Brushes with Madness

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Planet,

Today I was reminded of how often I live in a cocoon. I overheard some coworkers talking about a recent murder that happened in town, they then mentioned a past incident regarding a student and suspicious circumstances.

It turns out that a student committed suicide eight months ago by jumping off of a parking garage in town. Some months after his death, multiple witnesses came forward implicating him in the death of a professor, including bludgeoning and immolation, in a parking garage no less, eight years earlier. These witnesses claimed they were afraid to come forward for fear of reprisal.

It turns out that the now deceased student was a student of mine a few summers ago. He came off as a bit irascible, but it's difficult to conceptualize occupying a shared space with an alleged murderer for six hours a week.

Needless to say, spooky.

Any similar events from you all?

[rico]

Originally Posted by Jewish Rabbi

Have you posted that story on here before? I got some serious deja vu reading that.

****ed up.

Yeah, it was around the time that Brianfo suicide thread was taking place. A little over a year ago. Noone responded to it, presumably due to tl;dr reasons so I'm surprised that someone (you) caught deja vu from it.

Speaking of Brianfo, I wish he'd post more...he wrote an awesome post in the "Youth, High School, College and International Wrestling" thread. I have no idea what his football knowledge/ideology is, but if it's anything compared to his wrestling thoughts, then he would be a pretty cool poster to follow on here.

[rico]

Originally Posted by MeatRock

Did Not Read. Wall O' Text.

Lol, I pre-apologized to the tl;dr crowd in the second paragraph, homeslice.

[MeatRock]

Originally Posted by rico

Lol, I pre-apologized to the tl;dr crowd in the second paragraph, homeslice.

Shit man, that's a terrifying story. Do you have uneasy thoughts or recollection's about any of those events? Like think back to the crash and shudder at the thought of it?

I know i would.

[Jewish Rabbi]

Originally Posted by rico

Yeah, it was around the time that Brianfo suicide thread was taking place. A little over a year ago. Noone responded to it, presumably due to tl;dr reasons so I'm surprised that someone (you) caught deja vu from it.

Speaking of Brianfo, I wish he'd post more...he wrote an awesome post in the "Youth, High School, College and International Wrestling" thread. I have no idea what his football knowledge/ideology is, but if it's anything compared to his wrestling thoughts, then he would be a pretty cool poster to follow on here.

It seemed familiar, although I didn't remember all the details. Such as you being in a car that slammed into a wall, and that crazy mother****er burying gold everywhere.

[rico]

Originally Posted by MeatRock

Shit man, that's a terrifying story. Do you have uneasy thoughts or recollection's about any of those events? Like think back to the crash and shudder at the thought of it?

I know i would.

To date, I have had only 1 nightmare (that I can recollect) pertaining to him since it happened. So it could be worse.

Basically in the nightmare, it was set at the time where his insanity reached it's peak, which was following the crash and leading until the day he committed the murder-suicide. After the crash, he lost his license, so I would give him rides places if he wasn't in the mood to run. The nightmare basically took me back to those rides and the conversations we had while I was hauling him around to various destinations, but it was with the knowledge of what he had done and the fact that he was always carrying around a handgun in his backpack in the back of my mind opposed to when the events actually took place and I had no knowledge of him carrying the handgun or what he was going to do in the future. What made this a nightmare was that in our conversations in the car, everything I said would be misinterpreted or not tolerated well by him and he would threaten me or just be generally more volatile. Therefore, in the nightmare, I kept worrying that he was going to whip out his handgun and shoot me...and in the dream, it seemed like pissing him off was unavoidable. Can't remember if he actually got the handgun out or not. I don't have nightmares often, but when I do, I usually wake up when I become remotely afraid, which I'm guessing I woke up before he whipped out the handgun.

In reality, during these rides he was very uneasy and very symptomatic, but I was somehow able to give the correct responses to him without him becoming agitated. Basically, if he said something that reflected total delusional thinking, I would just kind of bob my head and wouldn't give my opinion regarding whatever he was talking about unless he specifically asked for it, and one recurring thing with him was that if he actually asked for your honest opinion and you gave it to him, he would accept it more willingly than if you were to disagree with him or rebut his point in casual conversation without his inquiry.

Overall, he treated me pretty well and I think he genuinely respected me, which sounds odd, considering I am suspicious that he was trying to commit suicide with me in the vehicle when he crashed the car...he didn't even ATTEMPT to make that turn...shifted my eyes from his face to the road the entire time.

He only verbally wigged out on me twice. Once was when he was pissed off at me for not breaking him out of jail, followed by chewing my ass for not lifting his car out of the ditch, placing it on the road and uncrumpling it so we could drive off. The other time was when my best friend (and his too) visited for Christmas break. Whenever my best friend and I would speak to each other, he kept suspecting us of "plotting" something against us...it got to the point where I couldn't say anything without him interrupting me by saying, "**** you!!!"

On another note, I wasn't the only one who had an experience with him digging something out of his sandbar. Our friend (the other one besides me who maintained friendship with the guy, who also happened to be my roommate at the time) told me that right around the time he first started experiencing symptoms, he had this girl who he was bangin' at the time over at his dad's cabin and they were boating and what not all night. Evidently, this girl's ex-boyfriend caught wind of where she was at and what she was doing and he and a group of his friends drove to the sandbar (his house) and were in he and our friends' faces, threatening to beat the shit out of both of them. According to my friend, while these guys were threatening them, the guy calmly walked to a specific location at the sandbar and started digging through the sand like a dog and dug up a shotgun case with a loaded shotgun in it and ran to the primary instigator's face and calmly told them that he was going to shoot all of them if they didn't leave. To be honest, whether this happened or not is debatable, for I had caught the friend who told me about it lying and/or telling tall-tales to me a few times before, but if it DID take place, it wouldn't surprise me a bit.

As mentioned above, if I ever rebutted anything he said, it was usually always if he personally asked me for my insight. With that said, one of my biggest, biggest, biggest regrets was introducing him to the concept of solipsism, which is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. One time he was ranting in the car about how he was beginning to think that the whole world was designed specifically to "test" him. He asked me if I agreed and I said, "I'm sorry bud, but I don't agree. I think that sounds a bit solipsistic." He looked at me with a confused expression and asked me what I meant and what solipsism was and I explained to him as best as I could, my understanding of that concept.

One thing to note about this guy is that prior to becoming mentally ill and even during his bouts with mental illness, he was extremely intelligent. A philosophical genius. So introducing him to concepts such as these was absolutely an unwise thing to do when he was sick. I remember him fixating on solipsism for months and would repeatedly interrogate me with questions like, "am I a product of solipsism?", "if I were a product of solipsism, you'd tell me, right?," etc. Then he would make comments that would creep me out, like, "of course you wouldn't tell me if I were a product of solipsism because if I were, you would be one of the ones testing me." Then he would stare me down coldly and ask, "you aren't testing me, are you?" And I would spend 5 minutes or so trying to convince him that I wasn't and would frantically try to derail the conversation....in which I learned that the best way to derail him when he was fixated on something was by asking him if we should by more beer or whatever, which the answer was always, "yes." And then it was like he went from being fixated on solipsism to being on a mission to score booze or whatever. It was stupid, stupid, stupid of me to bring that up to a person who was inclined to a combination of extreme philosophical thinking and intelligence AND experiencing consistent, chronic and severe mental health symptoms.

A lot of eerie shit with him, for sure.

[rico]

Originally Posted by Jewish Rabbi

It seemed familiar, although I didn't remember all the details. Such as you being in a car that slammed into a wall, and that crazy mother****er burying gold everywhere.

Yup, he claimed that one day his gold would be the most sought after treasure(s) in the world.

[mikey23545]

Originally Posted by Bo's Pelini

I just looked her up on Youtube guess she got the death penalty. Was she that ****ing weird in person?

Well, you have to remember I only spoke to her a few moments that night she tried to bum money off me.

She seemed pretty normal, just a little wasted, but nothing that would have struck you as dangerous.

[InChiefsHeaven]

Originally Posted by rico

Yup, he claimed that one day his gold would be the most sought after treasure(s) in the world.

I have to ask...what happened to the gold? Or did I miss that in the story...it was rather long...

[rico]

Originally Posted by InChiefsHell

I have to ask...what happened to the gold? Or did I miss that in the story...it was rather long...

Haha, he had numerous sites where he had buried and hidden safes filled with silver and gold bars and coins.

[InChiefsHeaven]

Originally Posted by rico

Haha, he had numerous sites where he had buried and hidden safes filled with silver and gold bars and coins.

Shit, I'd be going all National Treasure on it...you have earned it after all of that...

[tiptap]

Linda Thompson was hired as the bacteriologist in the OKC/city county Health Dept. I taught her some of the procedures she was hired to perform relating to a Dairy contract and the STD screening tests for the clinics. I would see her almost daily. After a year she got a divorce from her husband and was on her own with two little girls. She and her two girls were kidnapped in the parking lot of Penn SQ. Mall. The two men raped and killed Linda at one of the man-made lake sites. The two little girls were released to walk down a street on their own 5 and 3, because the men's regular girl friends talked them into letting them go. One of the men got the electric chair.

[Radar Chief]

Originally Posted by rico

Haha, he had numerous sites where he had buried and hidden safes filled with silver and gold bars and coins.

Tl;dr'ed it, but copied and pasted to a word document for later reading.

[Lex Luthor]

Originally Posted by MeatRock

Did Not Read. Wall O' Text.

Do you know what a wall of text is? That wasn't a wall of text. It had paragraphs separated by blank lines.

Just because a post is long doesn't make it a wall of text.

[InChiefsHeaven]

Originally Posted by Brainiac

Do you know what a wall of text is? That wasn't a wall of text. It had paragraphs separated by blank lines.

Just because a post is long doesn't make it a wall of text.

Not to mention, the dude actually wrote it all out...not a cut and paste. It's worth the time to read.

[Marcellus]

Threads like this and stories like Rico's are what make this place one of the most interesting sites on the internet.

JFC. Wow.