Note: A lot of you seemed to appreciate that I recorded last week’s story, “Gary”, as a mini-podcast. So I’ve done that again today. I can’t do this every time, but when I can, I will. Listen or read, you choose.

Hi,

Greetings from Austin, Texas. I’ve been lucky enough to run into a few Webworm readers here, and also got to meet some pretty great animals — which is my therapy.

I also ended up at an amazing little store called ‘We Luv Video’, which had an amazing array of DVDs (and VHS tapes!) to rent. And there on the shelf as I walked in was Tickled — something I’ve never seen in the wild here in the US.

There was a short staff recommendation taped to the cover: “I’m not a big fan of true crime documentaries, but this is just bizarre. Highly recommended,” said Clarke.

Thanks, Clarke. Clarke made me realise I’ve never really thought of any of my stuff as “true crime” — more “here’s another story goes that down the rabbit hole”. But I guess Tickled was sort of true crime, as was Mister Organ. As was last week’s Gary.

So I suppose this is, sort of, a true crime addition of Webworm. Because the story I told last week about brushing up against death seemed to really resonate — and I wanted to share some of the stories you shared with me.

I was surprised how many of you have interacted with people who went on to kill — in the case of one reader, an hour after you decided not to give them a lift in your car.

My intent isn’t to create a salacious edition of Webworm, but perhaps just as a reminder of how interlinked we all are, with the good and the bad. And that we all have this very unexpected stuff in common. Maybe that’s to be expected — we’re all doing this whole “being human” thing together after all.

It’s also another chance to explore that thing I fear so much: Dying.

My pet theory is that I spent about 20 years of my life firmly believing in an afterlife, and when that belief went away I felt deeply uneasy about the alternative: The very natural act of simply ceasing to exist. Hardly seems fair. I like being alive.

Of course I also spent 20 years absolutely convinced that an eternity in hellfire was a real possibility (I think a lot of conservative Christians don’t actually believe this bit, they just say they do), and when you believe something that long — a little stain remains deep inside your brain.

That stain is fear.

But enough about me. This one is about you. And these stories you told me.

Some of them are a little light hearted, some of them less so. Please read with care.

Kath

I thought finding a meth addicted drug dealer living in my ceiling was as wild as it could get, but to my knowledge the meth addicted drug dealer had never openly murdered anyone.

He must have been up there for at least a couple of months.

In my defense, it was in Brisbane and if you’ve ever had possums in your ceiling space they do sound like a person banging about up there.

I noticed the hard-wired smoke detector wasn’t working and called our building maintenance man to come and have a look, and he could see sunlight and sky through the hole the detector was wired through. Which should not happen.

The dude had ripped roofing tiles out to give himself ventilation.

I am eternally grateful that there were no access hatches in my flat.

Lauren

As a kid, my Dad’s parents both worked so he often stayed at the house of a woman who was his Boy Scout leader. He would stay there after school until his parents got off work.

Fast forward a few years: Turns out, after seeing her face plastered on the front of the newspaper and seeing most wanted posters around town, his babysitter became one of the most wanted fugitives in San Francisco.

She had killed a couple of people and buried them in her garage. I believe in the timeline this was a couple years after she babysat him, so there weren’t bodies buried while he was there.

Sara

Me and my girlfriends meet a bunch of lads at a festival. They were fun and rowdy, and some were single — which the other singles in my gal gang were keen on.

We kept in touch and were invited to a Halloween party a few weeks later.

It was a Saturday and the night before the Rugby World Cup final, so [it was] a big call to have a party then, when everyone would be up at 4am to watch the cup.

My boyfriend didn’t want to come for that very reason, and he also raised concerns about us not really knowing these people that well.

But we felt safe, we had good judgment, so me and the girls all went. Dressed up, I was a crazy cat lady (my favourite Halloween costume to date), the other girls were a hippy, medusa, and the black swan ballerina.

The party was in a house of a guy dressed as Superman and everyone came dressed up. It was a great effort! There was a pirate, cookie monster, a big cuddly teddy, and so on.

It was a balmy October night, and things were looking fun. There was just this one niggle though. Superman’s flatmate, who also lived in the house, was not at all dressed up. He was tense, he was erratic, and he had meticulously laid plastic all over every carpeted part of the house.

He made strange jokes and he switched between friendly and strange constantly. I got bad vibes from him, but no-one else really noticed. They found him funny. “Was he just being funny?” I thought to myself.

I kept a close eye on him. Whenever someone picked up a drink he would quickly wipe the cup ring off the kitchen bench before they put their drink down again. It became obsessive. He was irate whenever he found a discarded beer bottle not in the tiny plastic bag he had assigned as the empties bin.

He also started making creepy comments to my friend, the black swan ballerina.

When his flatmate finally took him outside and told him to stop being so weird, I heard him snap back and threaten him. I heard the word “stab”. Things were getting tense. I went inside and told my friend how uneasy I was feeling. I felt I wanted to leave.

The party was humming, all the guests were having a blast in the kitchen, but I felt danger. I took my friend outside to say that something was about to happen. As I began to tell her, I looked in the window to see the strange flatmate storm purposefully into the kitchen, and with horror-movie precision he pulled the biggest knife from the knife block and charged towards his Superman flatmate.

Immediately the pirate and Cookie Monster grabbed him from behind, muscling the knife from his hand before he could cut Superman, and they pinned him down.

As the costumed party goers were piecing together what was happening, everyone ran outside screaming and I called the cops. We all waited for them to come from a fair distance away.

The Armed Offenders squad came in as the strange flatmate sat on the lit up stairwell with a hammer in his hand. There was a fair bit of adrenaline surging after that. The guy was taken away, and most of the party cracked on with their adrenaline high.

The next day, the All Blacks won the World Cup final in the early hours. I cried all through halftime. I couldn’t stop replaying the scene in my head, over and over — seeing him pull the knife from the block, and then rewatching Cookie Monster wrestle the blade out of his hand, saving Superman.

J

I was told a story once by a musician, who said as a child, he and some friends had killed a man. It was an accident, but it still haunts him. He made me vow never to tell anyone how it happened, and I’ve kept my promise.

Amanda

My boyfriend at the time woke me up in quiet glee to softly tell me he’d been to a party and beat the living shit out of a guy. The next day there was a news story: someone had beaten a stranger to death at a local party.

I had some form of cognitive dissonance around it; it couldn’t be the man I was kissed so gently by who loved his two-year-old daughter so much (and did meth, had an illegal gun, and soon outlined to me his plan to try to kill me in a way so that nobody would ever suspect him).

Yeah, we broke up.

I made a police report but they seemed to think I was an angry vengeful ex and nothing ever came from it.

(Amanda has written more about her story here, as a type of closure.)

Miranda

I hate how much I relate to this — but one of my dear friends from high school, who sadly went undiagnosed (and thus, untreated) with severe schizophrenia in our early college years and, in the midst of an episode of psychosis, murdered a local Pastor.

In the tiny rural Appalachian town I grew up in, this was quite the shock. But mainly a shock because it was her. My friend.

Hell, everyone’s friend — this was a lovely, bubbly, stylish and popular girl that everyone absolutely adored.

And one day, she simply up-and-left a hair appointment mid-session and, in her telling, went on the “command of God” to go break into this man’s home and attack him repeatedly with a blunt object.

Please do not be quick to pass judgment. This is a tragic story at its core, for she, her family, and the victim and his family as well.

Anna

In my early twenties I moved into a flat with a group of people I didn't know.

A snarling guy who refused to talk to me and played records loudly at 2am, a friendly gay guy who was never home, and the leaseholder — a woman who ran a second hand clothing shop.

She didn’t let us have a TV in the lounge, and was angry if the house didn’t stay immaculately tidy. I was not tidy.

One day I was in a bit of distress because my goldfish were sick, they had begun swimming on their sides and I didn’t know what to do.

The woman confidently told me she would handle the situation. She fished them out of their tank, carried them into the kitchen and proceeded to cut their heads off with a steak knife.

I moved out soon after.

James

[I’m reminded] of this story:

A demolition crew yesterday ripped down the house in Oriental Bay where 38-year-old Dean Browne was bashed to death with a hammer on January 21 last year.

Mr Browne, from Auckland, was staying with a woman in an upstairs flat in the rambling two-storey house when the small-time drug-dealing Killer Clown Fiends gang plotted to kill him after an argument over money.

At the time I was trying to date a girl who lived in that house, and had visited a couple of times.

She was asleep in her room when her flatmate was murdered, rolled into a carpet, and driven to Taranaki.

L

I once made out with a guy who subsequently murdered his dad. Whenever I’m in one of those ‘get to know you’ things where you do two truths and a lie, I always use that one as one of the truths. I’d say people guess it’s the lie 80% of the time.

Ashley

My mother’s father was murdered when she was 22. I wasn’t quite born yet.

He was shot in his office by a client of his who was on some intense drugs. He shot himself right after and died...so he didn’t exactly get away with it I guess.

It’s weird to think how many lives are affected by brutality just within our small circles.

Lynette

At high school during the fifties, a classmate — due to mental illness — killed his two younger siblings.

We were informed at assembly and just had to get on with it. No counseling or anything soft like that. So we talked amongst ourselves trying to put things in perspective.

I didn’t realise how deep this memory was until now.

I got a very clear picture of a gentle quiet boy that didn’t harass us girls standing on the edge of the rugby field, not allowed to join in because of his parents strict religious beliefs.

In his mind he was saving his sisters from the same fate.

Chris

After my own run-in with a neighbour last year, I understand the obsession (not the knife, mind you).

Mine played the same three songs - ‘Firework,’ ‘Thunder’ and ‘Made You Look’ - on repeat, every day, for six months. When I asked him to stop, he poured weed killer over the lawn.

It absolutely did my head in, and we ended up having to move away.

I don’t like to think about what would have happened had I stayed, but I had to understand why he ended up here, next to me, stuck in this sick musical cycle.

I tracked down his ex-friends, researched his job history, talked to family members and other neighbours. It was just kinda depressing: he was a sad, divorced, angry alcoholic with no friends whose only method of getting attention was to antagonise people relentlessly. Didn’t you make a movie about someone like that once, Dave?

(Chris writes a newsletter about the music industry, where he also detailed his hectic neighbor encounter.)

Trevor

I was driving home in the wee hours of the morning, and stopped to get fuel and a pie in the middle of town. I saw a bloke from high school while I was pumping gas  — he didn’t look in good shape, and had a few teenage kids in tow. They asked for a ride. I said I was “going the other way”, because I definitely got a feeling they were trying to rob me. 

I watched them walk towards the park, and I drove off. 

The bloke stabbed some guy and killed him in that park, just after I’d seen them.

Emily

About eight years ago one of my best friends died. We’re still not sure if it was an accident or a murder.

We just know that it was in the middle of the Arnold Classic, one of Columbus, Ohio’s most chaotic weekends.

He was out drinking with some friends of ours. It was a busy street, and a busy sidewalk. So many people there knew him. He left at some point, got into a car, sent a garbled text message and disappeared. No one saw who’s car he got into. Cameras didn’t catch it.

Joey was missing for about a month before his body turned up in a lake.

There were searches and investigations. Podcast episodes, and Reddit threads. Conspiracy theories, and chapters in books written.

And then at some point the police just stopped looking. Stopped asking for information. At this point, I don’t think we’ll ever know. He didn’t drown, we’re sure of that. We’re not sure of anything else, other than the suspicious nature of it all.

There’s something so weird, and indescribable about grief that goes unpunished. Like little rips in your life that go un-mended. I always want to talk about Joey. To make sure that people know. To shake something up enough that maybe justice will come, or someone will fill that hole, or tell us why it happened, or explain anything at all.

But it’s also hard because when your grief escapes into the world, it takes on a life of its own and you don’t have any control over that either.

You want people to know. You want other people to scream for justice too. But it also seems selfish somehow, like pulling attention for yourself from the loss of someone’s life. I have a hard time grappling with it sometimes. I have a hard time grappling with it now, even.

He was one of my best friends but I’m still not sure if it’s my story to tell.

But I think the stories are worth telling. There’s community in it. Closure, maybe? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe that weird hole will never close. But I’m comforted to know that things like this roll around in other people’s heads as well.

David here again.

Thanks for sharing — for those of you who commented, or sent me emails: Kath, Lauren, Sara, J, Amanda, Miranda, Anna, James, L, Ashley, Lynette, Chris, Trevor and Emily.

Thanks to those of you who put up with me emailing back, sorting out a few extra details.

I’m not quite sure where this is going, but if you had any stories you wanted to share — I guess loosely based on the idea of “anonymous confessions”, or “a mad thing that happened that I’ve never written down”, I’m curious to hear from you.

I am [email protected]. Tell me if you just want to get it off your chest, or you want to share it more widely.

This idea may go somewhere, or it may not. I just have Emily’s words echoing in my head a little: I think the stories are worth telling. There’s community in it. Closure, maybe? I’m comforted to know that things like this roll around in other people’s heads as well.

Thanks for being here. I love sharing this place with you, and being reminded that all of us are constantly brushing up against chaos — sometimes totally unawares.

David.

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