Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - A Cabin Trip Turns Into a Night of Terror When a Stranger Knocks After Sunset PART2 #4

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales  #cabintripterror #strangerdanger #nightoffear #isolatedhorror #woodscreep  Part 2 plunges deeper into the terrifying events of a cabin trip gone wrong. As night falls, the tension rises with the mysterious stranger’s presence looming large. Isolation intensifies fear, and the narrator faces chilling moments of suspense, distrust, and survival. This chapter reveals the darkness lurking just outside the cabin’s walls and the desperate fight to stay safe.  horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, part2thriller, cabintripterror, strangerencounter, isolatedfear, nightofsuspense, survivalstory, woodscreep, realhorrorstories, chillingevents, terrifyingmoments, darkwoods, fearanddanger, hauntedcabin, nightmareunfolds

I'll never forget the first thud I heard that day. At first, I thought it was just the old house doing its usual thing, you know, with settling, random pops here and there. But then, there was a second thud. Louder. Closer. My heart instantly jumped into my throat. I was upstairs, surrounded by a pile of unfolded clothes, trying to ignore the uneasy silence

that had swallowed the house since my mom and sister left for the airport. The second sound was enough to make me throw on whatever clothes I could grab and sprint downstairs barefoot. I checked the front door. Locked. The patio door. Locked. Windows.

Secure. Nothing. The house was empty, well, empty except for me and the creeping feeling that I wasn't alone. I tried to shake it off. Took a deep breath and told myself I was being dramatic. Just the house settling. Maybe the neighbors.

Maybe my own paranoia. Whatever it was, I wasn't about to call my mom freaking out. She already had enough stress with my sister flying back home after some family drama. When my mom called to check in, I forced my voice to sound casual. Yeah, I'm fine. Just gonna order some takeout and chill for the rest of the day. I didn't mention the noises. No point in worrying her.

Later that night, around 10 p.m., I was deep in lazy mode, half a pizza demolished, a pile of wings in the box beside me, and how to get away with murder blasting on Netflix. I was curled up on the couch, the glow of the TV flickering across the dark living room. At some point, I dozed off. When I jolted awake a few hours later, the first thing I noticed was the cold. Not just, a little chilly, but bone-deep, teeth-chattering cold. I squinted at the thermostat. 42 degrees. That's when the feeling hit me again, this heavy, stomach-twisting dread, like I was a deer

frozen in front of a predator. My gut screamed that something was wrong. I sat up slowly, scanning the room, trying to listen over the pounding in my chest. That's when I noticed my phone wasn't on the couch. I patted the cushions, checked the floor, even dug through my takeout boxes. Gone. I groaned under my breath, part annoyed, part nervous. The last thing I wanted was to wander around a freezing house in the middle of the night, but I also couldn't exactly go phoneless if something was off. Then I remembered text now, a free site I'd used before to call my own number

when I misplaced my phone. I grabbed my laptop, fingers trembling as I typed in the night. The phone rang somewhere in the house. Relief almost washed over me, until it didn't, because it stopped ringing almost immediately. And in that sudden silence, I heard it, slow, heavy breathing coming from the other end. I froze. My fingers hovered uselessly over the keyboard. I couldn't even process what I was hearing before a new sound cut through the house. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Knuckles on glass The patio door I shot to my feet, adrenaline flooding my body,

and ran to the closet where I yanked out a loose bedpost I'd never screwed back on. My hands shook as I crept toward the sliding door, heart hammering so hard it hurt. When my eyes finally landed on the glass, I almost forgot how to breathe. There, standing on the patio was a tall, dark figure. And on his head, a goat mask. He was holding my phone. Before I could move, before I could even process, the figure slid the patio door open like he'd been waiting for me to notice. I didn't think.

I didn't grab shoes. I didn't grab my wallet. I just bolted. I shot through the front door and sprinted barefoot across the street to my neighbor's house, banging on the door like my life depended on it. An older woman answered, wide-eyed and confused. There's, someone, he's in my house. I gasped, tripping over words, shaking so badly I could barely stand.

She didn't hesitate. She grabbed her phone and called 911. The cops arrived about ten minutes later. I stood there on her porch, hugging myself for warmth, trying not to puke from the leftover terror in my stomach. After a full search of my house, they found nothing. No footprints. No goat man.

No proof that I hadn't lost my mind. But when one of the officers stepped back outside, he held something up in a plastic evidence bag. My phone. They'd found it in the yard, near the patio. No fingerprints. No signs of forced entry. Just a dead end. I thought that was the worst of it, until I unlocked my phone to call my mom and saw my photo

Gallery. My blood turned to ice. I couldn't speak. My hands shook so violently the phone almost slipped. The officer noticed. What's wrong? I turned the screen toward him. There were 15 videos on my phone. Each one about three minutes long. Each one was of me. Sleeping on the couch. The goat-masked man hadn't just been outside. He had been inside my house. Watching me. Filming me. I think that was the moment it really sank in how close I came to something way worse than fear. I called my mom, finally breaking down and telling her everything.

She and my sister came straight from the airport, and we didn't spend another night in that house. For weeks, I couldn't stop thinking about what could have happened if I had opened my eyes to see him standing over me. Honestly, I might not be here to tell you this. Even now, years later, the memory still creeps into my head whenever I'm alone at night. Then there's the part of my childhood I wish I could forget, but somehow it's glued to my brain in pieces. I was maybe five when it all started. Middle kid, two sisters, one younger, one older. This next story takes me back to 2003, to a crappy little apartment complex called Oates Creek.

That's when Julie came into the picture. Julie was supposed to be our babysitter. She'd been friends with my mom in high school, and for a while she even lived with us. Tall, super skinny, always had her dark blonde hair tied up. At first, she was fine. Cool, even. She babysat while my parents worked, and eventually started dating one of my dad's co-workers. My dad got endless jokes at work about being a pimp, because the sitter was basically part of the family.

but it didn't last. Julie changed. She got snappy, rude, mean. And then she started crossing lines, mostly with my sisters. My older sister swears Julie tried to kill her once. I don't remember the whole thing clearly, but apparently my sister pissed her off, and Julie grabbed a bottle of some green liquid, God knows what it was, and tried to make her drink it. We'll never know what was in it.

From there, things only escalated. Julie started getting physical over the dumbest things, spilling a drink, knocking something over. And of course, it only happened when mom and dad were gone. The first real red flag for my parents came from our cat. One day, Julie shut the bedroom door on my little sister's hand. Accident or not, it hurt like hell and made her scream. Our usually chill, lazy cat absolutely lost it. She leapt onto Julie's leg, claws and teeth everywhere, tail puffed like a bottle brush.

Julie screamed, flailing like a cartoon character, while the cat clung to her like she was straight out of a horror movie. That was when my parents started to realize something was off with her. Our cat was basically a furry pillow that never scratched anyone, but animals know. Even with suspicions, they didn't fire her right away. She still babysat, and that's where my memories start to get, hazy. Like my brain wants to protect me from remembering. But there's one night I'll never forget. I was sleeping on the top bunk of the bed I shared with my little sister. Across the room, my older sister had her own twin bed. In the middle of the night, my little sister woke me up. She couldn't sleep. Climmed up with me, and we whispered about nothing

for a while. Then she said, hey, watch this. I can't. can hang off the edge without falling. Spoiler, she could not. She slipped, smacked the floor, and immediately started wailing. Julie stormed in like a hurricane, cursing, face twisted with rage. She grabbed one of my dad's belts and spanked my sister, then hauled her onto the bottom bunk and screamed for her to shut up and sleep. I just, froze. I was five, maybe six, and all I could do was watch from the top bunk, heart pounding, praying she wouldn't notice me. Julie went silent for a second when my dad said that. I remember her face twitching, like she didn't expect to get called out.

She mumbled something like, he just, he was being rude, and then she stormed off to her room. My dad didn't push further because he probably didn't think it was that serious. He didn't know half the stuff she was pulling when he and my mom were gone. Looking back, I think my sisters and I all kind of felt trapped. We were little kids. This tall, angry teenager slash young adult ruled the house whenever our parents were at work. And there's this feeling you get as a kid when an adult is, in charge, even if they're awful, you just freeze. You think, well, this is how it is. I guess I just have to survive it. And survive is really the word. Because things didn't get better. They got way,

way worse. I started noticing little things that I didn't even process at the time. Like, she started locking her door when she took naps, which she never did before. Or she'd make weird phone calls in the kitchen, speaking in this low, angry whisper that sounded like she was plotting something. Sometimes I'd catch her glaring at us for no reason, like we were bugs she wanted to squish. One day, I remember walking into the kitchen to grab a juice box, and she was standing by the window with this creepy blank look, just staring outside. I said, uh, Julie, and she jumped like I'd caught her doing something bad. Her smile was so fake it made my stomach hurt. She said, Hey, buddy, go play with your sisters, and I booked it out of there. I didn't know what she was

thinking, but I knew it wasn't good. Then came the night that I'll never forget. It's one of those memories that plays in my brain like a bad movie. My parents were working late, again. We'd had some microwave mac and cheese for dinner, and Julie was in an extra bad mood because my little sister spilled hers on the carpet. She'd already yelled at us and stomped around the apartment for a while. Eventually, she plopped down on the couch and turned on some reality show, totally ignoring us. It was bedtime, so my sisters and I went to our room. I got the top bottom. I as usual. I remember staring at the ceiling, trying to fall asleep, when I heard the faint creak of the door opening. At first, I thought maybe it was mom or dad coming home early.

But no. It was Julie. She didn't turn the light on. She just stood in the doorway for a second, her silhouette framed by the dim hall light. Then she walked in, super quiet, and went straight to the bottom bunk where my little sister was. I froze. I didn't even breathe. I heard her whisper something, but I couldn't make it out. My sister whimpered a little, like she was scared. Then I heard the soft sound of the belt buckle jingling.

She was going to hit her again. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would shake the bed. I wanted to scream for my parents, but they weren't there. And I was five, I didn't even know what to do except hide and hope she didn't notice me. And then, out of nowhere, our cat jumped up on the top bunk with me. She crouched low, her fur puffed out. I'd never seen her like that before, like a little ball of fury. And before I could even process what was happening, the cat launched herself off my bed right

onto Julie's face. I swear, it was like slow motion. Julie screamed, stumbled back, and started flailing. The cat clung to her like a Velcro demon, hissing in scratch. My sisters both woke up screaming. Julie ran out of the room, yelping, get it off. Get it off, and our cat eventually jumped down and bolted under the bed. I think that was the first moment in my little kid brain where I realized, oh, we're not totally powerless. Someone's on our side. After that night, Julie changed again. She wasn't just mean, she was, weird. She stopped talking

to us much. She stayed in her room a lot, barely ate with us, and sometimes just, stared at walls. Like she was thinking of something bad. One day, my parents came home early, and everything exploded. I don't remember what exactly triggered it. My mom walked in, saw Julie sitting on the couch doing nothing while the apartment was trashed and we were crying about something. My mom asked, what's going on, and Julie snapped, I can't take this anymore. Your kids are little brats. My dad got home a few minutes later, and suddenly they were all yelling. My sisters and I were hiding in the bedroom, listening through the thin apartment walls. Then we heard the words that made us feel like we could finally breathe. Pack your stuff. You're done here. Julie slammed her door and started throwing

things into a bag. She stormed out not long after, muttering something under her breath. The door slammed so hard the whole apartment shook. I never saw her again after that. It took a while to feel safe again. For a long time, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and just stare at the doorway, half expecting her to be standing there. I still think about that green liquid sometimes, the one my sister said she tried to make her drink. I'll never know what that was. And honestly, the scariest part is realizing how close we might have been to. to, something worse. I think that's what sticks with me. How close danger can sit in your living room while your parents think everything's fine. Even now, as an adult, I get this weird chill

whenever I hear a belt buckle jingle. Trauma's funny like that, it sticks to you in the smallest sounds and smells. And that's the thing about experiences like these. They don't leave cleanly. They linger in the corners of your mind, popping up when you least expect them. Even though years have passed and that apartment is long gone, sometimes I'll dream I'm back there, top bunk, little me staring at the doorway, waiting to see what kind of monster comes through. Life after Julie left was, quiet, but in a weird way. You'd think we'd be relieved, and yeah, we were, but the apartment felt heavy, like her presence was still hanging in the air. My mom tried to act like things were back to normal, cooking dinner and humming in the kitchen,

but even she seemed jittery. My dad barely talked about it at all, like ignoring it would erase the whole nightmare. My sisters and I didn't buy it. We'd go to bed and still flinch at shadows under the door. I'd sleep with the blanket over my head even though it was hot, because in my five-year-old brain, that was my ultimate shield. And I'd listen to every creak of the apartment at night. That place was old and loved to pop and settle, but after Julie, every little sound felt like a warning.

A few weeks later, the first real aftershock hit. I was sitting in the living room, coloring on the carpet, when there was a knock at the door. My mom was in the shower, and my sisters were watching cartoons. We weren't allowed to open the door, so I froze and just stared at it. Another knock. Louder this time. Then, nothing. I should have gone back to coloring, but I crept up and peeked through the little people.

And I swear on everything, I thought my heart stopped. It was Julie. She wasn't smiling. She wasn't even moving much. She just stood there, staring at the door like she could see me through it. Her hair was messy, and she had this, empty look, like a doll somebody forgot in the rain. I didn't breathe. I didn't move. I just backed away slowly until I was hiding behind the couch.

After maybe a minute, I heard the faint sound of footsteps in the hall, and when I finally got the courage to peek again, she was gone. I didn't tell my mom right away. I don't even know why. I think part of me was scared she wouldn't believe me, or worse, that if she did, it would make it real. But it was real. A few days later, my mom came home from work and said,

someone's been calling, but they hang up when I answer. I knew. I didn't say it out loud, but I knew. From then on, every shadow outside the window looked like her. Every sound in the hall made me jump. I dreamed she was coming back, standing in the doorway with that belt or that weird green cup, and I'd wake up sweaty and panicked. It's wild how someone can leave your life but stay trapped in your head. Months passed, and eventually, she stopped trying. Or maybe she just moved on to someone else's nightmare. But the damage was done. I never looked at babysitters the same way again.

Whenever someone knew came around, my little kid brain immediately went to, are they hiding something? Are they going to hurt us? Even now, as a grown man, that instinct is still there. I can walk into a room full of strangers and my brain will quietly scan for danger, like some leftover survival mechanism. And here's the part that always sticks with me, that stupid cat. That brave, furious little cat who launched herself onto Julie's face that night,

she probably saved us from something much worse. She passed away years ago, but she's the reason that night didn't go a different way. Whenever I think about heroes, I think about her. The last time I thought about Julie in a real, stomach-sinking way was when I was moving apartments as an adult. It was late, I was unpacking, and there was a random knock at the door. My body froze the same way it did all those years ago. I wasn't five anymore, but my brain didn't care, it shoved me right back into that top bunk, staring at a dark doorway. It turned out to be my neighbor welcoming me to the building. Totally harmless. But in my head, I saw her.

And I realized something, childhood monsters don't always leave. They just wait in your memory, patient and quiet, until life gives them a shadow to step into again. If I ever have kids, I know one thing for sure, I'll never leave them with someone I don't completely trust. Because evil doesn't always come with a mask or a stranger's face. Sometimes it comes with a fake smile and a green plastic cup, and it lives in your house until you're brave enough, or lucky enough, to survive it. And me? I was lucky. To be continued.