The Class

My life has been somewhat ruined by an experience I had when I was younger. I think so often back to the time my experience happened. Nobody ever believed my story at the time, so I decided to write it now, for the world to see.

It began really when I was 14 or so, when my family moved homes. My Dad had been offered a job with better pay and a week later, we had sold our house and rented an apartment in our new town. We moved during the summer, so it was simple starting at my new school. When the term began I nervously walked from our apartment building to the school which was rather close. I hadn’t had the chance to meet any local kids so I knew nobody and was scared of having to make new friends all alone. I don’t recall really speaking to anyone that morning, I was too shy. I just took my timetable in a slightly trembling hand and looked to see what my first class was. Math, in room 104. I checked the little school map hand-out I had been given, I looked at that map over and over. I couldn’t see my class room number at all. By then no staff were around me and I began to panic. Where the hell do I go?

I noticed on the layout of the building that there was a whole section to the right of the school that seemed to have plenty of classroom sized rooms but no numbers. The class numbers on the far left of the school were numbers 300-310, the centre of the building had rooms designated in the 200-230 range. I decided my class room ’104′ would logically be to the right. I walked down long corridors, most of the other students were not new, and so they had already made it to their classes whilst I contemplated my map, because of this, the corridors were now deserted. In retrospect, I should have just found the help desk and asked them to give me directions, but I was so shy I’d rather try and do it alone.

Anyway I followed the building layout and at the end of an eerily quiet and long corridor, my passage was blocked by rather old looking wooden double doors that didn’t open when I pushed. This seemed wrong. Like this part of the building was not meant to be entered. I played with the idea that someone had accidentally shut them or maybe I just wasn’t pushing hard enough.

I rammed into the doors with my shoulder and with a scraping sound of metal on wood, they opened. I realized then that I had broken the bolts on the other side of the door which were brittle with rust. Horrified at having broken a door lock on my first day, I was about to turn and run from the scene and just ask someone to help me find my class. I obviously shouldn’t be in this part of the school. The new corridor was old and dusty. The lockers were all hanging open and unused. A faint smell of mold hung in the air. As I turned I noticed the numbers painted on the glass windows of the doors along the corridor. The one nearest to me read; ’100′.

Perplexed I checked my timetable again to assure myself that I had read my class number correctly. It was clear; my room was ’104′, and just along this corridor apparently. I began to walk slowly, looking into the windows of each class I passed. 100, empty, 101, empty, 102, empty except for a plastic skeleton hanging in the corner by a pile of yellowing student lab coats. Still, it was enough to make me flinch. As I checked 103 (empty) I heard the voice of an adult man coming from the room opposite. Room 104. I peeked through the window. Full.

Except it wasn’t what I expected to see. Sure, there was a teacher, wearing a worn brown suit and blue bowtie, and there were students, all focused on this teacher sitting apart from one another on old fashioned wooden tables. What made me pause was what they were wearing. Kids didn’t dress like that anymore, It looked like a classroom from an old film or show. The teacher stood beside a blackboard dusty from chalk.
Despite this oddity, I knocked on the door. I assumed the school had a poor budget. The teacher didn’t notice my knocking, so I quietly opened the door and walked in. None of the students took their gaze away from the teacher, who also paid no attention to me. I awkwardly apologized for my lateness, citing that I had gotten lost. I then made my way over to the only free seat in the room and sat down. I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment. I must have interrupted the class I thought.

The teacher began his lesson a few seconds later rather casually. His name was Mr. Telori. He began to chalk equations on the board and got the class to solve them. The lesson was rather ordinary; except for the fact that no calculators were used. Whenever I raised my hand to answer a question, almost to try and win back favour from the teacher, he ignored it and always chose another student to answer the problem. The lesson ended abruptly after what felt like hours. By the end of it I was bored and miserable. I just wanted to get home and complain about the way I was ignored.

When I left the room I felt pangs of hunger. I glanced at my watch and was shocked to see the school day had ended. A whole day of maths? Horror. I had decided I hated that school. I walked slowly home, going over the day’s events in my mind. It was all very weird, but I supposed I would get used to this new school eventually.

When I got home my mother was talking on the home phone. Her face displayed confusion. She heard me come in and frowned when she saw me. She looked somewhat angry and asked whoever was on the other end of the phone line to hold, and then she accused me of skipping school.

Confusion followed. I told her I was in class all day, but apparently the school had phoned to say I wasn’t in any lessons and hadn’t seen me after I collected my timetable. I said I was in Mr Telori’s class in room 104 all day. I must have missed the register when I was late I thought.

My mum paused and told the school on the phone my story. Her expression froze after a few seconds and then she looked at me rather worriedly.

She hung up the phone and told me what the school had said.

Mr. Telori had not worked at the school in thirty-eight years.

Apparently room 104 was part of an abandoned section of the school that hadn’t been used since a school shooting nearly forty years ago.

The school thought I was playing some sick joke.

---

That night I went on the web to find out if what the school said was true. Quickly I had found old newspaper articles about the school massacre that had been archived.

A madman had simply walked into the school with a hunting rifle and shot a whole class dead. He had blocked the doorway and shot everyone in a math classroom. An old grainy photo showed the class where the murders happened. I recognized it immediately. It was room 104.

An obituary showed tributes to the dead and photos of all that had died. I recognized them, too. Mr. Telori and all the students I had spent a day with.

My heart felt like it had stopped. I felt sick. I felt cold to my bones at that moment.

After that day I changed schools.

---

Now, years later I’ve written this, my account of what happened to me, which nobody had ever believed. The reason, why now?

Yesterday I received a letter in the post. There was no address; it had simply appeared through my letterbox. It was a class reunion invite, signed by my old teacher.

Mr. Telori.

Credit To: A J M

Pheromones

It’s not that I’m ugly. People don’t turn around and gag when they see me. The problem is that they don’t smile either. And if there’s one thing every woman learns far too young it’s that everything is about looks. Only it isn’t.

I tried clubbing, house parties, online dating—hell, even book clubs. We exchanged glances, introductions, nice words—but no matter what I tried, it never went further than that. Men always seemed to run away from me. I thought it was my looks—make up, push up, perfect pants and a shirt or dress with a cleavage so deep that I thought my nipples might jump out—and yet, nothing.

I was online, searching for operations to fix all the flaws in my face and body. There was an ad on top of one of these websites, blinking fast in red and orange with large black text:

"Be attractive. No operations. No effort. Guaranteed effect."

I usually avoid clicking on ads, particularly those that promise too much—but that one. That one I couldn’t resist.

The website looked old, like one you would see in the 90s. There was a short text advertising the product—a special perfume—and then a “try it for free” button.

Two days later, a Saturday morning, the mail arrived. I walked up the long driveway—one of the pleasures of living outside the city and at the same time a bother because it stopped me from meeting the few single neighbors. There was just one letter, slightly thicker in the middle. Inside was a small green packet that looked somewhat similar to the ketchup packs fast food places give with their fries. I tried to rip it open, but the plastic was stiff. I pulled harder—and suddenly the whole thing ripped open and splurted all over me.

I’ve never been more disappointed. I was expecting flowers or fruits, or maybe even musk. I would even have accepted camomile or cinnamon. Instead the perfume smelled like nothing.

In the morning I didn’t leave the house, but around noon I went to buy groceries for the day. There was a couple walking in front of me, one of those women with high heels and a tight shirt and next to her a man with fine leather shoes, jeans and a shirt. He was holding her tightly and I was already thinking how I could possibly pass—when he just stopped. He just stopped, turned around and stared at me. His girl was shouting at him, but this man, with his mouth wide open, stared at me.

I tried to walk past them, but his eyes followed me and, while she was shouting at him and then me, he finally put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a business card and ran the few steps after me. “Call me!” he said. “Anytime! Or stay right here!”

The woman was furious and I quickly left while she started hitting his arm. He didn’t even look at her. His eyes followed me until I was around the corner and even then I could still hear the woman shouting at him to stop.

Timothy Lang, that’s what the business card said. I had never had a man so obsessed about me. I let his name melt on my tongue while I made my way to the supermarket.

The other men didn’t react as extremely as him—but they did react. I was in that supermarket for less than thirty minutes but I left with five business cards, three numbers in my phone and two dinner dates.

I called one of the numbers in the evening. He confidently said “This is Jack.” but when I said who I was he seemed to melt away. We arranged a date for the next week and just before I hung up he was suddenly begging.

"Hey," he said. "Please, please, please, really come!"

"Of course," I said.

"Oh, wow," Jack said. "Thank you."

I think he wanted to say more but I ended the call, threw the phone on the sofa and four minutes later I had paid $140 for 200ml of perfume.

"Our perfume is special," said the website. "Something you get nowhere else. It’s not any kind of flavor. It’s the flavor of love, the secret of beauty and the weapon that brings even the greatest men to their knees: Pure pheromones."

When the bottle arrived I was, of course, more careful. I rubbed one small drop on my wrists and a second around my neck.

Jack was the first one I met. He was dressed in a suit that must have cost a fortune. He brought flowers. Even his hair was freshly cut.

I slowly walked towards the table and first, when I entered the restaurant, he seemed to be confused, even disappointed, but once I was only a few steps away his frown turned into a grin.

"My god, you look stunning."

At first he seemed a bit needy, but he was the perfect gentleman and just knew how to make me laugh. He smiled and made me feel more beautiful and wanted than I had ever felt.

It was only during desert, when he placed his left hand on my right, that I noticed thin line of slightly whiter skin on his ring finger.

"Are you married?"

He looked at me and smiled.

"Yes," he said. "But I’ll divorce her for you."

I never saw Jack again, but I did meet other men and he kept calling me for more than a week.

If you had asked me a month earlier what I would do if a great guy suddenly showed interest in me I would have blushed and told you that that wouldn’t happen. Afterwards I would have said that I would hold onto him and do everything to keep him in my life.

But with that perfume, the heavy black bottle with “K23” printed on the front, everything was different. I didn’t want to find someone. I wanted to be desired. I wanted to be wanted. I wanted to be stared at and be seen dating one or two or three guys at a time.

Two months. I nearly had dates every night. Sometimes, when I felt excited, I used more than just one or two drops—five or ten instead. I enjoyed watching them; the mindless things I made them do. The hours I made them wait. Everything for the thrill of being desired and to test more and more how far they would go to conquer me.

I made them buy food and clothes and trips. I went to quit my job but my boss, with desire in his big eyes, begged me to stay and gave me six month paid leave instead.

Every day I stayed out into the early mornings and enjoyed the ecstasy of a new man. Rarely I was home and, if ever, those were loud, wild nights.

There was a pink envelope in the mail, not the first and not the last. But it slipped from my hand and I had to step on the grass to pick it up. That time, for the first time in weeks, I looked at my flowers, the ones I had once planted as the only real pleasure in my life. They were flat on the ground; destroyed and ripped apart.

The grass too, in long rings that led around the house, was just mud.

That night, for the first time in weeks, I didn’t go out. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t bring a man home.

That night, for the first time, I heard the moans.

That night, for the first time, I glimpsed through the curtain and saw the dozen or so men standing outside.

With the trees around my house it was too dark to see their faces. But some of them looked frail and thin, others bigger. And they all looked pale and exhausted.

I watched from upstairs as the figures walked around the house. They went and pressed their faces against the windows. They tried to open the doors. They tried to scale the walls but each time fell back on the ground and struggled like tortoises to get back on their feet. And when they did—they went right back to the windows.

Some of them wore clothes—suits and jeans alike. Others didn’t wear anything at all.

No matter if with or without clothes—they all seemed constantly aroused. They all constantly pleasured themselves. I watched as they, every thirty minutes, usually while pressing their faces against the windows, seemed to reach a climax. And just a moment later they were sneaking around the house again, one passing the other and both staring at the windows and doors and looking for a way to scale the walls.

I was terrified and yet too scared to call the police. I didn’t want them to ask how it all happened. I didn’t want to tell them that I could maybe be at fault.

The first one left at 4:22am. A bird began to sing. The man, one of the stronger ones, suddenly stepped away from the window. He looked around for a moment and then he ran off.

They all left, one after the other, before 5am.

Around noon, when I was sure that they were all gone, I grabbed the black bottle and placed it in a plastic bag and that bag in another bag and that bag in another and then I wrapped it in blankets and placed it at the bottom of my wardrobe.

I locked all the shutters and the doors twice and then I wedged the doors shut with chairs.

Every one of those texts that I got during the day made me jump from my chair.

I kept the lights off. I was downstairs, at first, but I was too terrified and moved upstairs instead.

By 11pm the first one was back. The moans soon began.

There were thirteen in all, most came from the front but some also must have come through the fields at the back.

I thought it would be safer with the shutters locked, but it was worse instead.

They knocked and hit against the shutters. One of them kicked against the door, but not with much force.

That night, after countless moans and knocks, they left again at 4:30am.

The next night, when they came shortly after 11pm, they seemed different. They seemed more energetic. More aggressive.

There were two of them that never went far from the door. They kicked and banged against it while another shook the shutter of my living room window and the others mostly tried to scale the wall. Some of the stronger ones got further, nearly up to my bedroom, but again and again they fell.

They all left in the morning, nearly like a group, as if following an invisible command. One after the other, within around ten minutes, suddenly stopped, raised his head, pulled his pants up, turned around and ran.

I stayed home with my phone off. I ate instant noodles and tried to find the site again—to find where I bought the K23. But all I got was an error message. 404. Not found.

The search engines still had it in their cache. The images were gone, but the text was still there. There was a new line at the top. one that hadn’t been there when I had ordered.

"There have been some incidents," the large red letters said. "The effects can vary from man to man. Use it sparingly!"

Below that, in smaller font, was another line:

"You can’t wash it off, but the effect will fade."

That night they were back. They came a bit later, but when the first one came he ran straight against the wall. He didn’t try to climb it, he just ran against it, as if he wanted to break through the stone. The second one looked for the door and punched it. The third one attacked the second.

Within fifteen minutes there were eleven men in front of my house, some fighting, the others slamming against the house or clinging to the stones and slowly crawling up the wall until they slipped or another man pulled on their legs.

I had my phone ready, ready to call the police in case they got too close. They never did though, something always stopped them short from reaching my bedroom window.

They all left around 3am. Some stumbled off, the last one, who had been beaten to a pulp by two of the others, woke up and crawled away by 3:30am. I heard an ambulance drive by just a few minutes later.

There was an article in the newspaper. A man had been found down my street around 4am. The article said he had been badly beaten but survived. The article also said he didn’t remember the attack.

The next day I sat upstairs, barricaded into my room and staring out of the window.

The first one came around midnight, the second half an hour later and the third at 2am, when the first one had already left. They mostly walked around the house, silently and slowly, more like cats than like man. A few times they tried to climb and a few times they pleasured themselves. By 3am they were all gone again.

The next day there was just one man. He walked around the house twice, then he left.

I never touched that bottle again. At some point I moved it from the wardrobe to the bathroom cabinet. When the men didn’t return my calls I thought about using the K23 again, but just to touch the bottle made me shiver.

Every morning I looked at it and then closed the cabinet door again. At some point I even stopped thinking about it.

Nichole had moved out to the city a few years earlier and left me to keep our parents’ house on my own. She only wanted to stay over for the weekend, to first see a few old friends and attend a wedding the next day.

When she arrived she went straight for the shower and then, without even bothering with a towel, hushed to her room.

I stopped Nichole just before she left the house.

"Hey," I said. "Please cover yourself when you leave the bathroom."

She laughed.

"Why? Are there any men here that I should know about."

"No," I said. "Not really."

"Thought so," she said. "Your perfume is pretty old."

"Old?"

"Definitely," she said. "It has lost all its smell."

She was out of the door before I understood what she meant. I called out to her to come back, but she didn’t. By the time I had my shoes on she was already in the taxi.

The police told me she was attacked outside the bar, not far from the supermarket. They couldn’t explain the attack. They said the man even was with his wife, but the moment she stepped out of the taxi he ran and pushed her down on the floor and bit her neck.

They told me he ripped pieces of flesh from her neck and then, before a passing bachelorette party could pull him off her, he also bit a piece of flesh out of her arm.

They said that there were many men there, watching, but that none of them did a thing. They just watched. They even seemed to enjoy it.

The police arrested three of them for masturbating, right there, in the open, right after Nichole had been attacked.

I didn’t realize it until later, until the trial was all over the papers and until this monster pleaded insanity. Only then, with his picture printed in black ink, did I recognize the man.

I still had his business card in my purse.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Building Cannot Be Entered

CLAREMONT (AP) - There is a building nobody noticed before on Main Street. All attempts to enter the building have ended in failure.

"We walked in the front door and as soon as we put our feet down we realized we were coming out of the back door. We were all in the back yard. The back yard, instead of the house, where we should have been," said a police officer who wishes to remain nameless, aspires to be voiceless, and hopes one day to vanish altogether.

Local children call it “the mystery house” and spend their hours cavorting and frolicking around its featureless stone walls and decrepit lawn furnishings (hideous lawn gnomes, structurally impossible wooden benches, et cetera).

Mayor Tombaugh offered no comment on the house except for a mournful, strained wail when called on the telephone.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Beware of Big Hands

It’s strange what time does to your memories.

When I was a child, I told my parents about the signs and the hidden alleys and parks, and they would tell me that these were just memories of nightmares. Growing older, I am inclined to believe that: after ten, twenty years, my former certitude is starting to fade, as my childhood itself seems more and more like a distant dream.

And yet, sometimes, with a smell, a sound, a feeling, it’s pulling me right back in. At these moments, I am once again ten or twelve years old, my skin covered in goosebumps as I rush through our door and into the living room, where it is light and warm, the things I have seen still so very present in my mind. Things I didn’t remember from a nightmare. Things I had just seen with my own eyes.

I grew up in a small town, you see. Small in every way- we didn’t even have any tall buildings besides the bell tower of our church, and even that tower didn’t prove to be a reliable landmark.

On foot, I could make it to school in little more than twenty minutes. That’s why I went to school by myself.

Even as a child, I realized that I probably wasn’t very smart. I tended to get lost. Sometimes, I would walk up a hill or turn around a corner, in utter confidence that I was merely prolonging my way home by ten minutes or so for a little stroll in the evening sun. I liked to think to myself, dream to myself, and I still do. It works best when I walk. My mind cannot wander if my body is still. That’s why I did this over and over again. When I ended up in the hidden places, it always took me by surprise.

I called them hidden places, but at first glance they didn’t look any different from any other area in my home town. The architecture was the same. I never encountered any people or vehicles, but that wasn’t surprising in itself. Even my own neighbourhood resembled a ghost town most of the day.

The special thing about the hidden places was that I would only see them once. Whenever I would try to find them again, even on a map, they just weren’t there. Not that I felt bad about that. On the contrary. But I always managed to run into new hidden places.

It were small things that made me notice I was in a hidden place. Street signs. Posters. Flyers sticking out of garbage cans.

I remember walking down a little street, with houses to my left and a large hedge to my right. There is this yellow sign, and it doesn’t look like any sign I have encountered before. It is a yellow rectangle. There is a little human figure on it, you know the kind. The stick figure is grabbed by a giant hand that is coming out of a hedge. Needless to say that the hedge and the hand are on the right side of the sign. Quite accurately, the sign reads: ‘Beware of big hands’. There was rustling in the leaves to my right.

I remember seeing three posters stuck to the wall of a building. One said:

'Get your teeth in a bag! A bag full with your teeth, it is never empty! You will never run out of teeth!'. It had a hand on it that was reaching into a hole that was drawn in a way that it looked like it was ripped out of the paper, revealing the darkness beneath.

And the other: ‘You have children? We will make your children YOU! Children will never be not-you ever again!’ Underneath the text, there was a picture of two eyeballs of different size, rotated in a way that they seemed to be looking at one another.

And the last one, without any illustration, assuring me that: ‘Everything is collapsible.’

But the worst thing I ever saw was the sign with the raccoons. It was a little sign in a park, white, with a raccoon on it, just like those signs that say ‘don’t feed the animals’ or something along these lines. But this sign said:

'The behaviour of the raccoons will change.'

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Voices

For around a couple years now, I’ve heard voices. They’re usually more active at night, and they sound like someone’s watching TV in a room right next to me.

Usually I hear them the way I hear my thoughts and so I know no one else can hear them. They’ll say they want to kill me, and be extremely graphic about it, and they’ll put images of my corpse into my head so I look at pictures of little animals to cheer myself up.

I’ve always been interested in psychology and how minds work since serious mental problems run in my family. Around 9 months ago, I became fascinated with what made people killers, why they wanted to kill, how they chose their victims, and what their victim’s corpses looked like. The pictures of corpses actually calmed me down.

I started watching more and more crime shows and pausing the television when they’d show the corpse in the crime scene to make sure I could remember it. The different stages of decomposition and how different methods changed the bodies and how many things were used as weapons absolutely fascinated me.

I stopped being as absorbed in serial killers, spree killers, and school shooters after 3 months, but I still pictured gore.

I always separated myself from the people who actually acted on their thoughts since they started with animals but I’d never hurt one aside from self defense so I figured I’d never completely snap and hurt people.

The last 4 months I kept hearing “there’s too many” with no context so I brushed it off. Last night I heard “There’s too many dogs. Kill them”.  I don’t know what to do to make the thoughts stop. I’m so scared.

—-
This was based on a personal experience of a user who requested to remain anonymous. Due to the content and nature of this story, they wanted to emphasize that this is a slightly fictionalize version of past experiences, and they are not a threat to themself or anyone else.

Anon Hate by WellHey Productions

After a long day at the office, I like to unwind in the evening with some online game play with my friends over Skype, some chummy trash talking, and a few hours on Tumblr.  When I finally get to my computer, it’s usually after the kids and the wife go to bed, so I nestle into my squeaky office chair and power up my computer, situated on a l-shaped desk directly opposite from my wife’s computer. 

I fire up my computer and start my routine, check my email, pay some bills, check my Tumblr inbox then log onto Skype for some Payday with the boys. 

This time, there was a hiccup.  I booted up my computer and checked my mail just fine, but when I got to Tumblr to check my inbox, I saw that I had one incoming message.  It was some anon hate: “I know where you live!”

Very cute. I simply deleted it.

A few seconds later, after scrolling through down my dashboard, I get another incoming message.  another anonymous message “I see you!”

OK, now a bit creepy, I delete this one as well, and continue scrolling.  I am just about to tab out of Tumblr and log onto Skype when I get one final anonymous message.

“You are going to die!”

That’s it! I can handle most threats, but this was getting on my nerves. Instead of deleting it, I fired up a little script I have been using to track anonymous messages. I’m not stranger to tumblr, and I know some of these kids can get pretty harsh. Sometimes you need to message them back with the information that you know who they are to scare them off. I copied the message and ran it through the script. 

When the results came back, I felt the warm embarrassing sensation of wetting myself spread from my crotch and down my legs and onto the seat.  The IP address was from my wife’s vacant computer on the other side of my desk.

Just then, I was notified of another incoming message.

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta

Mr. Teeth

People sometimes ask me what my first memory is. Invariably I lie, because I’m prone to avoid the explanation that comes with the truth. Maybe, from now on, if someone casually asks me “What is your first memory?” I will reach into my bag where there will be copies of this story and I will just hand one over. As they read it, their face will morph from confusion, into the furrowed brow of concern, and finally into the drop-jawed bewilderment that accompanies real fear.

In passing, I tell people that my first memory was of me standing on a stool in front of my kitchen window. It was just after dusk in winter and from where I stood, I could make out the black limbs of the skeletal beech tree that loomed from across the driveway. While that is indeed a real memory, it’s not the first one. If you want to hear about that, here it is:

There was an unfortunate series of incidences that happened in the town where I grew up during the summer of 1989. By incidences, I mean murders. I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill bar brawl gone too far or an act of passionate revenge. No. The events that happened in Middleton were far more grotesque…. even more so because the victims were children.

I don’t remember the heatwave that had swept Middleton that summer, the pink droplets of melted ice cream on the simmering pavement, or old men reclined in overstuffed chairs in shady living rooms. These precious details were told to me through family members and friends of my parents. They all, to this day say that it was the hottest summer they have ever lived through.

To make the weather even more unbearable, there were weekly brownouts that year due to some oversights at the electric plant in Salem. As a result, homes and businesses would go for hours at a time without air conditioning. Popsicles were promptly sold out in every business after noon; magazines and newspapers weren’t read that summer; they were bought to be used as makeshift fans. It seemed that the only place where air-conditioning still remained during these outages was the car.

I’ve been told by relatives that it was not uncommon during that summer to find neighbors lounging back in their parked cars with the windows up, drinking a beer and listening to the radio. At times it was the only escape from the unbearable humidity and heat.

That’s why, when mothers would go shopping, it became impossible to pull their children from their cars. After all, the kids knew that the inside of whatever clothing or grocery store their mother had taken them to was probably as hot if not hotter than the parking lot. The coolest and best place to be was in the car, with the windows rolled up and that gentle whispering wind seeping through the vents.

With this setting in mind you can understand how “Mr. Teeth,” as he was later called by newspapers, had his pick of the litter, so to speak. He knew that in any given lot outside of a busy grocery or department store, there would be at least two or three cars where the children had been left inside.

One such car was parked outside of the Market Basket on the afternoon of June 3rd. Within sat Jeremy Hagger, a freckled eight year old with a pension for action figures. When Jeremy’s mother returned from her quick dash for butter, she found the back right door of the vehicle ajar, a Darth Vader doll left abandoned on the back seat.

News of the disappearance radiated through the town over the following week up until the day when a jogger noticed a small black Reebok laying in the grass on the edge of the reservoir. Not long afterward, Jeremy’s body was pulled from the brown water and sent to the morgue. It was there that doctors noted what appeared to be bite marks on the boy’s arms and neck.

Victim number two was Amanda DeMiller, a girl of seven who had fallen asleep on her way home from shopping with her mother on July 18th. As was common in those days, a parent might leave their sleeping child in the car once at home. Britta DeMiller, Amanda’s mother, later told police that with the house being as hot as it was, she had thought that Amanda would sleep better in the car with the sliding side door left open.
At some point Mrs. DeMiller looked out the window to see that Amanda was no longer in her seat. The family lived on a fairly wooded road leading into the forests of Middleton. Neighbors were widely separated from one another. Mr. and Mrs. DeMiller spent all of that night scouring the narrow back roads, knocking on the doors of the occasional houses.

After only a three day search, a local boy found Amanda’s body slumped in the corner of his tree house. Her throat was purple from strangulation and covered with bite marks. Her shoes were on the wrong feet. Anyway, that’s how the story goes.

That brings us to my first memory. My parents have since placed the date of this memory to around the third or fourth week of August. It had been about a month since Amanda DeMiller’s murder but no one had been apprehended. People in town were still on edge.

It was at that time, one afternoon when I sat in the front seat of my Mom’s rusty Toyota parked in the giant lot of Henry’s grocery store. I remember that there was a car parked on either side of my mother’s and in front of the Toyota was one of those corrals for shopping carts.

There was music playing quietly on the radio, Madonna maybe, and my hands were sticky from eating candy.

You may wonder how, with all of the horrors that had plagued Middleton that summer, my mother could have left me alone in the car. The fact is, she hadn’t. My older brother, Stephen (age 12 at the time) had been designated as my temporary guardian while she made an emergency stop for flour. It was this “temporary guardian” who decided that this was the perfect opportunity to run to the bookstore nearby to buy a deck of collectible cards. Before he dashed out of the backseat, I remember him saying something like “Don’t go anywhere!”

So there I sat, waiting for one or both of my family members to return. It was then that I saw him and it’s this part which is clear even to this day.

The halogen lamps had just come on all across the lot; they cast that greenish glow from just being turned on. The sky beyond the pines that bordered the market was streaked with pink and purple. It must have been around seven thirty. I remember first seeing him, standing there some 30 feet from the front of our car. Almost instantly, the music from the radio faded from my ears along with the sharp rattle of carriage wheels on the old pavement.

Transfixed, silent, I stared out the windshield at this lanky gaunt figure framed by pink and purple sky. Through a curtain of greasy black hair falling across his brow, I discerned a single eye; it seemed to sort of take on the green glow of those halogen lights. He tilted his head back a bit and the hint of a smile danced across his thin lips.

He must have stood and stared through the windshield at me, transfixed and spellbound as I was, for one whole minute. He then started a slow walk over to my side of the car, never taking his eye from mine. Once he was outside my door, he looked down his long beak-like nose at me.

Then looking around, he began to wiggle the handle.

“Open up,” he said, looking down at me again.

I just stared at him without saying anything.

Again, “Open up.”

His long skeletal fingers left the door handle and started to dance across my window tapping here and there.

He crouched down so that he was at my level and started a sort of puppet show with his hands. His dirty fingers dashed across the glass like great pale spiders in a deadly battle. He looked at them and laughed making hissing and growling sounds.

As he made these sounds, his mouth opened up into a full grin and I had a look inside, at rows of long yellow teeth. They are, to this day, the longest and largest teeth I’ve ever seen. There were gaps between them and they reminded me vaguely of dirty piano keys. He seemed to be completely immersed in his spider battle, giggling and clawing at each of his hands.

At one point, he noticed that my window was open just a crack at the top, he looked at me grinning with those mighty teeth and crawled one of his hand spiders up to the space. I was openly sobbing at this point. He managed to squeeze the tips of four fingers through the opening. I caught a greasy whiff of unwashed clothes mingled with the sweet scent of blood.

“Come on! Open up,” he said, in a winy, pleading voice. “Open up.” He said this same sentence in a dozen different voices, from a girly voice to a thick lumberjack one.

By sheer luck, the woman who was parked on the passenger side of our car, returned with all four of her noisy kids in tow. Upon seeing her, the man scurried off in a ducked walk towards the cart corral where he smoothly stood up straight and walked off into the parking lot…but not before looking over his shoulder, gnashing those massive teeth, and catching me with one final blood-chilling stare.

The memory ends there. It was later explained to me that my brother had returned to the car to find me crying hysterically. No matter what he said to calm me through the glass, apparently, I wouldn’t unlock the doors.

My mother returned soon after. She said that all I could manage to say through thick sobs was, “There was a man.” I just kept repeating it for hours after that. “There was a man.”

Like the insufferable heat, so too did the Middleton murders come to an end with the changing of the seasons.

Just two weeks after my parking lot encounter, the child killer (who was later identified as Raymond Sandler, age 29) was caught after taking a young girl from a birthday party at a roller rink in Beverly. A worker on his coffee break at the adjacent gas station saw a thin man lead the girl out the back door of the rink and attempt to force her into a red car. The worker called the cops and the car was pulled over on Route 128 just outside of Gloucester.

While I don’t remember it, I first made the connection between the man in the parking lot and “Mr. Teeth” by seeing my father’s newspaper on the coffee table the day after Sandler’s capture. There, in a large blown-up black and white, was the same ghastly face I’d seen just inches from mine with only a layer of glass separating us. Apparently, I didn’t make it to school the day I saw that newspaper on account of I couldn’t stop screaming.

Knowing that I had almost been a victim myself, my family and people around Middleton weren’t willing to tell me anything about the killer once I grew curious, years later. I suppose they didn’t want to freak me out more than I already was.

So, in high school, I did some of my own research. I learned that the Boston Globe had first coined the nickname “Mr. Teeth” both on account of Sandler’s unusually large incisors and his habit of biting the skin of his victims. His means of killing was almost exclusively strangulation. Due to his being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Sandler was often delusional. As a result, his story regularly changed. However, after being asked several times, the number of murders he confessed to, while varying, never went above 10.

It was also noted in research on Sandler that he only hunted in the summertime. Some speculated that this was because of the easy access to children who had been left in cool cars while their parents went in to shop. Others suggested that the hot weather triggered something inside of Sandler, something that lay dormant during the fall and winter, then awoke once the temperature hit 80.

Who can say?

The years have softened that first memory a bit. I’m almost forty now and, while that hideous grin isn’t quite as distinct as it used to be, I still see it sometimes when I wake up at night, usually in the warmer months.
Someday, one of my two girls (who know nothing of the summer of ’89) may ask when they’re older, “Hey, Dad? What’s your first memory?”

Maybe I’ll tell them about the time I was on the stool in my kitchen looking out at the old beech tree. Or maybe I’ll just say, “Teeth. I remember teeth.”

—
Credits to: photofreecreepypasta