Scary Stories

My true crime best friend went missing

My true-crime-obsessed best friend went missing.

I know Mandy better than anyone else.

I’ve (17F), known my best friend Mandy (17F) since we were in middle school. We first bonded over our interests in creepypastas and SCPs and the like, and we’ve been basically inseparable since the 7th grade.

Two weeks ago, Mandy went missing. At first, they chalked it up to a case of senioritis, which wasn’t too unlikely for her because we only have a month left until graduation and she has all her credits anyway. When she missed her shift at the coffee shop no-call no-show, and never returned home that night, well.

Mandy never got along too well with her parents. She spends most of her time with her boyfriend and the few friends she has, and between that and work she was never home much to begin with. Mrs. Dwyer texted me before jumping to any conclusions.

She assumed that Mandy had gone to my place for the night. Maybe something happened, maybe she got dumped or she was fighting with her dad again and she didn’t want to stay at her place. When I told her I hadn’t heard from her either, she was officially a missing person that night.

After a few days, officials had come to the grim conclusion that she had gotten lost hiking and succumbed to the elements. They found her car at her favorite trail, about 25 miles out where she frequented when she needed space to clear her head. Mr. Dwyer organized a search party and a local charity group as well as some close friends spent the day out there looking for her. We found her backpack and two empty water bottles around 6 miles into the trail in a secluded part of the woods. The next two days were spent looking for her body, to no avail. Her parents had pretty much given up hope, and they closed the investigation for a while. Then they got the letter.

Adressed to the parents of Amanda Dwyer, the letter was left on their doorstep on day 4 of her disappearance. No one was seen dropping it off, and there was no postage, so it had to be left there in person. The door cam came quickly.. I’ll spare you the details because I don’t want to reveal too much personal information here, but basically, the letter said that Mandy had wandered into some kind of hunting zone and she was fair game. “The Hunter” claimed that if she had paid more attention to signs and local folklore she would have known not to go to that part of the trail. Fuck, they even bothered to send them a letter to let them know. And the worst part? Mandy was alive and “well”.

Mr. and Mrs. Dwyer got little to no information after that. The case was obviously re-opened, but there was no ransom, no location, no death threats or anything otherwise. They sent out four more search parties where they found her backpack but found nothing other than footprints and sunburns.

Mandy and I started to get into true crime around Freshman year, but she fell way deeper in it than I ever did. She never really had any hobbies other than working, so she found herself spending her free time doing research and listening to podcasts. Her entire personality revolves around the sick and twisted things that have happened to other people. Ask her about any case you’ve ever heard of and I guarantee she knows it better than you. We always joked that karma would one day bite her in the butt, and that she’d get a little too close to something she probably shouldn’t.

On day 7 of her disappearance, they got another letter. The Hunter assured the family that she was still alive and well, this time with a polaroid attached. Mrs. Dwyer couldn’t bare to look at the picture when she got the letter, and Mr. Dwyer hadn’t left the bar for a few days so she called me and had me take a look at it. She knows that I’m into some of the same stuff as Mandy and was hopeful I might be able to gain a little more information from it. She was right.

Mandy was backed into the corner of a dark, warehouse looking room. Her face was pale and sunken in and her eyes showed that she had gotten very little sleep in the past week, as well as one eye blackened. Her hair was in the same high ponytail as usual, except matted and half fallen out. Her arms were bound behind her back to one of the steel beams that looked to be the framework of some industrial building and her shoes and socks were removed to reveal, bruised, swollen feet. I can only imagine her hands looked the same. Beside her was a black bucket, and on the ground two puddles, one dark and one clear. I was unable to tell what they were exactly because the picture was in black and white and the room was very dimly lit. The polaroid itself was quite dirty, and “Mandy D. 17” was sharpied on the bottom. The cops took it faster than I could process what I saw, and they came to the same conclusion as me.