In December of 2005, a young woman walked down a sidewalk in New York City.

There were Christmas decorations on all the buildings and Christmas lights.

I mean, it was very festive.

But as she walked along, she glanced over at a newspaper stand.

And she saw something on the front page of that paper that literally made her stop in her tracks,

and not because it was festive.

It was awful.

Right there on the front page was a picture of the one thing in her life that she'd hoped she would never, ever see again. But before we get into today's story, 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.

So, if that's of interest to you, on the next extremely hot day, sneak into the Fall of

Button's house and jack their thermostat all the way up to the highest possible setting,

then go ahead and just rip the thermostat out of the wall, and then leave.

Okay, let's get into

today's story. Early on the evening of Sunday, November 27, 2005, a 21-year-old woman named Catherine Woods,

leaned towards the mirror to put on her eyeliner inside the bathroom of her small apartment in New York

City. Catherine's phone was sitting on the bathroom counter and she heard it bus, but she didn't even

look to see who was calling. She didn't have time to talk to anyone because she had to finish getting

ready for her 7 o'clock shift at work. So Catherine had moved to New York City from Ohio three years

earlier to pursue her dream of becoming a dancer on Broadway.

But everything here was so expensive that in addition to chasing her dream, she also had to work three different jobs just to make ends meet.

Now, two of those jobs were pretty standard.

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