The Lets Read Podcast - 179: DON'T GO IN THE DEEP WOODS | 23 True Scary Stories | EP 167

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Being Home Alone, The Deep Woods, & FAKE DADS... This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp.com/read HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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she was greatly relieved to be getting some help around the house. Little did they know, their lives as they knew them were about to change, forever. When Kathy arrived in the early evening, both she and Margaret took 13-year-old Scott and 8-year-old Amy down to a local bar and arcade named Good Time Charlie's, letting them binge on soda and video games until just before 10pm. When the two women announced their bedtime, the children protested, but eventually allowed themselves to be driven back to the small log cabin where they lived. However, Margaret and Kathy weren't quite ready to call it a night, and after dropping the kids back at the cabin, they decided to return to Good Time Charlie's to continue drinking. Shortly before departing, Margaret told her children not to stay up too late and that they'd be back sometime after midnight. Kathy then told Scott to lock the door once they'd

departed and in reply, Scott apparently laughed. It was later established that he laughed because the door's lock was broken and despite his insistence that she have it fixed, his mother had neglected to do so. Once their mother and aunt were out of sight, the Fandel kids decided to sneak over to their neighbor's place, the Lupton's, to play with their five kids. It's not clear what a bunch of kids were doing out so late on a Monday night, but one of the neighbor kids later reported that nothing seemed amiss with the Fandel kids, who were happy and relaxed when they came over to visit. They stayed there until the noise got too loud, at which point the Lupton's mother emerged to corral her children indoors. She then shooed the Fandel children back

to their cabin and told them to stay indoors. She later stated that she believed the children had obeyed her commands and returned to the cabin, and a passerby confirmed that lights were on at the Fandel place when they walked by at around 11.45pm. These lights were apparently switched off when Margaret and Aunt Kathy arrived home sometime between 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. When they entered the cabin, they found a pot of water boiling on the stove. On a nearby countertop, a package of macaroni and a can of tomatoes lay untouched. The women apparently took the pot of water off the stove before clearing away the food, but at no point sought out the children to chide them for doing something so dangerous without parental supervision.

It was later implied that the women were so drunk that they didn't want the kids to see them in such a state. On top of that, Margaret was due into work at 8.30am, so as much as we can understand why we might want to get as much sleep as possible, it still seems odd that neither of the women would check on the children. As we mentioned, Margaret awoke around 8am to begin her shift, but still didn't check on her children. Aunt Kathy said she slept until noon and was the only one to check on the kids for around 12 hours. When she found they were absent from the cabin, she assumed they were at school, but the neighboring Lupton kids would later state that the Fandel kids, who they usually walked to school with, were nowhere to be seen that morning. When Margaret arrived at the restaurant she worked at, she apparently called

her children's school, intending to scold her daughter for not checking in with her before she left for school. But school staff were forced to inform her that neither of her children had shown up that day. Panicking, Margaret told her boss that her children were missing, and she needed to be excused from her shift so she could look for them. According to Margaret, her employer refused and demanded she work the rest of her shift. So, instead of looking for them herself, she says she was forced to rely on her sister to find them. It wasn't until 3pm that day that Alaska State Troopers learned of the children's disappearance, a full 15 hours after they'd last been seen.

Upon inspection of the family's cabin, the police found no signs of any kind of struggle, but the fact there was still a pot of water on the boil when the women arrived home suggests Scott had been interrupted while cooking something. But if he'd walked outside the cabin with the stove still on, he'd obviously expected a return, so initially, the main theory was that the kids had been lured outside, then snatched before they had a chance to get back inside. Naturally, one of the first suspects was Roger Fandel, the children's absent father. He lived all the way down in Arizona, but within a week, he had flown up to Alaska to help look for his kids. He cooperated fully with the police investigation and was subsequently ruled out as a suspect. Police established that Roger and Margaret's marriage had broken down due to alcohol abuse on Margaret's part and infidelity on Roger's, and at no point did police deem Roger a danger to the children's well-being. Yet Margaret and Kathy, as well as a handful of their blood relatives,

seemed to insist that Roger was somehow responsible, given that his Uncle Herman was a vocal proponent of taking the kids back by force. This Uncle Herman was later questioned by police, and although he was honest about having said such melodramatic things, he too was cleared of responsibility. The police were so convinced Herman was lying that they actually dug up his backyard, but not a shred of evidence was found. One witness claimed to have seen a black sedan speeding away from the cabin in the middle of the night, with the driver and passenger being identified as two carnival workers. They were indeed working at the Alaska State Fair on the day the children went missing,

and had moved on the next day, but it was later confirmed that Margaret had let the men stay at her home for a single night just a few weeks prior. They were mostly definitely aware of children and definitely had access to the children, yet despite remaining suspects, the two carnival workers were never fully charged with either kidnapping or murder. Following her children's disappearance, Margaret Vandell became deeply depressed, and this only exacerbated her problems with alcohol. Two years following her children's disappearance, Margaret left Alaska behind, abandoned the very place she had once sought solace in. Shortly after she left, the cabin she and the children lived in was burned down under mysterious circumstances.

In 1980, Margaret remarried and sobered up, later stating that she prayed daily that the children would be found alive and well. Her ex-husband, on the other hand, firmly believes his children are deceased, saying that if they were still alive, then surely, they'd have made an effort to contact him in the four decades since they'd disappeared. Margaret's brother, Terry, had made a handful of bizarrely specific claims since their disappearance, such as stating that Scott was murdered, but that Amy is somehow still alive. He's also stated that he believes her to be living in Anchorage, Lompoc, California, or Drummond in Montana. Terry has never fully explained why he believes his niece is living in such a specific place, and we're only left to imagine how he's come to such conclusions.

Yet the question remains, what happened that caused the children to vanish that night that they were left alone? And if someone took them, who was it? One thing we have to keep in mind is that Scott Vandell was extremely protective of his little sister, with those close to the children saying he was Amy's devoted protector. If someone tried to take the girl, there's a very high chance that Scott would have put up a considerable amount of resistance, yet there was no evidence of such a struggle in the cabin. This suggests that the children left the cabin of their own volition, possibly enticed by someone they knew and trusted.

There's also the little detail of the cabin's lights, which were apparently switched on at around 11.45, but switched off a few hours later when Margaret and Kathy returned from Good Time Charlie's. Like most children, Scott and Amy were said to be scared of the dark, so either they'd turned them off knowing they were unlikely to return, or someone else had done so. There's also the possibility that Scott and Amy simply walked off into the forest and died of hypothermia, but not a single shred of their remains had been found in the years that followed,

and even if they'd succumbed to the cold and been eaten by wild animals, at least a few scraps of bone or clothing would have been left behind. So if someone actually visited the cabin and took the children, who might have the motive to do so? As we've already mentioned, the number one suspect would obviously be the children's biological father, Roger. One of the reasons Roger and Margaret's marriage had broken down was her excessive drinking, so there's a chance that Roger viewed her as an unfit mother and viewed their abduction as a kind of rescue. His surprise visit might have excited the children so much that they remembered to turn the lights out but forgot to turn off the stove,

especially if their father told them they needed to leave as quickly as possible. But why would Roger resort to abduction over some kind of appeals process? Well, it came out years later that Roger wasn't actually Scott's biological father, only Amy's, so it's highly unlikely that he would have won any kind of custody battle. But how would Roger have known the children would be alone that night? Sure, he lived down in Arizona, but that doesn't mean he didn't travel up to Alaska surreptitiously, watching the cabin for the right time to make his move before disappearing the children completely.

And I do mean completely because if Scott and Amy are still alive, they'd be well into their 50s by now, having forged entirely new identities over the years presumably with the help of their father. They'd have gone to school, maybe even college, started employment, maybe a family too, all without ever being detected. It's a plausible theory, but even saying it out loud brings it into disrepute. Sure, the kids might keep their mouth shut to spare their father any legal repercussions, but to remain totally incognito for 50-something years would be extremely difficult, and therefore highly unlikely. And so, we're forced to look elsewhere for the most probable explanation.

Then, even as unlikely as it seems, we have to consider the possibility that Margaret and Kathy are responsible for the children's disappearance. The fact that Margaret claims she left her children home alone so she could carry on drinking shows just how reckless she was, even in a small town where she felt they were safe. What's more, Margaret's story is so inconsistent and nonsensical that it makes all the sense in the world to view her with suspicion. Drunk or sober, she completely neglected to check on her kids, either when she arrived home or before she left for work, then had the nerve to call Amy's school to scold her for not checking in. Then there's the issue of her boss refusing to let her leave work after finding out her children were missing. This never once had been corroborated and no matter how troublesome her financial situation

was, the idea that a mother might be content to just sit and work while her kids were in danger is extremely doubtful. However, some say these same financial troubles motivated Margaret to sell her children into a black market adoption ring, and even that her second trip to Good Time Charlie's was an effort to gain some liquid courage for what was to come. That would definitely explain the lack of a struggle, and the complete lack of any evidence regarding their whereabouts almost completely rules out the possibility of them being killed by their mother or their aunt. Maybe one day we'll read a news story in

which one of the Fandel children finally comes forward. Maybe we're only one regressive hypnosis session away from an internet breaking headline. But it seems more likely that the truth is, Scott and Amy's disappearance will forever remain a mystery. and in the absence of any definitive explanation, we find ourselves considering the most cynical of possibilities. A few years ago, around Christmas time, my family decided to go on holiday to Spain for the winter. I think they were just sick of the cold as we live in a fairly small town here in Northumberland, but since I wanted to spend Christmas with my friends, I decided to stay at home. No, they didn't just leave me behind, as one friend suggested. My decision to stay in England was entirely voluntary. But sometimes I really do wish I'd

gone with them, because staying home alone resulted in one of the most unnerving experiences of my entire life. It was the second week of December, and it was a Friday, so it had to be the 15th. I was just chilling in the living room watching TV, deciding on which takeaway place to order from. I place an order, about 40 minutes go by, and I got a knock at the front door from the delivery driver. I grab my food, tip the guy, then head into the kitchen to plate the food up. Now I'm plating up on the counter top nearest the kitchen sink, which just so happens to look right out into the back garden.

It's about 7 o'clock as I'm doing this so it's almost pitch black in the garden and there's only some weak ambient orange light coming from the main road just barely illuminating the tops of the trees. At one point I just so happen to glance out the window when I see this pair of glowing eyes looking back at me through the darkness. I know, I know, the first thing that comes to mind is cat, and I thought exactly the same thing, that it must have just been a neighbor's cat perched up there on the back wall. So, as opposed to freaking out or any other kind of irrational response, I just shrug it off, wish the cat a happy night of hunting, then trot off back

into the living room to carry on watching TV. The rest of the night passed without incident. I went to bed at a reasonable hour, go me, and got a peaceful undisturbed night's sleep. The next morning I'm woken up, bright and early by the sound of someone knocking at the front door. I roll out of bed, throw on my big comfy dressing gown, then head downstairs to see who's calling so early. I think I'd have been in a grumpier mood about being woken up if I wasn't so sure it was one of my mom's friends calling over to do the gardening. Mom didn't trust me to

do it properly, and not being out in the cold digging up weeds suited me down to the ground. Only it wasn't my mom's friend, it was the police. As you can imagine I was a bit taken aback to see two officers stood at the door at about half eight in the morning but since they were so polite and I hadn't done anything wrong it's not like I was particularly nervous or apprehensive. They introduced themselves and asked if I had any disturbances during the night. I obviously told them no, that I had slept right through and that's when they informed me that there had been a break-in next door. Thankfully no one was hurt and they were struggling to figure out if anything was actually taken so it seemed like no big drama. But apparently the police

suspected the person, or persons, to have been in the area for quite a while, and that they'd probably been casing places to pick the best target. Basically, they wanted to know if they could have a little look around the back garden to see if there were any signs of forced entry around the fence or back door. So I popped my slippers on, went around to the side gate and let them into the back garden. It was bloody freezing out so I asked the officers if they wanted a cup of tea, then went inside to put the kettle on. When I left the officers, the atmosphere was light and friendly.

Like, granted there had been a break in, but I got the impression they thought it was just kids being daft and not some horrible sinister stalker type thing. But when I walked back into the garden with some cups of tea, the atmosphere had completely changed. The two officers were crouched down near the back fence with one of them engaged on his radio, talking back and forth with someone who I imagine was back at headquarters or something. I don't know police things so don't have a go at me in the comments if I get things wrong please but I walked over to them and before

I offered them their tea I kind of peered over them to have a glance at whatever they were looking at. They were clear as day. Footprints in the mud right up near the back wall where someone had presumably climbed over. I'm stood there holding these three cups of steaming hot tea, and right as I'm about to say something like, oh my god, was the burglar in my back garden? I hear one of the police say into his radio, like, yeah, we're gonna need forensics down here, same address I gave you. Yep, cheers mate.

When he finishes, he basically turns to me and says, bit of bad news, ma'am. We're going to need access to your garden probably well into early afternoon. Obviously, I had absolutely no objections to this, and the police turned up, took a plaster cast of the shoe print, or however they do it these days, and took a statement from me before they left. At first, I just told them the same thing I'd said when they'd first these days, and took a statement from me before they left. At first, I just told them the same thing I'd said when they'd first called round and that I'd not been disturbed during the

night and had not seen anyone sneaking around the garden or the fields behind it. But then, I stopped to consider the placement of the boot prints. They were right near that back wall, right where I'd seen the neighbor's cat eyes glowing in the darkness. I had seen something, right around the time the police suspected the burglar to be in the area too, but it was just a cat, right? It was just a cat sitting on the wall right where the burglar had been stood near the back of the garden. I remember stopping for a moment and the police officer definitely assumed I'd remembered something because they gave me this exact look as if to say go on. All the thoughts about the cat and the burglar were rushing through my head and I

remember thinking how ridiculous it sounded but I just said I saw a cat. The officer looked at me like I was mental, and I swear I wanted to clarify what I'd been thinking, but my mouth just wouldn't let me. I'd sound like I was round the bloody bend, suggesting that the eyes I'd seen belonged to the sodding burglar. So, aside from mentioning the cat, I added, but nothing else. The officers still had this funny look on their face as they nodded,

but they eventually thanked me for my time, packed up, and left. I didn't hear any more news about any burglar, and the neighbors mustn't have had any more break-ins, or I'm sure I'd have heard something about it. When my family got back, mom went over to talk to them about what happened. The neighbors said they thought it was foxes at first because their cats outside food and water caddies had been rinsed and the poor things wouldn't go anywhere near them. It was only once they found an open window and some muddy footprints that they even thought to call the police and by that point, everyone was fixated on it being a person since they were able to open a window and were obviously wearing shoes or boots. I realize how insane this sounds, and it might come as no surprise to some of you that these are thoughts that I've never expressed publicly before.

I mean, why would I? People would think I was off my rocker. So naturally, there are thoughts that have always been pushed to the back of my mind, but they've always been there, festering away. Little questions like, what if the break-in, the cat's eyes, and the scared neighbor cats were all connected? What if I hadn't been looking at a cat in the darkness of my back garden that night? What if it was something else? And not even a something, a someone. Someone who wore boots, could evidently open windows and doors too, but whose eyes glowed like a cat's do. Whoever that might be that had been staring right at me. I had no idea what they

looked like, but they'd sure know what I'd look like, all lit up in my nice warm kitchen. Who knows, maybe they had one of those contact type things. I don't know if you've seen the Riddick movies, but that's kind of what I pictured in my mind. This is all very hypothetical of course, most probably nothing more than a kind of primitive fear of the unknown. Maybe the only thing to be afraid of was the fact that a burglar had been standing in my back garden with me asleep upstairs, weighing up whether or not to break in. That's what I tell myself anyways, because to consider anything else would be, as frightening as it would be, illogical. For context, I was about 10 years old at the time, female. Now, the story, I was really excited because my grandparents were going away for the weekend

and allowed me to watch their house while they were away. Since we lived right across the street from my grandparents' house, my parents said this was fine. Honestly, my parents let me do a lot of things during my childhood that, in hindsight, as a now adult myself, I should have never done. I have had my fair share of creepy experiences, but by some miracle, I've made it through unscathed. So as any ten-year-old with a sibling, I was excited for some space all to myself. My grandparents didn't leave a key key but instead let the back door unlocked for me. Stupid I know but it was a very safe neighborhood and nothing had ever happened a

million times before. And this detail is important so please keep that in mind. So I make my way across the streets of their house and water the plants, feed the cats, get their mail and do my house watching duties. Once they're finished I decided that I would spend my time there watching some movies and relaxing in the back room of the main floor. Time begins to pass as it does when you're engrossed in movies and now it's dark out. I'm ripped out of my movie by knocking at the front door. I'm not worried by this. My grandparents are popular enough and do have friends that sometimes stop by.

I figured that if I let the door go unanswered they'll understand my grandparents are not home and they'll just leave. The knocking continues and the doorbell rings one or two more times and then it stops. Figuring they must have left I happily return to my movie. Then, without warning, the knocking continues but it starts to intensify. The sounds echo through the house and it sounds like they're actually surrounding me. Whatever calm, relaxed state I was in previously is completely gone and my gut was telling me something here was wrong. I was confused as to why this person wouldn't just leave if they thought no one was here. My panic was increasing and my ten year old mind was racing trying to figure out what was going on. All the while the deafening barrage of doorbells and pounding on the door continues

incessantly. Then suddenly without warning it stops again and I've never been so grateful for this silence. I decide to summon my bravery and look out the window hoping I could recognize the car and realize that it was all just a misunderstanding. I've always been a very paranoid person and was hoping this was just another unnecessary scare. So first a little outline of my grandparents house. It's a one floor house with only a front and back door that has a brick walkway leading from front to back. Okay, so there I am, starting to peek through the window to see if I can recognize the car. Instead, I am locked eye to eye with a man

I have never seen before in my life. I can only imagine the terror in my eyes. I tried to examine this man. His eyes showed nothing. No fear, no surprise, no confusion. They were just completely void of emotion. I was looking to find some kindness or hope or something to try to ease my fears and tensions while I found quite the opposite of that. Suddenly his face shifted more determined and he broke our gaze and just kept walking. My brain was screaming, screaming at me that something was very, very wrong. Then it hit me and I realized what my head was trying to tell me.

He was going to the back of the house, the unlocked door. He was going to the back of the house, to the unlocked door. He was going to the back of the house, to the unlocked door. He was trying to find a way to ten-year-old defenseless me, home alone in this empty house. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I froze. Everyone, me included, always talks so much smack in horror movies when the victims freeze when the bad guys come to hurt or kill them. Trust me, I knew I needed to go move but my body just wouldn't allow it. To say my mind was moving a million miles a minute would be putting it lightly. What do I do? Do I call the cops? Do I run and hide? Do I run to my house?

All the time telling myself every second that I waste is another second closer to him getting inside. Finally, after being angry at myself for wasting this precious time, now with tears streaming down my face, I grab the cordless phone, this was back in the early 2000s, and run into the bathroom and lock the door. In the back of my head the whole time knowing and hoping this could all still be a misunderstanding, I really didn't want to call the police. I didn't want them to come and for everything to be fine and I waste everyone's time and just look stupid. It was wildly confusing. And not to mention I was and am a very shy person. Needless to say I knew I needed help defusing the situation so as the child that I was, I called my mom. At this point I was truly hysterical,

barely able to breathe let alone get out words. Somehow she was able to understand that I was at grandma's and there was a strange man walking around the back of the house. In a stern, almost angry voice she just said that I'll be right there and hung up. I clutched the phone like my life depended on it and crouched in the corner of the bathroom waiting for the man to come in and do god knows what. I felt like I waited for hours as I gasped for air in between deep fearful cries. The silence is broken by the sound of the back door opening and with it my stomach dropped. Unsure if this was my mother or the strange man whose dead eyes terrified me. After endless moments of pure terror, my mother calls out that it's her and it's safe to come out.

In one swift motion, I jump up, rip open the door, and run into my mother's sheltering arms. I just stayed there for a while, unable to speak, so processing what just occurred and feeling finally safe in my mother's arms. After a while I was able to get out asking what happened to the man. She told me she found him around the back of the house and immediately approached him asking what he was doing. He stated he was looking for an address and worriedly stumbled away to his car and drove off faster than seemed appropriate. There's no way that this man was looking for an address. Why would he continue to pound and pound on the door when no one answered?

Why would he walk around to the back of the house? Nothing about that looks like someone searching for an address. After asking around I heard that sometimes people do that when they're looking to break into a house. They thoroughly pound on the door and make sure that no one answers and that no one is home when they attempt to break in. But why, when he saw that I was inside, did he continue to go to the back of the house in the most ominous way possible? I'll never know that man's true intentions that night, and honestly, I don't know if I want to know. Thankfully, we never saw him again, again and no the police were never called, not to my knowledge anyway. My mother watched the house for me for the rest of the weekend as I was too scared to

return until the house was no longer empty. Obviously the story could have ended in many horrible ways and I'm forever grateful to my mother coming to my rescue. In hindsight she is very lucky the man didn't have a weapon and was instantly scared off when her presence arrived. This story may not sound like much to you but to someone who was already paranoid and afraid of most people and things it was enough to shake me to my core. I still, 15 years later, have irrational fears that haunt me some days and nights, and I'll always be haunted by those dead, empty eyes. Wherever you go, you can get a pro at Tread Experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard

when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Trade experts, that's EA. Back when I was 17, my first real girlfriend texted me one night to be like, parents are on a date night. Come over and we'll have the place to ourselves. Yep, the text that every young man waits for, the one that makes everything around you glow in gold while you hear the voice of God saying,

My son, you have been chosen. Now go forth and multiply. I'd been planning on a night of modern warfare 3 with the boys, but within minutes I was in the shower scrubbing the enamel off my teeth in order to become a little mint, drowning myself in cologne and raiding my brother's rubber stash for an entire platoon's worth. I remember texting her like, want me to bring anything over? I got a few red barons. And she just replied, nah, just bring yourself. What a feeling, dude. Girlfriend is home alone and all she wants delivered is me. So I rushed to finish off getting dressed, spent like five straight minutes in the mirror making

sure I look fresh and clean, so fresh and so clean clean, and then I was ready to go. The walk over to my girlfriend's place took like 20 minutes, so from the time of getting the text to me actually arriving couldn't have been any more than an hour. She had one of those long driveways too not like some southern manor house or anything like that but enough so you got a long look at the house as you were walking up to it. Then right as I'm about halfway up the driveway I see someone walking through one of the upstairs bedrooms

who was definitely not my girlfriend. I stop dead in my tracks, look up at this guy, and I've got this weird mix of anger and confusion and just utterly feeling a little bit heartbroken. I whip out my phone, dial my girlfriend's number, only to find her phone has switched off. My head is just swimming with negative thoughts. I think I was about to have a panic attack, like I just couldn't believe she'd do that to me. I was checking if I had the right house, double checking the upstairs bedroom,

like 100% certain that I'd just seen someone, but also telling myself, no way, I must be hallucinating or something. But nope, that same dude in the green hoodie walks through her parents' bedroom again, like all the way in and then all the way out. But on the way out, he sees me and he stops and stares at me. He's looking at me like, who are you my guy? Where I'm looking at him like, me? Who are you? But as I'm looking I notice there's something weird about his face. It's all distorted. And then it hits me that his face is all distorted because he's wearing like literal pantyhose over his head.

Like a meme of a bank robber or something. Then right as I'm thinking like, what kind of weird stuff is this? I'm like, oh no, he's not a meme. He's literally robbing the place. I just panicked and ran back down the driveway before dialing 911. But then as I'm giving the operator all the details, I realized that my arrival might have prompted something bad to happen to my girlfriend. I ended up running back up the driveway, kicking on the door and shouting up at the window, cops are on their way, you better get out of there. I added a few expletives but I won't say them here. I didn't hear anyone shouting back, in fact, I couldn't hear anything going on inside at all.

But that didn't mean there wasn't anything going on. The intruders, home invaders, whatever you want to call them, they could have been doing anything to my girlfriend in there. And that's if they hadn't done something irreversible already. Waiting those few minutes for the cops to arrive was agony, but the dispatcher promised me that they'd roll up with their lights and sirens blaring to try and scare the intruders off. We later found out that worked like a charm but no one realized that until we were inside and my girlfriend was safe. She was scared to death but she was okay and it turned out that my timing had been absolutely

impeccable. The two guys that broke in through the rear door of the house had only just tied her up in her bedroom and were right in the middle of ransacking the house when I showed up. And yes, they were actually wearing pantyhose. Seems kind of ridiculous, but the cops told me it's the smart choice for home invaders, I guess. You get pulled over with a ski mask and your passenger seat in Florida, questions are going to be asked. But a pair of pantyhose, you could just shrug it off and say, oh, that's just Meemaw's laundry day or something, and there's no probable cause. Needless to say, when the cops left, we were way too shaken up for any alone time,

and my girlfriend was in no mood to hang out at a place that had just gotten broken into, so we ended up going back to my parents' place to hang out. Nothing in the way of privacy, so I didn't get the explosive evening I'd been hoping for, but still, it was just cool to have been the one to have saved her, as she put it. I didn't save anyone, those dudes only bailed and the cops showed up, but still, you can bet I took all the credit she wanted to give me. We ended up dating until maybe our sophomore year of college. After that, neither of us could handle the distance, but we still keep in touch and I'm pretty sure our little post-relationship friend status is

rooted solely in that mild shared trauma of having confronted a pair of home invaders together. To be continued... was completely ruined on a Friday night in June. My mom and dad went out to some work-related event after dinner and told me they'd be back at around midnight. They gave me $20 to order takeout from somewhere, told me to not stay up too late, then just left me to it. I had a great time, at first anyway, just stuffing my face and watching cartoons until I passed out on the couch surrounded by candy wrappers. I'm not sure how long later, but I woke up and immediately I can tell something is different. I know I might sound weird when I say I could feel like a breeze on my face from the back door being open, but when you live somewhere for that long, I feel like you can pick up little subtle

environmental changes. The point is, I got up to check the back door and what do you know, it's wide open. I didn't remember opening it before I nodded off, but since I was so sleepy I didn't put too much thought into it. And I just closed the door, turned off the TV and downstairs lights, and started walking up the stairs to my bedroom. And that's when I hear it. The soft, barely audible sound of crying. It wasn't like a full-on bawling sound, more like softly sobbing. But it definitely sounded like a full-grown man doing the crying, and it was definitely coming from inside our house. I am like pant-wettingly scared, and when I get to the top of the stairs,

I can see that someone, definitely not me, has pulled down the ladder to our attic, and whoever it was, was upstairs in the dark, quietly crying to themselves. I'm not sure I can really put that kind of fear I felt into words, and just as I begin to think to myself, just get out of there, just run to the neighbor's place, I hear the crying stop, followed by, not footsteps, but movement up in the attic. That's what freezes me in place like a deer in headlights, and all I could do was keep my eyes glued to the opening of the ceiling. I remember seeing something. It was like a monster with a red face

that drooled when it saw me. But that's only because I lost a little piece of my sanity that night. A piece that I don't ever really think I got back. It obviously wasn't a monster. It was just a person. A very sick one at that. They were in the middle of a compound nervous breakdown. Complete paranoid schizophrenic. They thought they were trapped in the wrong body and so they tried to peel their face off by cutting it to find their real face. At least that's what I was told later. After they realized that they were trapped in their own body, this woman ran for her sister's place, where she was being cared for and somehow randomly picked our yard to climb into. Then, looking for a place to hide, she went up into our attic,

appearing in the hatch to scare the sanity out of me. So, you can see why that might just cause a kid to, well, lose his mind for a while and rationalize it by telling themselves that wasn't a person back there. People were good. People were normal. What I saw was a monster, or a demon, anything but a person. After I ran to my neighbors, after the police went through their investigation, and my parents came home and everything was said and done, I had to be homeschooled for a while, and I think I had my own little psychotic break. Or rather, I know I did. It made life almost unbearable for my parents, and they were infinitely patient with me, something I'll never stop paying them back for. I suppose some of you might not care who or what I am now but for those of you that do, be glad to know that I'm doing okay.

My wife doesn't know about what happened to me when I was a kid. I never had the heart to tell her. I know all it'll do is upset her and make her worry and I've had quite enough of that for one lifetime. I think she suspects something though. What with the way I'm basically obsessed with home security and maybe that's just a mark of what a good woman she is. She doesn't probe me. She just patiently waits for me to talk about whatever it is when I'm good and ready. A couple of years ago, when I was still living alone in a studio apartment, I got this really, really bad sinus infection. I have no idea how I got it.

It was gross, but I just couldn't afford to take time off of work. Not so much because I was broke, although my financial sitch wasn't the best, if I'm being honest. It was more because we needed to finish up on a project at work, and they needed all hands on deck, so to speak. Seems crazy to say that in a post-COVID world, now you get two weeks paid if you so much as get the sniffles, at least currently. But back then, it was hardcore office culture all the way. Anyway, about a week into this infection and just a few days off of our deadline, I decided to try at least to get rid of the gunk in my sinuses by taking some Mucinex. So I took a walk down to CVS, picked some up, went home and popped two of the little blue and white pills with a glass of water.

A few hours later I'm actually feeling considerably less congested, enough so that I'm actually able to get some work done at home. I was looking forward to the next day at the office too, thinking I'd be much more productive and my co-workers wouldn't be burdened with the sounds of my sniffling all day. I know that might sound kind of petty, but little irritants like that can really wear on people trying to concentrate. Early in the evening, I sat down for some dinner, intending to carry on my work when I was done, and that's the very last thing I remember. The next thing I know, I'm staring into the mirror in my studio apartment and I just sort of come to. The first thing that freaked me out was how my last memory was of sitting down to dinner after dark, but when I came to, it was daytime. I felt groggy, but I remember

my first thought being for the project at work. I grabbed my cell phone and saw it was just after 1pm, but I didn't see the date or the day. When my boss answers his phone, I rush into some slurred apology about having passed out since I knew at least that much had happened since I couldn't account for the loss of time. But then my boss acts all confused like, why are you calling me on your day off? I stop for a second, wiggle my finger over my laptop mousepad to turn the screen on, and that's how I figure out that it's Saturday. I took those Mucinex pills on Thursday night, meaning I just totally lost almost 40 hours of my memory. If you think he sounded confused when I called him on a Saturday and apologized for being late you can only imagine his confusion when I asked him did I go to work yesterday? And you can only imagine my horror when he was like

yeah, why? Is everything okay at home? I had to clarify. I asked if I was there all day, if I was acting weird or anything. He gave me normal answers to everything. I'd been my perfectly normal self, but at the same time, I was never there. It was like someone else had been at the controls. After we'd hung up, I was piecing together everything I'd done in those last 40 hours or so, and I realized I'd done all kinds of stuff. I'd driven my car, used knives, I think I even changed the light bulb in the bathroom. As you can imagine, I called my doctor's office almost right away, no more

putting stuff off, and it turned out I had an aggressively bad reaction to the Mucinex. It was a one in a million chance, but I guess I'm just lucky like that. My doctor mentioned it's a similar sort of deal to bad reactions people have to Ambien. Same sort of deal. I've had some pretty messed up things happen to me in my life. I was once in a skiing accident where I straight up could have died, but nothing. Nothing has ever scared me like losing those 40 hours that I did. Like it was almost this supernatural aura about it that makes my skin crawl even today.

I feel like I know what it's like to be possessed or something. Just having something other than yourself at the controls. Just living a day of your life, just to experience it. On Sunday, May 19th of 1996, 26-year-old Lolly Winans and 24-year-old Julie Williams set off on a backpacking trip in the Shenandoah National Park, along with her beloved golden retriever, Taj. Julie hailed from St. Cloud, Minnesota, while Lolly grew up further afield in Unity, Maine, yet both shared a passion for nature and the outdoors in general. The couple had met nearly two years earlier at a now-defunct non-profit organization in Minnesota known as Woods Women, which taught wilderness survival skills and funded adventure

travel for women. According to those that knew her, Lolly Winans was a micro-brew-drinking, fish-following, cigarette-smoking good-time girl from a well-to-do family in Michigan. She left home after graduating high school and enrolled in Unity College near Waterville, Maine, where she studied to become a wilderness guide. It seemed like Lolly loved the outdoors so much that she wanted to give others the experience of finding themselves in the wilderness just as she had. Julie Williams, on the other hand, was just a talented geologist. She was a successful high school athlete who won the Minnesota State Double Tennis Championship before traveling to Spain to study the extinction of the dinosaurs.

After graduating summa cum laude, Julie found a job at a bookstore in Lake Champlain, Vermont, and the Shenandoah trip was intended as a celebration of her newfound employment. She was due to start work on June 1st of 1996, but Julie failed to show for her first shift, and people began to worry. On May 31st of 1996, having not heard from his daughter in just over a week, Thomas Williams reported Lolly missing. The subsequent search and rescue operation culminated in Julie and Lolly's car being discovered just north of Skyland Lodge. Bridget Bonnet, Deputy Chief Ranger at Shenandoah National Park, later stated, We started doing hasty searches to cover all of those trail corridors in that general area to see

if we could locate them. At some point during those hasty searches, we located the dog. Taj, the golden retriever, was wandering through the park unleashed. The following evening of June 1st, 1996, Shenandoah Park rangers located and found the bodies of Julie and Lolly at their campsite near a horse track known as Bridal Trail. They had been bound and gagged before having their throats slashed. After recovering Julie and Lolly's camera, homicide detectives were given a glimpse of the last few days of the couple's lives. They had embarked into the woods of the White Oak Canyon Trail, then hitched a ride with a park ranger after a turn in the weather. Once it cleared, they climbed Hawksbill, the highest mountain in

Shenandoah, before setting up their camp in an idyllic spot next to an Appalachian stream. Detectives deduced that just a few short hours after the final photographs were taken, the couple's lives had been horrifically snatched away. Almost equally horrifying was the fact that their campsite was a mere quarter mile from the Skyline Drive and a half mile from the Skyland Lodge, both popular gathering places complete with bars, restaurants, and guest cabins. Given that it was Memorial Day, the lodge must have been abuzz with hikers, tourists, and nature enthusiasts. Someone must have seen something, it was just a case of finding them. It seemed unfathomable that two dead bodies could remain undiscovered in such a well-frequented

portion of the park, not to mention on a busy holiday weekend. Yet, backcountry regulations over the period stated that campers must remain away from designated trails, fire roads, and developed areas. Essentially, they needed to stay out of sight, which only played into the hands of their prospective killer. Yet, Julie and Lolly aren't the only couple to have disappeared in our nation's national parks. In fact, it seems frighteningly easy to get lost out there. This is for a number of different reasons. People have accidental falls, take wrong turns, or have fatal encounters with wild animals and statistically, the likelihood

of actually losing your life in a national park is relatively low. But for some reason, murders and disappearances which occur in these places have a much sharper and much more distinct kind of horror to them, something that Sally Hurlburt and Shenandoah's management specialist was only too willing to admit. We don't have a lot of crime in the park, she said, but when we found those poor women, it was very intense. We were all very scared and worried about it. To think we'd shared the park with someone capable of that, it was very frightening. Special units of the FBI were assigned to the National Park Service in order to handle the investigation in conjunction with the FBI.

The Virginia State Police's Special Crime Scene Unit were also enlisted to bring in specialist equipment. Yet, interagency rivalries prove the least of the team's concerns. Several factors make conducting investigations in National Park service sites extremely challenging, one FBI agent explained. The first factor is that so many people are coming and going from the park each day. The year that Julie and Lolly were murdered, 1.57 million people visited the park. That kind of transient environment allows the perpetrator to easily slip through park gates unnoticed. Another agent added that any type of crime that occurs in an outdoor environment, your crime scene is probably 10 times larger than it would be in a residence.

You have the initial crime scene where something happened, and then you have the outer crime scene because you don't know which way the person came in or went. So the crime scene in and of itself tends to be larger and harder to contain and process. In the years that followed, the National Park Service and the FBI joined forces to conduct a nationwide search for their killer, including following up on an estimated 15,000 leads. But sadly, no serious leads were able to be generated, and the case seemed destined to go cold. For more than a year, there were no new developments, until July of 1997, when the serenity of Shenandoah was shattered once again. Shenandoah's skyline drive remains popular with cyclists of all abilities, and in July 1997,

Canadian Yvonne Malbasha was traversing the mountainous road. Yet as she pumped her pedals and admired the Blue Ridge skyline, Yvonne was suddenly forced off the road by a man driving a large truck. Yvonne later said the man screamed vulgar profanities at her as he stepped out of the cab, before apparently attempting to force her inside. Thankfully, Yvonne was able to repel her attacker, taking cover behind a tree as the man retreated to his truck. But instead of fleeing the scene, the man tried to run her over. Yvonne endured a horrifying cat and mouse chase in which the man reportedly smashed his truck into a tree. Eventually, he gave up and sped away, but park rangers apprehended him as he attempted to escape the park. He turned out to be a man named Daryl David Rice. Following the search of

Daryl's vehicle, investigators found zip ties in the glove compartment, presumably for use in restraining his victims. Little was known about him, but at the time of Yvonne's attack, he was in his late 20s and living in Columbia, Maryland. Although he had no previous criminal record, Rice was apparently fired from his job at Maryland's MCI System House in June of 1997, with his recording stating that he was extremely volatile in his interactions with co-workers and customers. Other employees stated that Darrow often threatened and yelled profanities at them, and once punched a hole in the wall of the men's bathroom after being caught stealing lunches from the break room.

The following year, Darrow pled guilty to the attempted abduction, and was sentenced to 135 months in a federal penitentiary. Interviews which followed his arrest led prosecutors to believe that Darrow may have, in some capacity, been involved with Julie and Lolly's murders. Reasons cited were the close proximity of the two incidents, the predatory behavior Darrell exhibited in his professional life, and the exclusive selection of female victims. Darrell was also videotaped entering the park at Front Royal on May 25th of 1996 and was sighted again at Rock Fish Gap on May 26th, right in conjunction with Julie and Lolly's camping trip. Darrell then returned with his friends on June 1st, possibly in an attempt to dispose of the bodies, but

the police presence seems to have deterred him. Darrell later denied that he ever visited the park in late May, but he did admit that he was there on June 1st in the company of friends. This was in direct contradiction to publicly available security footage the cops had caught him in a lie. Even with this circumstantial evidence, it wouldn't be until five years after their deaths that the state attorney general would announce the indictment of Daryl David Rice in the murder of Julie Williams and Lolly Winans. In a 2001 press conference, prosecutors alleged that Rice stated on several occasions that he enjoys assaulting women because they are, in his words, more vulnerable. Yet perhaps even more chillingly,

the prosecutors stated that D Darrell had at one point admitted to the murder, arguing that the women deserved to die because they were a lesbian couple. Darrell was ultimately charged with four counts of capital murder, two of which were stated to be hate crimes. This meant that if convicted, Darrell would be eligible to receive the death penalty, yet he was never sentenced. Despite prosecutors spending years building the case against Rice, in the end it was a lack of forensic evidence that found them wanting. But later in 2003, a single hair found at the crime scene was sent away for testing. Investigators counted the days until the results came back, but when they did,

it was clear that Daryl David Rice couldn't possibly have been the killer. Following that little revelation, the whole case fell apart. And even though the FBI will not discuss persons of interest, the murder of Julie and Lolly remains an active investigation. Last year, around the 20th anniversary of Julie and Lolly's murders, the FBI circulated a press release and updated posters. The case remains an open and active investigation, said Agent D. Rubisky. It's our hope that any continued coverage of the girls' murders will one day generate that one crucial piece of information

that may bring someone to justice and peace for their families. If they were still with us, Lolly and Julie would be pushing 50 by now, still happily living together, still indulging in their mutual love of the outdoors. Yet while time marches on, the women are still remembered by their loved ones, the FBI and the old timers at Shenandoah who were working in the park all those years ago. When I found out that they were geologists, that hit me because I'm something of an amateur geologist myself, remembers one former park ranger. I felt bad knowing that they were out having a good time, looking at the rocks, enjoying themselves, and then something horrible like that happened. I was a very young ranger at the time and it affected my career.

Before that, I may not have taken the law enforcement part of my job as seriously as I do now. I was a backcountry seasonal, you know. I was having a blast. I didn't think about people getting murdered in the park. It changed the way I thought about things after that. It changed the way I trained for things. I changed a lot of stuff about how I did my job. It had a profound effect on me, and I know it did on the people who worked that case. Over two decades have passed since Julie and Lolly were killed in Shenandoah National Park. The shock of their murders is now just a shadow on an otherwise peaceful recreational paradise.

But the next time you're up Old Rag, or you're stargazing in the big meadows, take a moment to think of Julie and Lolly, two young lovers whose lives were cut short by a person of unimaginable evil. We'll be right back. When you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires, find a Kumo TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca. My name is Tim, and I'm a member of the UK-based walking charity, The Ramblers Association. We're a group that's all about celebrating the pleasures of walking and hiking, as well as protecting the outdoor spaces that people love to visit. I know, I know, it sounds pretty boring, and I'll readily admit that most of the membership

consists of anorak retirees and Bear Grylls wannabes. But Sunday morning strolls aren't the reason I got involved with the Ramblers. And when you look into their history, you realize they were actually pretty hardcore at one point. So, to keep it short and sweet, the whole rambling movement kicked off in the late 19th century. Basically, all of these fat cats wanted to just buy up vast swaths of the countryside and make it completely private. Naturally, this caused outrage, and there were protests in the form of mass trespassing on private land. There were scuffles and arrests, people got hurt, it was a huge deal, with the events snowballing into there being an official right-of-way law being passed through Parliament. In short, when you go off rambling, you're not just having a nice weekend walk somewhere,

you're exercising hard-earned political rights, you're maintaining your fundamental freedom to access naturally beautiful places, and to me, that's a beautiful thing in and of itself. Excuse the plug, but that's generally what I tell people to spark a kind of rebellious interest in the ramblers. We are a proselytizing organization after all. But trust me, there are plenty of things I don't tell them about rambling. Things that, if I did tell them, might put them off exploring green spaces for good. Because if you go out on the regular, exploring forests and woodland

and hill country of all types, you're bound to have a few encounters that you can't quite explain, and a few that downright scare you. And since I've already bored your socks off with the rambler's history and ethos, I suppose it's fair that I share a creepy story with you. And since I've already bored your socks off with the rambler's history and ethos, I suppose it's fair that I share a creepy story with you. This is something I personally discovered while out rambling near Monmouth and Wales. So I'm walking through some rather deep woods around a place known as the Forest of Dean. I come across what I assume was this unremarkable little clearing. I had no intention of walking into it. It was drizzling and the trees were providing a nice bit of cover,

and it only really caught my attention when I saw what looked like a ball of grass just floating in mid-air. It reminded me of one of those physical anomalies from the Tarkovsky film, and I just remembered stopping and staring at it for a moment as it gently swayed back and forth in the breeze. Obviously on further inspection I discovered that it wasn't really floating there, it was just hanging from a tree limb high above it. And still, someone had apparently made a ball of grass and being the naturally curious soul that I am, I walked over to investigate. As I got closer I realized it wasn't quite what I'd first expected it to be. At a distance it just looked like a load of baled grass. But on closer inspection,

I realized it was all solid turf. Like imagine if someone had just cut up a section of your garden and tied it into a ball. Only when I tried to find the seams of the thing I couldn't see any. It was like a miniature planet or something and for a good minute or so I was absolutely transfixed by it. The twine used to tie it to the tree looked like it was homemade and entirely natural and I imagine it must have taken someone of considerable skill to make it strong enough to hold the weight of the turf ball. Not only that, but it was tied to the tree branch of this old oak tree that had to be at least 20 feet up in the air. If nothing else, it made for an impressive piece of craftsmanship, and whoever had made and hung the thing was obviously very dedicated. I remember giving the turf ball a gentle push and then watching it sway back and forth for a moment

as the patter of the raindrops was joined by the creaking of the big old branch above me. That's when I caught sight of what was below the hanging turf ball, and what I saw almost took my breath away. Directly below the turf ball was what looked like an old tree stump, only this particular tree stump looked like it had been filed or worn down by something until it was almost at ground level. The actual wood itself had been completely hollowed out so that only a thin ring of wood and bark surrounded an intricate display of twigs, reeds, and interwoven wildflowers.

The pattern was like a series of expanding circles, kind of like a blooming rose, and there had to have been hundreds of small twigs in there, some bent into curves to achieve a bizarre, almost three-dimensional effect. I honestly think it must have taken days to put the whole thing together. I couldn't see any patches of grass missing from the clearing so I'm guessing someone bought or grew the turf ball elsewhere and hauled it into the woods. They probably brought a ladder too or some complete mad lad because climbing up a 25 foot oak tree is no mean feat either. I figured it might have been some kind of guerrilla art

installation or maybe the pet project of some eccentric green fingered landowner, I don't know. But as I kneeled down to get a closer look at the tree stump rosebud thing, I noticed that not all of the little pieces were twigs. I picked out one piece, thinking it looked a lot like an old bone, only to find out that's exactly what it was. Given its small size, I initially figured it was just an animal bone, all before I heard a voice in my head telling me that it could just as easily come from a human finger or toe. Thoroughly creeped out, I dropped the bone the very same moment the thought occurred to me. But for some reason, I couldn't bear to leave it out of position and out of some strange

sense of fear, I placed the small bone right back in the exact place I'd taken it from. My next thought is obviously something along the lines of, people need to see this. Only right as I stood up to reach for my phone, I swear I heard someone moving in the tree line behind me. I was a bit startled and as I turned, I remember hoping it was whoever created the bizarre natural construct I'd been transfixed by, but there was no one there. There's plenty of wildlife around Monmouthshire, and you get all kinds of deer, badgers, even weasels in some parts, so just because I heard a noise, it didn't mean it was a person.

But I didn't hear any more scampering or rustling as whatever it was scurried away from me, and it was just silence. That's when I started to get the horrible feeling that someone was watching me. Out of pure nervousness, I called out a greeting, again hoping it was the turf ball's creator, and they were just, I don't know, nervous or something. Again, total silence, but it wasn't like I just imagined that noise behind me. There was most definitely someone, or something there. I ended up putting my phone away, not daring to take any pictures. I had this deep, primal fear that if I had turned my back on whoever was out there,

they might just use the opportunity to approach with less than pure intentions. I mean, if they'd already been willing to kill, or at least procure bones for their little art piece, god knows what they'd be willing to do to defend it. Maybe it was just my years playing tricks on me combined with the mounting strangeness of what I was seeing just somehow getting the better of me. But I ended up backing away from that clearing then basically power walking away with my head on a swivel until I was satisfied that I was at a safe distance. Safe from what though? And as I started to consider that, the kind of haze of surrealness I'd been experiencing ebbed away and I suddenly was left asking,

what in God's name had I just seen? I wanted to go back, I really did, but the strong compulsion to stay away was the only thing that dwarfed the desire to go back and document the thing. I tried to tell myself it was nothing more than the work of bored hippies, and I'd simply spook myself by picking up an old animal bone. That was the most logical explanation, and therefore the most likely, so why couldn't I seem to calm myself down enough to walk back? I'm not a believer in the supernatural. I certainly like to think I can handle myself in a fight, and I know I'm'm biased but the last word I'd use to describe myself is cowardly. But on my mother's eyes, in that moment, every fiber of my being was just screaming for me to get away and never visit that place again.

I did end up going back by the way. This is a true story, not some daft horror film with plot holes you can drive a truck through. Granted, it was weeks after the original encounter, it literally took me that long to pluck up the courage, so it gave whoever made the thing enough time to get rid of it. The amount of work that had gone into such a bizarre thing, on top of how visually interesting it was, it was almost a shame to see it gone. Someone had dug up all the inlay of the tree stump and had cut down the turf ball that had been hanging from the tree. I say almost because, somehow, the fact that it was all gone now made the place all the more ominous. Like I get that someone else

might have stumbled across a thing, maybe even bored kids who just decided to vandalize it. But then, what if it was just me discovering the place that prompted its destruction? And what if it had been destroyed to hide what was going on there? In which case, what exactly had they been doing? And what was so wrong that they felt they needed to hide it? I kicked over the remains over the tree trunk pattern, hoping to find one of the little bones I'd discovered previously, but there were none to be found. Then, just like last time, yet without the feeling of being watched, I backed away from the clearing and went about my ramble. The whole turf ball tree stump combo is without a doubt the single strangest and creepiest thing I'd ever seen while out rambling. Probably the creepiest thing I've seen in my entire life, actually.

Sure, on the surface it looked kinda cool. But the more I think about it, about the bones, about the strange person who wouldn't announce themselves, about what it could all mean. The more I'm just gladlogist, which basically just means I studied water for most of my 20s and somehow didn't go insane from the boredom. All jokes aside, it's actually much more interesting than you might think. And if you get a decent degree from a decent college, then your job prospects are actually pretty vast. We work with farmers to ensure your food grows. We work with treatment plants to make sure your water's clean. We also make sure this water then makes it all the way to the comfort of your home, in plentiful supply, and without being contaminated.

We also do things like survey sections of a river that have the potential to be dammed up. With good surveillance, a dam can be a source of plentiful green energy, without being too destructive to the surrounding flora and fauna. And it was a surveillance job that took me out to the wilds of Washington during the summer of 2017. Given the time of the year, it seemed like a pretty sweet gig. On the surface, it was a highly paying, high-pressure job that could make or break someone's million-dollar government contract. But between you and me, it was a paid hiking vacation. I'd navigate around, assess the bedrock, make a few notes.

I figured the whole job would take no longer than about five or six nights. That way, I could take my time soaking up the pay as well as the sun. And I didn't last three. By the evening of the third day, I was hightailing it out of the woods as fast as I could, carrying only my car keys, my phone, and a survival knife. There's something going on up in the woods of Colville National Forest, and I think it might be very, very bad. The first day was when I arrived in a little place called Onion Creek, a quiet little town with a general store that I used to pick up a few last minute supplies. When I asked the clerk for a good quiet spot to park my car,

the clerk was nice enough to offer me the free parking space around the back of the store, telling me he'd personally keep an eye on it while I was hiking up the pine-infested hills. The pines I was ready for, but the hills I was not. I like to think I'm quite an athletic guy, but my god did those hills take it out of me. Even walking in a snaking pattern to reduce the overall steepness, lugging my gear up the side of my first camp was nothing less than agony, and I slept like the dead that first night, having barely had the energy to get my work done. The next morning was more of the same, burning calves and a back soaked with sweat, but I was keeping positive, telling myself it made for one heck of a workout,

even though I don't think I'd ever been that exhausted before. Worst part was just how bad I smelled, and the idea that I'd descend to the river, get nice and clean, only to be incredibly sweaty again by the time I got back to camp. It was like a hygiene-based Kafka-esque nightmare. I made do with baby wipes on that second night, promising I'd get an actual wash on the third day, which would coincide with topping off my water supplies. So, the morning of the third and final day, I wake up with a raging headache. I take some painkillers, put on my boots, then walk off into the woods to, you know, do my business. Only to find that my pee looks the color of Jack Daniels.

I was seriously dehydrated having rationed my water supply maybe a little too conservatively. I then take it upon myself to immediately hike down to the river drink my body weight in fresh water and actually get myself clean while I'm there. On arrival I chug some water then strip down to my underwear before immersing myself in the shallows, knowing I'd be able to change my boxers back at camp. I give myself a rinse but as I'm getting up and getting out, I'd swear I saw

something on the bank near where I'd left my clothes. I mean, unless it was a very isolated gust of wind, then something was definitely moving among the trees. I'm a little spooked, but having some deer watching me wash isn't anything to really worry about, so I just grab my stuff, towel off a little, then start hiking back up to camp. Later that day, as I'm out hiking, I start getting this god-awful smell from somewhere. At first, I was thinking it was me, like maybe my clothes just stank, or I'd been stealth-sprayed by a skunk or whatever. But the further I walked, the stronger the smell got, until I was literally struggling not to retch at how bad it was. Then, right as I'm about to puke, I look up in this bid to get to higher, fresher air or something, and there it is. It was either a fox or a coyote, but in such a bad way that I couldn't tell the difference. It honestly looked like someone had

caught the thing, then just beaten it to death before hanging it up in a tree. The only reason I could think for anyone to do that would be to, like, scare the foxes off a person's farmland. Brutal, but effective, I guess. But no, I don't think there was a farm for miles around. Yet it wasn't long before I realized that the fox-slash-coyote thing wasn't the only corpse strung up in the trees. I kept walking trying to get away from the smell. It was hot, so you can imagine how bad it was, but no matter which direction or how far or fast I walked, I couldn't seem to shake the smell of death. And like I said, that's because the dead were all around me. I got to the point where there was something strung up in every other tree in various states of decomposition.

I spotted dead raccoons, rabbits, moles, and rotten weasels. Heck, I even think I spotted half a deer skeleton up there at one point. At least, I hope it was just a deer skeleton. After that, like I mentioned at the start, I basically just turned tail and ran. Didn't bother packing up my tent or anything like that. I just bailed back to where my car was parked in Onion Creek and just got out of there. I don't want to think about how much money I lost from walking away from that job. I'd type it out if I didn't think I'd puke all over my keyboard. But at the same time, I can't really think of a number that would make me go back out there and risk ending up like one of those poor animals, hanging in the trees. I studied biology in college and one semester we had a guest speaker come in to lecture us.

We all recognized her name immediately, as she's quite a big name in the world of orangutan conservation research. After her talk, we discovered that she needed two students to go do research for a year after graduation, research that was taking place in Borneo. I've always wanted to travel, I just didn't know where I'd ever get the money. So to have it all paid for by the research foundation was just a godsend. And as a girl who grew up in suburban Indiana, it doesn't get any more exotic than Borneo, which is way out in Southeast Asia, just south of the Philippines. The whole trip was a dream come true, but I cannot stress this enough. It was hard work. We used to have to wake up at like 3.30am, 6 days on, 3 days off, then spend like 14-15 hours in the hot and

humid rainforest tracking wild orangutans and recording and taking data every 2 minutes. These were wild orangutans. We tried our best to keep our distance and never tried to touch them. The goal was to observe them while trying not to affect their natural behavior. That being said, over my year there I did get charged by one of the big dominant males in the area on three separate occasions, which is its own terrifying story to tell another time. He never did touch me, but sure scared the heck out of me and made me run. It was exhausting, both physically and mentally, and the literal legions of mosquitoes made being out there almost unbearable. On top of that, we had absolutely no communication to the outside world,

except on our days off when we had to walk almost an hour to a tree stand in the jungle. The signal strength wasn't nearly enough to make any actual calls, but we could sometimes get one bar of service and send a few WhatsApp messages to family and friends. You'd type them up, then once that bar came through, all the messages would slowly send. Then it was back on airplane mode to save battery and someone else took their turn. One morning when I was on shift, we all got up, did our morning routines, then walked off into the jungle at first light. I was incredibly tired, legitimately struggling to keep my eyes open but in the space of just a millisecond I went from half asleep to wide awake because crouched among the foliage, just a few meters off the trail

ahead of us, was a clouded leopard. It stayed still as a statue, just staring at us with these big amber eyes while myself and the other American researcher I was with just froze. I can't stress how rare encounters with leopards like that are Not only because they're so endangered But because they tend to keep well away from any human encampments I figured since it saw us it was about to run off in the opposite direction And I remembered having this distinct feeling of Enjoy this while it lasts But when the leopard raised itself up on its haunches

Then took a few creeping steps towards us, the fear kicked in. Luckily, one of the indigenous people we worked with took out his slingshot and fired rocks at it, and all it took was one rock landing near the thing and it disappeared back into the jungle. It took us a good five minutes to actually calm down, and our guide explained to us that it was probably a much younger leopard that was curious about us. It might have been watching us during the night, then came back at first light and we just sort of bumped into it on the trail, startling it so badly that it just went into

fight or flight. If it wasn't for our guide, we'd have been in serious trouble, and I think one of us probably owes him our lives. Anyway, once we felt like we were ready to continue, we carried on down the trail. Like I said earlier, it was still really early in the morning and the canopy is pretty impenetrable anyway, so as much as there was enough light to see, there is still a lot of dark patches among the foliage and stuff. As you can guess, I wasn't comfortable with that at all, so I got out my flashlight and started shining it into the thicker, darker patches of jungle. First one, I see nothing. Second one, I see nothing. But the third one, boom. Pair of glowing eyes just shining back at me.

My flashlight wasn't enough to completely light the leopard up, but there it was, unmistakably watching us from the darkness. And this is how I get around to telling you why we work such long hours, and for just prolonged lengths of time. For a variety of different reasons, jungle research can be dangerous, really dangerous, and predatory big cats can be the least of your concerns sometimes. Needless to say, we couldn't exactly just push on with a leopard stalking us. I mean, they're ambush predators, so theoretically if we kept our eyes on it, we'd have no problems. But just try keeping your eye on something that's evolved for millions of years to not be seen.

Besides, one little mistake, one little slip-up, and one of us might have lost their life. And no zoological breakthrough is worth losing someone on a research trip. So, yeah, getting hunted by a clouded leopard, definitely the scariest thing that happened on my Borneo trip. Back in July of 2013, I was doing a little solo backpacking around the Olympic Peninsula up in Washington State, with various stops in the Olympic National Park. A few days in I happened to stop in Quinault and ended up on some random road that dead ended on a beautiful spot at the edge of the Quinault River. It really was something to see. There was this old footbridge that led across the river and it looked like something out of the Lord of

the Rings. With it being July, it was way too hot outside and there I am, all alone with all this crisp, clean, cool looking water just sitting there in front of me. By that point, I don't think I'd actually wash properly for maybe 4 or 5 days, so I wasn't exactly feeling at my freshest. You can probably guess what came next. I drove my car all the way to the edge of the dead end road, turned it around just in case I needed to get out of there in a hurry, then started hiking down an embankment to the edge of the water with a towel in hand. I didn't have any swimwear with me at the time but I made a note to pick some up in the future and figured a quick dip in my underwear would have me nice and clean without

feeling too exposed. It sounds weird considering how deep in the woods I was, I mean, it seemed like I was totally alone. But heavy emphasis on seemed because, as it turned out, I wasn't totally alone. You know how people talk about that feeling of being watched? It seems like a total cliche, doesn't it? Like surely it depends on how paranoid the person is. Well, I'm not in the least bit paranoid, and I'd go so far as to say I'm something of an exhibitionist. I have friends that would rather pony up for a hotel just to use the bathroom, hence why I was backpacking alone. I didn't feel like I was being watched necessarily, so much as it dawned on me that what I was doing was just a bad idea. I couldn't work out why at first, it's not like great whites are known to swim up into the

quinoa, but in the end, it just felt like I was too exposed, too vulnerable. I tried telling myself I was being irrational, but I just couldn't seem to shake the feeling. So, after just a few minutes of scrubbing, I climbed out of the river, then walked over to the spot I'd stashed my clothes and towel. As I'm walking up the embankment, keep in mind that I have my back to the other side of the river, and since I was at my clothes and towel, it kind of felt like I was at a home base. Yet just when that feeling of exposure and vulnerability was going away, I happened to catch a glimpse of something on the opposite bank. I honestly thought it was a

bear or something at first glance, but it quickly became obvious that a bear was the least of my troubles at that moment. Standing on the opposite side of the river, a little higher up than me, was a man. It looked like every single item of clothing he was wearing had been hand-stitched and made from animal hide. His hair kind of looked like dreadlocks, but I later realized some of his hair strands looked more like they'd been woven around twigs. He looked like a full-on mountain man, like I remember my skin crawling when I saw my boyfriend playing that dumb cowboy game years later. He was obsessed with making animal clothes and one of his outfits looked almost exactly like my peeping tom. Only peeping toms are just an annoyance, whereas I know this guy

had other stuff in mind. After just staring at each other for a moment, totally surprised to have come across one another, the guy made a beeline for the rickety old bridge. At first, seeing that made me feel like I was going to puke. I was praying that the worst it'd get would be him shouting, put some clothes on or something. But the fact that he wanted to close the distance without even saying anything to me, he obviously didn't have good intentions. I just burst into action and grabbed my car keys, clothes and shoes, but they got tangled up in some blackberry vines so

I made a split second decision to just leave my clothes and get out of got tangled up in some blackberry vines so I made a split second decision to just leave my clothes and get out of there with my life. When I made it out of the blackberry bush I could see he was crossing the bridge toward me rapidly. I got to my car, flung my door open just as he'd arrived. I locked the door as well he pounded on the hood of my car, just screaming and grunting non-verbally. The moment he went from my driver's side door I hit the gas and took off as fast as I could. I looked back and he was chasing after me. He must have run after my car for at least a mile until he faded from view.

I was bleeding everywhere from running nearly without anything on through blackberry bushes and I was wet, unclothed, shaking and crying. Had I hesitated for just a few seconds longer, I don't think I would have made it out alive. Even typing this story out again all these years later, I'm starting to shake. I felt like I was being hunted. That is the only way I can describe it. I'll never, ever go back to that area. Since then, I always bring a hiking buddy with me when I venture out into the forest. That day is going to haunt me for my life. I've had many years of therapy and that experience is still as vivid as the day it happened. We'll be right back. Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo TreadExperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there, treadexperts.ca.

During my college years, I used to work at a summer camp for Boy Scouts. This all took place during the summer after graduation and was therefore the last time I worked at the summer camp. Every week I had to take a big group of campers out to a fairly secluded spot in the woods. Spoilers, it's not that secluded. Further wilderness survival badge. The activities involved things like building a shelter out of twigs and leaves, then their wilderness survival badge. The activities involved things like building a shelter out of twigs and leaves, then sleeping in it overnight, how to make a campfire, how to cook food on said campfire, stuff like that. Like I said, we were hardly in the middle

of the Rockies, more like half a mile from camp, but we used to walk them in circles for a while, so the place we ended up felt extra secluded. Anyways, on this one night, all the campers had made their shelters. We cooked dinner, then were all just sitting around the campfire, singing songs and telling spooky stories. It was getting late, but it's Boy Scouts, so think like 10pm. So I sent all the campers to their shelters for the night then started breaking down the campfire in line with our usual health and safety routine. That's when we heard what sounded like a church bell chiming in the distance. The sound was pretty faint but myself and the kids could most definitely hear it. The bell chimed for only a couple of minutes,

maybe every 10 seconds or so, but since we'd been telling creepy stories around the fire, the kids started to get a little freaked out thinking it was like ghosts or something. Obviously, I'm doing my job, telling the kids it's nothing, just a late night church service in the nearest town. But honestly, I think my duty of care was the only thing that stopped me from getting creeped out too. You see, to my knowledge, there wasn't a town or church within like 20 miles of us. This was later confirmed when I double checked a map of the area. And when I asked an older camp counselor if there happened to be any rural churches in the area, he said no, but then I followed up by asking if there was a reason why I might be hearing church bells out in the woods so late at night.

He then proceeded to give me what I can only describe as a very uncomfortable look, but then tells me he'd heard it too, and it was nothing I should worry about. I actually wasn't worried about anything until he said that. Yeah, I'd been a little creeped out at the time, but honestly more confused than anything. Like I said, I thought our camp was way out in the woods by at least 20 miles, so to learn I'd been wrong about that was confusing to say the least. I'd have probably been a little more curious if Bill, the head counselor, said he hadn't heard the bells too, that made it seem a little more normal. Right up until Bill cancelled the remaining wilderness camps the very next day.

All the other junior counselors were bummed out as the whole wilderness camp was definitely one of the most entertaining activities. But they just kind of shrugged it off and moved on. Whereas for me, that was when I actually started getting really spooked. Because if it was just nothing to worry about, as Bill had said, why had he decided to cancel the remaining trips? When I confronted him on it, I say confronted, I mean I asked politely, he told me there had been a handful of bear sightings in the past 24 hours and that he didn't want to risk it. Totally watertight answer, I thought. We were up in northern Utah too, so

we're talking a lot of grizzly and black bears, especially after a wet spring like we had that year. But to pretend like it was totally unconnected to the chiming bells and to never tell me why they obviously made him nervous, that was something that left a really bad taste in my mouth. We didn't have a single incident of kids going missing or seeing strange people in the woods, not at any point for the whole time I was there. But to my knowledge, no one saw any bears either, nor did they find any signs of them in the area. There were no signs of scratching on trees, no bear scat, nothing like that,

so I have trouble reconciling that all Bill had been concerned about was bears. Yet unfortunately, that's where the answers ended. Since I was incredibly busy with all my duties, it's not like I had the time to run around playing amateur detective. And besides, I kind of liked Bill and had worked with the guy for literally years at this point, so I didn't exactly want to call him out on his lie and risk jeopardizing our relationship. On top of that, as much as I would have liked to have gone running around the woods like Mulder minus Scully, but then again, being all alone in the Cache County woods in spring is

definitely in the top ten dumb things to do in Utah. So, that was that. I never worked the camp again, and no one was ever hurt, not by mysterious bell monsters from the woods anyways, so no further light was shed on the whole weird bell chiming situation, but it definitely became my go-to creepy story in the time that's followed. One that remains all the more potent because, whatever was causing that sound, and why the head counselor started acting so skittish in the days that followed, it all remains a complete mystery to me, even all these years later. I've lived in the Smokies most of my life. Always fairly secluded places, always nice and quiet,

and always surrounded by the woods. One night a few years back I was sitting on my porch at around one in the morning just drinking a beer and just appreciating the stillness and the quietness. If you haven't lived out here during the summertime, nature isn't quiet at nighttime. In fact, it can be very, very loud. The cicadas are humming, frogs are belching, occasionally you hear the grunts and squeals of other animals too. It's like the ultimate white noise. It can be real relaxing sometimes, but other times, nature throws things at you that are downright terrifying So this one time I'm sitting out on the porch drinking my beer And all the while that old white noise of nature is just droning on and on But then, all of a sudden, everything went quiet

It washed over the woods like a wave or something Until you could have heard a pin drop at 100 yards. Then out of nowhere I heard the most terrifying noise I'd ever heard coming from about 30-40 feet in front of me. It was this incredibly loud, blood-curdling shriek, unlike anything I'd ever heard before. I knew it wasn't a mountain lion, I've heard those before and they tend to all stay well away from any people.

It just had this real human quality to it, but at the same time I knew it wasn't a person. People don't make noises like that, not when they're sane anyway. I just got up, walked back inside and sat by the front window with my 12 gauge within arms reach until I was too drunk to be scared anymore. walked back inside and sat by the front window with my 12 gauge within arm's reach until I was too drunk to be scared anymore. It was the one and only time I've ever heard that noise and I pray to god I'd never hear it again. Some people have suggested it was a barn owl as they can make some pretty creepy screeching sounds late at night, but honestly there's no way it was an owl. Those things are tiny and

whatever I heard sounded way bigger than just a bird. It didn't make repeated cries either, it made one long shriek before I heard it moving away from me through the woods. And unless we get a rare breed of barn owl out here that runs on fours or two legs, I can safely say it wasn't a bird. I don't live around those ways anymore and I'm glad of it, too, because whatever was within about thirty feet of me that night, I'd prefer to be far, far away from it. I was a senior going to a pretty well respected community college near my hometown. One of my classes was an intensive public speaking course with a professor that I adored. At the start of the semester in this class, nothing was out of the ordinary.

My classmates and I either all got along or kept to ourselves. We were adults after all. This was my last class of the day so I would often have up to an hour to kill beforehand and would always look for quiet, comfy nooks to either study, work on assignments, or watch YouTube. One day I was working on a paper in a nook near my public speaking class when I noticed this guy from said class standing at the entrance to the little lobby staring at me. I just ignored it because I was busy. He walked over and stood above me, staring until I acknowledged him with a hi. He proceeded to take a seat near me and start asking me really mundane questions about the weather in our class. I humored him and eventually said that I was trying to work on a paper and would like to be left alone. He just went silent and sat, watching me until it was time for our class.

He walked with me, despite me not making eye contact or engaging with him in any way. Our classroom was set up in a way where each row had one solid desk and a big step, each one higher than the one in front, like stairs. This guy sat below me so when I noticed he had turned around in his seat to stare at me, a lot of other people did too. It was very obvious. I chose to ignore this behavior at first but I started to notice him everywhere. The campus wasn't huge but it certainly had enough tiny study spaces and nooks that a person could easily hide away from others. That was the whole point of the study nooks.

Still, he would always be around, no matter where I went, watching me. The incident that first made me report him was on a presentation day for our class. He found me at a computer lab where I sat with a couple of friends but was unfortunately not sitting between any of them. So this guy, who I'll call Noah for now, walked up next to me, making sure his crotch was close to my face, and asked if I'm ready to give my speech. I said yes and am trying to work on last minute changes to the outline. He then pulled a leather belt out of his backpack and scooting a tad closer to me started putting his belt on saying

look I got a new belt for the speech. When I just nodded and went back to working on my outline he said watch this and scooted so close my ear brushed his pants when I turned my head. I was mortified and instinctively scooted my chair away which made my friends look over at what was going on. One of them asked me what was up and I told them nothing. Noah eventually walked away after getting his belt on and then I told everyone what happened.

My friend Nicole told me to report him after I explained his other behavior. After class that day, I did. I went to the student advocates and told her everything that happened, that I was uncomfortable, and asked what I could do. She told me, you know, I think he may be on the spectrum or just socially awkward. Have you tried getting to know him? I told her I didn't want to get to know him and that I shouldn't have to befriend people who make me uncomfortable, even if they are on the spectrum or socially awkward. She said she would take what I said into consideration and only come back if he did anything actually worth reporting, since sticking your junk in someone's face is apparently not any form

of harassment. So, Noah kept following me, appearing wherever I was. Sometimes he would try to talk to me, sometimes he would just watch me. He followed me through the parking lot to my car one time. He stared at me in class. He tried talking to people he knew were my friends to try to get involved in conversations with me when they were hanging out with me. After class one day I decided to go to the McDonald's near campus to grab dinner on my way home for the day. I decided to go inside because I used to have a thing about drive-thrus for some reason. As I was waiting for my food, the girl who took my order came to the counter and called me over. She asked,

Do you know that guy? I turned to my right and Noah had pulled his car up next to the glass wall, where the drive-thru line was supposed to be, except there are no cars in front of him and he's 50 feet behind the menu and speaker, staring at me. As soon as I made eye contact with him, he backed his car up and began pulling into the parking space to the left of my car. My stomach dropped. Now he had followed me off of campus. My face must have went pale because the girl looked concerned and I told her exactly what

was happening, that Noah was stalking me on campus and now he was here. This girl, honestly, my hero, said, Okay, I'm going to rush your order. If you feel unsafe and he starts heading in here, I'll hide you in the back and call the police. Just as she got my food to the counter, Noah got out of his car and started walking towards the entrance. I told the girl that I was going to put my head down and rush past him, get in my car and get out of here. She told me to be safe. I walked with purpose out of the McDonald's, walking straight past Noah. He started trying to talk to me and follow me in my car, so I ran, got in, locked the doors and pulled out.

I looked in my mirrors the entire way home, scanning, scared I'd seen his car behind me. Luckily he didn't follow me home. The next day I told my friend Nicole what happened and that I wasn't sure if I could report it because of what the student advocate had said. She was appalled and said she would go with me to report. We sat down and I told the student advocate everything that had happened since the last time I reported. Her response was that I was overreacting and that she would document my report but wouldn't grant me a campus restraining order against him. She left me with, if he does something to you, touches you, hurts you, then we can investigate and get the police involved for a restraining order.

Nicole and I were angry and I felt so defeated. We went to talk to our mutual friend Amanda about it and found that he was being creepy to her as well, to the point that he had followed her to her car and wouldn't let her leave until she talked to him. I guess when he wasn't following me around and he was following her. She said she hadn't reported it because she didn't think anyone would take her seriously. She also said another friend of hers was stalked by him for a few months the previous semester to the point her friend had dropped the class that they had together to throw off his knowledge of her schedule because the student advocate wouldn't help her either. The next day all three of us, Nicole, Amanda and I, went to the student advocate to't help her either. The next day all three of us, Nicole, Amanda, and I went to the student advocate to show he was doing this to more than one person

and he had actually kept Amanda from leaving. The student advocate finally decided to start an investigation. Unfortunately, all of us were graduating soon by that point and never saw the outcome of the investigation. I did try to talk to campus police first. The officer I spoke to told me that the process for my type of situation was to talk to the student advocate first who would then determine if it was worth filing a report and taking action. The investigation involved the student advocate talking to, and my professor to Noah himself, and it didn't involve any police whatsoever, though at the end of the college when I lived off campus. I had two roommates in my apartment, a townhouse thing named Natalie and Katie.

Katie was out that night doing homework in one of the school buildings and I was awoken at 3am when I heard some knocking at the door downstairs. I thought that was weird considering the hour but I figured somebody had the wrong place and would realize and leave. The knocking didn't stop though and I lied in bed for a good several minutes thinking, yeah they'll go away, they'll go away, they'll get bored. As one might expect though I started to grow confused and then kind of freaked out by this person's persistence. Then the knocking turned into banging and I couldn't ignore it anymore. Honestly I probably should have called the police instantly, but it was the middle of the night and I was just confused, so I headed

to the top of the stairs to see Natalie standing near the door, staring at it. Her room was on the bottom floor, so she had just walked up to it. We exchanged a baffled look because what the heck, it's 3am, this is weird. Natalie called out and asked them who they were and what they wanted. We're friends of Katie's, said the voice on the other end, who sounded male and about her age. We know her boyfriend and we heard she was feeling down so we came to surprise her. That was already a weird story because, again, three in the morning. But thankfully Katie wasn't even home, so we both informed them of this. Katie's not here, she's off doing something else.

Good, they're going to leave, right? They came here to see Katie, she's not here. They'll leave us alone and we can go back to sleep. Just open the door! I know, I know. If I hadn't called the police before, I definitely should have done it now. It was weird though. That night I realized why people do stupid stuff in horror movies. Not only had I been woken up out of nowhere, but it feels surreal to be in a situation like this. Like there's no way you could actually be in danger. That only happens in horror movies and true crime documentaries.

And in questionable creepy stories online. It would never happen to me. I'm just a random, ordinary, boring person going about my business. I don't need to call the police. I'm sure this will get cleared up and everything will be fine, I thought. So yeah, Natalie and I did this stupid thing and tried to argue with them. We told them that again, Katie wasn't here and there was no need for them to stay. Eventually, Natalie asked what their names were. Throughout the encounter, we made out two distinct

voices, but only one gave us a name and I texted Katie without telling him asking if she was friends with someone with that name. After a couple of minutes during which we were still arguing with the stranger Katie replied I am but I don't think she knows where I live. That wasn't good, but even worse. She? The person on the other door had a male voice, so this was a real name but not the real person. Whoever this was knew stuff about Katie, like who she hung out with. I told Katie to stay where she was and not to come back until we were told everything was okay. Finally we told the guys that if they didn't leave we were going to call the police. No, no, no, no, no. Don't call the police.

Don't call the police, okay? If we wanted to do something bad, we would have already done it, right? Yeah, that last bit wasn't helping their case. Just open the door, okay? The attempts at reasoning with them basically devolved into them telling us just open the door, just open the door, over and over again, until we finally actually did call the police. We hid in Natalie's room and dialed 911 and explained what was going on. Thankfully, there was a police station close by, so it wouldn't take long for them to arrive. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of heading back into the living room and yelling through the door that we called the cops,

but contrary to what you might think, that actually didn't seem to scare them at all. They seemed only mildly upset and kept arguing. To this day I can only assume they just didn't believe us or something. Then we heard a neighboring home's door swing open and a very angry man's voice. If you don't leave right now, I'm calling the police. For whatever reason, that was what caused them to freak out and they drove off. The police arrived and we told them the whole story. Natalie revealed that a couple of times she had just barely peeked through the blinds of a window close to the front door and she noted that there were two guys but

only one of them was ever at the door at any given time. They would switch, with one at the door and the other sitting in the driver's seat of a car parked out front, presumably for getaway purposes. So yeah, that's reassuring. They also hadn't looked drunk, according to Natalie, and they definitely hadn't sounded like they were drunk. There wasn't much the police could do besides sweep the area a bit, but they told us that if the strangers showed up again, to immediately call instead of engaging with them at all. One of the officers did give us some self-defense tactics and told us what kinds of household items and chemicals would work best for self-defense.

After making sure everything was okay and reassuring us, they left and we eventually called Katie and told her the weirdos were gone. She arrived home and was understandably a bit shaken herself. We sat down and asked her who might have known where she lived. She did know people who had come to the apartment, so some people certainly, but Natalie hadn't recognized the guys outside as any previous visitors. Worse, it turned out that not only did they know Katie's friend's name, but they claimed to know her boyfriend, even though he didn't even live in the state where we were going to school. She swore up and down she didn't know anyone who would want to hurt her.

By this point, it was around 5am, so I didn't even bother going to sleep, since I was going to a workshop that morning. I told a lot of my classmates the story, and it freaked them out too. And the entire day, Natalie and I jumped at every unexpected noise, every shadow, every random movement. And that night it was hard to sleep. I expected to hear knocking at the door at any second. Thankfully, they didn't come back. Ever. But that almost makes things more unsettling, in a way. I'll never ever

know what they wanted that night. Did they think we were hiding Katie? Was she seeing less than savory people in secret? Did they want to hurt her? If they did, why did they never give up and go looking for her elsewhere? Was all of that just an excuse to get into an apartment of young women? Do they want to kidnap us, hurt us, rob us? Who knows? I try not to let it bother me, but I wish I knew if my life was in danger that night. I have a feeling it might have been. After all, they weren't wearing face coverings, so if they wanted to commit a violent crime, they might want to get rid of the witnesses. To be continued... We waited until sort of last minute to reserve an Airbnb because we weren't 100% sure who all was going. Nonetheless, we found one just outside of KC in a suburban area called Grandview at a pretty reasonable rate.

The host's overall rating was good and we didn't see anything out of the ordinary when reading the first few reviews, so we thought we had gotten a pretty good deal. We arrived in Grandview at a little after 3pm. reading the first few reviews, so we thought we had gotten a pretty good deal. We arrived in Grandview at a little after 3pm. Our Airbnb was the bottom floor of the owner's home, and as we pulled up to the house, we noticed quite a bit of religious signs and statues on the lawn. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't have an issue with people believing in what they believe in, so long as it doesn't infringe upon other people's rights. But here we were, a group of very visibly queer folk about to attend a gay country concert, blindly walking into someone's home that we'd be staying in for the next two nights.

We decided there was nothing to be worried about and that, after all, we technically were in the Bible Belt so we shouldn't be surprised that we were staying in the home of someone who was religious. My brother and partner called the hosts and met her at the door of our guest suite. She showed them around while the rest of us got our suitcases unloaded. When they came back to meet us they said that she was super nice and again our minds were eased. We decided to hang out, order food and rest a little before we headed off to the concert that night. Our comfort did not last long though. While we were

getting our suitcases unpacked and laying around in one of the bedrooms of our guest suite, my youngest brother was casually looking through the drawers and dressers and side tables as anyone would do, you know. Most of what he found was normal. Extra bed sheets, pens, paper tablets, nothing really out of the ordinary. That is, until we came across something that would completely change our outlook on the trip. Inside the drawer was a Bible. Not super weird considering where we were staying, but as he was flipping through the pages of it, a small tinfoil packet fell out. Now, for those of you that don't know anything about drugs or what they look like, what fell out of that Bible rhymes with smack star heroin. That's right, not even 30 minutes into our stay, my youngest brother found hard drugs in the folds of a Bible.

At this point, we weren't sure what to do. We didn't want to tell the hosts and we most certainly did not want to call the cops. We contemplated taking the packet and throwing it away at some random gas station, but ultimately we decided to put it back where we found it and act like none of us had seen it. We got food and started getting ready for the concert. While the rest of us got ready, my partner, who was not going to the concert, started reading through the household handbook. Everything seemed pretty standard except a few lines that read something like, we will respect your privacy so long as you respect ours. We can be as available as you need us to be, and if you are

interested in speaking about the ministries of God, feel free to reach out. Again, I have nothing against people following the religions that they do, but that seemed like an awfully out of place thing to put in your house rules handbook for your guest suite. There were a few other books around the guest suite that stuck out as a little off base with titles like Teaching Men to Comprehend How Women Think and How Women Should Think. We ignored these things for the most part, aside from my partner who was now freaked out about being left alone at the suite while the rest of us went off to our concert. I just told him it was some bible thumping BS and that he really didn't have anything to worry about. He's a worrywart though, so as soon as we left, he locked himself in the bedroom and started looking a little more into the books that we found. He came to the realization that the books

were associated with a group called IHOPKC or International House of Prayer, a prominent religious cult founded in Kansas City, a majority of whose members live in the Grandview suburb where we were staying. I could write a whole separate post about the beliefs of the International House of Prayer members, but essentially they're an evangelical Christian group that has a functioning 24-7 prayer room that's been going non-stop since 1999. There's also a murder, ruled someone taking their own life, slash cover-up case associated with the group, but again, it's all too much to go over here. We got back from the concert really late, not to mention a couple of us were still heavily intoxicated from drinking at the concert, so he didn't mention much about it that night, but he was quick to tell us the next morning.

At this point we thought, okay, these people were part of some weird church, whatever, it's fine. That explained some of the weird rules and books we had found. We left for the day to go hang out around the city and when we got back to rest, my friend and partner started doing some more reading on the group. This is when they found out that we were actually staying in one of the prominent leader's houses. We figured this out by cross-referencing the names of our hosts with the names of the important members of the IHPU, the International House of Prayer University website. After this, we started to snoop a little more in our suite. IHPU, the International House of Prayer University website.

After this, we started to snoop a little more in our suite. We found large barrels of dried food, a jug of some liquid that we later found out is what they drink while they fast, and lots more IHOPKC teaching materials. Basically, it seemed like they were completely prepared for some sort of end times rapture. Eventually we did go back and read more thoroughly through the reviews and found a few that would have set off some serious red flags. For example, one review stated how the male owner brought out a gun in front of the people who were staying there.

Yikes. Not to mention, if there was even a hint of a negative review left, the host would leave a snarky reply. Needless to say, we spent as much of our time as possible away from the Airbnb as we could for the remainder of our trip, and although we were never in any direct danger, we did feel very uncomfortable with the whole thing. Your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel. Wherever you go, you can get a pro at Tread Experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires.

Find a Kumo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. tredexperts.ca About eight years ago, two buddies and I decided to spend the night camping at Palo Duro Canyon. We're from Armarillo, Texas, so it's less than 20 miles away. This is the second largest canyon in the U.S. next to the Grand Canyon. And while you may be wondering what kind of spooky stuff we may have run into as young kids of just 17 years of age, this isn't necessarily that kind of story. Instead, us three friends were some of the only

around our age that we knew that didn't indulge in partying. No drinking, getting stoned, nothing of that nature. So, of course we think a perfect getaway on a Friday night would be the canyon. We didn't even own camping supplies, we just went to Walmart and bought some and headed out on a whim. We make the drive and get to the state park at around 5pm. We enter the gate and set off to find a spot to pitch a few tents. We pull into the campsite area that has two separate canopies with picnic tables and respective grills for cooking. In the middle of both canopies, a fire pit. Nobody was there, so we thought it was the perfect place to set up camp. We bought some coolers with soda, some hot dogs and hamburgers to grill, and a stereo to jam some tunes while we hung out and enjoyed the last few hours of

daylight in the Texas summer heat. After we pitched our tents, a truck with a small camper RV moseyed onto our site. A man and a woman get out and surveyed the area. The man saw us and waved with that friendly text in hospitality. We waved back of course and went about our business. We ate dinner and the sun was starting to set. I noticed that the man and woman didn't pitch a tent and that they probably just intended on staying in their camper. We built a fire and sat around it in some portable chairs we brought and saw the man walking towards us. He introduced himself as Doug and said that he cooked a lot of extra food if we wanted any. We politely declined and told him that we already ate but we appreciated the offer. He said, hey, as long as you guys have eaten, it's no big deal.

He waved again and set back off to his camp. About an hour later, he comes back with a brown paper bag and comments on the music we were listening to. Says how back in the 70s, he went to all these festivals and basically just rambles on how it's awesome that we're so young and still keeping classic rock alive. He noticed that my friends have guitars and actually yells over to his wife to come on over. By this point we don't think anything weird of it, we just didn't know him or his wife and he was obviously drinking and just invited themselves into our space. None of us have the spine to say anything to him about it, so we all just sat around the fire trading stories

as much as three 17-year-old boys can with a couple probably in their late 50s, early 60s. After what seemed like a lifetime of nonsensical stories with these people we don't know, he starts trying to get to know us on a more personal level. Super polite, but obviously a little drunk. Asks us if we have jobs or if we're in school and we all reply. He says that he works at a United supermarket as a stalker and has for the last 15 years.

Basically says that if any of us need a job at any time, then we can put him as a reference and he could get us on. He says his full name for us to reference just in case any one of us wants to apply. This is important for later. Anyways, finally the wife starts nodding off. All liquored and bundled up she fell asleep in her chair. Luckily that was the cue for Doug to get her back to the camp and put her to bed. When they walk back to their site, three of us look at each other and eye roll because we're all such doormats and basically let this stranger come ruin our night. We see that it's close to midnight so we decide to put out the fire and get ready for bed. Doug trots back over to our site. He asks us if we're here all weekend or not.

We told him we only had enough money to stay for the one night and that we'd be heading back to town in the morning. He said he really enjoyed the company and that he'd personally pay for us to stay another night if he wanted. We politely declined his offer and he started back to his RV. He quickly turns back around and says, Remember guys, if any of you need a job just call up the United on Gem Lake Road and tell them Doug sent you. We smiled and said thanks and he left for good that time. That night actually got considerably cold and we decided to pack up and head back to our warm beds in town at around 4am. As we were leaving the canyon we almost hit a deer and veered

off the road. Everyone was okay but we were definitely shocked because it was so late and we had gotten no sleep at that point. Us almost hitting the deer was practically the climax of our trip to the canyon that weekend and we all continued back to school on Monday like normal. One of my friends that was with me on the camping trip was actually in my third period class on Monday and we started talking about how that guy Doug and his wife were pretty cool despite not taking the hint that we didn't care to hang out with them. I asked my buddy if he could remember Doug's last name and somehow he did so I googled him. Mistake. Guess who was a ten times over-registered offender, who almost all of his victims were boys from the ages of 12 to 17? You guessed it. Good old Doug.

This rocked our world. We had somehow, someway just barely escaped the clutches of this absolute freak. What would have happened to us if we took his offer to stay another night? I was super suspicious of this dude and couldn't get the scenario off my mind that I decided to call United Supermarket to tell the manager that one of his employees was being really creepy to us kids and that he might want to be wary of the people he hires. And guess what? Nobody by the name Doug had ever worked for United. He made up all those stories all night long,

trying to get us drunk to do God knows what to us innocent kids. When I was about 9 years old, this would have been in the early 90s, my family and I lived in a house with a fairly big wooded area behind our backyard. I say fairly big because it wasn't big enough that you could really get lost in it for very long, but it was big enough that you could walk into it for a good 20 minutes before making it to the center. It got pretty thick in some areas and you couldn't see any of the houses from the neighborhoods once inside. To my friends and I it was a magical world. We played in those woods all summer long. My mom would let us go in there as long as we were back by sundown. Like I said this was the early 90s and times were a little different back then. My best friend would come over and we would run out there and play for hours. We played hide

and seek, army, star wars, and anything we could think of. But our very favorite thing to do was climb trees. We had a favorite tree to climb. It was a huge pine out towards the middle of the woods. The branches at the bottom were low enough that you could grab and pull ourselves up, and branches leading up there are all very strong, and we could climb very high and see a view from above most of the other trees. Sometimes when I got bored at home, I'd go out there by myself. I'd climb real high in that tree and just think about stuff. I loved being way up there. It was so peaceful and calm.

One Sunday, I decided to go out on a solo mission in the evening. I knew I didn't have too long before dark, so I hurried into the woods to get a good climb in. I was up in my spot in no time. I remember it was late summer and the weather was still warm late into the evening. I wanted to be able to see a little bit of sunset and then I'd climb down and hurry home. I just sat up there and daydreamed as I waited for the sun to begin to set. Then I heard a twig snap on the ground and I looked straight down. And I saw a man standing at the base of the tree looking up at me. I remember he was wearing a filthy brown jacket and he had a patchy beard. His hair was sticking up at random places, looking like he had been relentlessly running his

fingers through it. He was just staring at me with a bizarre expression that seemed to be one of wonder and delight. It was an extremely unnerving look, almost the look of someone that just realized that they stumbled across the gold of the end of the rainbow, and that's the only way I can describe it. It made my blood run cold. I went completely numb, like ice had just been injected into my veins. I don't know how long he had been watching me before I noticed him, and thinking about that still makes me shiver.

We just stared at each other for a moment. He didn't say anything, and neither did I. It sounds strange, but I didn't want to scream or tell him to go away because I had this feeling that told me not to provoke him in any way. After a few minutes he spoke, You coming down anytime soon? I shook my head back and forth. I didn't know what to say to him.

It was clear I was very uncomfortable at this point and that should be enough to make a decent person go away but he only grinned at me. Then he reached his hand up and grabbed the bottom branch of the tree as if to test to see if it could hold him. I do believe he may have been planning to climb up to me but the lowest branch was flimsy and was not strong enough to hold a grown adult. I thank God for that. He soon realized this and gave up but I had seen enough. I finally broke my silence and started to yell for someone to help me. I kept screaming and screaming. The man backed away a step or two from the tree and began to mumble and curse under his breath. He flailed his arms in the air in a rage and began making a motion like he was pushing an invisible person in front of him.

Eventually he turned and walked away, sort of stumbling with each step. I don't think anybody heard my cries because nobody came to help me. I stayed up in that tree for what felt like hours because I wasn't sure if he was really gone. Finally I climbed down because the sun was beginning to set and I couldn't bear to be out there at night. I hit the ground and bolted back to my house, positive that he would pop out from a shadow and grab me. He never did. I made it home and told my parents. My dad went out to look in the woods but he never saw anybody. We stayed in that house for about another two years before we moved across town to a larger

house. I never played in those woods again for the rest of our time there. I still think about that man sometimes. What would he have done if I would have came down? I have no idea, but that question does keep me up some nights. To be continued... My boyfriend, our husky, and I embarked upon our long holiday road trip to see our families earlier today. Fourteen hours of this trip takes place on a major U.S. interstate highway. We were looking for places to make our last gas stop and found a place just off the highway. We pulled off and into the desolate gas station and immediately were greeted by a fairly large, somewhat sketchy man taking not so subtle glances in our direction. We both were joking that maybe we chose the wrong gas station and boy did we. My boyfriend suggested that while he pumped the gas and run to the restroom, I take our dog and let him stretch his legs.

Being a city girl, I know to always carry my mace and phone, especially at night. We diverge as I started to make my way towards the little lit side of the gas station and my boyfriend to the restroom. I made it not thirty feet from my car and was approached by a small chihuahua mix and it had a collar on, who happily greeted our husky. We looked around for an owner while the two dogs got to know one another and continued to walk to a patch of grass with our new follower in tow. My first instinct was to help the dog and find his owner but in the back of my mind something felt very off and to be honest it felt off since the moment we pulled in. I immediately called my boyfriend and told him I had found a dog and said hey I found a dog but something weird. He immediately abandoned his bathroom break and came out to meet me.

While I'm standing with our dog and this dog, who came seemingly out of nowhere, I felt eyes on me from the employees working outside. My boyfriend expressed concern about the dog being loose so close to a major highway and further looked around for his possible owner. He approached one of the employees who was changing out trash liners right next to our car for some time now And he asked the employee if he had any idea whose dog this was And in perfect English he replied I don't speak English

And anxiously turned around to only continue to go through the motions of changing out a trash liner he had been standing at this whole time. We then continued to watch us chase around this dog until the dog led us behind the convenience store gas station. With my boyfriend five feet behind me, I followed the dog to the back of the store. Behind the store, ten or so big rigged trucks sat largely in darkness resting for the night. Cardboard boxes and broken wood pallets covered the dirt. A large man in a gas station uniform greeted me, staring through a glass door. With my boyfriend out of view, I bent down to check the dog's tags as the man continued to stare. My boyfriend approached, and that's when the man behind the glass door's demeanor changed. Almost dejectedly, he opened the glass door,

and I quickly asked, Do you know whose dog this is? Nervously, he fumbled his words and replied, Yeah, uh, yeah, that's, that's, um, that's my dog. We both exhaled and exchanged a look as if to say, Something about this is really weird. We made our way back to the car and my boyfriend remembered he had to still use the bathroom so I settled back into our locked car. When my boyfriend got back to the car he told me the same man we talked to at the back of the store followed him to the bathroom and stood behind him watching.

That's when we realized just how creepy and surreal the last 15 minutes had been. As we drove away, we discussed the strange and creepy series of events. How the whole thing felt staged or set up. Why did the employees act like he didn't know the dog when it belonged to his co-worker? We immediately googled the small town we had stopped in and discovered it had been a hotspot for human trafficking and in recent months 60 people were arrested. Was this just a string of eerie coincidences or was there something more sinister going on? on. My story is not one where I was the target of someone stalking or harassment, but one where I was the guy who was at the right place at the right time,

and I'm fairly certain my inadvertent intervention may have saved someone I'd never met from, well, who knows what. This was back in 2015 or 2016. I'm a career tow truck driver. At this point I've been towing cars for most of my adult life and will likely do so until I either retire or die, whichever comes first. At the time I was working for a small towing company with only two employees and we rotated who was on call each weekend. It was my weekend on call and it was

summer so with people being out and about late and whatnot I was pretty busy. Cleaning up accidents, towing broken down cars both in the city and off the highway. I was fine with it as I was paid commission at the time so the more calls I did the more money I made. So it's a Saturday night, now Sunday morning and it's around 2.30 to 3 in the morning and like I said I've been busy. I'm tired, a little grumpy and kind of want to go home when my phone rings. It's an insurance company calling asking if we can do a tow for one of their customers who had broken down on the side of the highway. The breakdown location they give me is about 15 miles out of town, which I normally wouldn't do, but the tow destination happens to be a dealership that's just a couple of minutes from my apartment. I contemplate rejecting the call, but because I'm paid commission, I figured,

screw it, I can run up and grab this car, drop it off around the corner from my place then hopefully I can head home and get a couple of hours of shut-eye. So I take the call and hop on the highway. The insurance company provided me with the customer's first name which we'll just say is Kara and gave me a phone number for her. Usually I try to make contact with the people who are on the side of the highway to let them know I'm on the way and give them an ETA. I try calling her a couple of times but she doesn't answer. Not unusual. After a short while I see hazard lights up the way on the shoulder so I turn on my strobes and start slowing down. As I approach I notice that not only is there the late model car that I'm looking for

but there's another car on the scene as well that doesn't have its hazards on but it's parked in front of the car I'm meant to tow. This is annoying but not uncommon as I need to be able to get in front of the disabled car in order to load it and sometimes people don't realize that. But because the other car is there, I instead pull up behind both cars. You do this so that as the tow driver, you're the one that has to make the weird maneuver of pulling off the shoulder and back onto the shoulder and that the other cars just have to drive straight forward on the shoulder. Otherwise, if I pulled out front, then the other car would have to go around me and it's unprofessional

and unsafe to make them do that. Standing at the trunk of the late model car which is now directly in front of me are a man and a woman. The woman is probably in her early 20s and dressed to the nines for a night out. She's about 5'1", 5'2", she's wearing tight leatherish or something pants, a halter top, long black hair, very pretty individual. The man is probably around 5'10", skinny, maybe 150-160, wearing a dark hoodie and dirty jeans. They're standing very close, facing each other. She has her arms crossed and he's leaning down, talking to her. I step out of my truck and approach them both, introducing myself. They separate a few times and I look to the woman and say, Are you Kara?

She nods. I say I'm here from her insurance company and ask what's going on with the car. Immediately the man pipes up and says, Yeah, it's just having some fuel issues. It's an easy fix. Can you just drop it off at this commuter parking lot? I'm going to fix it for her there. I'm rather annoyed at this because the commuter lot in question is further up the highway and I'm already 15 miles out of town.

Like I said before, I only took this call because it was supposed to be coming back toward my apartment and I really wanted to go home. Not only that, but in order to change the original tow destination, I would have to call the insurance company back, wait on hold for who knows how long for a representative, and let them know of the change and try to get them to pay me extra for the deadhead miles back home after unloading. And I really didn't want to do any of this. And thirdly, this is a late model car. I'm no mechanic but it's not enough that whatever is wrong with it is likely covered under warranty so the dealership is really the best place for it to go anyways. I explain this all to the guy but he's not really having it.

He gets stern with me saying something like, look man, you just need to take the car while I tell you to take it. We go back and forth on this for maybe 60 seconds and he's just getting angrier. Well, you know what man, you're not the named insured, Kara is. The easy way to settle this is to ask what she wants to do with the car and whatever she says is what I'll do. Fingers crossed she'll want me to take it to the dealership so I can get home sooner. I turn to look at Kara to ask her that question and I don't see her right away. She's no longer standing where she was just a minute ago which was slightly off to my right. I continue to not see her until I turn almost all

the way around because she's standing directly behind me. And by directly, I mean within an inch of my back, arms still crossed. I look down at her and she locks eyes with me. Her eyes are as wide as plates, almost like an owl. And immediately it feels like she's staring into my soul. She didn't say a word and she didn't have to. I took a step back and did what felt like a double double take. I looked at him, then at her, then at him again, then back at her. And it slowly started to dawn on me that

maybe something isn't right. I asked her, do you know this guy? And she ever so slightly shook her head no The expression on her face when I asked her that will forever be burned into my skull I turned to the guy and was like Oh You gotta go man Now, I'm not a tough guy I'm not a total beta male if there is such a thing and I don't care who knows it. I've nothing to prove.

I'm super adverse to confrontation and will run at the first sign of trouble. And I'm not exactly the biggest of guys either. I am however what I like to call sturdy. I'm 5'8 and 240 pounds. I got a bit of a gut and I also have big thighs and broad shoulders and people are generally surprised to find out that I weigh as much as I do and I think that might have been my saving grace for what happened next. Without a word, the guy starts moving to Kara and I move to stay in between them. He tries to push me out of his way by shoving me in the chest

but because I believe he underestimated my weight, only pushes me hard enough to make me take a single step back. Immediately, I took that step forward towards him and bodycheck him, hard, as hard as I could, hard enough to completely knock him over basically onto his butt. Because we rotated during the back and forth push bit, Kara is now in front of me to my right, somewhat between me and the guy who's trying to scramble to his feet. I reached out and snatched the poor girl up by her waist, spun her towards my truck and yelled for her to get into the driver's side, and she does so. I turn back to the guy, who's standing up again at this point and he's breathing hard. He gets right up in my face but doesn't do anything, just breathes at me. I stare him right in the face and mustering up the best dad voice I can muster just say, You need to go.

I'm shaking now and I'm absolutely terrified. I don't know if he has a weapon, I don't know if he's going to try to fight me, and I don't know what I would do if he did like I said I'm not a tough guy I don't know how to fight I've never been in a fight in my life what if I get hurt badly what if I get stabbed

what do I even do now I just want to go home for God's sake I wasn't even going to take this stupid call all this is running through my head at lightning speed. After probably around 15 seconds or so, which felt like eons, he kind of huffs a bit, smiles one of the creepiest smiles I've ever seen, and starts to back off. Sucking his teeth and rubbing his hands together,

he slowly walks backwards a few steps, then makes his way to the front car, gets in and drives off. I stayed motionless, watching him until I could no longer see his taillights. I got Kara's car loaded up on the tow truck and as we made our way to the dealership she told me through tears that her car had shut off while she was driving and she pulled onto the shoulder and called her parents because she was on their insurance. Her parents made the call to the insurance company who eventually dispatched me to her location. While she was waiting, a bit after she made the call, the guy pulled up in front of her and walked up to her passenger side window to try to talk to her, asking if she needed help, etc. and she told him she was fine, that a tow truck was coming and

she didn't need any help. He persisted and she tried to tell him off and eventually tried to roll up the window. Apparently he stuck his arm in the window and got the door unlocked and opened the door. In fear she jumped out of the car leaving her inside, and ran to the back of her car and stayed put there because it was in line of sight of traffic. Apparently he was pretty lewd with her, and whenever she tried to go back to the car, he would prevent her from getting in. Several minutes later I showed up, and who knows what would have happened had the timing been any different. Her parents were waiting at the dealership when we arrived and she told them what had just happened. Her parents gave me a $20 tip, which was all the cash they had on them at the time, and Kara gave me a very tight and clearly heartfelt hug before

I left. I never saw her again. I'll tell you what, every guy is daydreamed at some point of coming to the rescue of a pretty girl in trouble, myself included. You think you're going to be a hero, that you're going to be the bee's knees, you're going to slay the dragon and get the girl and ride off into the sunset like the king you are. But for me, being in that situation, in the moment, was one of the most terrible feelings I've ever had in my life. Forced into a confrontation I didn't want nor was prepared for, not knowing what to expect from a clearly not well-hinged individual. I didn't feel like the bee's knees, and I didn't feel like a hero. I felt like a scared little kid encountering a bully on the playground for the first time. If I'm ever in a situation like that,

I will never not intervene. I just really hope I don't have to. We'll be right back. On-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo TreadExperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca This happened one summer when I was a kid. Me and my little brother and sister were staying at our aunt's house in another part of the city. At the time we used to sleep in the same room as our parents, but since our aunt and uncle's place was much bigger,

we were able to sleep on the sofas in the lounge while having movie marathons every night. One night we fell asleep watching one of the Scooby-Doo movies, but then a few hours later, I woke up to hear a sound coming from our main gate. When I looked towards the source of the sound, I saw a guy standing inside the house near the door. I could just about make out the shape of the guy, but I couldn't see his face, so my first thoughts were like, what is dad doing out there so late? My father used to lock the doors at night before he went to bed, so it kind of made sense that that's what he was doing, but then I saw something that made my entire body tense up from fear. Whoever it was had some kind of rifle or shotgun in their hands. This guy probably heard me moving around, and I don't think he could see me because he just stopped there,

totally still as a statue. I think I was in just total denial, and just couldn't accept that there was an armed home invader in our place because I just called out, dad? Just in case it was him. I don't think the guy was expecting kids in the house because he just turned around and got out of there as soon as he heard me. But then the fact that he didn't answer to my dad please only confirmed that there was a strange man in our house. That prompted a massive freak out from both me and my brother which then alerted our relatives.

Within the hour the cops were over and me, my brother and my sister all just got to eat ice cream at like 3 am after we gave statements to the police. Kinda funny but years later my little sister asked if the guy was Santa Claus because he showed up in the middle of the night and then we all suddenly got a treat. Typical cuteness from my baby sister and it definitely helped me get over the whole thing. But that whole thing definitely amounts to one of the scarier events of my childhood. When I was eight we moved to military housing adjacent to the big base. I was a weird child and spent a lot of time in my tree reading if I wasn't out with the local hooligans playing in boxes like overgrown cats. There was a pomegranate bush in our yard so I would eat one while lounging on a

thick branch with an R.L. Stine novel. I kept noticing this guy walking back and forth on multiple occasions but who was I to judge what an adult does? I was home alone one day so I stayed in my backyard while reading in the shade of an overgrown bush but still visible to a passerby. That same guy was looking around our backyard that faced the tennis courts and open desert wilderness. He starts casually trying to lift the gate hatch so I ran inside and locked the doors. I told my parents later on and they listened but thought it was being dramatic. About a week later I was at my friend's house with three other girls. We were in bathing suits playing in hose water in a mini pool trying to find relief from

the sweltering heat. My friend's house faced a large park and one of them noticed this guy watching us. Someone went in to tell their parents but the guy must have noticed all of us going from wild animals to a small circle with little animation. My friend's mother was from Korea and ran out with a wooden spoon yelling and raging in Korean. She chased after the already retreating lurker but gave up, locked us inside and called the base police. I told them about the lurker but I couldn't be sure if it was the same one. The mother noticed he had a camera with him. It was back in the 90s.

We ate Keebler cookies, vanilla with fudge in the middle while her mother sobbed to the police. Human trafficking is a more tangible fear for some than others. Base police called my parents and they finally took me seriously. The house was searched which I thought was just normal protocol. I was heavily monitored by them and not able to do much without my mother in arms reach. One day about a week or so later we were eating lunch at a fast food place and I recognized the guy. I tell my dad and he asked me if I was sure and when I confirmed he lunged at the guy and threw him back in his chair. Base cops came and looked through his camera to find pictures of me with my friends and at recess.

He was arrested immediately. The weirdest part about it, he had broken into our house and made some rat's nest, I assume, of my things in his home. They found everything from baby pictures to clothing. The worst part about it? No charges because my dad was about to retire and get a big job in Michigan. He was also high ranking which probably had nothing to do with it. When talking to my mom about it years later, she told me he had accessed our attic and cut through the AC vent to watch me through it. That would also explain why my room was always hot, but now I wonder if she is the one being dramatic. A cop car was following me but didn't turn on their lights. I noticed they started following me before I even left my neighborhood so I'm not sure if they started from my house or not.

They followed me for four miles before I turned onto another street to see if they were actually following me or going straight. They followed again. Then I turned into a gas station and guess who parked next to me? Well I went inside and pretended to shop and they came inside too and just watched me. Didn't even buy anything. They were a heavyset man who looked to be about 40 to 45 and was completely bald. He was Caucasian but had a fisherman's type tan so he kind of looked reddish. He wasn't in uniform but had a badge hanging from his pocket.

His pants were unzipped and he looked sweaty. I'm a young woman and I was alone. I left the store and sat in my car. He did the same. Then I went and pumped gas and he did the exact same and I noticed he didn't even actually pump the gas. He just held the nozzle against his car while looking at me. Then I drove again for another three miles to another store. They followed me again into the store and watched me. After ten minutes I left and started the drive. I ended up getting onto a highway that leads to my parents' house about 45 minutes away. They lived in another town and for some reason I just assumed cops on duty

would stick to their assigned territory. Of course I didn't think about how a man creepily following me around town would probably bend the rules of the job. I didn't even know if my assumptions were true. After about 20 more minutes of driving he finally stopped following me and I really want to know what he was doing and why. To be continued... If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data.

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