scarygrindrstories

 Spain's northern port city of Bil Bao was historically um industrial hub plagued by pollution and the unstable highs and lows brought about by the constantly shifting fortunes of big industry. Eventually though, the lows would take hold as the West largely de-industrialized in the latter half of the 20th century, plunging Bilbo into a spiral of high unemployment and economic decline. It wouldn't last forever. In the 1990s, the local government launched an ambitious urban renewal project intending to culturally rejuvenate the depressed city. It began with the construction of the stunning Guggenheim Museum, which would go on to become one of the most revered works of architecture in the modern era. It'd be the start of a rolling snowball of interesting and unique urban designs. And by the time the new millennium rolled around, Bil Bao had transformed itself from a great depressed industrial port to one of the most sought-after art destinations in all of Europe. An artistic city attracts a certain kind of population, and Bil Bao is no exception. The people who call the Urban Center home, for the most part, hold progressive views, and as such, the city has a reputation for being socially tolerant to minorities of all stripes, especially when it comes to the gay community. With an annual LGBTQ film festival, an extravagant pride celebration lasting more than a week, and countless businesses in the city center sporting pride flags in their front windows, Bilbo has become the main hub for gay people in northern Spain, with many flocking to the city, seeking friendships and relationships within a community of like-minded people. One of these individuals is a 73-year-old man living in the Chaga district of the city. Right now, he's sitting in his apartment by himself in the evening, feeling a little lonely. Luckily, this unnamed Spanish man has a remedy. He picks up his phone and swipes through a couple pages of apps before he spots the one he's looking for. It has a black icon with a yellow mask in the middle, which was purposely modeled after tribal art and contains some interesting symbolism. Masks can be worn to take on a different identity. But becoming someone else can conversely make it easier for people's true nature to slip through because they're no longer being restrained by social expectations. Whether this elderly gentleman was about to play a role or take off his mask, we can't say. What we do know is that he did tap on that little yellow mask which resulted in his phone screen being filled by the user interface for an app called Grinder. You know, I'm about to turn 31 in a couple months. I feel like I'm getting to the point where birthdays are becoming less about growing and more about uh growing older. I'm starting to get a few gray hairs here and there. And while I do feel like I'm still a ways off from aging in any earnest way, there are still some subtle signs like that popping up to remind me that it's coming at some point. One aspect of growing older that I've noticed is my approach to healthcare. I used to just kind of not care at all, but now I find myself being more concerned about not just health issues that I have, but also just access to health care in general. I went for like 4 years without seeing a doctor when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. But nowadays, I get annoyed when I have to wait a couple weeks or a month to get an appointment with a general practitioner. And don't even get me started on the wait time for specialists. Luckily though, my sponsor ZDOC makes the process of finding the right doctor really easy. Zdoc is a free website where you can search and compare high-quality doctors within your network. Choose the one that's going to help you with whatever problem you may have, and then book an appointment with just a few clicks. It's actually that simple. Zotto can help you find an in-et network appointment with more than 150,000 different providers across pretty much any specialty you can think of. From mental health to dental health, eye care to skincare. If it's a health issue, you're very likely going to find the right provider to address it. Sockdog is a platform to finally take the process of finding the right doctor into the modern era. And it has all the bells and whistles you'd expect from any other kind of booking website, like filtering. It can filter for doctors that will take your insurance, doctors that are located nearby, doctors that are best suited to help you with your particular medical needs and doctors that have very high ratings from verified patients. Once you find the right one, you can then view their actual appointment availability, select a time that fits your schedule, and instantly book. It's as easy as booking a table at a restaurant. Sock Dog appointments also happen fast, often within 24 to 72 hours of booking. You can even get same day appointments sometimes. You don't even need to talk to anybody. You can get a quick appointment just by opening the site and making a few clicks. So, stop putting off that consultation or getting that thing checked out. Go to zdoc.com/feral, also linked in the description, to find and instantly book a toprated doctor today. Thank you to Zdaw for sponsoring this video. The name is only a few letters different from Tinder, which makes sense because the concept of Grinder is largely the same. Both apps try to pair you up with another person, but beyond that, they actually do function quite differently. While Tinder shows you a feed of people one by one that you have to swipe on, Grinder instead shows you a grid which is sorted by physical proximity. If someone catches your eye, you can either directly message them or if you're feeling bashful, you can instead just send them one of a few emojis. Most contact on the app though is initiated in the inbox as people on Grinder aren't usually very shy about what they're looking for. Tinder might have a reputation for being a hookup app, but Grinder is known as an incredibly direct and fast-paced hookup app. Conversations on Tinder have a tendency to drag out as a result of the usual mating dance most of us are subject to, but users on Grinder all but bypass it, wasting no time assertively stating upfront exactly what they're looking for. We don't know the minute details of what this particular Spanish man did that night on the Grinder app, but we do know that he arranged a meet up with another man whom he promptly invited over to his apartment, almost certainly in the hopes of some casual companionship. He would never be seen alive again. Just 12 days later, on October 17th, 2021, a music teacher would be found dead in his home. He was originally from the nearby coastal town of Andereoa, but had moved to Bilbao in search of a more urban lifestyle. The coroner would rule the death a natural one, concluding it had resulted from cardiac arrest. What the authorities didn't catch on to, however, was the unusual activity happening in this dead man's bank account. After he would have already passed, it was drained of his funds. His bank even confirmed that this financial activity required validation by phone, and the calls to facilitate that were placed within the music teacher's home. How exactly can a man living alone call his bank after he died of a heart attack? In the following weeks, the police would receive a call. It was from a grieving family member who wanted to report some unusual activity happening on their deceased loved ones bank account. It had seemingly been emptied sometime after their death. The police asked who had owned the account, and they're then able to look up the death in their records. It was deemed natural from a cardiac event. According to the coroner, the thing is, we're not talking about the music teacher right now. No, we're talking about the 73-year-old who was using Grinder. He died more than a week before the music teacher did. These are actually two different cases. Both men had died alone from apparent natural causes in their apartments and then had their bank accounts drained. Soon enough, grieving family members of the music teacher would also come forward to report the same strange financial activity to the police, who were starting to get suspicious. What if there was something connecting these two strikingly similar deaths that happened just over a week apart? It was just a suspicion, though, and not one they considered pertinent enough to follow up on, at least not for a little while. In December 2021, the police would receive a panic call from a man reporting a life-threatening encounter he had with someone he met on a gay dating app. He states that he invited the person who was named Carlos over to his home with the expectation of an intimate encounter. Soon after his date walked through his front door, the pair were seated close together on a sofa. Carlos puts his arm around the man, pulling him closer and holding him tight. Then he holds him tighter. In fact, he just keeps pressing his arm harder and harder. After trying to break free to catch his breath, Carlos quickly pulls him back in, in turn letting his mask slip. He's not just being cuddly. The man struggles and manages to fully break free, running out the front door and shouting for help, leading to his day trying to hit him in the head, but both men end up running out of the house in opposite directions. As the man was telling the police the story, he notices something interesting draped over the back of his couch. It was a jacket and it wasn't his. He rifles through it and finds a wallet, opens it up, and spots an ID card. He sees Carlos's picture, but the name is different. Mareno Bolanos. Soon enough, a search and arrest warrant is called for Mareno Bolanos. Police re-review the autopsies and evidence collected in both those October deaths, and they reclassify each of them as homicides. While both passings were initially attributed to cardiac issues, the police apparently ignored the marks on the necks of both victims during the initial examinations. After discovering the music teacher had also died the same night he invited over a man he met on Grinder, the police would link both homicides to Moreno. It would seem a grinder serial killer was on the loose in northern Spain. After digging into his history, they'd find that Marino was a 25-year-old immigrant from Colombia. Shortly after entering Spain, he'd form a relationship with a young woman whom he'd end up living with. Investigators found that Mareno spent much of his day gambling on the internet, which was a potential financial motive behind the killings. At some point, he'd sign up for Grinder under the name Carlos and took advantage of the app's geoloccation feature to target older single men living close to him. Despite having all his personal information, the police wouldn't have much luck tracking Marino down. In early 2022, the story would start spreading around online with the unresolved mystery subreddit picking up the case and it also swiftly spread around local group chats in Bil Bao. with a large interconnected gay community wanting to protect itself from a serial killer in the prowl. Moreno's name and face would begin popping up everywhere in Bilbao and the pressure would eventually lead to him turning himself in. On May 5th, 2022, he told the police that after his victims were either dead or incapacitated, he'd use their phones and bankards to transfer large amounts of money into his own personal account. By the time of his August 2026 sentencing, Marino had garnered a combined 37 years in prison across all his convictions, which may rise to 60 after his two remaining legal proceedings conclude. Marino is offered conflicting stories, both saying that he never intended to kill, while apparently also describing himself to others as quote the killer of gay men, insisting that he's quote not like that. That's despite the victim who escaped his clutches, telling police that him and Mareno had actually previously met on a different occasion and even shared a full-on intimate encounter. It would appear that Mareno was also putting on a mask. I've never used Grinder myself, but I do feel like I know the app somewhat just on the absurd stories and screenshots I get from my friends who do use it. On top of that, the app kind of holds an interesting place in the modern cultural zeitgeist. I'm sure we've all heard stories about how Grinder crashed because there was such a large surge in users during the Republican National Convention, which we will talk about near the end of the video. I'm sure we've also seen screenshots that show bare-chested men being incredibly forward when starting a conversation with a stranger. Furthermore, many people who use Grinder do so anonymously. There's plenty of reasons for that. Not every place in the world is accepting of gay people, and some using the app just aren't publicly out. But that makes the mask symbolism in the icon all the more interesting. These users are putting on a mask of anonymity while using Grinder, but wearing it results in them acting more like their real selves than when they're not wearing a mask, which almost makes the version of themselves they show the rest of the world more of a disguise than that little yellow tribal mask. I'm just rambling. My point is, with Grinder almost certainly having to allow anonymous users who then get access to the locations of gay people in their immediate vicinity, it results in a social network that's both great for casual anonymous hookups and also for bad actors who want to hunt for targets. And trust me, Mareno Bologanos is far from the only person to use the app in this predatory manner. In the midentth century, the Netherlands was busy producing huge swats of new land along their coastline. It's a process that's been ongoing throughout much of the country's history, but technological advancements brought on by the industrial revolution allowed them to greatly accelerate it. They'd build massive barriers far into shallow waters, converting seas first into lakes and then into dry land after the water was pumped out of them. The country would make thousands of square km of new land using this method, resulting in entire provinces being created, consisting of the newest pieces of earth in one of its oldest continents. Fleand is one of these provinces created in 1986. It mostly consists of rural farmland. And you can absolutely tell that this flat featureless landscape used to be a seabed, but situated close to the province's central eastern edge is a strange geographic anomaly. Something that shouldn't exist in a land younger than many people alive today. It's a rockabos forest. Suddenly, the flat land covered in nothing but short grass has been replaced by towering pine trees densely packed together. Their trunks covered with tall, lush bushes of wild flora. This woodland looks ancient, yet is sitting on a strip of earth that didn't even exist 80 years ago. As if it was simply dredged out of the water along with the rest of the surrounding region. While it does look like some ancient wild continental European forest, the Rockabatos is actually a man-made feature. It was planted shortly after Flleand province was reclaimed from the ocean. But the land here was so fertile that the trees all grew enormously large much quicker than they should have, giving the forest an unnaturally primeval appearance despite its young age. 36-year-old mailman Mark Yaski is currently biking towards this remote hinterland. He's not delivering any mail, though. No, Mark is heading towards this isolated coastal forest because he has a secret. It's something he's never told his friends and family, not unlike countless others caught in the same situation. You see, Mark doesn't live a traditional lifestyle. He's gay and he's currently on his way to meet a man that he's been talking to on Grinder. With the area being as rural as it is, cell network coverage is spotty. And as Mark draws nearer to the forest, his phone begins losing connection. At one point, after a prolonged period of no signal, his phone would manage to briefly reach a cell tower just as he was entering the forest. 8 minutes later, his phone would ping again, this time much deeper into the trees. This is the last contact Mark Yasculski would ever have with the outside world. A single ping to a network confirming where he was. After that, there'd be nothing. Earlier that day, a security camera had recorded Mark at the beginning of his journey in the nearby town of Drton, a place he called home. Friends and family would describe him as easy to talk to and socially outgoing. But despite that, Mark lived alone. He'd call his parents every day. So after he abruptly stopped contacting them, they obviously grew concerned. They dropped by his home unannounced where they'd find the medication that he needed to take for his serious kidney condition still sitting on the counter. Fearing the worst, they immediately contact the police and a missing person's investigation is opened. With Mark not being publicly out, he didn't let anyone know about his plans to meet a potential love interest, which left a crucial element out of the initial investigation. The search effort first suspected that he either may have become unwell after not taking his kidney medication or that he simply had an accident on his bike. They'd search for cycling paths around his home, but would come up empty-handed. Then they comb through the wooded areas, canals, and lakes around Tron. Again, nothing would be found, and the case would start to go cold, only shortly after it started. In June 2024, however, the police would learn of Mark's Grinder account and what he had been up to that day. They tell the public about Mark's secret life, frequenting quote, men's meeting places, and of his secret love life that he had kept hidden from those closest to him. This press release is how Mark's friends and family, even his parents, learned that he was gay. In July, 3 months after Mark went missing, the case would take a turn. Someone had noticed a bicycle floating in a lake about 6 km south of the Rockabots forest. They'd call it into the police who would come to drudge it out. They knew immediately that it was Mark's Gazelle brand bicycle. This is where the authorities began to treat this case as something that was likely darker than a medical emergency. Someone had purposely dumped this bike in the lake, and it certainly wasn't Mark. We now need to move our story south, far away from Dton, to a village called Best. Almost 2 years later, in April 2026, a cafe owner in Best notices someone trying to break into his building. He attempts to chase a man off, but gets stabbed several times in the process. He's severely injured, but manages to call the police, who promptly track down the perpetrator, a 42-year-old man named Ilia, either a Ukrainian or a Russian, depending on the source you're reading. He's thrown in jail, where he sits awaiting charges. He expects to be slapped with breaking and entering and attempted manslaughter, but soon enough, the police accuse him of something on top of those, something he's not expecting. The details here are scanned. We don't actually know if Mark had been planning to meet up with Ilia, but the police would label him as a prime suspect in his disappearance, stating that a digital paper trail that did involve grinder activity, led them directly to him. Ilia had a history of run-ins with law enforcement, having been arrested multiple times in the previous couple years for all manner of mischief, including vandalism, arson, and intimidation. They'd place Ilia in a mental facility so he could undergo a psychiatric evaluation. And while that was ongoing, a breakthrough would seemingly be made in Mark's disappearance. On August 10th, 2026, just 1 month ago at the time of making this video, a set of human bones would be found deep within the dense Rockabots forest. Everyone immediately assumed that it was Mark's remains. But just 10 days later, police would reveal the results of the DNA testing they ran to the public. The bones were not Marks. Moreover, the examination estimated that they may have been sitting on the floor of the artificially primeval forest for up to 6 years. Now, the police have a second potential unsolved murder attached to the forest. This dense, fertile woodland may have previously been known as a place of rejuvenation, marked by destinations like the Yukan Forest Wellness Retreat that lay within it. But now, the straight rows of towering pines, which often sit in the cold, hanging fogs typical of a Dutch coastline, are becoming a symbol of something else. something darker. Who knows what other secrets lay hidden in the super growth. Mark's case is still ongoing, and while Ilia is the prime suspect, he hasn't been formally charged yet. I imagine this one will get resolved, but it may take some time. Until then, many questions are going to remain unanswered here. But with the police confirming that it was Grinder activity that led them to Ilia, it would make sense that he was the love interest that Mark was hanging to meet. But then again, there's already been a few twists and turns in this case, and I won't be surprised if we see a few more. You know, I've read through quite a few cases of Grinder crimes for this video, and they mostly seem to follow the format set by the two we've just covered. A connection is made between two users on the app, and then one of them dies or goes missing. Instead of just telling you another version of that same story, we're going to switch gears. There's a pretty crazy internet rabbit hole surrounding Grinder that I've never seen someone cover before on YouTube. So, let's see if we can map it out. On July 15th, 2024, an account on Twitter would make a post that would immediately go viral, garnering more than 50 million impressions, making it among some of the most viewed posts on the platform. It read, >> "Breaking, an executive of the gay dating app Grinder says a Republican national convention is basically Grinder's Super Bowl." The following day, somebody would quote tweet this with a video that they describe as quote opening Grinder at the RNC. The video, which is filmed in a packed dark stadium, occasionally being lit up by flashing lights, shows somebody using Grinder on their phone, swiping through a seemingly endless feed of profiles. It's obvious the intention is to show the large quantity of people attending the Republican National Convention, an event aimed towards members of America's right-wing party who are apparently using Grinder. The video would get 22 million views, giving the pair of posts a combined 75 million views. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw this when he was making the rounds. I definitely remember people talking about it. One of those people happened to be George Santos, a former congressman who was being investigated for several crimes at the time. He posted a video on July 17th referencing the original post using the same Super Bowl wording. The same day, the RNC Grinder video would begin making the rounds on threads. Right was next where several posts would mention the supposed crash of the RNC along with the Super Bowl quote from the CEO. Over the following days, new stories would circulate, all reporting that Grinder had crashed because so many people at the Republican National Convention were using it. One of them even mentions that the crash was used as a joke on the Daily Show, one of the most popular political comedy shows in the country. The RNC that year was being hosted in Milwaukee, and as such, the local Milwaukee Journal Sentinel would also publish a story covering the supposed Grinder crash. But you'll notice that this one uses much more muted language. The headline is framed as a question rather than a statement, introducing the first hint of uncertainty we've seen about this story. Reading through it, you'll find pretty much everything we've already covered. But you'll notice that one thing is absent. Confirmation. They reached out to Grinder HQ for comment, but didn't hear back. And moreover, they noticed that there wasn't any outage being tracked on the site's official status tracker, leading to the article concluding without actually being able to definitively say whether or not this story was even real. Let's take a closer look ourselves. Starting with the video taken at the RNC, it does show someone swiping through countless Grinder profiles on their phone, but let's focus on the background for a second. This is a busy stadium with lots of standing room. Since when do major political conventions make their often elderly attendees stand? If we look up photos of the 2024 RNC, you'll notice that they did in fact have chairs for everybody. And on top of that, the arena here is completely different. The stage at the RNC was in the middle of the stadium, but the stage in this video is at the back, and they're clearly not the same. This is not the same event. Doing an image back search confirms that this video indeed was not taken at the RNC. It was filmed 2 weeks prior at a pop concert. Someone just reposted it and changed the caption. Okay, so the video is fake, but what about that original post that got 50 million views? Well, this is where things get a little silly, and I'm kind of shocked that I've never seen anyone talk about this. It was posted by an account called The Halfway Post. And if we click on their profile, we're greeted with a description telling us upfront that this is satire. The Halfway Post is a satirical newsletter started by comedian Dash McIntyre in 2017. It's similar to The Onion in the sense that they produce fake headlines for comedic effect. And somehow the fact that this 50 million view tweet was openly satire, didn't seem to enter the conversation much when it was being passed around the internet. I suppose The Onion is just so famous that most people already know that everything they post is made up. But in the Halfway Posts case, their fake satire news headline became actual misinformation because very few people thought to verify whether or not it was actually real. And it's not the first time it's happened. In 2023, they'd make a post stating that Grinder was threatening to reveal right-wing politicians using the app if Florida didn't stop passing homophobic laws. This one got 17 million views, being so widely spread that the Associated Press stepped in to inform the public that it wasn't real. And a community note would eventually appear under the original post as well. A community note would not appear, however, under their August 2025 post, claiming that Grinder, along with other gay dating apps, would once again plan to out right-wing politicians if the Supreme Court ended up banning gay marriage. This post got almost 10 million views, leading Newsweek to reach out to Grinder for comment, who'd firmly deny any and all plans to out users. While it's nice that the Associated Press and Newsweek did some investigative journalism to confirm that these posts were indeed satire, they also could have just, you know, clicked on the Halfway Post profile, which openly states that they write satirical news. This 2025 screenshot shows that the account's description hasn't changed. I'll admit I completely bought into the idea that Grinder had crashed during the Republican convention, although I don't think I ever saw the original tweet. I definitely remember the video, though. It kind of makes you wonder, even if the post was made up, is there any truth to the idea that Grinder crashed during the RNC? Vice did actually investigate that back in 2016, and they found that during the Republican convention that year, Grinder did actually see a 66% increase in users. But the DNC, the left-wing Democrat convention, saw a 148% increase in users, which makes sense considering gay people are twice as likely to identify as leftwing compared to the general population. Both the DNC and the RNC's increases were apparently driven by white men in their 30s. So there you have it. While it is indeed a funny idea, in reality, the Democrat Convention is statistically more likely to crash Grinder than the RNC. Although neither convention has ever actually resulted in any sort of Grinder crash. I've got to admit, I don't really have much of an outro for this one, and I don't really feel like talking about the yellow mask again. I have heard that Grinder has been bad for gay bars and the gay districts they reside in since it's allowed people to bypass those third spaces, which used to be a necessity when seeking out like-minded people, but I think you can say the same thing for all dating apps in all physical social spaces. Personally, I haven't been on the market for a decade, so I suppose I just don't really have a dog in that race. If you have some thoughts about it, let me know in the comment section. Anyways, thank you all very much for making it all the way to the end. If you enjoy immersive internet focused true crime videos like this one, then make sure to click that subscribe button. It'll teach YouTube algorithm to recommend you more videos like this one in the future. And not just my content either. If you're ever annoyed that YouTube keeps recommending you the same slob, engaging with the content you do like will result in better videos appearing on your homepage. Oh, and of course, have a great night. Heat.