When this woman woke up this morning, she could never have expected her day to end this horribly. It all started with an anonymous package containing a weird cassette tape in her mailbox, but after listening to it, she was in shock. The tension really amped up when police suddenly showed up at her house.
The start of that day was normal. As mentioned before, Sarah woke up and poured herself a hot cup of coffee in her kitchen while wiping away the sleep from her eyes. Afterward, she walked to the mailbox by her front door to fetch the morning paper, and that’s when she saw it. Her newspaper was present inside the mailbox, but it was not the only document in there. On top of the daily news forecast, there was another item—a thick yellow envelope pressed down on the newspaper and met Sarah’s eye. Two cassette tapes fell out of the sealed envelope, and one of them creepily said, “Just press play.”
Sarah stared at the cassettes on her kitchen counter with a nervous look on her face. Why would someone send her something this bizarre? This wasn’t something you would send to someone anonymously. Sarah held the top tape in her hand and peeked out the front yard-facing window of her house. Of course, no one was there, but Sarah still felt the urge to check. After a couple of minutes where Sarah stood motionless in her kitchen, it was time for action. The confused woman knew she had a tape recorder lying around her house somewhere, so a desperate search commenced. Luckily, it didn’t take Sarah long to track down the vintage device.
Sarah inserted the tape and pressed play, but after about 10 seconds, her face turned pale. “This can’t be… who is playing games with me?” Sarah turned a full circle and scanned her immediate surroundings. It was clear that Sarah was in full panic mode at this time. On that tape, Sarah heard a voice she knew all too well. The voice speaking to her through the headphones was Sarah herself.
It was already creepy that someone would send her a tape with her own voice on it. Sarah recognized the sound of her voice but couldn’t recall any of the recordings. She couldn’t remember speaking any of the words present on the tape. It was like a stranger stole her vocal cords and played out a scene she had never heard of. She was clearly upset about something because Sarah heard herself crying the entire time. But one thing was certain—whatever happened during this recording was terrible.
Sarah stood in the living room and tried to catch her breath after hearing the disturbing audio footage, but much rest was not in the cards for her. About an hour later, Sarah’s doorbell rang. Who could it be? Sarah was not expecting any visitors, and the mailman only came by once a day. Tension rose inside Sarah’s body again as she ventured toward the front door of her house. Carefully, she lowered the handle and opened the door to see who was standing on her porch. Two policemen were standing in front of her house, which gave Sarah an immediate shiver. “Hello, can I help you?” she asked.
The two officers asked if her name was Sarah Foster, and Sarah confirmed this question. “All right, Miss Foster, can we come in, please?” Sarah was confused but she obliged the request. The officers walked in without giving any further explanation as to why they were there. There was complete silence as they walked through Sarah’s house, clearly searching for something.
The police officers passed through every room on the ground floor with an open door, scanning the entire layout of her home. The confused Sarah followed the two uniformed men from a distance. She didn’t like that the two men were walking around her house without explaining why, but they were cops, so she did not dare to question their motives. Sarah saw the officers whisper to each other when their paths crossed. Eventually, the two policemen came to a standstill in Sarah’s kitchen, and as you might expect, it was at the exact location of the mysterious envelope.
“Is this yours, Madam?” one of the officers asked.
Sarah stated that it was, but also followed up by saying that it wasn’t. “I got it in the mail this morning, but I don’t know who sent it or why.” Sarah wanted to add that she didn’t understand the confusing message on the tape. These officers weren’t just there to ask questions; they were there to make an arrest. They escorted Sarah to the police car, which was already waiting for her outside.
She did not physically resist the arrest, but she wanted answers as to why she was placed into custody. The confused woman asked multiple questions while inside the police car, but both officers ignored every word. While Sarah sat in that silent police car, there was nothing else to do but speculate. She wouldn’t get any answers from the two policemen. Before the confused woman knew it, the police car arrived at the local station. Once there, Sarah was escorted into the building and placed in an interrogation room. She was ordered to sit down in the mostly empty room while one of the arresting officers placed the tapes on the table before her.
Sarah started to panic. She felt like she was being treated as a suspect in a crime she never knew she committed. Sarah wanted answers, so when, after a few minutes, another officer stepped into the room, she bombarded him with questions. The man tried to calm her and explained he was the station’s lead officer. “You don’t need to worry, Miss Foster. We have not arrested you for any crime you committed, but we do want your cooperation with something very important.”
What the lead officer said next came as a complete surprise to the already shaky Sarah. “So, you have not heard the part where you talk about your husband and the accident?”
This question instantly added another level of complexity to the situation. Sarah looked up at the policeman with a bewildered look. “My husband, sir? I have never had a husband, and I do not recall ever being part of any accident.” The officer looked at Sarah with amazement because he noticed that Sarah believed every word she had just spoken. This woman only wanted answers, and he was able to give them.
The officer explained that they were contacted by someone with extraordinary and very important news this morning. This person knows you very well, and she is eager and obliged to answer all your burning questions. Seconds later, the door opened, and an older woman stepped inside. Sarah recognized her instantly—it was Sarah’s family therapist. She was a close friend and she helped many of her family members with multiple issues.
“What is going on? Why am I here and what does this have to do with my therapist?”
The older woman grabbed the cassette tape on top and placed it in a tape recorder that was already present on the table. Together, they listened to every spoken word this time, and the message shocked Sarah. At the start of the audio footage were the words Sarah knew. It was a highly emotional roller coaster of incohesive words spoken in Sarah’s own voice.
None of them made any sense once again. But then they reached the rest of the tape and a second voice was heard—that of her therapist. On the tape, Sarah’s therapist asked Sarah to calm down her emotional state and explain in understandable words how her traumatic experience came to be. “Please share with me what happened during the accident, Sarah. It will help, I promise. We will stop if it becomes too much.”
On the tape, Sarah explained a car accident that had occurred about a month before the recording. She and her husband were driving at night on a seemingly abandoned road when out of nowhere, another car popped up and showed its headlights. On the tape, Sarah explained that she was in pretty bad shape, but her husband got the worst of it and passed away because of the crash. Sarah looked up from the recorder with wide eyes. Sarah’s therapist looked at the disturbed Sarah and urged her to continue listening because the important part was about to come.
“After the crash, the driver got out of his car. He came by to check on the situation but did not decide to help. I got a good look at him but also saw him get back into the car and drive away. Shortly after, I blacked out and woke up in the hospital.”
After that statement, Sarah’s voice got emotional and chaotic again. After that, the therapist turned off the recorder and explained that this was one of multiple sessions she and Sarah had over the course of months. “The second tape is basically the same every time we tried to work on this traumatic event.”
“But why can’t I remember any of it?” Sarah asked.
Her therapist provided a very good explanation for that as well. She told the two people in the room that the event was too traumatizing to be healed. Sarah could not function normally anymore, so they had to think of something else. “That’s why we opted for an alternative approach. With the permission of your concerned family, we chose to hypnotize you.
A specialist came in and brought you into a very deep sleep, and with it, we were able to completely remove the memory of the accident from your mind. But this process also deleted the memory of your husband because every thought about him would bring back the painful memory of his loss. It was a hard choice, but one we had to make. And it worked because you recovered. But now we need you to remember once more,” the therapist said.
The therapist explained that she was the one who sent the tape to Sarah’s house this morning. It was to help jumpstart the traumatic memory from that day. She also sent the police to her house because the combination of those two things was why they were in this room now. Sarah’s therapist explained that the drunk driver who hit Sarah and her husband struck again. A car and person with the same details as the one Sarah described during their sessions have reportedly hit two other cars last month.
Every time, he drove away, and there was one other problem. Even though the victims saw and described the driver’s vehicle in great detail, the driver himself was only vaguely seen every time. Nobody got a good look—well, almost nobody. Because Sarah spoke in her therapy sessions about seeing the man perfectly, but this image was locked away in her memories. That’s why they needed that memory back. The police had found multiple suspects and brought them to the station today; however, without a true identification, they could not arrest someone fully.
Sarah struggled with this revelation, but this driver caused all this heartache, and she wanted to help catch him. Sarah agreed to assist the police in this matter and hoped that her memory would return in time. The woman walked with the officer to a separate room where multiple men waited in line. They all looked at the two-way mirror for Sarah to analyze.
And that’s when it happened—the light switch got turned on in Sarah’s mind when she saw him. The woman’s eyes grew large and her skin even turned visibly pale. Sarah suddenly knew everything. She experienced the accident in its entirety, and she felt the stabbing pain of loss. But she also remembered the driver’s face. Sarah lifted her finger and pointed at one man in the row of people. “He’s the one who hit me and my husband. I know it for sure. I will never forget that face,” Sarah spoke angrily.
That statement was all the police needed. The man was arrested, and justice was finally given. Sarah felt all the emotion she had bottled up, and she fell to the floor crying. She felt pain, but the joy of love and memories rushed back in. At first, Sarah seemed sad, but a smile appeared on her face soon after. “I can finally mourn and give everything a place in my heart.”
A few weeks after the revelation in the police station, Sarah visited the grave of her husband for the first time after getting her memories back. She had walked by this graveyard before and saw only anonymous tombstones. Now, one of them had a name she knew that was linked to her heart.
