u/Accomplished_Edge477

In April, I quit my cushy corporate sales job in April to work with my husband at our landscaping company. It’s been four months and it’s gradually been getting hotter in Texas.

The last three days it’s been 107° with no relief in sight for at least the next 10 days. Yesterday we put in 14 hours, the day before 10 hours. So far today we are at 9 hours.

I am taking the rest of today off because I am literally to the point of tears thinking about getting back out in the heat. I know it was my choice to pursue this career change, and I’m happy to go to work most days, but this week has just been too much. I just want to hibernate for the next month or two until the weather cools off.

When I was 18 years old, I was a brand new mom — knee deep in diapers and breast milk, and severely lacking on sleep.

My baby daddy (now husband) and I had just signed the lease on our first home together in a tiny town in north Texas. The town was so small that there was just one flashing red traffic light, two gas stations, and one cop who only worked 2 nights a week. The population was well under 1000.

Our house was adorable. Pink brick, big backyard, two bedrooms and one bathroom. Perfect for our young family.
Shortly after moving in, strange things began to happen and it didn’t take long for us to realize we weren’t the only ones in the house. Over the next two years, it was clear to us that there were at least two entities in the house with us- a woman and a man.

The first incident occurred while my husband was home alone with the baby. He was sitting on the couch in the living room when he saw the light, misty shape of a woman pacing in the kitchen. He couldn’t make out her face, but he could tell it was definitely a woman wearing a long dress.

In the following weeks and months, it seemed like the activity really picked up and was focused in our daughter’s room. Every single day when I went to get my daughter out of her crib, pictures that were hung on her wall would be on the floor. The first couple of times, I chalked it up to not having enough thumbtacks holding the large painted canvases up. But even after reinforcing each painting, I’d still come in to find them all on the floor. At the time, my daughter was so young, there was no way she could have knocked them down, and my husband definitely wouldn’t have intentionally messed up her room like that.
Being a new mama bear, this activity really pissed me off. Like, fuck you, ghost. Mess with someone your own size.

The next major incident occurred when my sister and her boyfriend spent the night at our house. At the end of a long night of board games (since we were too broke to have internet or tv), they made a pallet of pillows and blankets on the floor in the living room, and my husband and I retired to our bedroom.

The way our house was set up, the living room, kitchen and dining room were in the front of the house. Then there was a long hallway leading to the bathroom and the two bedrooms, which sat directly across from each other at the end of the hallway.

The next morning, my sister and her boyfriend looked extremely tired. When we asked how they slept, my sister said “we kept waking up every time you went to the bathroom.”
Confused, I looked at my husband. “I didn’t go to the bathroom last night. Did you?”

My sister explained that they heard our bedroom door open and close, then after a short pause, the bathroom door open and close. A couple minutes later, they’d hear the bathroom door open and close, and then the bedroom door again. As if someone was leaving the bedroom, going to the bathroom, then coming back to bed. They heard this sequence at least 3 times that night.

I was breastfeeding my 6 month old at the time and I never closed our bedroom door, ever. I always left it open in case the baby woke up in the night. Our rooms were arranged so that I could just sit up in bed and see across the hall into her room.

Needless to say, this experience had us thoroughly shook. We started losing sleep, worried that every little sound was something or someone in the house, in Addie’s room. I began to feel like I was going crazy. The anxiety consumed my thoughts, day and night.

Then, one night, I woke up in the middle of the night, once again. I sat up in bed and looked toward the hallway to peer into the baby’s room. Instead of seeing the warm yellow glow of her night light, there was the black shape of a man— opaque, impenetrable black— and he was standing near the foot of my bed, blocking the glow of the nightlight. He was tall, maybe 6 feet, with broad shoulders. I couldn’t see any of his features, as he was solid black, but I got the sense that he was wearing a blazer or suit jacket which caused his shoulders to look square.

Strangely, when I saw him, I didn’t feel scared. He didn’t feel threatening or spooky like the woman did. In fact, when I realized what I was seeing, I simply rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next morning, I described the night’s events to my husband and we agreed to have the house blessed \~just\~ in case. After that, the activity stopped. We never had another experience again.

When I was 18 years old, I was a brand new mom — knee deep in diapers and breast milk, and severely lacking on sleep.

My baby daddy (now husband) and I had just signed the lease on our first home together in a tiny town in north Texas. The town was so small that there was just one flashing red traffic light, two gas stations, and one cop who only worked 2 nights a week. The population was well under 1000.

Our house was adorable. Pink brick, big backyard, two bedrooms and one bathroom. Perfect for our young family.
Shortly after moving in, strange things began to happen and it didn’t take long for us to realize we weren’t the only ones in the house. Over the next two years, it was clear to us that there were at least two entities in the house with us- a woman and a man.

The first incident occurred while my husband was home alone with the baby. He was sitting on the couch in the living room when he saw the light, misty shape of a woman pacing in the kitchen. He couldn’t make out her face, but he could tell it was definitely a woman wearing a long dress.

In the following weeks and months, it seemed like the activity really picked up and was focused in our daughter’s room. Every single day when I went to get my daughter out of her crib, pictures that were hung on her wall would be on the floor. The first couple of times, I chalked it up to not having enough thumbtacks holding the large painted canvases up. But even after reinforcing each painting, I’d still come in to find them all on the floor. At the time, my daughter was so young, there was no way she could have knocked them down, and my husband definitely wouldn’t have intentionally messed up her room like that.
Being a new mama bear, this activity really pissed me off. Like, fuck you, ghost. Mess with someone your own size.

The next major incident occurred when my sister and her boyfriend spent the night at our house. At the end of a long night of board games (since we were too broke to have internet or tv), they made a pallet of pillows and blankets on the floor in the living room, and my husband and I retired to our bedroom.

The way our house was set up, the living room, kitchen and dining room were in the front of the house. Then there was a long hallway leading to the bathroom and the two bedrooms, which sat directly across from each other at the end of the hallway.

The next morning, my sister and her boyfriend looked extremely tired. When we asked how they slept, my sister said “we kept waking up every time you went to the bathroom.”
Confused, I looked at my husband. “I didn’t go to the bathroom last night. Did you?”

My sister explained that they heard our bedroom door open and close, then after a short pause, the bathroom door open and close. A couple minutes later, they’d hear the bathroom door open and close, and then the bedroom door again. As if someone was leaving the bedroom, going to the bathroom, then coming back to bed. They heard this sequence at least 3 times that night.

I was breastfeeding my 6 month old at the time and I never closed our bedroom door, ever. I always left it open in case the baby woke up in the night. Our rooms were arranged so that I could just sit up in bed and see across the hall into her room.

Needless to say, this experience had us thoroughly shook. We started losing sleep, worried that every little sound was something or someone in the house, in Addie’s room. I began to feel like I was going crazy. The anxiety consumed my thoughts, day and night.

Then, one night, I woke up in the middle of the night, once again. I sat up in bed and looked toward the hallway to peer into the baby’s room. Instead of seeing the warm yellow glow of her night light, there was the black shape of a man— opaque, impenetrable black— and he was standing near the foot of my bed, blocking the glow of the nightlight. He was tall, maybe 6 feet, with broad shoulders. I couldn’t see any of his features, as he was solid black, but I got the sense that he was wearing a blazer or suit jacket which caused his shoulders to look square.

Strangely, when I saw him, I didn’t feel scared. He didn’t feel threatening or spooky like the woman did. In fact, when I realized what I was seeing, I simply rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next morning, I described the night’s events to my husband and we agreed to have the house blessed ~just~ in case. After that, the activity stopped. We never had another experience again.

I grew up in a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas (howdy!) with my mom, dad, and older sister. We lived in an old house with a big sunroom that was added on sometime in the 70s. Picture floor to ceiling glass sliding doors all along the back wall, overlooking the backyard.

The sunroom eventually evolved into The Computer Room, where if you were sitting at the computer, your back would be to the glass sliding doors.

The Friday before Labor Day in 2006, I was 11 years old. My mom was sitting at the computer and I was almost assuredly on her nerves when we heard a loud pop come from the backyard. Without looking up from her email, my mom told me, her 11 year old daughter with no electrical experience, to go out into the backyard to see if the transformer had blown.

Not knowing exactly what I was looking for, I went out back and took a look around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except our neighbors dog, Bonnie, was running loose on the street behind our house.

Our backyard shared a fence with their backyard and I knew Bonnie because my dog had a lil crush on her, so I had facilitated some of their lusty meetups by lifting my dog over the fence to see her.

Later that night, after my sister and I were in bed and my dad was at work, my mom started receiving calls from family asking if we were okay. Apparently, they had seen on the news that there was a SWAT team standoff CURRENTLY HAPPENING BEHIND OUR HOUSE. Every surrounding house had been evacuated except for us!

My mom ran to the sunroom and looked out the glass doors to see Bonnie’s house fully engulfed in flames. A police officer was on our back porch telling my mom to turn off all the lights and get away from the doors.

It turns out, Bonnie’s dad had opened fire on his neighbors across the street earlier that day. That was the pop that we had heard. It turned into a police standoff, and the cops threw tear gas into his house to get him to come out. Instead, the tear gas canisters caught fire and set the entire house ablaze. Unfortunately, the standoff ended when the man shot and killed himself.

From what I heard, he was going through a nasty divorce that pushed him over the edge. I still think about him often. He was a sweet man who had once bailed our dog out of the pound after he got picked up by animal control. To 11 year old me, that was the kindest thing anyone could have done. It warms my heart to know even in his darkest time, he still wanted Bonnie to be safe and had let her out of the yard before it all went down.

I grew up in a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas (howdy!) with my mom, dad, and older sister. We lived in an old house with a big sunroom that was added on sometime in the 70s. Picture floor to ceiling glass sliding doors all along the back wall, overlooking the backyard.

The sunroom eventually evolved into The Computer Room, where if you were sitting at the computer, your back would be to the glass sliding doors.

The Friday before Labor Day in 2006, I was 11 years old. My mom was sitting at the computer and I was almost assuredly on her nerves when we heard a loud pop come from the backyard. Without looking up from her email, my mom told me, her 11 year old daughter with no electrical experience, to go out into the backyard to see if the transformer had blown.

Not knowing exactly what I was looking for, I went out back and took a look around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except our neighbors dog, Bonnie, was running loose on the street behind our house.

Our backyard shared a fence with their backyard and I knew Bonnie because my dog had a lil crush on her, so I had facilitated some of their lusty meetups by lifting my dog over the fence to see her.

Later that night, after my sister and I were in bed and my dad was at work, my mom started receiving calls from family asking if we were okay. Apparently, they had seen on the news that there was a SWAT team standoff CURRENTLY HAPPENING BEHIND OUR HOUSE. Every surrounding house had been evacuated except for us!

My mom ran to the sunroom and looked out the glass doors to see Bonnie’s house fully engulfed in flames. A police officer was on our back porch telling my mom to turn off all the lights and get away from the doors.

It turns out, Bonnie’s dad had opened fire on his neighbors across the street earlier that day. That was the pop that we had heard. It turned into a police standoff, and the cops threw tear gas into his house to get him to come out. Instead, the tear gas canisters caught fire and set the entire house ablaze. Unfortunately, the standoff ended when the man shot and killed himself.

From what I heard, he was going through a nasty divorce that pushed him over the edge. I still think about him often. He was a sweet man who had once bailed our dog out of the pound after he got picked up by animal control. To 11 year old me, that was the kindest thing anyone could have done. It warms my heart to know even in his darkest time, he still wanted Bonnie to be safe and had let her out of the yard before it all went down.

I (31f) grew up unsupervised on the early internet. I remember being in yahoo chat rooms, getting explicit messages from men as early as 10 years old.

By the time I was 13, I had an app called Photoswap. It was similar to Snapchat. Take a picture, it gets sent to a random Photoswap user who took a picture at the same time, and you get their picture in return. If you respond to their picture with another, the convo can continue. If you skip their photo, the convo is lost and you have to connect with them again.

As you can imagine, there were lots of nudes posted here. Being a neglected teen who was starved for attention, I started sending nudes. Random men would respond all the time, but it was something that filled a void in my life. People “cared” about me. I had someone to talk to.

Then, I started high school and was busy with sports and didn’t use Photoswap for a year or so. One night, I redownloaded it and sent a picture of myself into the void.

A couple of moments later, I received a response. It was a picture of a computer screen in a dark room. On the screen was a folder of photos. They were my nudes from a couple of years ago that he had saved. He remembered me, and knew right where to find his collection of my photos. I was sick for days. I still am when I think of this today.

I have my own teen daughter now and cannot imagine letting her experience the things I experienced. While I give my parents grace that the dangers of the internet were not well known at the time, I do still see it as neglect.

My partner and I own a small landscaping company. Usually, it’s just the two of us, but in busy seasons we’ll hire 1-2 helpers.

One helper who’s worked for us for a couple of years smells so bad that I’ve dry heaved on more than one occasion when he gets in the truck. Even in the dead of summer in TX, 115°, we ride with the windows down because otherwise, the smell is unbearable. Once, we were working on a 1-acre lot, and I could smell him from across the field.

It’s a mixture of BO, dirty clothes, cigarettes, and dog. Sometimes a little dog shit smell too.

One week, we worked 6 days in a row, and he wore the same clothes every single day. After that, I bought him 6 work shirts, so he’d always have a clean one. I even said I’d wash them for him every weekend. He took the shirts, but never took me up on washing them.

He lives in a shed outside his grandparents’ trailer in a really low income neighborhood, with no running water. If he wants to shower, he has to use his grandparents’. If they’re already asleep when he gets off, he’s S.O.L. He told us he bathed in a blowup pool outside. On another occasion, he said that same pool was swarming with mosquito larvae 🤢

We finally let him go a month ago, not totally bc he reeked. He was also really slow on the job, unreliable, and didn’t drive, so we’d have to drive 30 min one way to pick him up and drop him off every day.

A month later, our truck finally doesn’t smell like him. Now, we have a perfectly clean crew. Even after working and sweating all day, I can still smell their cologne/perfume/deodorant 🙌🏻