he wanted. I know for a fact that Durst wasn't some mentally ill kid or anything. He didn't come from a troubled home, and he was just a little asshole back then. I don't know if it's still the case in British secondary schools these days, but back in my day when I was in school during music class was compulsory for the first couple of years of secondary school. We didn't really learn much. It was kind of an instruction class. Sometimes we'd play around on instruments. Other times we'd all have to sing, and then sometimes we'd be taught vague musical history lessons or vague attempts to teach us what musical scores. secondary class is basically a free muck about session, and we all loved it, not least

35:03because of our teacher and Mrs. Beaton. She was a proper, sweet old granny type, clearly still working as a music teacher because she enjoyed it. And I went to a fairly rural school, and I think that as she taught in a bigger city school, Mrs. Beaton would have been forced into retirement many years before. But my school was kind of small, kind of undefunded, and didn't exactly have a wealth of music teachers queuing up at its store. Mrs. Beaton never lost her temper ever, and she was maybe the only teacher who really genuinely tried with Durst. I guess because it's bizarre Limp Biscuit fascination was music related, and she thought maybe she could reach him by trying to be nice to him and encourage him to listen to other music. This didn't work, of course. Durst would just turn up significant other, usually no key or break stuff, and I sweared at thanks to Durst, I'd hear those two songs more than any other music during 2004. Let me just reiterate. This album came out in 1999. Limp Biscuit had four albums out by 2004. Durst just only owned this one, at least for most of the story. So Mrs. Beaton tried really hard to be nice to Durst, and he was rude as hell to her,

36:03and she never once got hungry at him or raised her voice or anything. Oh, there's one thing that I haven't mentioned about Durst copy of significant other yet. It was the censored version, so all the swell words were just muted out hilariously, and his parents wouldn't allow him to own the insensitive version back in the day in case it was about influence. And I first met them back at parents' evening of that year. They were at the table next to mine, and I heard them describing his son as bearded and enthusiastic to a teacher, who was explaining to them that no, he was incredibly disruptive and badly behaved. This inductively shocked at this, which was the first time I discovered that his whole dust after most of the only at school. And this was before the Mrs. Beaton incident. So back to that, every time he disrespects Mrs. Beaton, the rest of the class would get particularly mad at Durst. We started calling him Durst the worst, which I think is an nickname for it himself probably heard often. But despite us trying to use it as an insult, Durst loved being called Durst the worst. And because we were stupid kids, we didn't realize that we were only encouraging him and rewarding his attention seeking behavior. So a typical music lesson would kind of go something like this.

37:04Mrs. Beaton would say, hello class, something, something, dance and macabre, something, something, teacher, voice, voice and blurb, something, something, and then she'd sigh and add something about Limp Biscuit. She tried her very best to incorporate Limp Biscuit into her music theory lessons, knowing that Durst would just bring them up anyway. Then Durst would hear Limp Biscuit and take it as a sign to yell, I did it all for the nookie come and the nookie orang can agribe a chainsaw something similar and then we'd all yell at him to shut up Durst the worst and then back it doesn't about approximation of Fred Durst and then eventually we were all disrupting the lesson, not just Durst, so Mrs. Beaton would clap her hands together politely and ask for gentle calm quiet. And that was her cat freeze. And of course, none of us wanted to upset Mrs. Beaton, our beloved teachers, so we'd all calm down then. Durst generally kept the swearing to corridor moments because it was the only thing the teachers couldn't just let fly, I guess. So in other classes, his disruptive behavior usually involved the lines accrued it above or he'd self-sensor to avoid getting into too much trouble. Not the case in Mrs. Beaton's class though. He knew lovely old Mrs. Beaton would never actually punish him so he used this opportunity

38:04to say a default range of f-bombs and b-words that you would hear in their music and he could see that it genuinely bothered Mrs. Beaton every time he did so. Like whenever he said the f-word, she twitch a little and tell him it was harmful to use language like that. As some example of how powerfully sweet Mrs. Beaton was, Durst even listened occasionally and he would usually start wearing once he saw that he offended her too much. The main event happened and the day we came back from half-term break. It was the final half-term of year 7, which means Durst had been at the school for around six months. He joined after the Christmas holidays hence why he was the insecure new-kit acting like a weirder. It felt like he'd been the main character of our entire school forever though even though this must have just been because he was in my class. Looking back, it was obvious that the situation couldn't go on forever and it's something would have to be done about Durst eventually to stop him disrupting our entire school lives. And I sometimes wonder what things would have been like if the Mrs. Beaton incident hadn't happened. Maybe Durst would have moved on to Lincoln Park or called himself Shenuit and become a very different person. And that day back after the summer half-term though he was still Durst but there was something

39:06different about him. We all recognised it right away because he'd been spinning significant other every single day for six months but I'd particularly recognised it because my older sister at other school in Biscuit albums so I'd heard it before when it came out in 2001 or whatever it was and the thing I'm talking about is Limp Biscuit's third album, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. Durst had the CD. He was listening to it jamming to Roland, Airy Vehicle and in fact a smigger and excited look on his face as if it was a brand new album and this was his first time hearing it. Turns out that it actually was the case. He'd literally been gifted it for the first time on the way to school that day. In amongst his usual snarls and spinning his red cap on his finger, Durst would point to his CD player during form room and say things like new album and good ha to anyone who came close. Of course we all psyched him up asking him about it and asking him which his favourite tracks were and things and it was clear he loved to Roland and take a look around which to be fair was a banger because those were the two songs he kept playing over and over and singing along to the latter in particular. When he was listening to... Hi this is Alex Cantrowicz I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a long time reporter

40:08and an on-air contributor to CNBC and if you're like me you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it. Asking where this is all going they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. The sun shining, birds are singing and all feels right in the world. Until the season changes and suddenly you lose your motivation to get out of bed. In fact one in five people experience some form of depression no matter the season or time of year. At the American Psychiatric Association Foundation our vision is to build a mentally healthy nation for all because we want you to live your best life and be your best you all year round. Please visit mentallyhealthination.org to learn more.

41:09For the fifth time though, I noticed something. Not only did Durst have a second lumbus cue album now, it was also the unsent subversion. Yep, Fred let loose with a full barrage of cuss words on this album and for anyone who knows the chocolate stuff shall come, you can probably understand why this is significant and where it's going. If you don't, well then stay tuned. Because music was our last lesson of the day and for most of the day we saw Durst strutting through corridors or in some of our classes, wrapping along to Roland, snalling at U11's and doing some kind of new dance to the day that I don't think Fred Durst ever did and I'm pretty sure it was from that one bloodhound gang song, but for whatever reason, Durst did the dance along to Roland. I've been listening curious the old day, wondering if Durst would dare to play the title track of the album in front of the teachers. I remember my sister playing it to me when I was in primary school and telling me that I had to promise not to tell mom and dad that should let me hear it. And we both found it hilariously, stupidly funny sitting in her room listening to Fred Durst screaming those lyrics, which if you don't know them, well again, stay tuned. And Kid Durst did not play hot dog in front of the teachers or at all.

42:11He just listened to the middle few tracks of the album over and over again, creating his usual mini-tronado of musical chaos as he Durst walked through the holes. As usual, everyone laughed at the weird little lint biscuit kid doing his weird little lint biscuit routine and as usual, Durst thought that he was intimidating as all frickin' the coolest kid on campus and when we all showed up for music class, things were suspiciously quiet and calm and that because Durst was late to class. Mrs. Beaton took the register and asked if Durst was out today. One of us said no, he was in school, but she just shrugged and began the lesson, which today was going to involve listening to some classical music and talking about T.Colzki. I don't remember if that really is what it was, but something like that probably. I Mrs. Beaton sat down at her desk and put her hand in the CD player. It was like Durst time to survival for that moment. In my memory, looking back, I would swear that I could hear the faint sounds of the intro track, who's in the house? Lint biscuit is in the house, drifting in from the corridor as Durst made his way to class. And then as track one became track two, he slammed the door open, stepped in, and slammed it shut behind him. Then with a bow and a flourish, Durst interrupted our music class with a memory as word perfect

43:14singing along to Lint biscuit's titular truck cut dog. I woke up the whole song, obviously. I can't quote the whole song on YouTube, but I remember once hearing that hot dog held the well record for the most number of f-bombs used in the song at least for a while. It is also direct parody of the nine-inch nail song closer and quotes the song as well as perfect dragon at a nine-inch nail's classics in the chorus. But here are some highlights of the two-minute ten seconds performance we got from Durst and music class that date and from the sweet beloved OIP music teacher, Mrs. Beaton get the f up, it's an f-top world in an f-top place, everybody's judged by the f-top face, and then about ten similar lines and something about DJ Lethalander to shame that you can't say the f and the f are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Obviously I don't remember the song from memory, I had to look up the lyrics, but it's burned into my mind watching Dost Caper and leap about the class, his crappy speakers hanging around his neck, doing a dance that wasn't even from Limbiscat. It's burned into my mind how we all cheer him on and got raucous every time he said the f-word, which is a lot in this song, and it's burned into my mind how none of us dare to even look at Mrs. Beaton the entire time because surely even she would be furious at Durst for this insanity.

44:15And Durst finished with a flourish of just no that nothing you do can bring you closer to me. And the class fell silent and that's when we all knew, Durst included, that this had gone too far this time that the whole class should probably be ashamed. I turned to look at Mrs. Beaton to see what the teacher's reaction to Dost's description and constant use of the f-form was. She was sitting at her desk staring ahead, breathing heavily. Durst just sort of stood there looking defeated and pathetic. It was the most normal human behavior I'd ever seen from him. He even took his cap off and muttered, sorry miss, I went to sit down. Mrs. Beaton was still staring ahead, breathing heavily. She didn't even look at Durst as he went and sat down and looking a bit cheapish. And that's when I realized that she wasn't looking at any of us. She was staring off into space, like the top left corner of the classroom, so staring at nothing, basically. One of the other students quietly said, miss, to try and get Mrs. Beaton to react. She slowly stood up and as she did so I could tell even then something was deeply wrong. She swayed on her feet, her breathing still heavily and we still thought that it was

45:16just anger and outrage at Durst. Mrs. Beaton took a few unsteady steps out from behind her desk and into the center of the classroom. The desk had been arranged in a sort of u-shape around the teacher's desk so there was a central space where we'd congregate if we played the instruments. Right now it was empty and this is where Mrs. Beaton walked. The whole time she was staring into space, then she reached up with her right hand and gripped her chest, suddenly and viscerally. Then she sort of shook a few times in the spot, let out a strangled cry and dropped to the ground, a dead weight. Literally I'd discover later. Mrs. Beaton had suffered a massive, devastating, hard attack in a brain aneurysm and to those of us who saw it happen, we'd swear it occurred as a result of sudden trauma. It felt like Durst had shocked it, we'd miss Burton into having a hard attack with his performance of that song. Of course, we didn't know it was a hard attack at the time or even the shoes dead. First, there was panicking some kids running to get another teacher and breathless explanations of how Durst had burst into class and performed a song resulting in Mrs. Beaton dropping to the ground. And then there was more chaos and paramedics and teachers crying and guiding students out

46:17of the classroom carefully. And then finally all of us kids were saying one thing to each other under our breaths. Durst killed Mrs. Beaton. The next few weeks must have been awfully difficult and complicated for the other teachers. Mrs. Beaton was beloved amongst staff as well of course and it's really hard to argue the dose didn't kill Mrs. Beaton, even though he obviously didn't mean to or even mean to harm her. But adult teachers can't go accusing a 12 year old boy of killing their 76 year old colleague because she had a heart attack in response to his bad behavior. They still had to treat that bad behavior in the same way they would have normally treated it. Unfortunately for them, they all knew they'd been complacent with Durst and if they suddenly acted differently, it would imply that they believed that he was at fault. Now I have a bit of insight here so I know that his parents had had plenty of meetings with the school and the teachers panicked and worrying about the psychological effect that it would have on their son if he fully blamed himself from Mrs. Beaton dying. On the other hand, they understood that he couldn't be allowed to believe that he held no responsibility either because his bad behavior had led to something terrible happening. So basically the teachers and his parents decided that he should be punished but not too

47:19much. Simply moving schools wasn't an option at first and they also decided that it could make Durst internalise too much guilt. So basically it meant that Durst got a handful of detentions and our music teacher was dead. In the eyes of his angry classmates who all knew we bore a bit of guilt to, this meant that Durst had gotten away with murder, literally. We only had a few weeks left for some a term and I think most of us were too shell-shocked at seeing Mrs. Beaton die to litter or cringe to actually act on it then. We all received counselling, although surprisingly little, concerning that we'd seen a woman die in front of our eyes. And our class also, the special assembly, with a dose where the headmistress herself emphasized strongly that while Durst's behavior had been unacceptable, it was very important that we all realised that Durst did not intentionally harm Mrs. Beaton and that she was very old and we all had our part to play and blah blah blah. We were little kids and not very compassionate and also certainly didn't want to admit that we all act just on that day. And so instead we spent a summer seething and plotting with our friends and talking about how we were going to make Durst pay in the autumn term. Honestly, I think we were surprised that he even actually showed up at school in September.

48:19I didn't know until later that moving schools would be in a really awkward and difficult option, so I genuinely just been expecting never to see Durst again. The kid who showed up at the start of year, it was a very different boy to the Durst of year 7. Punted is the best word to describe him. Clearly, if there was one person who blamed Durst from Mrs. Beaton's death, it was Durst himself. On the first day of class, he worked up to our form room teacher and handed over a note and then quietly sat in his seat. The teacher read a note and addressed the class to ask if we would call Durst by his real name, Ben, going forward and then moved on with taking register. Durst or Ben just kept to himself after that and he barely spoke to anyone and when he did, it was because he had to. He most certainly did not listen to Limp Bizkit or any music in Accordors and he did not attend music class and now that I think about it, it's kind of ghoulish that the rest of our class still had the lesson in the same classroom we'd see Mrs. Beaton dying, but hey ho, here we go. The new teacher was young and inexperienced and some of the boys in the class would make half-hearted jokes about how the role was cursed because of Mrs. Beaton, but nobody really got mad at them for it because we all knew that the respect that we had for Ho's good.

49:23And we were all still mad at Durst, though, and refused to call him Ben, despite what we'd been asked. We called him Durst or Killer and made absolutely no secret of the fact that we blamed him from ordering Mrs. Beaton. One of our favorite ways of tormenting him was to sing the Abyssalm when I kissed the teacher but changed the lyrics to Killed, which was deeply cruel and retrospect, and I'm pretty sure some of the boys got in some more trouble for bullying Durst than Durst ever got into the year before any of his behavior, and while I think the teacher should have been tougher with Durst in the first place, I do think it's right that they cracked down on his bullying now. Durst or Ben had very obviously not intended to do anything more than scandalise Mrs. Beaton. Certainly not kill her and even then as a kid I could tell that he was deeply haunted and guilty about it. It was like Mrs. Beaton's good slope to round him. In fact, some kids started saying that, there was a rumor that if you looked at Durst at just the right angle, you could see Mrs. Beaton's apparition in his shadow or in his reflection. We'd share this rumor just loud enough for Durst himself to hear and more than once I called him staring at his reflection or his shadow in a very nervous way. And throughout year it eventually just became set in stone fact that at Durst it killed

50:24Mrs. Beaton and B. Mrs. Beaton's ghost was now haunting Durst. The bullying continued and no matter how severely the teachers tried to punish us we would not stop calling Durst a killer and telling him he was haunted. And that is the end. Thank you for listening and I will see you in the next one.