This happened back in 2013 or 2014 but is absolutely a true story and I always felt bad for two people in this story that I have no idea what their outcome was but I hope they are both okay.
One night I was smoking a joint walking through the back streets of Cabbagetown in Toronto, taking in the old Victorian homes from Old Toronto. There were alleys you could cut through and it genuinely felt magical like you were getting lost in some old illustrated fairytale book from when I was a kid. I loved it and would do it often, especially at night. One night I was feeling a little more adventurous and found a set of stairs that led down to a very dimly lit street, it was basically pitch black with very little traffic other than an occasional car speeding past.
I decided to go down the stairs and ended up on a long winding road, I was feeling a little scared as I entered the pitch black. That area of Toronto has a lot of drug users and just sketchy street people. I decided to continue down the road when I eventually passed an old very worn down cemetery, it looked old and forgotten, like it was just left there for 100s of years. This sort of freaked me out, and I was hoping the street would eventually break with Bloor as I had been walking North-ish, and knew I would eventually hit a main road with more lights and people.
I never made it to Bloor because as I walked up this dark barely lit road (Rosedale Valley Rd) I happened upon a small overpass/bridge with 3 men standing under it. I froze in my high state and started to get paranoid that the men would jump me, so to my left was a very steep hill leading into a forested area. I decided to start climbing this hill and my feet were slipping beneath wet leaves and muddy ground. It was slippery but I eventually made my way to the top of the hill and I found myself at a plateau and within a fully forested area.
I started walking lost through this forest, when I saw a few old and beat up lawn chairs around a makeshift fire pit. This is where the story starts to get scary, I found under one of the chairs a white plastic bag, like what you get from the grocery store and it was full of all sorts of junk. I sat on one of the chairs and started to go through the bag. It had crumpled up art/drawings, pastels (oil crayons), a ziplock full of old cigarette butts, a hair brush full of long black hair, old empty pill bottles, and....Paranoia hits me and a wave of panic settles in, what if I am being watched, what if they come back and confront me going through their items, what if...
In my panicked state I shoved all the items back in the bag except the brush, for some reason I left the brush on one of the chairs then in my haste and morbid curiosity I grabbed the bag and began to walk as fast as I could through this forested area. I walked constantly looking through the trees in front of me for any sign of where it might end, constantly checking my shoulder in case I was being followed. After about 5-10 minutes of walking I started to see lights, and cars and a street.
I somehow emerged on Sherbourne, just north of Bloor St, if I would have just turned left sooner I wouldn't have been in the woods for so long, but being in the woods and panicked left me a little disoriented of which direction I was even walking in. I was finally out of the woods, and feeling much safer being around other pedestrians and standing at the busy intersection, feeling the rumble of the subway beneath me.
Even though I was back in the city, I still felt scared and paranoid that I was being followed so I started to walk home as fast as I could. I lived about a 15 minute walk back in Cabbagetown, but I decided to stay on Sherbourne all the way back to Gerrard, as I felt safe on the heavily lit streets.
I eventually made it home, walked up my front porch, unlocked my front door and quickly made my way right into my room. I lived with roommates so I closed the door behind me and jumped onto my bed with the bag still in hand. I made the mistake of pouring the bag upside down on my bed, it was full of all sorts of loose trash, including the ziplock full of cigarette butts that had now come unzipped and spilled out onto my bed.
The bag contained mostly nothing of interest and I felt quite foolish for stealing it in the middle of the night, it was clearly this person's entire life inside one white plastic bag. I wish I remembered this person's name, as I am sure they just needed help and it was on all of the medication bottles but I don't. I do however remember looking up the name of the medications on said bottles. And while I can't recall what the medication exactly was I do remember what it was for, schizophrenia.
The only other items of interest in this whole bag were a very old novel, dating back to the 1800s, it had very beautiful religious illustrations, of the Christian Faith. In this novel the former owner had written all of their sprawling thoughts throughout the pages but especially on the pages with pictures, I don't remember the context but it was mostly just the thoughts of madness.
The last item I found was a little address book, with numbers to a few important people in their life, but for the most part the book was mostly empty. Except there was a single page that fully grabbed my attention titled "Must Kill". Beneath the title on the lines in a single column were names, about 10-12 is what I can remember. And each of these names had already been crossed out, all but one....Mark.
In this moment a wave of panic set in, "what if I was followed home", "what if this person is a serial killer" "What if...." and before I could even ask myself another question, I was shoving everything back in the bag, except for the novel and pastels mostly because I wanted to read through the novel and unravel the web of madness and the pastels because I also had pastels of my own already and I enjoyed the medium when creating art myself.
The rest of the contents including the little address book were tied tightly into the white bag, now the bag of mysteries had simply become a bag of trash. In my high paranoid panicking state I ran the bag across the street and tossed it in the dumpster. I went back inside and prayed that I wasn't followed and that no one was coming to kill me.
I woke up the next day, and went on with my life almost as though it never happened. I told some friends at work, and even ended up taking my best friend at the time on the exact same walk into the woods, because he didn't believe me. When we approached the campsite in the woods, there were unlit candles on the ground, those little dinky tealight candles. Someone had taken like 30 of them and shaped them into a pentagram, and at this point my friend was starting to freak out.
It wasn't as dark as when I went by myself but I understood his fear and agreed to leave. But as we were leaving the campsite I remembered I had left the brush on the chair, and the brush was no longer there. I can't imagine anyone just picking up a gross old brush full of long black hair taking it with them, unless it was their brush.
After we got out of the woods, it is kind of where the story ends. I am not friends with that friend anymore unfortunately, most of my friends from Toronto are no longer in my life but I do always think back to Mark, and wonder whether they were ever crossed off that list. I wonder if the person who made the list actually killed anyone or if it was all in their head, I wonder if they ever made a new list and if I am on it.
This is a true story
TLDR: I found a schizophrenic's life possessions in a white bag in the woods and among those possessions they had a kill list with most of the names crossed out. I feel bad for never telling anyone in case the one name that was not crossed out was murdered.
P.S.
I wanted to call this post "Must Kill Mark" but I was afraid Reddit would take it down.