"The Payphone":
It was April 4, 1991, and the air in Clinton, Missouri, felt wrong in a way I still can’t explain. Not stormy or cold—just heavy, like the sky was pressing down and something awful was lying in wait. I didn’t know it at the time, but that night would unravel my life in a way that could never be stitched back together. Clinton was the kind of town where everyone knew everyone, where Friday night meant high school football and weekends were for barbecues, not body bags. Trouble didn’t come here, not really. That’s why we stayed. Angela and I had both grown up here. Fell in love here. We were going to raise a family here.
Angela was twenty-two, radiant, and four months pregnant with our first child. We were engaged, making plans, painting the spare bedroom baby blue, even though we didn’t know if it was a boy or girl yet. She’d laugh and say, “Blue’s peaceful. The kid’ll need that if they take after you.” She always found a way to make me smile, even on my worst days. That night, April 4th, we’d been at a backyard barbecue with some old friends. She was quieter than usual—tired. Pregnancy had her worn thin that week, so around 10 p.m., she offered to drop me at my place before heading home. I told her she could stay the night, but she smiled and shook her head, saying she just wanted her own bed.
I leaned in and kissed her, told her to get some sleep, and she gave me this soft, sleepy grin I’ll never forget—the kind of smile that said I love you and I’m safe. She told me she’d call me from the payphone a few blocks from her apartment. Her place didn’t have a landline yet, and she didn’t like going to bed without hearing my voice one last time. It was our little ritual.
I should’ve gone with her. God, I should’ve walked her there or at least stayed on the line. Every second since, I’ve wished I had. I’ll never forgive myself for not going.
I was sprawled on the couch, thumbing through a crumpled issue of Field & Stream, the kind with dog-eared pages and coffee stains. I’d just turned a page when the phone rang. I grabbed it on the second ring, already smiling.
“Hey, Rob, it’s me,” Angela said. Her voice was soft, familiar, but tired. “Just wanted to say hi before I head home. I’m too beat to do anything tonight.”
“No worries, babe,” I said, trying to keep my tone light, warm. “We’ll chill tomorrow. You get some sleep.”
She was quiet for a second, longer than usual. Then she said, “There’s this truck driving around here. It’s weird. Old green pickup. It keeps circling the block.”
I sat up straight. The tone in her voice—subtle but off—made the hair on the back of my neck rise. “Be careful, Angie. Maybe you should leave, or come back to my place.”
“I think it’s okay,” she said, but there was a tremor in her words she couldn’t hide. “He just parked near the payphone. Guy’s getting out now.”
My pulse thudded in my ears. “What’s he look like?”
“Dirty. Beard. Glasses. He’s wearing overalls, holding a flashlight like he’s looking for something.”
My chest tightened. I gripped the receiver like I could hold onto her with it. “Angela, please, just get in your car. Drive away, right now.”
There was silence, then, like she was watching him. “Hang on, he’s coming closer. Oh my God, Rob, he’s—”
Her scream cut through the line. A single, piercing sound of pure terror. My whole body went cold. “Angela!” I shouted into the phone, but it was too late.
The line went dead.
Everything inside me froze. Then instinct kicked in. I bolted off the couch, grabbing my keys with shaking hands, nearly tripping on the front step as I dashed to my car. My heart was hammering like it wanted out of my chest. The payphone wasn’t far—seven blocks—but each one felt like a mile of panic. I ran every red light, tires screeching on the cracked asphalt, praying I wasn’t too late.
And then I saw it.
The green pickup was peeling out from the curb, accelerating fast, like it knew it had to vanish. But I heard her. Just for a second—Angela’s voice, raw with fear—“Rob!” It echoed through the night like a ghost screaming through the trees.
I floored it.
I chased that truck through the sleeping town, headlights bouncing across potholes, engine groaning. I got close enough to make out a fish decal on the back window—a stupid little detail, a cartoon trout—but it branded itself into my memory like fire. I was gaining, adrenaline pushing my car beyond its limits, when I felt it—my engine sputtered. A sharp, ugly noise. Then the transmission gave out completely.
I screamed. Punched the steering wheel until my knuckles bled. The truck turned a corner and disappeared into the black.
I stumbled out of my car and collapsed onto the road. I didn’t care that the asphalt scraped my knees raw or that my hands were trembling so bad I couldn’t stand. I just knelt there, sobbing, staring down the street where that truck had vanished with everything I loved inside it.
Police arrived fast—someone must’ve called when they heard the scream or saw the cars. Flashing lights bathed the street in red and blue. I couldn’t speak at first, just pointed, broken, wild-eyed. They took me in, questioned me for hours. I told them everything. The truck. The man. The fish decal. The scream. They ruled me out quickly—I had people who could vouch, and I was the one who called 911. But it didn’t matter. Angela was gone. Vanished without a trace.
They canvassed every block, combed through every green pickup in town. Nothing. No match. No suspects. No tire tracks worth a damn. Just a scream, a broken phone line, and a grieving man gripping at smoke.
Days became weeks. Then months.
I stopped sleeping. When I did, I saw her—eyes wide in terror, reaching for me through glass. I heard her voice in my dreams, and sometimes when I was awake. That one scream never stopped. It echoed through my life, gnawed at my sanity. People tried to help—neighbors brought casseroles, my pastor prayed with me—but nothing filled the hole. The town was shaken. We weren’t used to this kind of horror. Clinton wasn’t supposed to be like this.
One day, Detective Harris asked me back to the station. He looked beat, like the case was draining the life out of him too.
“We’ve got nothing solid, Rob,” he said quietly, almost ashamed. “We’ve gone through every lead. We even checked the cases of those two other girls—Trudy and Cheryl Ann. Similar age, similar vanishings. But nothing connects. No overlap. No suspects. No closure.”
I stared at him. “There’s gotta be something. Angela didn’t just disappear.”
“We put up a sixteen-thousand-dollar reward,” he said. “We’re hoping someone talks. But so far, it’s like she vanished into thin air.”
I slammed my fist on the desk, a dry rage spilling out of me. “She’s out there, Harris! You can’t stop looking!”
“We won’t,” he said, meeting my eyes. But there was something behind his expression—fatigue, frustration. Doubt.
Years passed, but I stayed frozen in that moment. Every time I saw a green truck, my heart would seize. Every time I heard a woman scream on TV, I’d flinch. Then came a rumor—a theory that someone might’ve taken her by mistake. There was another Angela in town, the daughter of a known police informant. A threatening note had been found at her dad’s place the same day. Some people thought the man in the truck might’ve grabbed the wrong girl.
It made me sick to think her life might’ve ended because of mistaken identity. Like she was collateral damage in someone else’s war. Random. Pointless. Senseless.
I still drive by that payphone. It’s still there—rusted now, half-covered in ivy. Most people don’t even notice it anymore. But I do. I always will. I sit in my truck, engine idling, and stare at it like it might speak. Like the ghosts might finally talk.
Angela’s case remains open. No body. No resolution. Just pain suspended in amber.
Some nights, I dream she’s out there. Somewhere. Alive. That maybe someone will finally talk, and she’ll get justice. I cling to that hope, even when it feels pathetic. But I carry her with me, always. Her voice. Her smile. Her scream. And the guilt—that never left.
Because the worst kind of horror isn’t a monster or a ghost. It’s something real. Something human. Something you can’t escape.
And I lived it.
"Through Both Eyes":
I’m Emily Dancy, a 28-year-old journalist from London. My life used to be straightforward—early commutes, late deadlines, casual drinks with friends in Shoreditch, the occasional weekend in the Cotswolds or Paris when I needed to breathe. I wasn’t looking for anything more than what I had. But then, everything changed with a podcast.
It was called Ghost Story. I wasn’t expecting much—just something eerie to listen to on the Tube—but the story it told stopped me cold. It was about a murder in 1937, in Richmond, Surrey. A woman shot in her sleep, in her own bed, through both eyes. A gruesome, almost surgical act. That woman was my great-grandmother, Dr. Naomi Dancy. I’d never heard the details before. I knew her name, of course—there was an old portrait of her in my grandmother’s hallway, always looking a bit too stern, a bit too alive—but I didn’t know this.
According to the official version, her brother, Maurice Tribe, a war veteran broken by shell shock, shot her in a fit of madness and then turned the gun on himself. A closed case. A family tragedy, buried and forgotten. But the podcast hinted at something else. It suggested that Naomi’s own husband—my great-grandfather, John Dancy—might have been the real killer. That the madness was convenient. That maybe, just maybe, the truth had been buried alongside the victims.
Something about it got under my skin. Naomi’s gaze in old photographs suddenly felt urgent, haunted. It was like she was staring directly at me, challenging me. Asking for something. I couldn’t let it go. I started digging, not as a journalist but as a descendant, chasing a mystery that felt like it already knew my name.
I began at the place that made the most sense—my grandmother’s cottage in Suffolk, a little house wrapped in ivy and the smell of roses. She was Naomi’s daughter, just a child when the murder happened. If anyone knew more than they let on, it would be her.
We sat in the sitting room, a fire crackling faintly behind the grate even though it was barely cold. Her teacup rattled just slightly in her hand when I brought it up.
“Grandma,” I said gently, “I’ve been listening to this podcast. It’s about Great-Grandma Naomi. They say there might be more to her death—that maybe Great-Grandpa John had something to do with it.”
She paused. Her eyes didn’t move to mine. Instead, she stared out the window, where the wind stirred the hedges. “Emily,” she said, her voice dry and tired, “why do you want to drag up something so horrible?”
“Because I think it matters. Because she was our family, and no one ever talked about her.”
“She was lovely,” she said softly. “Strong. Clever. She had a way of knowing what people didn’t say.” She sipped her tea. “Your great-grandfather loved her. It was Maurice who did it. He wasn’t right. Not after the war. Always twitching, always sweating. He cried when doors slammed. I remember that.”
“But,” I said, trying to be careful, “the way she was shot. Through both eyes. That’s not a random act. That’s… calculated. That’s someone making a statement.”
Her hands clenched on the cup, and her voice went sharp. “People who go mad do strange things. Terrible things. Don’t read too much into it. Some stories don’t need to be told again.”
I saw the line close across her mouth. A steel door slamming shut. She wouldn’t say more. But the way her eyes flicked toward the hallway, toward the room where Naomi’s old portrait still hung, told me she hadn’t said everything either. I didn’t press. Not then. But I wasn’t finished.
The house in Richmond still belonged to the family. No one had lived in it for decades. It was too old, too big, too full of ghosts. But the key was easy enough to get. When I stepped inside, it was like walking into a sealed bottle of time. Dust coated everything. The air was dense with the scent of wood, mildew, and something else—something metallic and dry.
The living room was still furnished with heavy chairs, their arms worn down by long-dead hands. The wallpaper curled at the edges. I moved carefully, half-afraid to touch anything. In the attic, I found boxes—dozens of them. Paper, photos, old medical journals, even prescription pads with Naomi’s name printed in elegant lettering. For hours, I sifted through everything, hands growing gray with dust.
Then I found it. A letter. Tucked into a yellowed envelope, folded and re-folded until the creases nearly split the paper in two. It was addressed to someone named Margaret—clearly a friend.
Dear Margaret,
Things are difficult here. John’s been... distant. I’ve discovered he’s gambling again. The debts are worse than ever, and I worry what he might do to get out of them. He frightens me, Margaret. He’s angry all the time. Not the man I married. Please don’t speak of this. I just needed to tell someone.
Love,
Naomi
I sat back, cold spreading through my chest. It wasn’t just sadness or fear. It was the sense of a woman quietly bracing for something she couldn’t say aloud. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining her folding that letter, pressing it flat, hiding it away as if some part of her knew what was coming.
I needed more. I found Mr. Thompson, the neighbor who’d lived next door back then. Ninety-three years old and as sharp as ever. His skin was paper-thin, and his hearing was fading, but when I asked about that night, something lit up behind his eyes.
“Loud bang,” he said, rocking slowly on his porch. “Middle of the night. Thought it might be a car backfiring at first. Then came the sirens. Never seen so many policemen in one place.”
“Did anyone suspect John?”
He stopped rocking. His lips pressed into a line. “There were whispers. Always are. He was a strange one. Kept odd hours. Argued with her a lot, from what we heard through the walls. Money. Always money. Maurice, though… poor man was barely functional. Twitched like a rabbit. But a shot through the eyes?” He shook his head. “That’s not madness. That’s hate. Or fear.”
I thanked him and left with my head spinning. The house felt different when I returned that evening. Colder. The air pressed against me like damp cotton. I had no plan to stay, but somehow I couldn’t leave. I curled up in one of the old upstairs bedrooms with a sleeping bag and flashlight.
That night, something changed. I couldn’t sleep. The house creaked and groaned, of course—it was old, breathing like a beast in the dark—but then I heard something more. Breathing. Not mine. Soft, deliberate, just outside the door. I froze. Sat up, holding the torch like a weapon. When I opened the door, the hallway was empty. But the air felt warm. Disturbed. It was like someone had been standing there, waiting.
I barely slept. When I did, I dreamed of Naomi—only it wasn’t her as I remembered from the photo. Her eyes were gone, replaced by wet, bloody hollows. She leaned in close, lips barely moving, and whispered, “He lied.”
I woke up gasping, drenched in sweat. The morning light was a relief, but it didn’t erase the feeling. I kept digging. In the study, behind an old bookshelf, I found a loose panel. Inside it was a small wooden box, locked but brittle with age. I pried it open. Inside was a letter. This one was from John.
Dear Naomi,
I don’t know what I’ve done. I didn’t mean for it to end this way. You said you were going to leave. I was drowning, and you were going to walk away. I couldn’t let that happen. I was mad, yes, but not from the war. From you. From fear. Forgive me, if you can. I never stopped loving you, even when I pulled the trigger.
—John
My hands trembled. The paper was smudged, stained, half-faded. But the words were enough to make me sit down, heart pounding. I didn’t know whether to cry or scream. Was this the truth? Was this what had been hidden for nearly a century?
I took the letter to my uncle Mike, the only family member who ever treated the past as something worth understanding.
He read it twice, then set it down carefully.
“It sounds like a confession,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said. “But it’s not proof. Could be a metaphor. Could be grief. You don’t know what was going on in his head.”
“But she was going to leave. He owed money. The debts, the fear. The way she was killed—it fits.”
He looked at me for a long time, then sighed. “The truth, Emily? It’s buried. And maybe that’s the only place it belongs.”
I left the house not long after that. Locked it up behind me. As I turned the key for the last time, Naomi’s photo on the hallway wall seemed to follow me. Her face frozen in sepia, her eyes unreadable.
I wanted answers. I got shadows. Whispers. A sense of rot beneath the family history. Maybe John killed her. Maybe he didn’t. But something dark lived in that house, in our blood. A silence that festered for decades.
The real horror isn’t ghosts or creaking doors. It’s the doubt that eats away at certainty. The idea that someone you came from—someone whose blood still pulses in your veins—might have been capable of such cold violence. That kind of evil doesn’t wear a mask. It wears a family name.
And I carry that name.
"Four Days in Hell":
It’s a true tale of fear, pain, and survival that happened to me in 1988. I’m telling it in my own words, exactly how I remember it, with every raw detail and every conversation that still lives in the back of my head. This isn’t some campfire ghost story or slasher movie plot—this is real. And the man behind it, Robert Berdella, was worse than anything I could have imagined.
Before all this happened, my life was already in shambles. I was 22 years old and had already hit rock bottom. I was living on the streets of Kansas City, Missouri, moving from one alley to the next, always cold, always hungry. I didn’t have a place to call home, no family to turn to, no real job—just a worn-out backpack with a blanket and a few stolen things that didn’t mean much. The only thing I could count on was the next high, and even that was getting harder to find. I’d been using for a few years by then—whatever I could get my hands on. Heroin, meth, pills. It didn’t matter as long as it made everything quieter in my head. That life makes you desperate, and desperation makes you easy to prey on. That’s what made me perfect for someone like Berdella.
It was a cold, gray day in early March when I met him. I remember the way the wind bit through my jacket as I tried to find a warm spot near the park. My stomach was growling so loud it was making my chest hurt, and I’d barely slept the night before. I was sitting on a bench, shaking, when this man walked up. Middle-aged, round glasses, a little overweight, maybe in his early 40s. He had this soft voice and a polite, almost gentle way of talking that made him seem harmless. He smiled at me—this kind of friendly, casual smile that, in hindsight, makes my skin crawl. “Hey, kid,” he said, “you look like you could use a break. I run a little business, and I could use an extra hand. Some odd jobs. Nothing hard. I’ll pay you, give you a place to stay for a bit. Warm bed. Hot food.”
I stared at him. I didn’t trust anybody, but my body was giving out, and the thought of a bed, even for one night, felt like salvation. I asked what kind of work, keeping my tone guarded, but he just smiled again and said, “Cleaning, lifting boxes, stuff like that. Easy work. You help me, I help you.”
I hesitated, but the cold and hunger wore down my instincts. I nodded slowly and followed him down the street.
His house was on Charlotte Street. I didn’t know the address then, just that it was a big, run-down two-story place with overgrown grass and a faded paint job. It looked worn out, like it had been lived in for too long without any love. Inside, it was worse. The air was heavy with the scent of mildew and something sharp, like rotting meat hidden under bleach. Piles of junk and old furniture crowded the hallway. He didn’t seem embarrassed by the mess. Just pointed to a small room and said, “You can crash here tonight. Get comfortable.”
I should have left right then. I should have trusted that sick feeling building in my gut. But I was too tired to care. I dropped my bag in the corner and sat down. He came back a few minutes later with a glass of soda and handed it to me. “Relax. You’re safe now.”
It tasted wrong. There was a bitter aftertaste, like old aspirin or chemicals, but I was thirsty and didn’t want to seem ungrateful. I drank half of it. Within minutes, everything went sideways. The room tilted, and my vision blurred. I tried to stand, but my legs gave out like someone had pulled the floor from under me. My heart pounded as I collapsed onto the bed, the glass slipping from my hand. I could hear him saying something, but it sounded like it was coming from underwater.
When I came to, I wasn’t in that room anymore. I was in a different one—darker, colder, and reeking of sweat and something metallic. I was tied to a bed, wrists and ankles pulled tight. The ropes were so tight they were already digging into my skin. My mouth was dry as sand, and my head throbbed like it had been split open. Berdella stood over me, no longer smiling. His face was blank, eyes flat, like he was looking through me.
“You’re mine now,” he said. His voice was calm, like he was stating a fact.
I thrashed and screamed, pure panic taking over. “What the hell is this? Let me go!”
He just tilted his head and gave a small, twisted grin. “No one’s coming. No one even knows you’re here. You’re going to be very useful.”
Then came four straight days of absolute hell.
He didn’t just tie me up. He broke me, piece by piece. He’d come into the room like it was routine—like this was just part of his day. Sometimes he’d smile, sometimes not, but he always had something with him: syringes, clamps, wires, tools. He’d inject me with something that made my limbs feel like jelly and my mind float away from my body. But I never floated far enough. I always felt it. Every second of it.
One day, he jabbed a needle into my arm, and I felt a burning like acid in my veins. Later I found out it was Drano. He watched me writhe and scream like it was entertainment, calmly writing notes in a little journal while I begged him to stop.
He hit me with anything he could find—wooden paddles, fists, even metal rods. My ribs cracked. My lips split open. One eye swelled shut. He shocked me, too. Attached wires to my body and flipped a switch. My muscles seized so hard I thought I’d snap bones. I screamed until my voice gave out and only dry, broken gasps came out. He kept Polaroid cameras nearby and snapped photos while I cried. He had dozens, maybe hundreds of them. Other guys, too. He showed them to me one night.
“See this one?” he said, holding up a photo of a guy maybe my age, his face bruised, his eyes empty. “He didn’t listen. Ended up in the crawlspace. You want to end up like him?”
I stopped talking after that. I went quiet. But I didn’t stop thinking.
By the fourth day, I could barely move. My arms were raw from the ropes, my body bruised all over. But I noticed something: he always tied my hands behind my back—except once, when I complained about the pain. That time, he tied them in front. That was my only shot.
So I played the part. I went still, silent. I acted like I’d given up. When he came in that evening, I whispered, “Please. My wrists. Just for tonight. It hurts too much.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, then shrugged. “Fine. But try anything, and I’ll cut your throat.”
He tied them in front and left the room. I heard the front door slam shut. He was gone.
My fingers were numb, but I worked at the knot, slowly, carefully. It felt like it took hours, but eventually, it slipped. I pulled the rope off, then freed my legs. My body screamed in pain as I stood. I hobbled to the window. Second floor. No time to be scared. I shoved it open and dropped.
I hit the pavement hard. My ankle snapped the wrong way with a sound I’ll never forget. Pain exploded through me, but I got up, naked, bleeding, barely able to breathe. I ran. I don’t know how far or how fast, but I ran like something was chasing me.
I found a house, banged on the door with everything I had. “Help me! Please—he’s going to kill me!”
An older woman answered, her face going pale when she saw me. She dragged me inside, wrapped me in a blanket, and called the cops.
They got there fast. I was taken to the hospital. They pumped my stomach, gave me painkillers, stitched me up. Then they went to Berdella’s house.
What they found was worse than anything I could’ve imagined. Human remains in the backyard. Journals full of detailed torture logs. Dozens of Polaroids—faces frozen in terror. Six confirmed victims. Probably more. Berdella confessed. They gave him life without parole. He died in prison in ’92. Good. He didn’t deserve a single peaceful day.
I left Kansas City after that. Tried to rebuild. I’ve stayed clean since then, but the damage doesn’t go away. Not really. The body heals, but the mind… it keeps the scars hidden under the skin. Sometimes I hear his voice in my dreams. Sometimes I wake up, tied up in my head again.
But I survived. That’s what matters. I got out. And if telling my story helps someone else—if it helps even one person recognize a predator before it’s too late—then maybe all that pain won’t be for nothing.