MrBallen

The second story is about this town in California where there was this perceived threat and it was sort of normalized and people were not that worried about it until it totally spiraled out of control.

But before we get into today's stories,

If you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload two, three, even four times every week.

So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Buttons house and write on their bathroom mirror, I'm watching you in red lipstick.

Okay, let's get into our first story, which is called The Tip-Off.

Early in the morning on February 5th, 1990, 57-year-old Laverne Pavlenok stood in the kitchen of her Wilsonville, Oregon apartment making some coffee.

Mornings were the best part of Laverne's day because she had the whole apartment to herself.

Now, she lived with her boyfriend, John Sosnovsky, but he worked at a nearby mill and had to be out early in order to catch the bus there.

And each time he left, Laverne felt like a huge weight lifted off of her.

Because when John wasn't home, Laverne could go about her day and pretend she was safe.

But that's all it was.

It was pretend.

John, in reality, was an incredibly violent man.

I mean, he was seriously physically abusive, especially when he was drunk, which was basically all the time.

So Laverne had actually been married, but her husband had died of cancer, and she had ultimately met John following her husband's death.

And so when they met, Laverne was very vulnerable and lonely.

And she really hadn't realized the kind of person John was until it was too late.

It had been 10 years now and Laverne still had not, you know, built up the courage to leave him.

I mean, the reality was, is she was just scared of how he would react.

And so she sort of felt trapped.