13 True Stories Of People’s Terrifying Encounters With Evil

We often have readers submitting their own stories describing terrifying events that have happened to them.

Everyone has at least one scary story, and some of them are actually true.

We’ve collected some of the most terrifying true scary stories that have been sent in, and compiled them in one place to terrify and haunt your mind to the core.

13 Terrifying True Stories

The Creepy Man at the Playground

Updated 2/9/2020 – This happened many years ago, when I was 12 years old.

It was the 1990’s and my brothers and I decided to get on our bikes and go to the local playground.

Those were the days when parents left us to our own devices, so not many parents – if any – were there at the park that day.

We dumped our bikes and ran over to join the other kids.

I got on the whirly merry go round and there were other children on board – girls and boys.

A man came out of nowhere and I assumed that he was one of the parents.

I remember his creepy comb-over, thin mustache and wrinkled clothes.

He pushed us around and we all laughed, but I noticed that whenever I came around to him, he grabbed me by the hips and squeezed as he pushed us faster and faster.

He kept his eyes trained on me and I knew that he was a dangerous pervert.

I instinctively got off and went to the wooden playhouse.

I climbed up the ladder and played with the other children – even though I was a little older.

The man followed and went underneath the level we were on.

I realized that he was looking up through the slats of the wooden floor – looking up our skirts.

Again I escaped and ran over to my brothers.

I told them about the man and other kids overheard and agreed that he was a pervert.

We all ended up yelling at him and saying that we were going to call the cops.

It was funny to see him run off but as we left to go home, my brothers pointed to a tree, where the man was climbing up after a young boy.

We yelled out again but he ignored us.

The boy in the tree was climbing higher and higher to get away from him.

As soon as we got home we told our parents and they called the cops.

We never heard about him again but I’ll never forget that evil look in his nasty eyes.

Stalked by a Creepy Ex

This is my true story.

When I was in high school I went out with a possessive guy for about 3 months.

He was so jealous and had to know everything I did, everywhere I went and with who.
[adinserter block=”2″] One time I said some silly comment and he actually tried to choke me.

That was enough for me.

I ended it straight away.

I soon forgot about him and grew up into a successful young woman with my own home and a huge St. Bernard who weighed 220 lb’s. It was 9 years after the incident with the choking and I was blissfully single.

All of a sudden I started getting messages from my ex on Facebook, asking how I was.

He wanted to take me out to dinner and went on about how he missed me and hadn’t stopped thinking about me.

Trying to be polite, I declined and ended up having to be quite firm about it.

He was relentless and started sending messages 2 – 3 times per day.

I ended up ignoring him completely.

It got worse and worse – just like the old days.

He ended up sending at least 10 messages a day so I had to block him.

After that, I pushed him out of my mind and went on with living my life.

Then things got intense.

He managed to get my phone number and started texting me over 20 times per day.

The messages were creepy and it became obvious that he was stalking me in person.

He said that he saw me in my yard and that I looked good – adding that he always got his way – no matter what.

I was scared and annoyed over the fact that he knew where I lived and didn’t know how he found out where I was.

At 23 years of age I didn’t have a house phone – just my cell phone.

It came to a head the night I woke up with my dog on top of me – shaking and shuddering.

He was staring out of the bedroom window with a slight snarl on his frightened face.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw my ex staring straight back at me.

He then took off as I called the police and luckily for me – they arrived within 2 minutes.

They looked around and found many cigarette butts under the window.

What was worse – and disgusting – was that there was also semen on the ground.

The police were able to match his DNA due to him having been found guilty of rape in another county.

Apparently he’d also served time for his crimes.

I was so proud of my dog – Sargeant – who’d protected me that night.

If it wasn’t for him, I could’ve been raped or worse if he hadn’t been there.

Sadly, he was hit by a car and died two months later.

I’ll never forget him, but I did get a new dog – a Cane Corso mastiff who was a protection dog trained by police.

Both dogs are very dear to me and always will be.

I hope I never see that freak again.

Spooky Boots

Being typical students living on campus, me and my roommate thought it would be fun staying in an old dorm.

For the first couple of months everything was great, but a couple of weeks ago our lights started flickering and going out without warning, which was so annoying and creepy.
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It was more annoying when we couldn’t put in a request for maintenance to come and fix the lights, because of some kind of glitch with the website.

Finally, last night, we bundled up with loads of blankets to keep warm.

I have no problems getting to sleep and I’m a lucid dreamer, so I wake up easily.

Later in the night, I woke up hearing yelling from the hallway.

It was my roommate and she was freaking out about the fact that her key wasn’t working and she screamed about needing to get into the room asap.

I staggered to the door and before I reached it, I saw her back in bed – sleeping.

I didn’t think much of it and decided to go back to sleep, believing that I had dreamed it all.

When I got into bed I checked my roommate again.

She was still asleep in her bed but I was distracted by a shadow which appeared under the door.

I bent down and saw boots standing directly at the other side of our door.

At first, I was relieved when I saw the boots walking away and then I heard the door of the stairwell opening.

Seeing as the lights weren’t working, I turned my lamp on and huddled under the covers for about an hour – creeped out and wondering if the person wearing the boots would come back.

No one can get into the girl’s floor without a student card and security is strict about locking up at midnight, so there’s no way it was one of us.

The only thing I could think of was that homeless people sometimes camp out in the basements and the boots were definitely men’s boots – which is even creepier.

Mean Mother

This happened years ago when I was house-sitting for a friend.

I’d been at her house many times growing up and when her mother passed away, she inherited it.

I never liked her mother because she was one of those nasty women who thinks that no one’s good enough for their kids, even friends.
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She was even harder on me because I excelled at school and received higher grades.

My friend never cared as we were close friends who didn’t care about that crap.

I can’t say that I was too upset when her mother passed away but I was there for her and understood that it was a terrible thing to go through.

I never really believed in ghosts or the paranormal so I didn’t think twice when I stood on the front porch and waved goodbye to my friend and her boyfriend.

They were going on a trip to New York for a week, to visit his father.

It had been nearly three years since her mother passed away.

From that first night I felt like I was being watched.

I kept getting the same vibe I used to get when I visited over the past years.

It was like a mixture of scorn and loathing coming from laser red eyes.

The first incident happened in the bathroom, of all places.

On my way out the door, I felt something fall on my back.

It rolled down me and it felt like someone threw a roll of toilet paper at my head and then rolling down my back.

I spun around but nothing and no one was there.

I shrugged it off and left the room.

Then I started making a sandwich in the kitchen and heard shuffling behind me.

What was freaky about it was that my friend’s mother used to shuffle around wearing fluffy slippers.

My blood ran cold.

I turned this way and that but couldn’t see anyone.

The next day I was in the garden having a cigarette with my cup of coffee.

All of a sudden I heard a gruff whisper in my ear.

It said, “Loser!”

I squealed because the voice sounded exactly like my friend’s mother.

I started losing my temper so I yelled out,

“Too bad. Deal with it!”

When I walked back inside I could’ve sworn I heard footsteps behind me.

When I called my friend and told her about it she laughed.

She told me to act like there was no one there.

Because her mother hated being ignored, even by people she didn’t like.

I was surprised at how calm she was and she told me that she had a hunch her mother’s spirit was hanging around and was sorry that I was copping the brunt of it.

For the rest of the week I did my best to ignore the activity. It was mostly footsteps, whispers and doors creaking but on the last day, it was like she wanted to send me off with a bang.

I was getting the last of my clothes out of the dryer and I got that prickly feeling on the back of my neck.

When I turned around I could’ve sworn that I saw a pair of eyes looking at me from inside the cupboard above the dryer.

Thinking that it might’ve been a rodent or something, I pulled the door wide open.

The eyes disappeared but a terrible stench hit my nostrils.

I freaked when I heard an evil laugh.

I was so glad to get out of that house and the only times I ever visit is when my friend is there. No more house-sitting!

Dealing with Her Demons

This is a true story about my brother and Krista: his ex-girlfriend.

Back then, we all lived together in my parent’s home and my brother wanted to save some money so they could move into a place of their own, after some financial difficulty.

Krista had paranormal skills, which she’d had since childhood.
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Even though it was obvious that things were going to change once they moved in, I knew that those changes weren’t for the best, seeing as the energy was darker.

What was even more frightening was that it seemed like someone or something was always watching from the shadows.

It was worse at night.

Every time I saw Krista, whether it was bumping into her in the hallway or seeing her walk into the room, I always got a creepy feeling.

I don’t know if it was because of her telling me beforehand about her skills, but she definitely had a strange aura or mysterious atmosphere around her.

The incident occurred after my brother finished playing his Xbox Kinect, which projects green dots everywhere.

He fell asleep and when he woke up later on, he saw a creepy reflection on the TV screen.

The thing was, the Xbox Kinect registered the dark figure, who was standing at the end of his bed.

He freaked when the figure walked over and stood right next to him, on the side of the bed.

When Krista woke up, it disappeared.

When my brother told me what happened, I decided to keep the light on.

I was so glad when they finally moved away to Ohio – especially Krista – who I believe was the cause of it.

I’m convinced that she was responsible for manifesting the dark figure, as she was always a little creepy and she’d admitted that she saw things not of this world.

Even though I was open to paranormal things, that event – and others – proved to be too much for me, like a continuous nightmare.

The Haunted Car

Back when I was 21, I had a car that was about to die for real, so my boyfriend at the time took me car shopping.

I’ve never been that excited about cars so I didn’t really care what it was, as long as it was reliable and cheap.

We went to the next town to a used car dealership.
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I told the dealer what I wanted and the first car he showed us was a black, 2 door Honda.

For some reason my boyfriend was excited about it but the car gave me the creeps.

He really wanted to take it for a test drive, so he talked me into it, seeing as I was young and dumb and eager to please him.

The car dealer got in the passenger seat while my boyfriend got in the back. I got in the driver’s seat and took my time starting it up.

When we were on the road I asked if the car was cheap because of the fact that it didn’t have a stereo but my boyfriend interrupted and said that he could get me a good deal on a stereo.

When I stopped at a red light I saw that all the windows were tinted apart from the driver’s.

The dealer made out like he had no idea why the driver’s window was the only one not tinted.

Then all of a sudden I got a severe pain in my head.

It got so bad that I thought I was going to be sick.

It didn’t take me long to know that this car wasn’t for me.

When I got to the next set of lights I made an illegal U-turn and raced back to the dealership.

My boyfriend was pissed and once we got there I couldn’t wait to get out of the car.

I was amazed at how much better I felt once I was out of the car.

I was angry when I heard my boyfriend trying to strike up a deal so I screamed, ‘No – I’m not buying that car!’

I then asked the dealer why it was so cheap and wanted to know if it had been involved in a car accident.

That was my hunch at the time.

Fair enough, I was right.

He finally caved and admitted that the previous owner was a 17 year old guy who’d been a victim of a carjacking.

He received a gunshot wound in the head and died.

They shot him right through the driver’s window and then stole the stereo and the speakers.

Needless to say, I didn’t buy the car.

The Unwelcome Visitor

When I was a child, we lived in a house that was bungalow style and the dining room was separated by a hallway which had two rooms opposite each other.

I was relaxing in front of the TV in one of the bedrooms but soon found myself bored with the programs, so I switched it off.
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Picking up a magazine and enjoying the articles and horror tales, I was having a wonderful time immersing myself in the stories rather than boring myself with the news on TV.

It wasn’t until I finished reading when I began to hear footsteps in the hallway.

I felt the hairs prick up on the back of my neck.

The fear was not only due to the sense of foreboding running through my body.

It was the fact that the footsteps were unknown to me.

I knew the sounds of my family coming and going, so it was instantly apparent to me that someone else was walking down the hall, or worse – something else.

My heart started pounding while I strained my eyes and ears.

The heavy thud of the approaching footsteps suddenly diverted and changed into running in circles up and down the hallway.

This went on for a while and I decided to try and wake my niece, but she wouldn’t wake up.

All on my own, I began to tremble.

I went over to the door and quickly raced to the end of the hallway where the dining room was.

I was relieved to see my other niece there watching TV with our maid while my father was cooking.

Shaking, I asked my niece if she was the one running around the hallway.

At six years of age, she was innocent and sweet.

She shook her head with wide eyes.

The maid responded with a strange look on her face, telling me that they had been watching TV the whole time.

I went over to my father and asked him if he’d heard anything.

He looked puzzled as he shook his head.

He told me that I probably imagined it but I was sure that I’d heard the footsteps loud and clear.

The he laughed and said, “Maybe one of our friends is paying a visit.”

I was shocked that he was so flippant because I was scared out of my wits.

What he told me next was amazing.

He said that our house was a rice field many years before.

Apparently the Spaniards had killed people there and buried their remains on the property.

He said that those footsteps could’ve been one of those victims trying to escape or the killer, which didn’t alleviate my fear, although it did explain what happened.

Ghost at Guantanamo Bay

This is the most frightening thing that ever happened to me and it’s totally true. I was nineteen in 2011 and stationed at Guantanamo Bay, where many paranormal myths were commonplace, due to GTMO’s past as well as those from the Cuban side.

I shared a duplex with five other women.
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I was lucky enough to have my own room which had two beds.

One night, I put my uniform and my gear on one of the beds, then got into the other bed, facing the middle of the room.

This is the way I like to sleep and once I’m under I don’t toss and turn.

That’s what makes what happened so strange.

I later woke up facing the wall and was startled, to say the least.

The funny thing was, even though I felt like someone was watching me, I didn’t panic.

Actually, I felt quite calm.

Then I slowly sat up and turned around and was shocked to see a blonde man sitting on the other bed with my gear on the floor.

He was wearing a black cloak and was quite attractive, apart from his freaky eyes.

They were completely black but that didn’t stop me from talking with him for ages.

It’s odd that I still can’t remember what we were talking about, but it seemed to be important.

Then he told me to go back to bed.

The next morning I woke up and the memory of the dream hit me.

I looked over at the other bed and my gear was still on the floor.

I distinctly remember putting it on the bed, so I started to freak out, but I had to get ready for my shift.

After I shook it off I left the room to report for duty.

Just when I started to forget about the dream, I got to the guard mount and spoke to another soldier who proceeded to tell me that she had the same dream.

I was even more shocked when she told me that she’d had the dream several times.

If that wasn’t crazy enough, a male soldier repeated the same story.

He told me that there were slight differences, such as the man wearing the hood on his cloak and his eyes being red – not black.

After that, I couldn’t stop thinking about that dream, if it was a dream.

From then on, I never had that experience again but it still has the capacity to give me the creeps and make me weep for some reason.

The Little Boy in the Attic

The house I grew up in and still live in, was built back in 1931.

Mom said she didn’t like the attic as there was a chilling sensation that came over her, even when it was summer.

She told me that as a baby, I would stare up at the corner of the living room and smile.

Apparently I’d also gurgle and chatter happily.
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When I was three years old, Mom said I had a pretend friend, but I remember him as Jay.

We would talk for ages and I enjoyed his company.

I too sensed the chilling sensation when I finally went up to the attic on my own one day.

I was lucky I didn’t fall when I went up the stairs, which Dad had left extended.

Jay told me that I didn’t have to worry; that his Mom was protecting him from someone, but he wouldn’t tell me who.

One day, Mom saw me whispering and looking up at the attic.

She asked about what I was doing and I told her that Jay lived up there.

She continued to brush it off as my imagination.

It wasn’t until my Aunt advised that she’d seen a shadow in the corner of her room, after being awoken by whispering.

When she told Mom, my parents did some research and found out that the man who built the house many years before had gone mad and killed his wife and child – for no reason.

We were all shocked to discover that the little boy’s name was Jay.

What’s interesting about still living here is that my little brother began talking to the attic recently.

He too has made friends with Jay and I realized that the chilling entity is the murderous father, but we’re lucky that the mother keeps him at bay.

My Disturbing Dream

This recurring nightmare has been haunting me since I was 7 years old.

It’s creepy because it’s about something that lives inside the mirrors in my room and also because the nightmare continued to freak me out when I moved away to go to college.

The dream just turned up out of nowhere in the beginning.
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It starts with me waking up in the dream and looking over at the mirror that hangs on the back of my door.

In the reflection I can see an evil creature crouching over me, looking back at the mirror and smiling with scary eyes.

They alternate between yellow and green.

The most frightening thing about the creature is the wide mouth crowded with sharp teeth and long, matted hair.

I was so scared when I woke up that I turned the TV on to try and forget about it.

Soon enough, it did go away and when I told my Mom, she took the mirror down.

When I was in my senior year at college, I had a room which had its own bathroom and my bed was situated on the other side of the room.

It bothered me that I could see the mirror from my bed, but I tried to push it out of my mind.

Another mirror was on the door that led up to the hallway of the dorm.

The reflection of the mirror in the bathroom showed the chair and table in my room and on the first night there I had the dream again.

This time I woke up in dream like normal, but the monster was in bed with me and looking at me through the mirror with that same, creepy smile and freaky teeth and eyes.

When I woke up I did the usual thing by switching the TV on.

Luckily, the monster was gone, so I got up and closed the bathroom door so I could have a good night’s sleep.

However, the following night had me dreaming the same thing but I saw the creature in the other mirror on the door.

I realized that the creature is a female and she’s giving me that horrible smile with her terrifying teeth.

This is where the dream changes again.

She gets up from crouching and walks out of the view of the mirror, heading towards my bed and aiming straight for me.

I screamed and woke up, then turned the TV on.

I got out of bed and covered the mirror with paper and tape.

I didn’t go back to sleep that night. My boyfriend invited me to sleep over at his place the next night and I went to bed early because I was so tired.

Fair enough, I had the dream and woke up to see the mirror next to my boyfriend’s ladder.

The ladder leads to his bed and I saw the creature climbing up to get to me.

I was so exhausted, scared and mad – so I got my boyfriend to take me back to my dorm.

Now I cover all the mirrors wherever I go, but what freaks me out is that whenever I talk about this, the cover falls off the mirror.

Coincidence?

Demon TV

When I was seventeen and still living at home, my parents went out for dinner and I decided not to go.

There was a cool show I loved watching and I didn’t want to miss it.

I settled on the sofa and watched some bogus show while I waited for mine to come on.

Then my dog jumped on the sofa and knocked the remote onto the floor.
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The thing was, it didn’t fall far and it landed on soft carpet, so I was baffled when it wouldn’t work.

Even when I tried to manually change the channels, angrily slamming the buttons with my fingers, the TV wouldn’t respond.

Then I heard a loud whooshing sound coming from the TV, like a wild gust of wind.

The TV turned off and I couldn’t get it to come back on again.

When I went to the other rooms with TV’s, the same thing happened with each one.

They kept shutting down with a loud whoosh.

When I called my girlfriend down the road, she advised me that she wasn’t having any trouble with her cable.

When I went into the kitchen and turned on Mom’s tiny TV, it worked for a few minutes but then went blank after a whoosh.

I stomped up the stairs to my room, which is at the top corner of our house and directly under the main section of the attic.

We only use the attic for storage.

From time to time I went to check on the TV’s but they still weren’t working.

Nearly an hour later, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the whooshing again – but there wasn’t a TV in my room.

I realized that the sound came from the attic this time. It freaked me out because we don’t have a TV up there.

I decided to go up there anyway, seeing as I was losing my temper and wanted to go to sleep.

When I opened the door I couldn’t believe my eyes.

There was a 90’s TV there, in the middle of the floor.

I’d never seen it before and what freaked me out the most was that it was making the whooshing sound like the others.

I nearly fainted when I saw that it wasn’t even plugged in, but it continued flicking on and off.

I didn’t wait to race to my room and wait for my parents.

I was worried that they might think I broke all of the TV’s in the house.

I called Mom and she said she’d check it out when they got home.

An hour later I went back up to the attic and was surprised to see that it was off. The other TV’s weren’t working and when my parents came home, I sent her up to check the attic.

I was dumbstruck when I saw that there was no TV at all. Not only that – all of the TV’s in the house were working perfectly.

My family think I’m nuts and they still tease me about it.

I don’t mind sharing that I’m too scared to watch TV on my own now.

The Hissing Shadow Man

This happened to me when I was a junior in High School.

Lots of strange things were happening to me at the time and when I look back now, it seems like I was being targeted by dark forces.

I always felt like I was being watched or stalked and I often caught glimpses of shadows out of the corner of my eye.
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Some of the scarier experiences involved creepy voices that would swarm around me at times, making me feel like I was being attacked by invisible bees targeting my mind.

The worst event occurred in my bedroom one night. I slept on the top bunk facing the window and I was suddenly awoken by something.

Yet again, I felt like I was being watched and when I looked over my shoulder, I saw a large, dark shadow man standing in the center of the room.

There was a full moon that night and I knew that I wasn’t seeing things.

Then the figure began to let out a terrifying growl which went on for ages.

Then the sound changed to a high-pitched hiss like a screeching gas leak.

Then the shadow man stretched his long arms up and I saw his claws approaching fast – growing longer as they reached my bed and burrowed deeply into my body. I felt like I was being skewered by death himself.

The burrowing claws were ripping through every part of my body like veins of pain, which soon seemed to be deadening each cell along the way, leaving me chilled to the bone.

I felt a sense of dreadful loneliness, lifelessness and hopelessness as the evil shadow man infiltrated my soul along with my body.

With more hissing as the shadow lifted his arms again, he repeated the flow of creeping claws as I lay rooted to the spot, unable to do anything about it.

I thought about my family and wished they could come and save me from this demonic monster.

We are very religious, which gave me an idea.

I slowly lifted my heavy head and looked straight at the shadow man.

Then I pointed my left hand and said, “With the power of Lord Jesus Christ, I command you to be gone!”

I used all my energy to send a pulse of power against the shadow man, to push him back and away from me.

I could see that my efforts were working, slowly but surely.

The noise he was making now was a kind of labored breathing, like a slow leak of air.

In slow motion, the shadow man flew back, but he sent his claws out for one last attack.

I could see the claws aiming for my crucifix and chain around my neck.

The claws snatched at the chain and began to pull.

He was fading but the claw kept a strong grip on the chain, until I felt and heard it snap and fall to the floor.

I was so petrified but I still couldn’t move.

Then the shadow man finally disappeared and slowly withdrew his arms and claws.

I fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning I woke up and thought that it had all been a dream, but when I brought my hand up to my neck, I realized that the chain was still missing.

I looked over the edge of the bed and saw my crucifix on the floor – with the chain broken – just like what had happened the night before.

I was so grateful that I was able to rely on my faith and will-power to defeat that evil spirit, and to this day it was the most frightening thing that’s ever happened to me.

Plagued by a Dark Figure

Back when I was in my early teens, my older sister was twenty one and had a lot of issues with substance abuse, a broken relationship and depression, so she moved back home to get herself sorted out.

We lived in an apartment on the second floor and my sister slept on the spare bed in my room.
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One night, we were asleep in the dark room, with my sister’s bed opposite mine and our heads situated crossways.

First, I was asleep and when I began to wake up, I felt strange.

It was like I was trapped in my own body.

I couldn’t move and could hardly breathe.

When I opened my eyes I saw a dark figure on my chest.

I could feel it pressing down like a heavy weight, making me scream in terror.

Even though I couldn’t move, I was able to turn my head slightly so I could look at my sister and signal for help.

I freaked out when I saw her sitting up in bed, screaming and looking back at me, which awoke both of our parents.

They came in and we searched the room high and low, but nothing was there.

I was shocked when my sister told me that she had seen the horrible entity on my chest, which was why she sat up and screamed.

It never happened again, but sometimes I think about it and it chills me to the bone.

My sister sometimes tells me that she wonders if the dark figure was an emanation of her darkness, which had nearly got the better of her.

Mom also advised that it could have been a demon that was trying, without success, to jump from her body to mine.

I’m glad that it didn’t succeed, but it’s still very creepy.

• Read: For Adults: Short Scary Stories That Will Terrify You (Creepy & True!)