Okay, you better strap yourself in for this one, because I’ve got one hell of a story for you! And for this one, we’re going to need to go all the way back to the 90s, when yours truly was but a mere child. You might be thinking that this unnatural attraction for weird and unusual stories I’ve been experiencing has at least had the common decency to start after I was already mature enough to appreciate them, but nope – I’ve been in the middle of these kinds of shenanigans ever since I could remember. Now, when this story happened, I was about 8 or 9 years old, so my memories are a bit vague, so excuse me if I can’t quite remember something that happened at the time, or if I’m losing some detail that makes the story make a bit more sense. So let’s not waste any more time and get right into it!

The thing is, I don’t really consider myself to have been a weird kid. I was a bit quiet, especially when compared to my friends, I didn’t cry or laugh a whole lot, and I was often awkward around other people, but that was 90% because I was a little bit shy. I really opened up socially when I became a teen and started going to parties, where I basically went “Holy shit, talking to other people is AWESOME!” But as a little one living in Leicester, I was pretty introverted. My best friend in the whole world was Mark, who was a bit more outgoing than me (it comes with the territory, as he played a whole ton of sports while I preferred videogames), but we also shared a bunch of interests. The two of us were basically inseparable. And then there’s Lexi – her full name was Alexis, but she hated being called that, so we all just called her Lexi. During a time when boys and girls find each other so utterly icky, Lexi was the only girl cool enough to deserve to hang out with me and Mark. She liked comic books, she was great at games, she was just the biggest tomboy you could imagine. Honestly, if it wasn’t for her long hair, you probably wouldn’t have even been able to guess she was a girl.

It was always the three of us – Liam, Mark and Lexi. Wherever one went, we all went. And most interestingly, Lexi’s father was a photographer (as in, the professional type that actually went to take pictures and then sell them professionally), so I’ve actually got a whole ton of our pictures together. It was good fun! So at this point, you might be saying to yourself “This guy just spent 500 words talking about his friends, and he hasn’t even gotten to the story yet!” And yeah, that’s true, but I needed the set-up. Let’s fast-forward a couple of years, to the early 2000s. I’m in high school, Mark is no longer around, and my relationship with Lexi isn’t quite what it used to be (we kind of went in different directions in life after this and joined different crowds that weren’t really compatible with each other). One afternoon, I was returning from school when I saw a brand new billboard on the street. It was one of those PSA ads that are meant to warn people against childhood obesity, or racism, or cancer or something like that, kind of like this hilariously misguided one. The billboard I saw was about autism, featuring three cute, little kids – two of which were grinning widely while the third was sitting there awkwardly, with the caption above their heads stating something along the lines of “It’s easy to spot the symptoms of an autistic child if you know how to look” – I don’t recall the exact wording, but that was basically the meaning behind it.

And yes, you guessed it – the children were me, Mark and Lexi, and guess who was supposed to be the autistic child?

Now, a few things. First of all, I’m not autistic – no disrespect to the people who are, I don’t consider it an insult, I’m simply not on the spectrum, it’s a fact. Second of all, neither I nor my family were ever informed that my picture would be used at all, let alone in this manner. If we had known, I’m pretty sure my parents would’ve never allowed the town to associate me with “the autistic kid from the billboard”. So, how did this happen? I’ve got nothing but conjecture and speculation, but like I mentioned earlier, Lexi’s dad was a photographer. My best guess is that he uploaded some of our childhood photos (which, keep in mind, were taken with a rather professional camera – they could easily be of a high enough resolution for a billboard despite being taken half a decade ago) to one of those stock photo sites that were popping up around that time. The company seeking to do the ads liked it, bought it and then used it, and us models weren’t even told about it. Ah well! I guess I got lucky – not a soul in Leicester recognized my face, so nobody asked why the hell I was, quite literally, the poster boy for autism when I didn’t even have the condition. So remember – no matter how bad you had it as a kid, at least a marketing company didn’t decide to call you autistic just because you looked shy in one photo!

Today I’ll tell you another story from my college days. I was visiting a friend in Cincinnati, Ohio, and he took me to a frat party. Warm beer in red, plastic cups. Low-key lighting slowing down your reflexes. Thick smoke filling up your lungs the moment you enter the house. A drunk girl dancing on a table. Strangers making out as if it’s the end of the world. Small groups of nerds seem totally out of place. Beer pong and flip cup teams warming up for some world-class action. You know the drill.

My friend Tom knew the crowd and was greeted here and there but he made a beeline for stairs. Upstairs, there were three guys waiting for us. On the table in front of them, there was a large roulette outline and stacks of one hundred-dollar bills.

Tom quickly introduced me to his friends whom he called “his secret roulette team.” They gathered once a week to practise playing roulette. In their attempt to beat the house, they were trying out different strategies and devising ones of their own. Turns out the legal gambling age in Ohio and in most states is 21. So, they had a few months before they could play at a real casino.

“I brought you over, Liam” Tom explained, “because I know you’ve played at land-based casinos as well as online casinos.” He paused letting the information sink in.

“That’s true…” I said tentatively. “But how could I possibly help?”

“Oh, we’ll just give it a few spins, have some fun and we’ll see where it takes us. And you get to keep whatever you win.” He added an ambiguous wink to his statement.

We played a few games. At first, I mostly placed outside bets to get a feel of the game and the table and then I decided to go for it and bet on straight numbers. I bet on my birthday. I won. I bet on my favourite numbers, all 8 of them. I won. I bet on my cat’s age and on the number of pets my little sister had managed to kill. You get the idea. I WON every time. Every bloody time! I got cocky, started wagering more and, because I was using a martingale strategy (Here’s martingale strategy explained), my winnings multiplied by the minute. I was at the top of the world and Cloud Nine was so damn comfy…

Then I heard my name from a distance… “Liam!”

Bathing in success, I thought it was Lady Luck calling me.

“Liaaam! Liaaaaaam!!!” It was Tom. “Wake up, man! We smoked a joint and you passed out!” He answered my question before I even had the chance to form it in my mind, let alone ask it.

“But what about the roulette? My winnings?” I mumbled, still in that hazy, half-asleep state.

“What roulette, fool?” Tom laughed, his voice booming in my ears. “You’re at a frat party!”

So, that’s it – a true story of me getting stoned in the good old US of A and dreaming of playing roulette and winning big, not dreaming of hot girls, like regular college students would.

It’s not exactly a secret that I’m a pretty big fan of online casino – as a matter of fact, many of my stories have to do with gambling, in one way or another! But, believe it or not, one of my first experiences in the area almost made me quit the whole thing, and it’s so fantastical that most people whom I’ve told it to don’t believe me! Honestly, I don’t blame them, because the thing sounds like something straight out of a Creepypasta. The story takes place shortly after I turned 20, maybe about a month or so after I began playing online casino. I won’t disclose the site where I played, mostly because I don’t want to discourage people from signing up (it’s a pretty great site that I still visit occasionally), but let’s just say, it’s one that even at the time was pretty famous for its live games. For those of you who don’t know what live casino is, you can learn more on this website, but to put it simply, it’s basically a game where you watch a real dealer through a webcam deal cards or spin a roulette wheel and place bets on the outcome remotely. It’s great fun!

So, due to college and my job at the time, I really didn’t have a lot of time to play casino games, so I typically did so pretty late at night, usually around 1 or 2 AM. When that story was happening, I think it was a bit later than that, maybe approaching 3 AM, because there was absolutely nobody in the live roulette room with me. Usually there is a certain number of players that can join a table at one time, but this time it was just me and the dealer – a mildly attractive mid-20s girl with a cockney accent so thick it couldn’t be thicker if she tried. Being the centre of attention for once was actually pretty fun as the girl (let’s call her Ann, less to preserve her anonymity and more because I don’t recall her actual name) addressed me by my username, responded to my text messages in the chat so we can have a conversation and overall we had a fun time. Almost felt like we were at a real casino. But that’s when a second player joined the game.

“Liam”, the player typed in the chat almost immediately upon signing on. I found that quite odd, because my username doesn’t even contain half of those letters, so how in the world did the guy know my name? “What?” I typed. “What?” Ann responded to me. “That guy just said my name!” I typed. “What guy?” She asked me. “Love, it’s just you and me here!” Ann insisted, shrugging her shoulders. “You abandoned me in Leicester, Liam”, the mysterious new player typed up, and now I was seriously sweating bullets because Leicester was my hometown, and there’s absolutely no way in hell a player could possibly know this! Like, even if they could somehow track my IP address, I wasn’t currently in Leicester, I was away for school, so what the hell? How could they possibly know my hometown? “Who are you?” I asked. “Carter”, the stranger typed up, and that almost made me fall out of my chair. My mother’s maiden name was Carter, before changing it to Randall when she got married. My terrified subconscious began conjuring up images of a sister of an aunt I didn’t know who passed away back home and had come back to haunt me. Horrified, I immediately shut off my computer by holding the power button and then went right back to sleep. Naturally, that didn’t mean that I was actually able to sleep.

Of course, the story isn’t really supernatural, but the real solution is so absolutely ridiculous that many people have found it harder to swallow than the ghost part! I thought about just ending the story here, but figured “Ah, what the hell, I’ll give you the full thing”. A few days later I received an e-mail from the online casino with an explanation of what had happened. As it turns out, while I believed that there was only one person in charge of each live casino room, there were actually two – the dealer and an IT guy who does stuff like put values up on the screen, monitor the transactions and address customer complaints in real time. As it turns out, both of them had handed in their resignations a few days prior, but according to their contract still had to work for a set amount of time before being allowed to leave unless they were kicked out. Well, I was their ticket to getting kicked out. Ann’s friend was the mysterious user, who used his privileges as an IT guy to look at my personal information and use it to spook the hell out of me. Well, they achieved their goal – both Ann and her friend were kicked out (according to the e-mail, at least), and for my troubles I got a nice deposit for free and another story to share.

Last time we were here we spoke about my ex-girlfriend Helen, whom I hadn’t seen in four years before meeting again at a party by accident. So I approach her, say hey, and she pretends like she doesn’t even notice me. I asked what she was doing there, thoroughly confused about it as I was studying in neither our native town nor the one where she went to university, and as far as I knew she didn’t know where I lived. We actually hadn’t spoken at all for the last four years, but I still expected her to at least remember me, which made the next moment all the more jarring. Helen turned to me, glared at me and asked “Excuse me, do I know you?” in the most bitchy tone that you can possibly imagine. And I say “It’s me! It’s Liam! Don’t you remember? We used to date!” And she just looks around, as if she’s searching for the hidden cameras, and asks me if this is some kind of joke. I tried to desperately assure her that this wasn’t a joke, that I had no idea why she wouldn’t remember me. It turns into a huge deal, and ultimately I just have to leave with my tail between my legs, confused and, honestly, a little scared.

So I went home, a few days pass, but this feeling that something is horribly wrong keeps nagging at me. I read a bit online about memory loss, and I realized that certain conditions and diseases can cause memory loss, but we’re talking really serious, life-threatening stuff, like aneurysms bursting in the brain. That made me all the more worried about my ex-girlfriend, so I decided to call my mom, explain to her what had happened and ask her to track down and speak to Helen’s mom. A few more days pass before I received a response. Helen was fine – no aneurysm had burst, her memory wasn’t affected in any way, she was the same old Helen. But weirdest of all, she also hadn’t left the town in which she was studying recently. So what the hell?

It took another conversation with the bitchy Helen, and some investigation by my mom, to find out the truth. When my ex-girlfriend was born, she unexpectedly had an identical twin. Her mom, who was single at the time, thought that she couldn’t take care of two children, so she gave one up for adoption. The two sisters, separated at birth like in the movie “Twinsters”, proceeded to then live almost entirely similar lives, right up to dating a guy named Liam in high school. Sadly, I wish to say that the story ended with the sister reuniting, but alas, even all those years later they still haven’t met, at least to my knowledge. Thanks to me meeting both of them they’re aware of each other, but neither has expressed an interest in meeting the other. Still, the sheer fact that something like this could possibly happen is insane, and yet it did. But hey, it makes for one hell of a story!

This one’s one of my favourites, and a worthy way of launching this site! I love it for so many reasons that it’s just impossible not to share! Okay, so this story started back in 2002, when I was a high schooler. Let me tell you, I was a pretty dumb 15-year-old – ever seen a person who went to parties, but never socialized with more than 2-3 people? That’s 15-year-old me, right there. A friend would say “Hey, let’s go out for the night, John is throwing a party at his place”, and I’d say “Sure” literally just because I wanted to get out of the house. So go to John’s place (not really John, but I’ll be changing everyone’s names in my stories anyway – anonymity is important), we hang out, play some “Goldeneye” on his old N64, have a fun time.

And then I see her. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life. Fiery red hair, deep, green eyes like emeralds, ivory skin, and just a few freckles across her nose. She’s brilliant, way out of my league. So I turn to my friend (let’s call him Mark) and ask “Who’s this lady?” and he says “Forget it, dude, that’s Helen, she’s set to go into Harvard, way out of your league”. Helen was 17 at the time, sitting to our side at the table and drinking on her own, looking in the distance. So I tell Mark that he has to be the wingman of the century and score me Helen’s phone number. And I’ll be damned if the guy didn’t deliver!

To make a long story short, it turns out that I totally clicked with the girl who was supposedly out of my league, and a few weeks after the party we officially became a couple. We had a wonderful relationship for about 8 months before she had to leave for university. She didn’t manage to get into Harvard, but she was still accepted into a very high-profile school while I had to leave for college. We decided that a long-distance relationship just wasn’t going to work out for us, and as such agreed to part on good terms – no hard feelings, it was just life that got in the way. It happens.

Four years later, I was a second year in university and was, as usual on a Friday evening, at a party. I have to say that college really helped me open up, so at that party I was actively having fun with people I’d never met before. We’re chatting, enjoying a beer, having a discussion about something or another, and then she comes in. That fiery hair. Those deep eyes. Even the freckles. There’s no way I couldn’t possibly recognize Helen. Every single little detail, right down to her favourite clothing style (jeans and a blouse) was a match. So the guys see me staring at her, and one of them just goes “Forget it, man, that’s Helen. She’s way out of your league”, and I just say “Dude, that’s my ex! I’m gonna go say hi!” So I go… And she pretends like she doesn’t even know me. The reason for this may surprise you.

To Be Continued.

Hey, everyone! My name is Liam Randall, but you might know me as “That guy at every party who’s always got an awesome story”. Yes, it’s true – I feel like I’m some kind of magnet for weird, funny or downright creepy situations, because they’ve followed me throughout my entire life. Ever since I was a kid I keep finding myself into things that usually only happen to people once or twice in their lifetime. I’m not trying to stroke my own ego and tell you that my life is more interesting than yours or anything, I’m just being honest. Actually, if I was to be perfectly frank, I didn’t even know that my life was strange until I began partying in my late teens and everyone was just captivated by my stories. I’m an adult now, and, just like the father from “Big Fish”, the stories just keep following me. The only difference between us is that, well, mine are totally true, for the most part. Sometimes I tend to oversimplify things for narrative reasons, but let me tell you, if I say something happened, then it happened! In other words, welcome to “Short Stories Out Of My Life”! I hope you enjoy the ride!