My carpenter father walked in on a cult ritual. He’s never been the same.

This is a convoluted story about my father who’s had a pretty rough life. He was involved with some shady people in his 20s and was in a few hustles and rackets that, if not for getting out of when he did, could have landed him a lengthy prison term or worse. He would talk about some of his exploits, but in light of recent events, I feel like there’s more to the story than I know. <br><br>The story he tells about the most is about Billy Armstrong, a shady carpenter and alleged cultist. My dad had been working odd jobs with this guy for months and always thought he had a weird vibe. One night, his buddy Billy asks him to help him break into an abandoned church to steal some lumber that they would then sell. <br><br>They go there in the middle of the night. As they’re prying a board off the window, Billy tells my dad to “grab the gate.” My dad’s confused because he doesn’t see a gate, but my dad walks a foot or two in another direction and there’s a gate. My dad looks back at Billy and he has this big wide grin on his face. My dad says he looked possessed. <br><br>They break in the church, and this where my dad gets a little fuzzy on the details. He has a few different versions of this story and they’re not always consistent in terms of details or sequence of events, but the gist is the same. <br><br>They’re stealing lumber and they hear some noise. They hide in the shadows and see robed people walking around. Apparently, these people were chanting. My dad doesn’t say what they were chanting. He keeps repeating that he doesn’t want to know what they were saying and that he hopes he never finds out. <br><br>The cultists were wheeling out these blood covered mannequins. My dad doesn’t know what they were made of, but he insists it wasn’t human remains. He recognized some of the people in the cult and he said one of them was a police officer, which is probably why he’s never reported it. <br><br>My dad freaked out and ran. He didn’t stop running till he got to his car and got about a mile away before he pulled over. When he looks in his rear view, he sees a figure standing behind his car. My dad says that when he popped the trunk, the figure disappeared. <br><br>He goes home and thinks that’s that. Two days later, Billy comes to my dad’s door with the biggest grin on his face. My dad freaked out and called the police. They showed up to the house and asked if my dad was feeling ok, but they didn’t take a report and never had any follow up to that. <br><br>That was it. My dad has been obsessed with this ever since. He’s done a lot of research on fringe cults. The fact that he never got any follow up from the police just made him more paranoid about it. <br><br>He used to be very level headed. After that, he became extremely paranoid. He started drinking more. He’d go on long exhaustive benders. He ran through some bad relationships. <br><br>The strange part: My dad started getting these boxes in the mail. No return address. No indication of who is sending them. The boxes contain mannequin hands and feet. Someone is sending him body parts in the mail and he has no idea who. He keeps them in a shoe box under his bed. He says it’s just a reminder to stay vigilant. I think it’s some weird fetish. <br><br>My dad isn’t a carpenter anymore. He works at a gas station cash register. He’s still a drinker. I love him, but he’s a sad case. If he’s to be believed, he walked in on something sinister. If I’m being more critical, I think he might have embellished some details. Regardless of what happened, something or someone shook him to his core and he hasn’t been the same since.