FATHER'S DAY HORROR STORY

For most people, Father's Day is a fun time when people remind their dads how much they mean to them, but for me, it's just a reminder of the hell that I went through. I lived with my parents back then. They had a decently large house, so there was plenty of room for me, and they didn't seem to mind that I hadn't moved out. All of my siblings had already left, so it was just me there with my parents. I honestly felt like an only child half the time because my siblings never visited, and we weren't very close. Of course, I wasn't very close with my parents either. Even though I lived with them, I still felt like I barely spent any time with them. My mom would always be at work or with friends. I was usually just at home with my dad—not that he was ever around me either. He was always building and doing construction in the basement as he was renovating it to lease for tenants whenever he was finished. I was even less close with him than I was with my mom. He was very standoffish and always acted like I was a nuisance. Sometimes I would offer to help him with whatever he was doing, but he always told me to f*** off. Usually, I just left him alone. Then one year, Father's Day was coming up. I decided that I should try to do something to connect with my dad for once. So, one night, I decided to ask my dad if he needed any help, as he was always working in the basement when he got home from work and barely slept. "Hey, Dad, do you need help with anything?" I asked. He looked especially bad that night, like he hadn't slept in days. His face was haggard, and his eyes were bloodshot. "You want to help me?" I had expected him to just tell me to leave him alone like usual, but this time, he seemed almost excited. "Everything is almost ready. I just need to install one more door," he said. I told him that I was happy to help and was excited to see how everything looked, so he took me downstairs. When we entered the basement, the first thing I remember noticing was how unfinished it looked. It didn't look even close to being ready for someone to live down there. There was dust and debris everywhere. I honestly struggled to see what my dad had even been doing for so long. The only thing that made it look like he had done anything were the doors. There were a bunch of them, one after the other. I felt strangely nervous, but I slowly followed my dad as he led me through the weird twisting hallways. We must have walked through seven different doors, each leading deeper into the surprisingly large basement before my dad finally stopped. We had finally made it to the door frame that still needed the door installed. My dad told me to hold the heavy door in place while he screwed it on. I struggled to keep it steady, but I didn't want to say anything. I was just glad that he was finally letting me help him. When he had finally finished screwing on the door, he took a step back, and I let go of the door. My dad swung it back and forth a couple of times to make sure it stayed put. Then he looked up at me and said, "You know what would make this Father's Day really special?" "No, what?" "For you to be my lab rat." Then, out of nowhere, my dad grabbed the door and slammed it in my face, trapping me in the cellar. "Dad! Dad! What are you doing?" I couldn't understand if it was a prank or not. I was freaking out, though. I started banging on the door wildly as he laughed like a psycho on the other side. After that night, the next 24 years of my life would be a living hell. I was trapped in a house of horror. I literally became his lab rat. He kept me in that same room at all times, never letting me out for even a second. He would bring me just enough food to keep me alive, but it was hardly anything. For the next 24 years, I lived as his slave. Every day, he would use me for his needs. It was like he had never even been my father. He was able to convince my mom that I had run away to join a cult. He even forced me to write several letters to make her believe that I was okay. My mom totally bought the story, so no one ever came looking for me. During my imprisonment, I would birth several children. I never got to keep them for long, though. He would take them away from me almost immediately and pretend that I had left them on the front porch for him and my mom to take care of. It was horrible. After the first year, I surrendered to the idea that I would never get away, and I probably would have been right if it wasn't for one of the babies. All those years later, I finally convinced the monster to bring me and one of the kids to the hospital because the baby was sick. He must have thought that he had broken me completely because he didn't even seem afraid that I would try to run away. When I got to the hospital, I got the chance to tell them what was going on. They called the police and arrested him immediately. He was charged not long after. I was finally free. Ever since then, it's been hard for me to get used to having a normal life again. I'm traumatized by every Father's Day now. I don't see him as a father anymore, though. To me, he's nothing but a monster. This story was inspired by the most evil father that we had to feature in the Father's Day video. We featured him in a past video but wanted to revisit his heinous crimes. The man we are referring to is Yoseph Fritzl. Yoseph Fritzl's notoriety began in 2008 when his daughter reappeared 24 years after she went missing. She had spent those years locked in the cellar below the Fritzl family home in the city of Amstetten in Austria. Fritzl kept his daughter, Elizabeth, locked in the cellar from when she was 18 until she reached the age of 42. Trapped underground and enslaved, she was tortured and abused thousands of times by her own father, which resulted in the birth of seven children. Fritzl started building the cellar stretching below the house and the garden years before he took Elizabeth into captivity. He asked for his 18-year-old daughter's help to hang the final door, then held an ether-soaked cloth to her mouth and locked her in the cellar. Elizabeth had run away before, and while her mother filed a missing person's report, Fritzl's story that she had run away to join a cult was easily believed. He forced his daughter to write letters supporting the story. While three of the children were kept in the cellar, three others would "appear" near the house with notes purportedly from Elizabeth saying she could not take care of them. They were raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie. In 2008, Elizabeth's 19-year-old daughter became ill. After Fritzl took her to the hospital, police issued an appeal for Elizabeth to come forward. The week following, Fritzl released Elizabeth from the cellar, and the police were alerted to her reappearance. When they questioned the now 42-year-old, she revealed that she had been held captive for more than two decades. Fritzl was then immediately arrested and jailed for life in 2009.