When something scary happens at home, we can usually handle it. We know the creaks and squeaks of our stairs, the sounds the pipes make, and where to hide if someone who doesn't belong there comes in. But in someone else's house, all bets are off. Even the tiniest sound becomes terrifying and a knock on the door at night sets our hearts pounding. We asked people to share the scariest things that happened to them while visiting someone else's house. Prepare to never leave home again.
34. Not the scare you were expecting.
When I was 8 I slept over at a friend’s house with my little brother. Her father woke us all up in the middle of the night, had us bundle up, and loaded us in the family minivan. He drove to a gas station and talked the whole way about how a bakery exploded behind their house. He said the resulting gases and such could kill us, so we had to try and drive as far away as possible.
They were also our next-door neighbors, so I was worried about our parents’ safety. At the gas station, our friend’s mom bought us snacks while he canvassed the area. I told her I didn’t hear any explosion and asked about my parents. She must have called them from a pay phone during the snack run, because they pulled up a few minutes later to take us home. I was, of course, terrified to go home.
Later, our parents sat us down to explain that our friend’s father was sick with something called schizophrenia that makes him hallucinate.
33. Busted awake by pain.
I was at a sleepover at my best friend’s house when I was about 12. Middle of the night after we’d fallen asleep, he wakes up and starts screaming that his head is going to explode. Not just a bad dream; he keeps going, just screaming and crying and thrashing around. His parents wake up, scoop him up, and rush him to the hospital.
Turned out he’d just never had a headache before, and his first was apparently a doozy.
32. The anger monster.
I was probably 7 when this happened. My friend lived down the street. Her mom had invited some girls to come hang out from our class and she made us sandwiches, cookies, juice, popcorn, the normal ‘girl day’ type of fun. We were in the garage playing.
Her dad had an anger problem. Out of nowhere, he came in yelling at us, saying we were too loud. He grabbed my friend’s mom by the arm and hit her, she started crying. Then, he grabbed my friend and spanked her. Alright. Well he proceeded to grab each girl and spank them hard. I ran away as fast as I could back to my house.
I told my parents and they called CPS, the family moved away shortly after that. Hope my friend is ok.
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31. No small scare.
I was babysitting a special needs 2 year old, and the kid wanted to go play outside. No biggie, but since it was fall in Alaska I wanted to make sure that it wasn't too cold out. I stepped outside to check their thermometer. The door locked behind me. I had no phone, and since it was Alaska the closest neighbor was too far away for me to leave the kid alone in the house to get help. So I ended up ramming into the door in a panic until the lock broke and I could get in. The kid was okay, got in the laundry but otherwise had no idea anything was wrong. I thought I would get in trouble for breaking their door but the mother said I could've broken a window and she wouldn't have cared.
The mom still paid me $50 for babysitting, though, and that's a lot of money for a 12-year old.
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30. The mafia extends a cordial invitation.
My cousin brings me to his friends house. We all hang out in the basement, my cousin forgets his cigarettes and asks if I can grab them from his car outside. I think nothing of it, go grab the cigs and start making my way back to the house. I walk in the house by myself when I run into the friends dad. This guy's father (who I’ve never met) just looks me up and down & goes “WHO THE HECCK ARE YOU! WHY ARE YOU IN MY HOUSE!” Mind you we’re in New Jersey and this is an Italian family, so I’m basically getting yelled at by discount Tony Soprano. This guy's flipping out and I’m scared to death, until my cousin comes storming upstairs and clears everything up. All my cousin had to say was, “Frank this is my cousin” and just like that, crisis averted. Love you, New Jersey.
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29. Scary prank backfires.
I was sleeping over on a former friend's sofa. He decided to "prank me" by pretending to be a burglar wearing a ski mask, then he pretended to try and "kidnap me." Long story short I broke his nose, and we are no longer friends.
Image by LeoFra from Pixabay
28. Dad's doppelganger.
My best friend's dad was in the reserves and would come home late at night a lot. One time he had come home and we didn't notice. We were heading to the kitchen to go make bread and cheese and we froze in the hallway because we saw someone kneeling in front of the fireplace which wasn't lit. We proceed to freak out, which wakes the dad up and he comes out of his room laughing. Turns out he thought it wold be funny to set his duffle bag up, wrap his coat a round it, hat on top, boots in front and it looked just like some dude chilling with his head on his knees.
27. Terrifying for everybody.
One of my friends from childhood would have really bad night terrors. She would either wake up in the middle of the night screaming at the top of her lungs or she would randomly jump up and start running for the front door trying to get away from whatever she thought was chasing her. It was always pretty terrifying waking up to her screaming or tripping over me while trying to get to the door.
Image by Gisela Merkuur from Pixabay
26. Predictable predator.
I housesat for my childhood crush when we were 12 as her family went on a 6 week road trip around the US. They had a cat and a bird and you see where this is going. This stupid little finch got out of its cage (legit, the cage was closed when I returned the next day), and the cat killed it.
I was obviously scared out of my mind of being "the guy who killed my crush's bird" so I did the only logical thing and went to the pet store and bought both of the finches they had that looked identical. I had about 2 weeks to figure out which was more like the cat-bait and then, not knowing what to do with the other, I kept it. They never found out, or told me if they did.
And that's the story of how I ended up with a pet finch.
25. Swords are always a good strategy.
I was 18 and my friend and I were alone at her house. Her parents were going through a nasty divorce and her dad (who had anger problems) was not allowed to come near the house because the mom had a restraining order. He ended up banging on the door and trying to break in since he knew the mom wasn’t home. We hid in my friend’s room with a samurai sword while she called her mom to come home.
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
23. No trespassers.
I was a freshman in college when I spent Christmas with my high school buddy who didn't go with his family out of town. I went to his kitchen to get a drink when I looked out his kitchen window and saw two figures jumping his fence. Luckily I saw them before turning on the light, so they didn't see me. I quietly told him to get ready to call the cops, when I saw them making their way to his door. Without thinking I ran to the door and opened it and yelled, "LAPD! Freeze!" And luckily the two figures got scared and ran away. Thinking back on it they sounded really young and they were probably just gonna ding dong ditch the place or something. But to be safe I stayed with him until his family came home.
Image by Moritz Bechert from Pixabay
22. Frightening fungi.
A friend was doing some long-term house sitting, and invited me over to hang (the owners were aware and okay with this). We went down into the basement, since that’s where the TV was. We got about halfway down the stairs, and see this thing sitting on a shelf. It was about the size of a small dog, and kind of fuzzy. It didn’t look alive, but the prospect of a dead thing was even worse. We noped out and went back upstairs to watch Netflix on the laptop instead.
About a week later, my friend texted me. The thing was a mushroom garden that they’d put down there and apparently completely forgotten about, and now it was covered in mold.
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21. Texas tree trimmer massacre doesn't have the same ring.
I was 11 and at my friend's house, his parents and all of his siblings were home. Everyone but his dad was in the front room of the house. His dad was doing yard work in the backyard. I got up to go to the bathroom, and while passing the backdoor saw that my friend's dad was on a ladder with an electric tree trimmer. Before I looked away and continued on, his dad fell off the top rung of the ladder and crashed hard on the ground. The tree trimmer was still somehow on and landed next to his body. The trimmer was going full horror movie and slowly moving towards him and he was not getting up. I'm the only one who saw this happen. So I yelled, "Your dad fell, come quick!" and ran outside to pick the trimmer up and move it away. By the time I turned it off and started focusing on him, everyone else was outside. We helped him up, the mom took him to the hospital for back pain and a mild concussion, the older siblings watched us while they were gone, and everyone was very thankful I had to pee.
20. Too close for comfort.
I was about 14 years old. Sleeping over at my friend’s house, and in the middle of the night we heard some rustling around in her enclosed patio (which was adjacent to the living room we were sleeping in.) We shrugged it off because she had two very active outdoor cats who generally slept in the patio. When we woke up the next morning and went out there to eat breakfast, we saw the screen door had been slashed and several pieces of furniture (TV, etc) were gone. So the rustling we heard in the middle of the night were actually burglars. Not sure if they knew that several teenage girls were in the living room, but still freaks me out a bit when I think about it.
Image by LeoFra from Pixabay
19. They summoned evil.
This happened when I was 8. I went over to this girl's house, really liked her. Her older brother told us about "Bloody Mary", and she was ecstatic to try and summon her, so she asked me to come with her, and of course I said yeah. So we go into the bathroom, turn off the lights, shut the door, she starts chanting it, and the brother starts pounding on the door, screaming.
When we tried to open the door, it was blocked, and he kept pounding and screaming "OH GOD SHE'S GOT A KNIFE HELP!" After like a while he finally let us out, laughing like crazy. Because of this, mirrors scared the crap out of me until I was 16. And I am still wary of them to this day.
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18. The real horror is right here.
I was at a shared house that our ski club owned, up in Vermont. We were renting it for the night, along with a few other families. All was fine until after dinner, when I had to take a particularly bad dump. Naturally, the toilet clogged. I tried plunging, I tried flushing again, I tried... other disgusting methods, but it would not go down.
Knock, knock.
A sinking feeling entered my stomach as I realized someone was at the door. This was the only restroom and the contents of the toilet bowl were swimming around in a brown soup of disgustingness. I couldn't flush again or it would overflow, and nothing was working, so I washed my hands and explained the situation to the waiting gentleman, who was a portly dude in a wife-beater and worn jeans. He told me to get out of the way, which I did with haste.
I don't know how he got it to go down, but he did. I apologized like 20 times. It was a terrible, smelly, revolting situation. At least I had enough toilet paper, huh?
17. You always hurt the ones you love.
When I was like 8 or 9 I was at a relative's house for a family gathering when one of my distant relatives flipped out and grabbed a kitchen knife. I don't remember the details but I'm pretty sure he was threatening people. I remember being ushered into a side room with everyone else and being cramped in there for like a minute or two just listening while a few male relatives who had remained outside with the guy encircled him, got him to calm down, and disarmed him. I learned later that the dude's brain was like partially fried or something from substance abuse. Never saw him at any family gatherings again after that.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
16. Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?
The first time meeting my boyfriend's family, who live in another country, we stayed in his old attic bedroom. In the middle of the night, he reaches over and shakes me awake. "Huh?" I mumble and he says, "shhh... be very still...I think there is someone else in the house." I lay motionless, thinking that someone has broken in and I'm about to be psycho murdered. Listening to the sounds of the old creaky attic, convinced every gust of wind is a foot step. He puts his arm around my head, covering my ears. I don't move for hours in fear... until I hear him snoring.
And that was the night I discovered, for the first time, he talks in his sleep.
15. Nothing scarier than public embarrassment.
I stayed with my boyfriend and his parents for a few weeks. One night, they left me home alone for a few hours. I decided to take a bath. Ventilation fan is on full blast, door is closed, water is running, so I dont hear the beeping. When I turn the tap off, I hear alarms blaring and a robotic voice saying "FIRE. FIRE. FIRE." and someone is banging on the front door. I run downstairs in a towel while calling up my boyfriend. Neighbor is at the door because he heard the alarm. He has no idea who I am. Alarm company couldn't get ahold of anyone so they called the authorities. Cop cars, ambulance, and firetrucks show up, neighbors all crowd on the lawn. I'm still in a towel. Firefighters conclude the steam from the bath set off the alarm. I die of humiliation and never take a bath there again.
14. The young and the deadly.
I was watching a friend's kids when I was in the Army. I was crashed out on the couch early one morning when the door flung open and 3 kids that didn't live there entered the house, the one in front had a gun.
They were making for the kids bedrooms and had not noticed me on the couch. I was scared but not gonna let them just kill the kids I was watching so I jumped up and barreled into the lead kid and took the gun. There was screaming and the kids I was watching came running out into the front room.
Turns out it was a BB gun, the kid with the gun had just received it as a gift and wanted to show the kids I was watching. The visiting kids had been told by the resident kids that their parents were away for the weekend so they just bardged in.
Of note they were all like 13 so it wasn't exactly hard to take the BB gun, still scared the crap out of me.
Image by Виктория Бородинова from Pixabay
13. Too sick to sleepover.
I had hallucinations from a fever while staying over at a friend’s and thought the dad was just downstairs screaming all night. It was like living through a horror movie. I still have nightmares about it almost 20 years later. The fever was so bad I had a seizure the next day.
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12. Thanks mom and dad.
I was at my parents' home. They asked me to house sit. The neighbors knew they were gone and called the cops on me. I guess the cops just hung out outside waiting for the (presumed) burglars to come out but when that didn’t happen and the lights went out they decided to come in. I awoke to a bunch of cops shouting at me with drawn guns and flashlights shining blinding me and backlighting the pistol pointing right in my face.
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11. Trick or trauma.
I was around 12, and my friend asks if I wanna see a cool trick.
Friend proceeds to bang his head against the wall, then falls flat to the ground and barely breathes. I panicked, we were alone. Turns out he wanted to prank me but actually passed out, woke up while I was panicking and decided to keep to his act. I thought I'd just seen someone die, and was partly responsible.
10. Housesitting nearly ends in drowning.
I was housesitting for an aunt of mine while she was on holiday. She told me there was a leak in the lounge area but it was fixed, so if there were any issues to let her know.
A massive storm happened a couple nights in. I heard some trickling in the early hours so I went to go check that there wasn't a leak. The entire wall was flooding with water, like an actual waterfall. Turns out the spouting was blocked and the water was just forcing its way through the cracks in the wall.
I knew it wasn't my fault, but it was so terrifying watching someone's house fall apart on your watch, just piling towels on the floor and shifting furniture to keep everything dry.
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
9. Fitness fiasco.
Years ago when I was babysitting an infant who was down for his nap. The family had an inversion table and I decided I’d try it out. One of those things where you lay on a table, strap your ankles in and then flip the table so that you’re nearly upside down. Well, stupid me couldn’t figure out how to flip the table back up so I could get out. Panicking, sweating, imagining the family coming home to this scene with their baby crying in the crib....I was mortified. I’m sure there was some quick release thing but damned if I could find it. No idea how long I struggled but I eventually hulked out of it somehow. I still get sweaty thinking about how badly that could have gone. What an idiot.
8. Slim escape turns into lifelong friendship.
When I was little I would have a good amount of sleepovers at my friend’s house. My fam always had tons of allergies to pets so we never had any. My best friend had dogs and a really wonderful, special cat. But I didn’t know anything about cats when I was little, so I'd kind of say hi, then run away.
It’s the summer and my friend has a tent and wants to sleep in the tent in his backyard. I’m not crazy about it, but we bring a bunch of blankets out and get all set up. When I wake up, it’s light out, so maybe 7-8 in the morning, and his cat is laying on my chest with her paws right under my chin and her nose like right near my nose. I’m laying there in mortal fear because I figure she’s planning on eating my face off. She’s purring, so that must have been a sign she was going to strike. I remember sort of half moving to get her to go away, but she’d just sit there and kind of flex her paws a little. I think I lay frozen for like a good hour until she decided to do something else and got off of me. I barely escaped death.
As I grew up, she became a great friend. Whenever I’d go over she’d come find me and sit either on me or next to me. Because of her, I love cats now, and respect them. She was special.
7. Deadly dog trio.
So generally I'm afraid of big dogs. I went over to my new friend's house to get ready to go out clubbing. Coming in she introduces me to her stepdad's three Dobermans to help me get comfortable.
All three are cute dogs, very friendly and wanting pets. I give each one a treat and we are all friends, right? So, I'm feeling at ease. I don't think anything of it. We,decide to ride together, so I go step outside and move my car while she does her make-up. As I head for the back door (I came in the front) dog number one cuts me off and stands infront of the door. I reach for the knob and there is snarling. Okay. . . I turn to head upstairs and the other two have me in a triangle. Not growling, just staring.
I'm in a triangle of Doberman. I try to stay calm and take another step, the two infront step towards me growling. I start to call up to my friend--bad idea. I get one syllable of her name out and now teeth are being bared. I'm now terrified, for context I'm 5ft tall and female. As I try to reach for my phone the triangle shrinks a lot, and growling intensifies. I realize this is how I'm going to die. They're snarling, shiny white teeth bared, heckles up closing in and my friend appears, panicked calling the dogs by name. They back off, she hugs me, then opens the door. All three of those jerks way their tails like everything is cool. Everything was not cool.
It turns out they're rescues and some idiot taught them to keep people in the house until there is a hug. A literal hug, she was very apologetic about forgetting that part.
Image by Yama Zsuzsanna Márkus from Pixabay
6. The Chicago gangster ghost.
I saw a shadow person. When I was about 17, I was at my friend's apartment building, which his parents owned. It wad a pretty old building in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, and according to his dad it used to be owned by Al Capone, but I'm not sure how true that was. We had an apartment on the top floor that they let us use to just hang out and it allowed us easy access to the roof so we could go smoke cigarettes.
One night we were about to go up, but I had to pee, so I told him I'd meet him up there. After I was done, I went up the stairs to the attic portion that was connected to the roof. There were no lights, so we always used our phones to guide us. We had those old flip phones without lights, so you only had the light from the screen to help navigate the cluttered mess that was up there.
As I made my way to the roof door, I saw a shadow pass by me. Now this wasn't like the shadow of something moving with the light of my phone, this shadow felt solid like a person. I followed the direction it went thinking it was my friend. I kept saying that I knew it was him and to stop playing around. It passed me a few more times, before heading to the other side of the attic and that's when I heard my friend's voice from downstairs.
He got a call from his girlfriend and was in another room talking to her the whole time. I have no idea what that shadow figure was, but it really freaked me out and I told my friend what happened and that I did not want to go back up there.
Image by Adina Voicu from Pixabay
5. Crying over petty crime.
I was house sitting for an older neighbor who had gone off to visit her grandkids a few states over. I had just moved out of my dorm and didn't have a place to stay at the time so I agreed to do it since she would be gone long enough that I could stay there until I moved in with my grandmother.
So I'm sleeping on the couch and I hear panicked voices coming from the back of the house. I was already pretty on edge since I lived in a bad neighborhood and this was basically prime time for petty thieves. So I slip off the couch and start sneaking towards the back of the house and I make it to the kitchen. All the rental properties are laid out the same, you walk in the front door and you're in the living room with the attached kitchen (which was separated by kitchen counter). Off to the side you go into the hallway and you have two bedrooms on either side with a bathroom/laundry room at the end of the hallway.
So I grabbed a knife out of the holder on the counter and start creeping towards the hallway and I could hear one of the people freaking out. I could barely make it out since they were in one of the bedrooms but it sounded like they were holding back sobs. So I flung open the door and flipped on the light.
There were two kids in the room, middle school kids who went to the school across the street. Turns out they were in the process of robbing the place when I showed up and they didn't want to go to jail. They thought that they'd be able to sneak away when I went to the bathroom or something but chickened out because they didn't want to risk getting caught. They sat in that room for hours until nightfall so they could sneak out.
I let them go. It made me kinda sad though. They were kids and their life is going to be a lot more difficult now just because they wanted to be thugs.
4. Little criminals.
This was when I was really young, like 7 or 8. And its one of those memories where I'm not sure if it was real, or just a crazy dream, and it was too long ago to tell, but I'll tell it anyways.
Was with a childhood friend at his house in the boonies. He lived in a real run-down house, but his neighbor down the road was pretty affluent, with a great house. He said he wanted to go exploring, and being a kid in the desert, I was down for that. He led us to the house, where he somehow convinced us to climb through the guy's doggie door into the house. Pretty great house, I still remember the layout vividly.
Anyways, here we were, exploring some random guy's house, when we hear a door open. My friend had thought the owner wasn't home because the neighbor's car wasn't in the driveway, so he thought we were safe. We sprinted and hid behind separate leather couches in the guy's living room. He came out into the kitchen, wearing a bathrobe and nothing else, and got a glass of water, reading a magazine. We watched him from behind the couches as he took his time and finally went back up the stairs.
We sprinted out of that house and back to my friend's house, and I don't think Usain Bolt himself could have beaten my 7 year old sprint. It was pretty scary then, but its absolutely terrifying now to think what could have happened. Obviously, I will never break and enter again.
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3. Scary intruder.
When I was about 16 I spent the night at my best friend's house. During this time there were rumors going around that I was gay because I came out to a previous friend who decided to share it with others. My best friend knew of my sexuality but it did not bother him at all. During this sleep over, I remember laying on the floor while he was in his bed. I was still laying opposite to his head which angled me towards the opening of his bedroom door. In the middle of the night I get this jolt of adrenaline in the middle of night as I had the feeling that someone was watching me. I still had the cover over me and made a hole shape to peek out of. The door was cracked open. It was completely shut before we both knocked out. I stared deeper into the crack and notice what looked like another pair of eyes staring back. I get this horrible pit in my stomach as the eyes continue to look around the room. Right up to the point when it locked onto my eyes. The door began to crack open wider. I see a full head peek it’s head in at an attempt to get a closer look of something. When all of a sudden this thing bursts the door open shouting “I CAUGHT YOU!” While removing the covers off my friend. My friend immediately shouts and flicks on the light switch. It was his mother. She stormed out of the room and slammed the door to her room. Me and my buddy had a hard time falling back to sleep as we were trying to figure what that was all about. The next morning I overhear my friend talking to his mom while I was in the bathroom. Apparently she heard I was gay and that she always had a feeling. She was trying to catch if I was doing stuff to him in his sleep. I washed up and told my buddy that I would be going home. We are still best friends I just avoid his mother.
Photo by lalesh aldarwish from Pexels
2. Unidentified Freaky Occurrence.
When I was in high school I was house sitting for the first time at my best friend's place. He had two dogs. It was a split level home so I was in the downstairs with surround sound watching "Event Horizon" for the very first time.
At some point mid movie all of the power in the house goes off and I am in pitch blackness and confusion for about 5 seconds until the power comes back on and the doorbell rings.
The dogs start going nuts and barking at the door. I am at this point freaking out. I run straight upstairs to my friend's room and grab the BB Gun I know is next to his dresser.
I start inching back downstairs towards the door with the squirrel popper tightly in hand.
I turn on the porch light but no one is out there. The dogs are still riled up though.
At this point I can see outside that it's raining. Hadn't heard the storm before because of the loud movie followed by my pounding heart.
I call my mum and ask her casually if the power went out at our house due to the storm (we lived about five minutes from my friend). She said "no, but a funny thing happened..." the phone line suddenly went dead. Now I am starting to freak out a little bit because the power is still on but the phone is dead (this is when cell phones were just starting to become normalized but most people still used pagers).
After about a minute or so, I'm trying to rationalize everything when the power goes back out, about 5 seconds pass, the power comes back on and door bell rings. The dogs start going nuts again.
I had left the porch light on but didn't see anyone out there. So I herded the dogs back downstairs, locked the door, clutched the BB Gun to my chest and finished watching "Event Horizon."
1. This sleepover was almost her last.
I saw a white lady.
I was sleeping over at a friend’s house, in a big old colonial in Germantown, an old neighborhood in Philadelphia. It was early February so it was pretty cold and my friend had brought me a ton of blankets to sleep under. The room was fairly narrow, with a twin bed set up across a window and a floor length dressing mirror in front of the closet. I was uneasy going to sleep because I’d never been there before, but eventually I did fall asleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I felt like I woke up to see a women all dressed in white standing in front of the mirror by the closet. She was facing the bed, but her long, dark hair was loose and streaming in front of her face so that I couldn’t see what she looked like. I lay there for what seemed like hours, just staring at her, standing motionless across the room. I was too afraid to move, in case she was waiting for me to wake up before she did anything. Though I never saw her do it, she moved across the room till she was sitting on my chest, with her arms across my throat and her hair trailing over my face. I was struggling to breathe, really gasping huge, heaving breaths, but all I ended up doing was sucking in huge mouthfuls of her hair, making it even harder to breathe. I was choking to death on her hair and I couldn’t move enough to dislodge her from my chest.
And then I woke up. The weight was all those blankets my friend brought me to sleep under in her drafty old house and the hair was my own, uncharacteristically left loose as I slept. It took me ages to get back to sleep, but once I woke up, I didn’t remember the whole thing till months later.
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