Stories From Mr. Nightmare

The Neighbor

"I'm currently in a predicament and quite frankly, I don't know what to do. I'll start from the beginning;

5 years ago, my next door neighbor, Charlie (or Charles as we called him) informed us of his 14 year old son's disappearance.

He reported it to police. It was on the news, it was everywhere. Me and my wife felt awful and always offered to help them out in any way we could.

As the years passed with no word from their son, we assumed they eventually came to terms with it and realized the worst had probably happened.

Me and my wife had never had the nerve to ask if the body every turned up.

Occasionally, Charlie's and his wife would invite me and my wife over for a barbecue during the warmer months. We noticed that neither of the two were every the same since their son had gone missing.

Charle's wife, Cathy is quieter and more reserved and Charles just seemed more awkward and nervous. Both understandable to a certain extent.

Fast forward a couple of years later to last week. Charles came over to me while I was taking out the garbage and asked to borrow a shovel.

Without hesitation I ran to get him my best shovel, not asking why he needed it. He thanked me and said he just need to do some work in his backyard and he'd get it back to me by tomorrow.

He then disappeared into his backyard.

I went inside and when I was by one of my upstairs windows that has a clear view into Charlie's backyard, I could see he was digging out a really big hole in the ground.

He seemed to be struggling a bit. He's 56 after all. I figured I'd go grab my second shovel and help him out.

As I entered his backyard and called his name, he looked up from what he was doing, dropped my shovel, and hurried over to me saying, 'No, no. It's okay, Tim. I got it. Please just leave.'

I said, 'What's wrong with you? It's not a big deal,' mainly because of his bizarre reaction.

He told me, 'I will not allow you to use that shovel in my backyard.' And then pointed to the gate as if I were a dog.

I was so taken aback by how he was acting that I just left without saying another word. I went upstairs to spy on him through the window.

He was digging the whole for at least another half hour. When he finally looked like he was done, he started looking around like up high at neighboring houses as of to check and make sure nobody was watching.

And then before I could think to hide, he spotted me at my window. All I could do at that point was casually walk away. He's up to something and I wanted to find out what.

I continued to look at his backyard every so often but he wasn't digging anymore. I figured he knew I was watching now and would wait until it was dark out. I was exactly right.

At 1:30 in the morning, I heard the sound of a shovel hitting the dirt outside.

It was too dark to see anything from my window now so I snuck outside quietly and looked over the fence in the backyard.

I could see him digging loud and clear now. When he went inside his house, I took that opportunity to sneak into his backyard and take a look at what was in the hole he was digging.

The moonlight alone revealed a small piece of a black garbage bag pretending from the dirt at the bottom of the hole.

I looked at his back door and back at the hole. I did this three more times deciding whether or not to see what was in the bag.

In the end I decided to run back to my backyard, and it was a good thing I did because he came back outside seconds later...but he wasn't digging.

In fact, he disappeared to the other side of his house and didn't come back.

I went back to my house and quietly got back in bed, trying not to wake up my wife.

The next day, the first thing I did was look out my window to see that the hole in the ground was completely patched up is Charle's backyard.

I also noticed that his SUV was parked in the street now instead of his driveway.

I don't know what happened throughout the rest of that night but Im disturbed to think that whatever was at the bottom of that whole might have been his son's body.

For all I know he could've dug up that hole to remove whatever he had previously buried down there and drive it somewhere else to dump it.

This is all speculation, call me crazy if you want. I haven't told anyone, not even my wife and quite frankly, I don't know what to do.

Charles never gave me back my shovel. I'm not going to ask him for it. In fact, he's been avoiding me ever since and something disturbing happened yesterday.

I by coincidence happened to look out my window across to Charlie's house and caught him standing at one of his windows looking into mine.

When he saw me he shut his blinds. And that was in the middle of the day.

I don't know what to do and I'm honestly terrified."

~Tim Ruvio