Shadowing Practice: 6 Most Disturbing Reddit Threads - Learn English Speaking with Video

On September 29th, 2022, Reddit user Liz Gillies made a desperate post in the Glitch in the Matrix subreddit reading, I am losing my mind.

I was never one to believe in the paranormal or whatever, but I have no idea what is going on with me right now and I'm genuinely considering seeking professional help.

I live in a really small shared dorm apartment with two roommates.

There's this hallway that if you face it, there are two bedrooms to your right, one bedroom to your left, and a closet at the end of the hallway facing you.

The bedroom on the left is right next to the closet.

When we moved in, my roommate always complained that they got a closet instead of a bathroom, like me and my other roommate had in our rooms.

This closet has a bunch of our shared stuff, including my clothes, gifts, keepsakes, whatever.

Today I got back from visiting my parents, and I came back to put away some clothes from this closet, but I opened it and saw a bathroom.

A bathroom with a toilet, a shower, and everything.

I was only gone for two days, and we rent this place, so it couldn't have been randomly built or something.

I told my roommates, but they said it was always a bathroom and they had no idea what I was talking about.

I can't find any of the stuff that was in that closet anymore, even though I had a ton of memorable keepsakes in that closet.

What is going on?

I spent all day just sulking in my room, feeling miserable.

I am not crazy, but that bathroom was a closet just three days ago.

I feel like I'm losing my mind.

I'm genuinely considering seeing a psychologist right now.

Now, as far as glitch in the matrix stories go, this is exactly the kind of story the subreddit is filled with,

where one person has a strange experience where it felt like reality briefly malfunctioned.

And because they can't really prove what they saw, the people in this community find it easier to land on the explanation that feels more comfortable, that it wasn't an errant perception,

but rather some kind of slip in reality itself.

But even by those standards, this post felt strange.

Because the OP wasn't trying to sell anyone on alternate realities.

In fact, they opened the post by clarifying that they didn't believe in such theories and were already considering seeing a professional.

And that self-awareness is exactly what made the details so unsettling.

Unlike most posts on the subreddit, which usually revolve around much smaller incidents, like a small object disappearing for a moment before reappearing, or a split-second change in perception,

OP experienced an entire part of their apartment structurally change while they were away for two days.

But even more strangely, nobody else seemed to remember the building being any different.

As far as their roommates were concerned, the closet had never existed at all.

Naturally, people in the comments started trying to help the OP figure out what happened.

Some leaned into the idea that if the apartment had somehow changed, then maybe the missing keepsakes hadn't disappeared, they'd just been moved somewhere else.

While others suggested checking old photos of the apartment, looking for anything that could confirm whether that space was ever listed or used as a closet in the first place.

However, because of the nature of this subreddit, it didn't take long for the thread to devolve into paranormal speculation.

Users floated everything from alternate universes, timeline jumps, to quantum immortality.

Some even suggested that OP might have died during their trip, and that their consciousness had somehow jumped into a different timeline.

At one point, the OP actually tried following some of the bizarre advice they were getting to make any sense of the situation, but sadly, none of it seemed to work.

For a while, it really did start to feel like there was no explanation, like OP had genuinely experienced some kind of time glitch.

However, the reality behind the situation was a lot more simple, and a lot more devastating.

Shortly after the post went up, a user named OddCorgi30 asked the OP what kind of items had actually been stored inside the mysteriously vanished closet.

But instead of naming specific keepsakes are valuables, the OP answered vaguely, almost like they didn't fully know what even was inside.

I don't know, some clothes, old Christmas gifts, jewelry, some other stuff I can't remember.

This was strange, but it didn't prove anything on its own.

Most people would struggle to list every item in their closet.

However, in this case, those missing items were the main proof OP had that the closet ever existed.

So, if their memory of the contents was already vague, then naturally it raises questions about the larger memory attached to those contents too.

It's possible OP's mind had built an entire memory around something that never existed in the first place.

Memory distortion to this scale where someone is convinced an entire

physical space has changed can be an early sign of neurological deterioration, including conditions like dementia.

But at the time, nobody in the thread considered that possibility.

Instead, the comments just pushed the OP deeper into the idea that what they were experiencing was real.

People started sharing their own glitch-in-the-matrix stories, reinforcing the belief that nothing was wrong with the OP and what they were experiencing was, in a way, normal.

Some even went as far as to say that seeing a professional was not only unnecessary, but harmful.

Then, roughly two weeks later, the OP edited the post with one short sentence.

Edit, October 15.

I have a brain tumor.

Suddenly, everything the commenters had attributed to a glitch started looking like the symptoms of a life-threatening medical condition.

The OP never shared what type of tumor they had.

But brain tumors are well documented to cause memory distortion, hallucinations, confusion, and changes in perception.

And depending on where the tumor is located, they can also interfere with spatial awareness and the brain's ability to process physical environments correctly.

Which means that the most likely explanation is

that the OP's brain had created or altered a memory

so convincingly that it completely overrode what was actually in front of them.

It's possible they had once lived somewhere with a closet in a similar location, and their brain merged that old memory with the apartment they were currently living in.

By the way, the most unsettling part is that we'll probably never know for sure.

Because the OP never gave another update, and their Reddit activity appears to have stopped completely after that edit.

And considering the average survival rate of some brain tumors among adults is only 14.6 months, there's a very real possibility that they are no longer alive.

If that's true, then this thread may have documented one of the final moments of someone slowly losing their grip on reality,

while thousands of strangers online convinced them that it was the universe glitching around them.

On December 28th, 2025, a Reddit post was made under the title, Please help random bare feet and snow showing up in front yard.

It rained and snowed all day yesterday, so I decided to check out the backyard.

I looked down and there are bare feet trackings around and near my car.

I double checked it wasn't my slippers, but this was pure bare feet showing.

We decided to set out a camera in the yard overnight.

When we woke up, there was even more footprints, but nothing on the camera.

Throughout the morning and afternoon, I was checking to see if there was more.

About an hour ago, there was one more, but it was hard to tell since the snow is melting and there was a bunch of footprints to begin with.

Alongside this, the LP posted several pictures of the prints.

At first, a lot of people in the comments treated the situation like a strange but explainable incident, with some suggesting that one of the people in the house may have been sleepwalking.

Others told the OP to check for a carbon monoxide leak, stating, Check your house for carbon monoxide.

One of the residents, including you, could be doing this and not remembering due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

An exposure like that can cause hallucinations and memory gaps, which might explain why someone in the house was walking outside barefoot with no recollection of doing it.

But a few hours later, the OP posted an update, and what they shared made the situation even more bizarre.

They confirmed that nobody in the house sleepwalks, and that none of them had even been barefoot outside since August, so the prints couldn't have come from any of them.

More importantly, after the first set of tracks appeared, they moved their ring doorbell camera from the front of the house to the backyard, hoping it would catch whoever was responsible.

But according to the OP, that didn't happen.

Friday night we moved the Ring doorbell camera

that was at the front of the house to the backyard to catch the person who was walking around barefoot.

The morning of Saturday I go outside and there are even more prints now.

Checked the camera and there was not a person detected and I did not see anybody.

Even though the quality isn't great, I would definitely be able to see a grown man or a grown woman walking in our yard.

The LP also posted a video clip of these prints.

And the more they described the prints,

the stranger the whole situation became.

These weren't normal tracks from someone walking across a yard.

The spacing was unusual and inconsistent, in, without the steady rhythm you'd expect from a person moving through the snow.

Some of the prints were clustered near the car, while others were facing the house, close to the windows, as if someone had been standing there looking in.

But none of them seemed to lead anywhere in and out of the property.

Now, because this was posted to a paranormal subreddit, a large part of the discussion went exactly where you'd expect.

People brought up spirits, skinwalkers, and mythical creatures.

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The OP, though, to their credit, didn't seem fully committed to the paranormal explanation.

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They admitted that they only turned to r slash paranormal encounters after the camera failed to capture anybody moving through the yard, which may not have been the mystery they thought it was.

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But the subreddit's framing steered them away from the most realistic explanation.

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As the top comment under the first post suggested, Someone is scouting your house.

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Time to invest in security cameras and lights.

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And another commenter who claimed to be a reformed burglar explained why the person decided to do it barefoot.

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As a reformed bad guy, their case in your place are probably a peeping Tom.

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I would take my shoes off when in and put them back on when out.

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The thing is, shoe soles leave identifiable treads that can be matched in an investigation.

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But bare feet, or feet covered only by socks, are far harder to trace back to anyone.

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So the fact that the person was barefoot may not have been random, but an intentional choice.

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And because the OP never mentioned contacting the police, whoever was outside realized they could keep coming back without attracting much attention.

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But one user presented another possibility that was a lot more terrifying.

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Google Hinterkaifeck For those unfamiliar, the Hinterkaifeck murders are one of the most notorious unsolved cases in German history.

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In 1922, a farmer in Bavaria discovered fresh footprints in the snow leading to his farmstead, but none leading away.

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Days later, all six members of the household were found dead.

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Investigators later determined that the killer had been hiding inside the home, possibly for days before the attack.

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Even though the relevance of this example to OP's situation is limited, the possibility alone is enough to make the footprints feel much more dangerous.

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But the connections likely aren't true.

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For starters, the Hinterkaifeck footprints led toward the home and stopped, because the killer had gone inside and never left.

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The OP's prints told a different story entirely.

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There was no trail leading in or out, and nothing inside the home had been disturbed.

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More importantly, the Hinterkaifeck murders happened within days of the farmers first noticing the footprints.

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OP's situation had been repeating over multiple nights with no escalation, so the case doesn't actually share much beyond the snow.

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Now, as for the camera capturing nothing, that part is far easier to explain than the OP's scene to think.

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Looking into the Ring doorbell camera the OP was using, you find that it doesn't record continuously.

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It only begins recording after its motion sensor is triggered, and there's a well-documented delay between detection and the actual start of the footage.

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Numerous Ring users have reported their cameras consistently missing people approaching and only capturing them walking away, if at all.

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On top of that, the motion sensor can shut down for up to 30 minutes between detections.

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So when you factor in snow, cold weather, possible weak wifi, and a doorbell camera that had just been moved from its normal position to the backyard,

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it starts to make sense why the intruder was never caught on camera.

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Which is probably also why the footprints suddenly stopped by the third day.

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And weeks later when it snowed again, OP confirmed that no new prints disappeared.

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So whoever it was had been watching closely enough to notice a new camera in the yard

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and decided the house was no longer worth the risk.

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We will likely never know what exactly their intentions were.

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On August 2nd, 2014, Reddit user Stev Goldhound made a chilling post that immediately caught the platform's attention.

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Seriously creepy, a picture of a man with an axe on a decommissioned military frigate being broken up for scrap. Must read.

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The post linked to an Imgur gallery where the person told the full story and shared the image.

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As I've said in previous posts, I work at sea.

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Last month we came into dry dock to carry out refit and repairs.

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Dry dock is when a ship is brought into a lock, the gates closed, and all the water pumped out, leaving the ship high and dry on the blocks, thus allowing repairs slash inspections,

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etc., of the underside of the hull.

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Next to us was an old military frigate being broken down for scrap.

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She had arrived about two weeks prior to us.

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Once the frigate was on the blocks and dry, all the crew left and the old girl to her fate.

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A sad sight, but that's how these things go.

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Once all the sensitive stuff had been removed, the dock workers were free to go on.

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The dock foreman, John, went on board first with a camera to take pictures of work areas.

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He took a couple of hundred all in all.

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This was one of them.

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The image showed a narrow corridor inside the ship, but right near the edge of that flash and barely visible in the shadows,

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there was a figure peeking from the corner and in his hand he appeared to be holding an axe.

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OP went on to explain how John had been moving through the ship.

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He later sent all of the pics to his boss who

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upon seeing this one called John straight away asking who is

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the guy with the axe at the edge of the camera flash.

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John had no idea.

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He never saw anyone.

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The area where this picture was taken was in a cross alleyway deep inside the ship.

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He was going around with a torch and a camera.

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When he'd go to take a picture, he would turn off the torch, snap the shot, turn the torch back on, and be on his way.

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This means, when John took this photo, he was standing completely blind in the middle of a decommissioned warship,

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with nothing but the split-second flash of his camera between him and whoever was in that doorway.

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The OP also mentioned that because the vessel was military, a police search was called immediately.

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A search was carried out, but no one was found.

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There was one way on and off the ship, and that was by a gangway covered by CCTV.

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TV.

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You couldn't jump over the side as it was a 25 meter drop onto concrete.

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No one was seen to leave the ship after John had taken this.

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Once the post reached Reddit, users started enhancing the image, adjusting the brightness and contrast levels to pull more detail out of the shadows.

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The clearer version wasn't enough to identify exactly who it was, but it made it unmistakably clear that it was a human,

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leaving no chance of dismissing it as a random piece of machinery or an unusual shadow.

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What was harder to explain though was the face.

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It looked almost featureless, with no visible eyes reflecting the flash and skin that seemed gray and waxy, like it was made of plastic.

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But for most people in the thread, the answer was simple, but still quite unsettling.

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It just looks like an old hobo who was startled that someone was in his home taking pictures, so he grabbed an axe and peeked around a corner to see what was up.

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An axe hobo is still scary.

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Now, considering the setting, this theory isn't exactly impossible.

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Some commenters later identified the ship as the HMS Cornwall, a former Royal Navy Type 22 frigate that was being scrapped around that time.

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These ships are massive, and by the time they're being dismantled, they're full of stripped rooms, dark passageways, and partially open compartments,

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which is exactly the kind of place a homeless person could wander into.

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A user who claimed to have served on a submarine backed this theory up, saying naval vessels are full of hidden gaps and tight sections large enough to crawl through or move across without being detected.

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So, the fact that police didn't find anyone after searching the vessel may simply mean

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that whoever was in there either slipped out before the search started

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or knew the ship better than the people looking for him.

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But, this theory only works if the photo itself is real.

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As with most internet mysteries that get this much attention, some users were understandably skeptical of the photo.

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They pointed out that the figure could have easily been a friend in a mask, photoshopped, or even a CPR dummy propped up in the corridor.

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But there are still a few details that make the story hard to dismiss completely.

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For starters, according to the OP, John was an old-school steelworker who used a Nokia 3210 as his personal phone.

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Not exactly the type of person who would Photoshop images for internet attention.

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And secondly, one user ran the photo through a forensic analysis tool and they didn't find any obvious signs of digital editing.

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Of course, that still doesn't rule out the simpler possibility that the scene was staged in front of the camera, which leaves only two realistic explanations.

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Either someone in the dockyard created an extremely convincing hoax, or John unknowingly photographed a real person hiding inside the abandoned warship.

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If that second theory is true, and the man with the axe was close enough to be caught by the flash, it also means he could have been close enough to reach John before he could run to safety.

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And, in a pitch black corridor, John would have had no idea someone was moving toward him until it was already too late.

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On April 18th, 2019, Reddit user Wooden Head made a post with the title,

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Someone on Facebook Thrift Page found this chilling message in some old drawers.

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Attached were two images of a drawer that had apparently been bought from a thrift store.

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The first one showed a message written inside the drawer, The truth is under.

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And the second image showed the underside of that same drawer, where another message read, The body lies at, followed by a set of GPS coordinates.

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Now, the first reaction most people had was that this was some kind of joke.

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Just someone writing a disturbing message on an old piece of furniture to scare whoever eventually found it years later.

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In fact, multiple people in the comments admitted doing the same when they were younger.

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So, under normal circumstances,

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a post like this probably would have been dismissed within minutes as another creepy internet hoax.

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But when people started plugging the coordinates into Google Maps, instead of leading to some random empty field or suburban backyard, the location felt way too specific to ignore.

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The coordinates pointed directly into the Avon Park Air Force Range, which is a massive military training ground in central Florida that spans more than 100,000 acres.

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At first, a few Florida users talked about going there to see what was actually at the location, but those plans fell apart immediately after a user who owned

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property just north of the pin spot recognized the area and warned everyone to stay away.

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I own recreational property just north of that location.

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As someone else mentioned, the pin location is inside the Avon Park bombing range, or MacDill AFB.

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We ride our four-wheelers down to the very southeast end of the property and watch them do bombing runs.

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Aside from trespassing on a military installation, you do not want to go trekking out there.

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Lots of unexploded ordnance.

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According to this user, the area was a live bombing range, surrounded by restricted land and unexploded ordnance, which are undetonated military explosives.

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So even if someone nearby wanted to check it, this wasn't a place a civilian could simply walk into with a shovel, which is actually what made the whole thing so disturbing.

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If this was a hoax, then the location was almost too perfect and specific, and a bombing range is also an almost perfect place to actually hide a body.

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Nobody goes there, and the ground is already so torn up from years of explosives that fresh digging would blend right in,

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and any remains left near an active target zone could eventually be destroyed by ordnance, causing the evidence to erase itself over time.

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This theory was supported by another commenter who pointed out how

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easy it would be for someone with military access to move through the area without drawing attention.

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If the killer worked there, they would have access, and it's not like the gate guards would be searching their car.

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There would be some camera evidence, but when you've been there for some time, you know your way around and where the blind spots are.

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Besides, the specific location is in a remote part that's probably rarely driven past, if at all.

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Even with all these possibilities floating around, nothing was more unsettling than the coordinates themselves.

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They weren't just rough directions to a vague area, they were written out specifically to 6 decimal points.

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According to GIS Standard, this narrows a location down to roughly 0.11 meters, which is precise enough to mark the exact position of a single human grave.

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So, while the hoax theory still sounds the most reasonable, it's also strange to imagine someone going that far just to scare a stranger buying old furniture.

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Eventually, the post gained enough traction that people began contacting law enforcement.

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According to an update shared by the OP, a friend of theirs contacted the Polk County Sheriff's Office,

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only to find out the homicide detective had already been alerted by someone else earlier that same day.

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But a second update revealed that the situation became complicated almost immediately, because the coordinates landed on military property.

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Since the location sat near the boundary between Polk County and Highlands County, there was confusion over which department actually had jurisdiction over the area.

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However, even without that dispute, neither department could simply drive out there and start digging.

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The area was part of an active Air Force bombing range, so they needed military authorization before anyone could safely enter the site.

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The OP ended the update by saying they would return with more information once investigators looked into it.

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But that update never came, and the last activity under that thread dates back to over six years ago.

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Searching through local reporting and public records from both Polk

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and Highlands County doesn't bring up any evidence that a search was ever officially carried out at the coordinates.

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And with no concrete evidence of any criminal activity, the more likely possibility is still

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that someone simply wrote the message in the drawer as a joke

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and was designed well enough to drag both the internet and the police into the same mystery.

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But until someone physically goes to the location and checks firsthand, we will never know for sure.

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On July 20th, 2021, Reddit user ProlapseThis posted to the investigative subreddit RBI, which read, Police didn't investigate and it's been bothering me.

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At around 8.30, 8.45, I arrived home from a quick trip to town to grab a beer.

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As I got out of my car, I could hear something.

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I thought for a moment that I'd left the TV on and was hearing it from outside.

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But as I walked to the front of my car and pressed the lock button on my remote, I realized that what I was hearing was screaming.

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I listened for a second, thinking it was somebody screwing around.

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But then the woman's voice screamed, No, stop.

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You're hurting me.

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You're killing me.

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and an adult male voice yelling something I couldn't make out.

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There was a dog barking from the same direction, as well as a repeated thudding noise.

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I immediately dialed 911 and told the police.

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They could even hear the screaming in the background.

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They said they'd sent an officer to drive by, but an hour passed and none came.

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I watched for them on my security cameras.

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The screaming was coming from directly where the camera is pointed, but more than 50 feet away across a narrow field.

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There is a small shack that has a couple of cars, usually parked at the road just on the other side of the field.

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It is bothering me a lot since I'm 41 years old and I've never heard anything so disturbing in real life.

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The OP also attached a Dropbox link containing two clips from his security cameras.

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One of them shows him standing outside while on the phone with 911.

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And in the background, a scream can clearly be heard.

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I'm not at Rocky Fork Lake.

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I'm not real sure.

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I'm at my home.

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The second clip came from a backyard camera pointed toward the narrow field and the small shack beyond it.

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And although a lot of the audio is buried beneath the outdoor AC unit, it captures how the screaming went on for several minutes without stopping.

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Since the OP lived in a rural area, some of the first comments suggested the sounds could have come from a wild animal,

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especially a fox, since foxes are known for screams that can sound disturbingly human but the OP rejected that idea immediately.

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While I've never heard a fox screaming, stop it, you're killing me, and the man's voice screaming would have been awfully deep for a fox.

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Some users tried finding less disturbing explanations, with one user suggesting the screams could have come from a TV playing a horror movie.

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It is creepy.

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It could possibly be from a movie, or I don't know, any chance something could be being filmed in the area, so like this was acting?

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Another person even named the specific film they thought was playing.

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But when you factor in the dog barking and the repeated thuds coming from the same direction as the screams, the situation felt a lot more like someone was being hurt in the background.

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Eventually, most commenters arrived at the same unsettling conclusion.

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Whatever the OP recorded was most likely a domestic violence situation happening somewhere inside or around that shack,

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which is exactly what made the police response feel so disturbing.

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According to the OP, the dispatcher could hear the screaming during the call and yet no officer came by that night.

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Even when he followed up the next morning, the property still wasn't checked and the only clear instruction he received was not to trespass or he'd be cited.

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Unsurprisingly, this didn't sit right with the commenters.

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A lot of them began speculating

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that the police may have already known more about the property or the people living there than they were letting on.

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Which, at the time, seemed like the most disturbing theory.

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And with With the OP now explicitly warned by police not to investigate the property himself, the thread slowly went quiet for several weeks.

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Until September 7th, when he came back with an update.

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I guess they finally had a reason to go out

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and check the property I was trying to tell them to look at.

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There are sheriff's cars all over the place, and cops in gloves walking in and out of this garage and one cop throwing up in the front yard.

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The update heavily implied that something horrific had finally been discovered at the property after all.

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But it still didn't explain exactly what had happened.

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And without another follow-up, the thread once again fell back into uncertainty.

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Unfortunately, five months later, that uncertainty ended in the worst possible way.

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On February 7th, 2022, OP finally returned to the subreddit with a follow-up post.

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I posted last year about coming home and hearing a female voice screaming for her life.

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I posted a video with the audio of the scream and got plenty of comments.

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About two months later, the house he was coming from had sheriff's cars all around it.

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I found out that an elderly man had taken his life via gunshot

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and that his son was the only person home and the person who reported that his father had taken his life.

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Fast forward to last week, I was sitting at home watching YouTube when I heard gunshots.

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I live in the country and that's common so I didn't think anything of it.

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Turns out it was the sound of that son murdering his mother.

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He was trying to claim self-defense but he is being charged with murder.

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I live next door and my security cameras caught the audio of the murder.

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It also captures the vehicle the son made his getaway in.

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I've had detectives in and out gathering video footage for the past week.

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His son was 40-year-old Tim Johnson II.

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According to reports, on the night of January 29, 2022, Tim contacted the Clermont County Sheriff's Office and told them that his mother,

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61-year-old Stephanie Chaney, had taken her life.

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But when Highland County deputies arrived, the evidence of the scene didn't support that story.

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There were multiple bullet holes in the front of the house

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that appeared to have been fired from inside with shell casings near Stephanie's body

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and a loaded firearm magazine sitting next to the coffee table in the living room.

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So when investigators questioned Tim under pressure, he confessed to murdering his mother, claiming he did it because he felt threatened by her for always carrying a pistol in her purse.

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Tim was arrested and later sentenced to 15 years to life.

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But knowing all of this now places the original Reddit post in a much darker light.

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The woman screaming, you're hurting me, you're killing me, that night in July 2021 was almost certainly Stephanie Chaney,

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and the man whose voice the OP couldn't quite make out was most likely her own son.

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Which means that recording may have captured only a small piece of a much larger

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and troubling pattern of violence inside that home, one that would eventually leave both parents dead within six months of each other.

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And when you factor in that Tim later tried to stage his mother's murder as self-inflicted, it becomes harder to ignore the possibility surrounding his father's death months earlier,

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which had also been ruled as self-inflicted at the time.

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Even OP himself pointed this out in his follow-up update.

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This is a family annihilator.

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They are now looking at him for the murder of his father as well.

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By the most tragic part is how preventable all of this looks in hindsight.

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If local police had taken OP's reports seriously and responded properly, lives may have been saved.

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On May 25th, 2021, this image was posted by AnxiousFaze4140 in the subreddit MorbidReality.

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The image shows a woman crouched beneath the roof edge, pressing herself as far into the corner as she can with a phone held to her ear.

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And just behind her, climbing over the other side of the roof, is a man.

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The title of the post explained the context.

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This terrifying photo reveals the moment a woman climbed onto her roof to hide from home intruder, only for him to appear behind her.

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The reactions in the comments were exactly what you'd expect.

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But the more people looked at the image, the more unsettling the situation became.

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Because burglars usually avoid confrontation.

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If someone inside the house notices them and starts running, the logical move is to take the opportunity to escape before police arrive.

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Yet, this man made a conscious decision to follow her.

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something one of the top comments on the Reddit thread pointed to.

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If someone breaking into your house is this determined, they're not just there for your possessions.

343

And that suspicion only got worse

344

when several users zoomed in on the man's right hand where he appeared to be holding something that looked like a knife.

345

The image wasn't clear enough to confirm what it was.

346

But when people eventually tracked down the full story behind the photo, the details turned out to be just as disturbing as everyone feared.

347

The incident happened in September of 2014 in Venice, Los Angeles, and the woman in the image was identified as actress Melora Rivera.

348

Melora had been home alone and asleep when the break-in started.

349

According to reports, she woke up after the intruder shattered part of her front door

350

and reached through the opening to unlock it from the inside.

351

Once I saw him in the house, I knew that we both couldn't be there.

352

I knew that I didn't want to have a confrontation with him of any sort, you know, not knowing what his intention was.

353

The moment she realized someone was inside the house, Melora grabbed their phone and climbed out of the second story window, hiding herself beneath the edge of the roof to call 911.

354

But while she was still on the phone with the dispatcher, the intruder followed her out through the same window.

355

At that point, Melora was trapped.

356

The drop from the roof was over 20 feet, which was far too high to jump without risking serious injury.

357

So her only option was to stay completely still and hope

358

that the intruder wouldn't come around to her side before the police arrived.

359

Fortunately, officers arrived within two minutes and were eventually able to talk the man into surrendering on the roof, while firefighters brought Melora down safely using a ladder.

360

The intruder was identified as 29-year-old Christian Hicks, and the people who knew the neighborhood immediately recognized him as a homeless man who was often seen in the area.

361

When investigators pulled his record, it became clear that this wasn't his first violent encounter with the lot.

362

He had two prior convictions, one in 2008 for carrying a loaded, unregistered handgun, and another in 2011 for inflicting injury on a spouse or partner.

363

But even with that history, it still didn't answer why he had chosen Malora's house specifically.

364

There was nothing suggesting he had any personal connection to her before that morning.

365

The only clue for why he ended up at her house came from what happened earlier that morning.

366

According to reports, Christian had already been detained

367

that same morning after a neighbor saw him wandering through someone else's yard around 7.30am.

368

Witnesses later said they had seen him acting erratically in the neighborhood even before Malora's encounter.

369

But when the police detained him, the caller refused to identify him in person and officers were legally forced to release him.

370

Looking at both incidents side by side, several reports described Christian as mentally ill and behaving unpredictably in the hours leading up to the break-in,

371

which means that Melora was likely never the actual target.

372

By the time Christian reached her house, he was already drifting through the neighborhood in a paranoid and unstable state without any clear destination or reason.

373

Melora may have simply been the unlucky person whose home he entered once that spiral reached its worst point.

374

And once he got inside, whatever state he was in pushed him to keep following her, even after she climbed onto the roof trying to escape.

375

Fortunately though, she made it off that roof unharmed.

376

But it's hard not to imagine how much worse that morning could have become if police hadn't arrived in time.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “6 Most Disturbing Reddit Threads”. This video has 376 sentences and 6277 words to shadow. The speech runs for 31:55. The speaker talks fast, about 197 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
closet noun	/ˈklɑzɪt/	A small room within a house used to store clothing, food, or other household supplies.
scream verb	/skɹiːm/	To cry out with a shrill voice; to utter a sudden, sharp outcry, or shrill, loud cry, as in fright or extreme pain; to screech, to shriek.
subreddit noun		Any of the subforums, generally intended for discussion of a specific topic, on the Reddit web site.
footprint noun	/ˈfʊtpɹɪnt/	The impression of the foot in a soft substance such as sand or snow.
disturb verb	/dɪˈstɜːb/	to confuse a quiet, constant state or a calm, continuous flow, in particular: thoughts, actions or liquids.
commenter noun		One who comments.
intruder noun	/ənˈtɹudɚ/	Someone who intrudes.
unsettling adjective		That makes one troubled or uneasy; disquieting or distressing.
coordinate verb	/koʊˈɔɹ.dəˌneɪt/	To place in the same order or rank.
backyard noun	/bækˈjɑːd/	A yard to the rear of a house or similar residence.
barefoot adjective	/ˈbɛɹfʊt/	Wearing nothing on the feet.
glitch noun	/ˈɡlɪt͡ʃ/	A problem affecting function.
paranormal adjective		Of events, experiences, or phenomenona, that cannot be explained by current scientific understanding or natural laws.
roommate noun	/ˈɹu(m)ˌmeɪt/	A person with whom one shares a room, as in a dormitory, barracks, rooming house, or apartment.
tumor noun	/tuː.məɹ/	An abnormal growth; differential diagnosis includes abscess, metaplasia, and neoplasia.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
follow up verb		To take further actions remaining after an event; to continue, revisit, or persist; especially, to maintain communication or verify.
bring up verb		To mention.
carry out verb	/ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/	To hold while moving it out.
find out verb		To discover, as by asking or investigating.
make out verb	/meɪk aʊt/	To draw up (a document etc.), to designate (a cheque).
point out verb		To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body.
wake up verb	/ˌweɪk ˈʌp/	To stop sleeping; to awake.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is filled · were concerned · been moved
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	person who was · person who would · Range, which is
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has changed · have reported · I've said

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 75 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, wasn't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thrift /ˈθɹɪft/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shack /ʃæk/, perception /pɚˈsɛpʃ(ə)n/, decommission /diːkəˈmɪʃən/, hallucination /həˌluːsɪˈneɪʃən/, warship /ˈwɔɹˌʃɪp/
Long words — get the stress right: coordinate /koʊˈɔɹ.dəˌneɪt/, investigator /ɪnˈvɛs.tɪˌɡeɪ̯.təː/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, decommission /diːkəˈmɪʃən/, hallucination /həˌluːsɪˈneɪʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like closet, scream, subreddit.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: 6 Most Disturbing Reddit Threads - Learn English Speaking with Video

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