The Lets Read Podcast - 198: STAY OUT OF APPALACHIA | 20 True Scary Stories | EP 186

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Cops, Cabins in the Woods, & The Appalachian Trail... 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 & Bonus Content!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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How to un-cry. Get simple, smart home insurance. Bel Air Direct. Insurance simplified. It's the Lexus Demonstrator event at Dawn Valley North Lexus. During May, Dawn Valley North Lexus has rates as low as 1.9%, with savings up to $9,000 on select remaining 2024 demonstrator models, while supplies last. See DonValleyNorthLexus.com for details, or visit them at 7200 Victoria Park, just north of Steeles. A proud member of Wayne's Auto Group. Although serial killers are not a uniquely American phenomenon,

it's undeniable that such malevolent criminal behavior has captured the national psyche, with some of the most celebrated pieces of American cinema detailing the exploits of both fictional and non-fictional serial killers. The vast majority of America's most famous serial killers seem to have operated in what we might call the golden age of serial murder, which include the crimes of Bundy, Gacy, and Dahmer, spanning from the early 70s to the late 1980s. Yet very little light is shed onto the history of American serial killers, and it often begs the question, who were the first serial killers to operate in the United States? To answer that question, we have to go all the way back to the fledgling 13 colonies,

to a time when violence and political strife were a part of people's daily lives, and the War of Independence set the continent aflame. This is the story of America's first brutal and bloodthirsty serial killers, the Harpy Brothers. Little is known about the early years of Micjah and Wiley Harp, but they are thought to have been born in 1748 and 1750 respectively. They were the sons of Scottish parents who had emigrated from their native land in either 1759 or 1760, and although it's been speculated that the Harp brothers were

actually first cousins, we can know for certain that they settled in Orange County, North Carolina between 1761 and 1763. Like many of the Scottish settlers in the Thirteen Colonies, the Harp family were staunch Calvinist Protestants, meaning that they were fiercely loyal to the King of England. Nicknamed Tories, such people often joined regulatory militias which put down rebellions among those who resented royal interference. Ironically, at the advent of the Revolutionary War, the Harp Brothers attempted to enlist with patriotic American forces rebelling against the Crown. But due to their family's past associations with Tory militias, they were refused entry to the militias on suspicion of being spies.

Some historians have speculated that this led to feelings of resentment and persecution among the brothers, but it's much more likely that they were indeed hoping to work as spies, as they soon began butchering revolutionary sympathizers with a frightening level of zeal. It's believed that the Hart brothers were residing in North Carolina during this period of hostilities, and that following their rejection from the revolutionary militia, they joined a group of predatory loyalist criminals who took advantage of wartime lawlessness by violating women, stealing, murdering, and burning and destroying property, especially the farms of patriot colonists. And these gangs were exactly as brutal and obscenely violent as you can imagine. However, the crude epithet was intended as an

insult by the revolutionaries, and officially speaking, the Harp Brothers gang were called military associators, men who fought for the crown taking only what they could loot and steal as payment. As the war against the colonists grew more desperate, the Harp brothers and their gang took part in the Battle of King's Mountain in October of 1780, as well as the Battle of Blackstocks in November of 1780. Yet their efforts did nothing to slow the progress of the revolution, and following the decisive British defeat by Patriot and French forces at Yorktown in 1781, the Harp brothers fled North Carolina to seek refuge with the renegade Chickamauga Cherokee tribe in the Appalachian Mountains.

From their mountain sanctuary, the Harps began a series of revenge raids against the newly liberated Americans of the United States, the first of which was a devastating attack while in the company of 400 Chickamauga tribesmen on present-day Nashville, Tennessee. The following year, the Harps helped give Daniel Boone's frontier army a bloody nose at the Battle of Bluelix in Kentucky, all before retreating to the Native American village of Nickajack. However, it wasn't long before Boone and his forces closed in on the village, and as payback for the defeat at Blue Licks, they put Nickajack to the torch.

Given that they were still considered traitors to the revolutionary cause, the Harp Brothers were forced to hide out in the forests of Powell Valley near Knoxville, stealing supplies from local pioneers in order to survive. During this period, the brothers stewed in bitterness, having been almost completely outcast from civilized society. They hated the fact that they lost their way. They hated the neighboring townsfolk. They hated the very country they resided in. And so, instead of simply giving up the ghost and facing up to the treacherous past, the Harps embarked on one of the first campaigns of serial murder in American history.

In 1797, they were believed to have murdered a man named Johnson for no other reason than they happened to cross him while out hunting one day. After killing him, the Harps then cut open the man's chest, tore out his internal organs, filled the cavity with rocks and stones, then urinated all over him. Following the discovery of the man's corpse, a huge effort was made to find the culprits, forcing the harps to flee north into neighboring Kentucky. They entered the state of the Wilderness Road near a place known as Cumberland Gap, and on their travels they came across a traveling salesman named Peyton. Peyton offered to sell the Harps some of his goods, but upon hearing him talk in glowing tones of the newly founded republic, Micah Jaharp flew into a rage and beat the man to death.

The brothers then repeated the act of disemboweling and urinating on the body of their victim, then made off with the dead man's horse and some of his goods. Next, the brothers targeted two travelers from Maryland, torturing, murdering, and mutilating the pair when they were overheard expressing animosity towards the British. It's believed that the younger of the two Harp brothers, Wiley, held one of the travelers down and forced them to watch the torture and murder of their longtime companion. And once again, both of the victims' chest cavities were filled with stones and rocks as a final show of gruesome disrespect. Then following the Harps' murder of a Virginia man named John

Lankford, the pair were apprehended by a local militia force before being imprisoned at the Kentucky State Prison in Danville. Yet after luring one of their guards into the cell on the pretense of being horribly unwell, the Harps strangled him with their own shackles, took his key, then escaped into the surrounding wilderness. Once the alarm was raised, a posse of jailers and militia men were sent after them. Somehow, the harps found out the identities of the men who'd formed the posse, and as revenge, snuck into a nearby town in the dead of night, hunted down one of the men's family, and then slaughtered his young son. Following such a horrific atrocity, Kentucky Governor James Garrard announced a $300 bounty on

the Harps on April 22nd of 1799. Garrard had hoped the bounty would pacify the brothers, either driving them out of state or forcing them to lay low. Instead, it only succeeded in making them more vicious. The brothers became intensely paranoid, often mistaking innocent travelers for pursuing bounty hunters, and over the days that followed, the Harps killed five different people in two separate instances, simply because they had been spotted and feared being further pursued. After fleeing into the state of Illinois, the brothers made their way to a natural cave system on the bluffs above the Ohio River, only to discover it was the stronghold of a band of river pirates led by the infamous Samuel Mason. Mason welcomed a pair of fellow outlaws into his

midst, especially when they asked only to be sheltered from the law, and would aid the gang in their raids while only asking for food, water, and a place to sleep in return. Mason believed the brothers would be something of a boon to the gang, but he soon realized that they were nothing but a burden, and a shockingly evil one at that. Generally speaking, the Mason gang killed only when they needed to, and only ever for monetary gain. But in the case of the Harp brothers, they seemed to mutilate and kill just for the fun of it. At one point, the brothers led away one of the gang's hostages, with Mason believing that they were leading the man back to their hideout to be kept

prisoner. Moments later, the gang watched in horror as the harps appeared on a cliff above them, before shoving their now naked prisoner down onto rocks below, laughing as he screamed for mercy. Their lust for blood and terror was so insatiable that in the end, even a hardened outlaw like Samuel Mason had to force the brothers to leave at gunpoint. They wanted no part of the sick depravity that the brothers partook in, bloodshed that would surely only draw the law's attention. The Hart brothers were furious at the rejection, but there was no arguing with the business end of a rifle, so instead of seeking further conflict, the brothers simply moved back into eastern

Tennessee to carry on their killing spree. In July of 1798, records show that a farmer named Bradbury, a man named Hardin, and a boy named Coffey were all murdered by the Harp brothers, although no such record indicates exactly why they were killed as there were no witnesses. We can speculate that the farmer was killed so that the men could help themselves to his crops without having their movements reported to the authorities. But why on earth the brothers would want to kill a young boy is simply beyond all reasonable explanation and provides nothing but an insight into how murderously depraved they truly were. The brothers left a trail of death wherever they went, and as a result, they became remarkably easy to track. Authorities were able

to trace them to the banks of the Holston River, where a man named William Ballard was found disemboweled, packed with rocks, then tossed into the waters so the fish could gnaw on his rotting flesh. They were then traced to a place known as Brassel's Knob, where the body of a man named James was discovered with his home ransacked and his throat slashed. To evade authorities, it seems the brothers then crossed state lines into south-central Kentucky, where the discovery of two bodies seemed to bear all the hallmarks of their grisly handiwork. John Graves and his teenage son was found dead near Logan County with extensive mutilation to each of their skulls, most probably having been caused by the axes they were using to chop wood, and like so many others,

they had been disemboweled, packed with rocks and stones, then urinated on. It seems just a few nights later the brothers came across an entire family sleeping in a camp not far off the trail from where they were walking down. If we're to believe that their signature was disembowelment, this family of five also fell victim to their bloodlust, and once again, they needlessly slaughtered an innocent child who would have posed absolutely no threat to them whatsoever. This is one of the few crimes that the Harps ever expressed any real remorse over, with Wiley Harp confessing that he'd bashed in the infant girl's head against a tree because

her wails of terror irritated him. The brothers' killing spree continued all throughout the summer of 1799, but the more lives they stole, the bigger the pursuing posse grew. It swelled with the family members of those they'd slaughtered, men who sought to wreak a terrible revenge on the two monsters who'd taken away their loved ones. By the end of the summer, the posse was said to number almost a hundred men, who were then able to split up into mounted, fast-moving teams of hunters, who eventually succeeded in tracking and cornering the brothers in Kentucky's Molenburg County. The brothers were preparing to ambush a settler

named George Smith when, suddenly, a voice called out through the woods ordering them to surrender. Terrified, the brother attempted to flee, but a member of the posse fired a well-aimed shot which struck Micah Jah Harp in the leg. Wiley Harp managed to quickly mount his horse before escaping the posse but the same could not be said for the wounded Micah Jah. And as he lay bleeding among the pines, the posse forced him to confess to up to twenty different murders. When he was finished, a man named Moses Stegall, the grieving relative of a family the brothers had killed,

stepped forward and produced a large bowie knife from his belt. Then, while Micah Joe was still conscious, Moses plunged the knife into Micah Joe's throat, slicing and cutting until he was able to twist the outlaw's blood-soaked head from the stump of his neck. Moses then placed the bloody head in a burlap sack, then rode all the way back to Webster County, Kentucky, where the family's homestead was built, before nailing the head to a tree outside the house. And to this day, the crossroads near which Micah's head was mounted is known as Harp's Head Road, in honor of the revenge that was reaped that fateful day. Not long after the death of his brother, Wiley Harp managed to talk his way back into the Mason gang, and he managed to evade the same fate as Micah for four long years. But eventually, Wiley's luck ran out, and he was captured along with the rest of the Mason gang when the law finally caught up with them.

In 1804, Wiley was executed via hanging in modern-day Jefferson County, Mississippi. And like his brother, Wiley's head was staked high along the Natchez Trace as a warning to other outlaws. And so marked the end of the Hart brothers' killing spree, one that had lasted almost three decades and claimed the lives of up to 50 innocent men, women, and children. Their terrifying story sank deep into American folklore, and although there are numerous references to them in art and literature throughout the 20th century, theirs is a story that is painfully undertold in our day and age. They are arguably America's first real serial killers,

having established a specific modus operandi that made their murders as distinguishable as they were dastardly. And theirs is a story that will remain as compelling as it is chilling, for Tech Business Administration Master's student Becca White sat down for breakfast one morning in the university's cafeteria. She was a hard-working and diligent young student, but her industriousness had left her isolated and pining for the company of another. As such, we can only imagine her joy when Manhattan-born architecture student Claudia Brenner sidled up next to her and asked her something along the lines of, is this seat taken? What followed was the love affair of a lifetime, as each woman discovered their intimate preferences

of their opposite number, and they realized that they were perfect for each other. They had a great deal in common, with both of them being highly intelligent, goal-oriented young women, who both had a deep appreciation for the outdoors. Then over the next two years, as they fell deeply in love with one another, they made frequent trips to some of the most beautifully scenic hiking trails that the Appalachians had to offer. And so it came to pass that in May of 1988, Claudia and Rebecca decided to visit the Michaux State Forest in Pennsylvania, an 85,000-acre expanse of woodland that is home to a section of the Appalachian Trail.

They drove up from Virginia Tech, singing along to the radio the whole way, sharing road snacks and planning out their latest outdoor adventure. Then eventually, they found what they agreed was a suitable place to park up their car before gathering up their things and headed off into the trees. But the place they parked had a name that, in light of the fate they shared, has a chilling sense of foreboding to it. Because the place they parked before heading off into the Michaux State Forest, was one named Dead Woman's Hollow. About an hour into their walk down the Appalachian Trail, the couple came across the first of a series of campgrounds known as primitive campsites. There are around seven or eight of those campsites dotting the southern slopes of the Appalachian Hills

with Rebecca and Claudia navigating the trail until they found the perfect site for them to pitch their tent. Once they established their cozy two-person campsite, Rebecca White excused herself to the campground's bathrooms for a moment. But as she walked, she was suddenly startled by the presence of a young man who seemed to be lurking near the small wooden facility's building. It wasn't just his sudden and unexpected presence that startled her either. It was the young man's frightening appearance that really gave her the creeps. The young man's hair was wild and unkempt, and his shockingly gaunt facial features made it look like he hadn't eaten a decent meal in weeks. His clothes were filthy and torn, and the amount of dirt under the man's fingernails

suggested that bathing wasn't exactly his strong suit. The man grinned at Rebecca and asked if she had a spare cigarette. She told him that she didn't smoke, then politely excused herself before walking back towards the campsite. Rebecca immediately told Claudia that they weren't nearly as alone as they'd first expected, and that the encounter with the leering stranger had her feeling considerably creeped out. Since it was still relatively early in the afternoon, Claudia suggested they pack up and move camps, an idea which Rebecca thoroughly agreed with.

So, over the next hour or so, the girls dismantled their tent, packed away their belongings, and then carried on hiking down the trail in the direction of the next primitive campsite. At one point, the couple stopped to check their map to ensure that they were headed in the right direction. They studied the map for a moment, then looked up from it to scan their surroundings when, suddenly, one of them spotted a man lurking in the trail behind them. It was the same man that had asked Rebecca for a cigarette back at the campground bathrooms. It made for a grim moment of realization for the couple. It wasn't just a chance encounter, they were being followed. Rebecca and Claudia immediately marched off down a trail they believed would lead them to the next primitive campground,

picking up their pace in the hopes the man might lose track of them. The couple stopped on several other occasions as they progressed, looking over their shoulders to ensure that they weren't continually being followed. Only when they failed to spot the gaunt-looking hermit did they feel safe enough to make camp again and they did so at the next campground they came across. Once their campground was set up, the couple prepared dinner, growing more comfortable with their surroundings as they ate. The woods around them seemed quiet and still. As the more time went by, the more they became convinced that they were completely alone. It's at this point that Rebecca and Claudia began cuddling,

watching the horizon turn from blue to orange as the sun dipped in the sky and began to set. It was rare that they had moments alone, and the couple relished every second of the peace and quiet the deep woods offered. There was just one problem. They were not alone. Creeping up to the campsite on Cat's Paw was the man that had asked Rebecca for a cigarette. He was an accomplished tracker, enough so that he was able to slip away from the couple entirely to retrieve something from the place he called home. You see, the man had a brick and mortar home, but he also spent a great

deal of time living in a cave out in the woods. And it was this cave he'd returned to in order to fetch a.22 caliber rifle he kept hidden away inside of it. The man kept the rifle close to his chest, watching the dancing flames of the girls' campfire from around a hundred feet away. Then, as Claudia and Rebecca began to get intimate with one another, the man took the opportunity to creep closer and closer, staring intently as the girls began to kiss. Then, right as they were about to retire to their tent for the evening, the man raised his rifle, took aim, and let out eight shots in their direction. Five bullets ripped through Claudia Brenner, breaking her arm, tearing apart her face, cracking her skull, and puncturing her neck, while the remaining three rounds grazed Rebecca

White's head, ripping through her back and puncturing her liver. After firing the shots, the man tore off through the woods in the opposite direction, whooping and laughing as he ran. Hunting his fellow humans was one of the most exhilarating throes of his entire life, and to see his prey collapsing as his bullets tore through them was nothing short of intoxicating for him. The man believed that there was no way that either of the women could survive such a fusillade of gunfire, but he was wrong. Although Rebecca was in critical condition from being shot through the liver, Rebecca found that despite her wounds, she was able to stand. With tears of terror in her eyes, she promised her pale and bloodied girlfriend that she'd go to fetch them help.

And then off she went, limping down the trail for three whole miles until she finally came to a main road. Claudia managed to flag down a passing driver who rushed her to the nearby Shippensburg police station in order to seek medical attention. Claudia described exactly where the attack had taken place before she was rushed to the hospital, yet despite arriving at the campgrounds as quickly as she could, the officers found that Rebecca had succumbed to her wounds. While a heartbroken Claudia Brenner received word of her girlfriend's death, the police combed the crime scene for any evidence they could find. They quickly noticed that around 25 unfired.22 caliber bullets were lying on the ground,

just less than 100 yards away from the campsite. They also found a knit cap not from the bullets and correctly assumed that the item belonged to Rebecca's killer. One group of cops then searched the surrounding trails while another took note of all the information that Claudia could offer them, including how she strongly suspected the man who'd followed them of being the attacker. A considerable effort was made to apprehend the gaunt, hermit-like man that had followed them down the trail. But over the weeks that followed, the police weren't able to locate anyone matching Claudia's detailed description.

Meanwhile, a group of Old Order Mennonites who live within just a few miles of the Michaux State Forest were visited by a man named Stephen Roy Carr, who expressed an interest in their community. Old Order Mennonites are similar to the Amish in the sense that they shun modern technology and refrain from involving themselves in modern society. Some communities even refuse to speak English among themselves and prefer to speak the German or Dutch of their religious ancestors. As you can imagine, the group doesn't exactly have people lining up to join them. So when the solitary visitor told them that he wished to join their community,

they welcomed him with only the slightest hint of suspicion. Yet as it turned out, not everyone in this particular Mennonite community followed their faith as strictly as their brethren. And in the attic of one household, there was a secret television that the homeowner would use to watch the nightly news. It was during one of these broadcasts that the Mennonite learned of a brutal murder that had taken place in the nearby Michaux Forest. And when a picture of the case's main suspect was shown, the man instantly recognized him as the gaunt-faced stranger that had wandered into their community in the days prior.

Under the pretense of needing to purchase some primitive farming equipment, the secret TV watcher headed into a nearby town. Yet the moment he arrived, he rushed to the local sheriff to report that none other than Stephen Roy Carr was sheltering himself among his people. A careful and very delicate operation was then planned, one that would keep this Mennonite's secrets under wraps while also ensuring that Carr would not receive any advance warning of his imminent arrest. It involved the Mennonite returning to his village and inviting Carr to join him for dinner one evening. Then just as Carr sat down to

dinner with a family he believed had nothing but good intentions for him, the local police force swarmed their dwelling, capturing their suspect before putting him in cuffs. Even though the evidence against him was sparse to say the least, homicide detectives managed to convince Carr to waive his right to a jury trial in exchange for an agreement by the prosecution not to seek the death penalty. Yet at his trial, Carr made the horrifically homophobic claim that he had been so enraged by the sight of two women making love that he had simply lost his mind and opened fire.

He also tried to claim that Claudia and Rebecca had known he was watching, and that their love making was purely a method of taunting and provoking him. His defense attorney tried to link this to the fact the car had been violated in a Florida prison, as well as having been abused as a child and that the display of homosexuality had caused him to go temporarily insane. Thankfully, the judge refused to show any form of leniency against Carr, completely dismissing his claims as being homophobic nonsense and forcing the defense to accept the maximum penalty of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In the aftermath of her ordeal,

Claudia Brenner moved to Ithaca, New York, and went on to author a book which detailed the events of the shooting. She had since become an activist against anti-gay violence and is a vocal advocate of harsher sentences for those convicted of hate crimes against the LGBT community. Thankfully, public acceptance of gay and lesbian couples has skyrocketed since the mid-1980s, with local and national hate crime laws extending the sentences of those who seek to harm or persecute people who simply wish to freely express their love for their romantic partners. People like Stephen Carr must never be allowed to receive leniency by claiming

that the free expression of love and affection offends or angers them, especially when two people seek the privacy and seclusion of a quiet campground to express that love. I'm a huge camping and hiking enthusiast, so one of the holy grails of my hobby has always been the Appalachian Trail. Unfortunately, I've never had the time to dedicate to hike the whole thing, so throughout the years, me and a few friends of mine visited certain sections of the trail for about a week or so at a time. We were based over in New Jersey, so we crossed Mount Mincy off of our list fairly early. Then the next year, we suffered through the part of the trail near Anthony's Nose that leads up to Camp Smith. The year after that, we conquered the Hundred Mile Wilderness up in Maine, but then in 2018, we decided to venture a little further south. We'd heard a lot of good things about both the George Washington and Jefferson National Parks, how they're some of the wildest sections of the trail, and how the parks are home to some really

cool features like the oldest fire lookout tower in the eastern US. But the place I had my heart set on visiting was an old ghost town called Lignite. I'm really into ruins and abandoned places and stuff like that, and I think I'd be more into urban exploration if your videos on the subject didn't put me off the idea entirely. See, the idea of getting to see an old ruined town like that was really appealing to me. In reality though, venturing out near Lignite was probably one of the worst mistakes we'd ever come to make while on a hiking trip, and it's honestly kind of a miracle that none of us were seriously hurt. So to cut to the chase here, we started out near Covington, then hiked our way down into the forest until we hit the trail. After that,

we followed it about 20 miles or so, up these winding trails, until we found Lignite. The whole hike took us about 9 hours, so as you can imagine, we were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived at the old ghost town. So instead of moving off to find more covered campsite for the night, we decided to just bed down near the ruins so we could go exploring them in the morning. There wasn't all that much to see to be perfectly honest, just some of the old foundations and a few crumbling chimney stacks, but it was still worth it to take a few pictures before we moved on down the trail. The next morning, we got up and before we packed our stuff away, me and my buddy Joey decided to take a little stroll among the ruins. We're just meandering along, still kind of half asleep from the grueling hike of the day before, and Joey is taking the lead while I follow with my phone,

taking pictures. Then suddenly, my eyes are drawn to something that Joey seems to be walking towards while in blissful ignorance, and I find myself just reaching out to grab the back of his shirt, tugging him back to stop him from walking any further. Right there among the half-dead yellow grass was an old rusted bear trap. At first, we were kind of amazed at what we were looking at. The thing looked like it could have been an antique, like it had been there for a hundred years just rusting away in the wilderness. Joey then tried to make out,

jokingly I should add, that I'd basically saved him from nothing and that he'd have been kind of impressed if the thing had actually clamped itself around his leg if it actually stood on it. We made each other a little bet over whether or not it was still functioning, all before picking up a few rocks and bits of old brick to toss at the small round trigger in the middle. It took us a few tries, but in the end, Joey managed to hit the trigger mechanism with a chunk of old masonry, and then snap. We found ourselves recoiling in horror as the thing violently snapped shut. We both shared this nervous kind of laughter because it could have just as easily been Joey's

leg trapped in that thing if he'd stood on it, and although we were laughing, we were definitely pretty freaked out. It was only when we realized that there might actually be more of them in the area that we actually got serious about it, as a threat dealt with was one thing, but a threat unknown was another thing entirely. We then very carefully made our way back to where we were camped, told the other guys about the bear trap, then suggested that we move someplace else since there might have been more of them out there in the grass or something. This guy Mike didn't believe us, thought that we were playing a prank on him and only realized that we were serious when I showed him the picture on my phone of the bear trap all

closed up. After that, we packed up our stuff and very carefully hiked out of the area, making sure to keep our eyes on the ground in front of us the whole way. We ended up walking around 5 miles west towards a place called Barber's Creek, hoping it would provide us with a much safer campsite as well as a source of fresh, clean water. It definitely provided us with one of those things, as there were a few fast-flowing parts of the river that allowed us to fill up our water bottles, but although it seemed fine and deserted to us at first, we found something the next morning that proved otherwise. One of our usual routines when deciding on where to camp would be to mark out an

area for us to use as a bathroom. I won't gross you out with all the gory details of digging holes and whatnot, but it was a kind of silent agreement to confine all our grumpies, as Johnny Depp so elegantly phrased it, to a certain area away from the campground to remain as hygienic as possible. Then, once the sun had set, we made ourselves some hot food over a fire, shared some bourbon that Mike had brought along, then got ourselves some much-needed rest. We didn't hear anything moving around in the darkness. We didn't hear any voices or sounds of metal or anything. The whole night was perfectly quiet and still apart from a few crickets and cicadas. And that's when we found it extra creepy the next morning,

when Mike got up and wandered off to the bathroom area and found something that had him calling out to us through the trees. I remember waking up with a startle at the sound of his voice, not knowing what the deal was, but hearing enough fear in his cry of you better come see this to know that something was definitely wrong. I pulled my shorts and boots on, then joined the other two guys in rushing through the woods in the direction of Mike's voice. But then as soon as he came into view, he turned to us and started shouting, no, no, no, don't run,

with this look of absolute terror on his face. We all freeze, thinking he might be facing down a black bear or something, but the whole woods in front of him was completely clear. That's when he points down onto the ground in front of him, saying something like, this wasn't here yesterday, was it? He was pointing at another rusty old bear trap, and no, it was most definitely not there the day before. It was lying right where we'd all been walking to and from the little bathroom area we designated right out in the open too, and we all agreed that whoever had put it there was banking on one of us stepping on it during a nocturnal bathroom break. We had to repeat the process of being extremely careful where we stood as we trudged

back towards our campground and packed our stuff. We applied the same amount of care to where we stepped when making our way south away from Barber's Creek and towards a small town called Newcastle. We were in no mood to stay out on the trail, not after it had become painfully obvious that whoever had laid the bear trap had followed us all the way from Lignite down to Barbers Creek. It was also a deeply unsettling realization that the bear trap we found at Lignite probably wasn't there by accident either. Like I said, given its condition we figured it had been set years before our arrival, when by then it seemed much more likely that it had been set years before our arrival, when by then it seemed much more likely

that it had been set as we slept. Once we got to Newcastle, I made sure to call our find into the local cops, as just about anyone could have accidentally walked out onto that bear trap, and god forbid if they were alone and lacking cell reception. But then, the question about who might have placed the traps came up, and neither us nor the cops had any clue who might have actually done something like that. In fact, they found it pretty weird that someone wouldn't cover the thing up with leaves or make any other kind of attempt to hide it. It was like whoever had laid it there wanted us to find it, like it was more about sending a message than actually trying to maim one of us. We ended up catching a bus over to Parisburg to completely throw whoever it was off our trail.

There was a period where Mike didn't want us to carry on at all. He was that freaked out by the idea of someone following us, totally unseen. Not only that, but they were able to somehow lay a bear trap without making any noise, which we all found intensely creepy all on its own, especially at night. Thankfully, no one followed us for the rest of the trip, not to our knowledge anyway, and there were no more bear trap finds near any of the other campsites. That didn't mean that we didn't have some seriously sleepless nights for a few days. In the first night we got back out on the trail, we all spent it sitting around a dead fire, shining our flashlights out into the darkness,

just scanning the woods for any signs of anyone creeping around. It was only when we were 100% sure that we weren't in any more real danger that we were able to get any decent sleep. But I think by that point, whoever had been laying the traps was confident that we'd gotten the message to leave, and to never come trespassing around Lignite again. I've been hiking the Appalachian Trail for the better part of 30 years now, and I've had plenty of hair-raising run-ins that I don't care to repeat. I've come face to face with black bears and their cubs, which, as any experienced person will tell you, is about as close to staring death in the face as a hiker can get. I've had fissures running up trees next to my tent at night, which was very unsettling back when I was at an age when stories of skinwalkers still raised the hairs on the

back of my neck. And there was one time that I heard such a sickening crack of wood when crossing a log bridge over a stretch of rushing river that I was just about convinced that I was going to drown. But let me tell you, there ain't no kind of fear like the fear your fellow man can give you. And the Appalachians have a way of getting into people's heads in a way that can be just as negative as it can be positive. I can tell you first hand, once you get a taste for hiking, you really enjoy it. There's nothing quite like being up there, far away from civilization, relying on nothing

but your wits and whatever you can carry on your back. The Appalachians change people. Like you might have heard about the old tradition of taking a trail name, something like Bear or Sovereign or some other kind of nickname nickname as a way of expressing how you've left your old self back down in the lowlands having ascended to a higher plane, both figuratively and literally. It's not just for aesthetic purposes either, folks, because every time you go out into the wilderness, a little bit of the wilderness goes into you too. For some folks, namely city folks, that can be a good thing. It opens the

mind, helps them better appreciate the simple things, like a warm soft bed or a good shower. But for other folks, the appellations get into them in a way that a demon might possess someone's soul. It burns them up inside, burns everything good out of them, until all that's left ain't fit to be called human. I've heard stories of people taking their own lives after hikes, when they've walked the whole trail over the course of a summer or fall, then just been unable to go back to their drab, tedious lives back in their concrete jungles. I've heard plenty of other stories of folks who lose their minds up in those hills before running into a group of less experienced hikers and just killing them. I've never encountered anyone like that myself, but I believe I almost did, and that's

about as far as I ever want to get to one of them. This was way back in the late 90s when I was doing some solo hiking up in Great Smoky. I was experienced enough not to have to stick to the trails as such, but not experienced enough to know that it's better to wait out approaching bad weather than to try and beat the skies. I thought taking a more direct route over the hills and through the forest would mean I could get a hot shower and hot chow quicker, but as it turned out, my arrogance meant I was caught in a hellish downpour. Experienced hikers will tell you that a hot sun might burn and blister your skin, but wet feet can kill you. Wet feet means foot rot and fungus, and when you're

relying on them to get you to food and shelter and away from any potential dangers, not being able to rely on your feet can be a death sentence. I knew enough to know that, so when the heavens suddenly opened, I went running off to find myself some cover. In the end, I found it, and it came in the form of what I thought was a shallow cave set into a rock face. At the time, I thought it was an actual godsend, and I said a little prayer of thanks as I took off my wet clothes and swapped them for dry ones. I was so relieved to be out of the rain that I didn't actually check out how deep the cave went, not until I was dry again and getting bored from having to take shelter for so long. I took my flashlight out

from my pack, switched it on and then saw that the cave went way further back than the creeping daylight led to believe. Not only that, but it narrowed off into a much smaller passageway that I'd have to get on my hands and knees to traverse. Now I know what you're thinking, who in their right mind would want to crawl down a narrow cave tunnel in the middle of the woods when I could just stay warm and dry and safe in the cave's opening while I waited for the rainstorm to pass. But then I imagine there's some of you that have gathered that I have something of an adventurous streak, and that after about an hour of just sitting there, waiting for the rain to pass,

I was just about going crazy with boredom. So if there was something that could help me kill some time before I get back on the move again, you bet your butt that I was going to do it. That's how I ended up creeping towards the opening to the tunnel with the flashlight ready and I'd never have guessed in a million years what I was about to see. I figured I might see some of the awesome pointy hangy things, stag mites or whatever they're called, but the first thing I saw when I poked my head through the other side made me immediately stop in my tracks. It was a single rock chamber and the first thing I saw that made me think,

hold up, was signs of human habitation. There was quite clearly some kind of bedroll in there, incredibly filthy, but there it was. Then just as I was thinking how someone must have been all kinds of smart and resourceful to use this place as shelter, I saw what was on the walls. Whoever had been sleeping there had scratched so many letters and words in the stone with something that I don't think that there was a single inch of the rock that was unscathed. I spent so long trying to read all that chicken scratch that I didn't see the skulls lining the bottom of the cave walls. So many I couldn't even count them.

And it looked like they were from every kind of animal that called Appalachia home. I was understandably nervous after seeing all of that, but my blood didn't run cold until I saw the skull that quite obviously belonged to a human being. I don't know how a person could get their hands on a human skull as there are so many old burial sites around these parts that it's not out of the question that they just maybe found one. But as we all know, that's not the only way a person can get their hands on a human skull, and I definitely didn't want mine to be the next skull lining that wall of that chamber.

After that, I wasn't too keen on hanging around as I had been previously, and although it was still raining like the deluge out there, I decided it was better to take my chances getting soaked than hang around and wait for whoever lived there to come back. They didn't seem like the kind of person that would appreciate the sudden appearance of a stranger, and from the way that bedroll looked, they'd been sleeping there recently too. I've been up to those parts of the Smokies since, but I've stuck to the trails since I found that cave. And anyone I bump into in that area, I always tell them to be wary of strangers.

Even folks who seem kind-hearted and friendly, such as myself. Because like I said, the hills get into people's heads in a way that changes them. Not for the better, but for the worse. For a few summers back when I was a kid, I used to go to a summer camp in the Shenandoah National Park. This place is long gone now, which is a real shame because I have a lot of happy memories of spending a week in the woods up there with some of my friends. For the first few years before heading off to sleep, we'd do the stereotypical campgrounds thing of telling stories around the fire or playing flashlight tag. But then this one year, the camp counselors had us playing this really weird game every so often. It was called Invisible, and the idea was that you ran back to your cabin and either hid under the bunk beds or under your sleeping bag on the top bunk, whichever you were assigned.

Then the counselors would inspect each cabin and whichever had the most invisible kids got extra marshmallows or s'mores or whatever the after dinner treat was that evening. I remember thinking it was a pretty weird game, and it definitely wasn't as fun as flashlight tag, but whatever it took to get extra marshmallows, I was down for. We didn't play it so often that any of the kids complained, and it did get kind of fun once we all got the hang of it. I remember the best part being the race back to the cabins and how I was one of the fastest kids there, so I always made it back to our cabin first, which obviously earned me a lot of praise from the camp counselors. We didn't find out why we

were playing that game until years later, when we were old enough to recognize just how weird it really was. Basically, a prisoner had somehow managed to escape the RSW Regional, which is the county jail over near Front Royal. Sheriff's deputies then figured out that the guy had then made his way up into the park because a bunch of food kept going missing from all these campgrounds. Like obviously human theft too, not just bears being bears. The really scary thing is, the guy had been picked up for attempting to kidnap an elementary school girl after following her home from her bus stop. He did it in broad daylight too, right in front of their chaperone. Guy just didn't seem to care, I guess, who saw him do it. Looking back on it, we were obviously at risk and stuff, but the people I really feel for were the counselors. Hearing that news must have made them sick with fear knowing that there was that kind of threat to us just lurking out in the woods.

Camp did actually end early that year for a lot of us and kids parents came to pick them up whenever they were able so it's not like they just kept us there in spite of the risk or whatever. They just had to think of something to keep us safe while they organized getting all of us out of there. My dad said the way some of the counselors looked, it was obvious they just hadn't slept in a couple of days. They must have been keeping watch at night in shifts or something than having to wake up at normal hours to be extra vigilant where we did all of our regular activities so as not to give away that anything was wrong. This particular memory stands out to me because we didn't know anything bad was happening at the time. We were all just blissfully ignorant to how much danger we were in. And then when camp ended early, we were all just so bummed about it. But then our parents couldn't exactly tell us why it had ended because it no

doubt would have traumatized us. I mean, knowing we were in such danger for a while and there was nothing we could do about it other than run and hide. Really makes you question what else was going on during our childhoods that was just a cover for something we were too young to handle. Christmas of 1990 was supposed to be a truly joyous occasion for the Salt Lake City-based Tita family. 20-year-old Linnae Tita and her 16-year-old sister Trish were particularly looking forward to visiting the family's cabin up in the mountains, where they and their extended relatives would gather every year to celebrate the holidays. The cabin was nestled at the bottom of Weber Canyon, near a place called Oakley, and was so far away from any main roads that the family had christened it Tita's Tranquility,

due to the peace and solitude that could be found there. The place was so isolated that during heavy winter storms, the cabin was completely cut off from the outside world and could only be accessed via snowmobile. Naturally, this made it the perfect place to get away from the rat race of the big city, yet it would also leave the family extremely vulnerable to anyone with ill intentions who happened to cross the cabin while they were there. After turning the cabin into a picture of perfect Christmas coziness, the family headed into Salt Lake City in order to engage in some last-minute holiday shopping. And while they were gone, two men who had been trudging through the snowy wilderness

suddenly stumbled across the cabin and decided to force their way inside. The men were named Vaughn Lester Taylor and Edward Stephen Delly, two parolees who had gone on the run from their halfway house a week earlier, the same halfway house they were supposed to be using as a base for job hunting. Edward had been sent to prison for five years back in 1989 following a conviction for arson, while Vaughn had been doing 15 years for aggravated burglary. After breaking into the cabin, the two men set about warming themselves up before pilfering some of the T-Day's family's food and drink. Then they found the family's video camera and recorded themselves ransacking the cabin, even going so far as to film themselves opening the family's Christmas presents while making a mockery of the holiday season.

Vaughn believed that they would swiftly move on from the cabin for fear of getting caught, but to his surprise, Edward revealed that he had no intention of vacating Tita's tranquility. In fact, he planned to, as he phrased it, shoot some people. Later that day at around 3.30pm, Lene Tita, along with her mother and grandmother Beth and Kay Tita, returned to the cabin following their shopping trip. The snow was just light enough on the ground for them to have driven to and from Salt Lake City, so after parking up their vehicle, they walked inside the cozy cabin to warm their bones. But then as soon as they walked into the kitchen, their little slice of winter heaven turned into nothing short of pure hell. Lene Tita later said that from behind the refrigerator came a frizzy-headed man in a

gray sweatshirt with his pistol pointed at me. As soon as my mom came to the top of the stairs, out from the back bedroom another robber with really thick coke bottle glasses on was pointing a gun at my mother. Linnaeus also said that she believed that they were about to be robbed, but when her mother began praying aloud in the moments following the ambush, Vaughn Taylor told her the prayers wouldn't do any good, because he worshipped the devil and had come for their souls. At that, Vaughn pulled the trigger, executing Kay before shooting Beth in the head. Linnaeus was both terrified and traumatized by what she had witnessed, but her horror only deepened when she realized that her father and sister would also be arriving

back at the cabin in the next few minutes. She begged the invaders to leave, telling them that they were welcome to whatever they pleased. But it was far too late. Vaughn and Edward were reveling in the power they now wielded, lost in a haze of pure bloodlust, and as they heard Rolf and Trish Tita pulling into the driveway, they relished in the sadism of having two new victims. They ambushed the two unexpecting Titas as they exited their vehicle, dragging them into the cabin at gunpoint. My dad could see tears in my eyes, Lene later said, and it was an unspoken communication, and he knew, at that point, that something awful had happened to Mom and Grams.

Edward and Vaughn made the trio kneel in the cabin's main room, then told the girls to watch as Edward aimed his pistol at Rolf Tita's head. It must have seemed like a sick joke as Edward first shot misfired, a dull click echoing around the room as the girls begged and screamed for mercy. Edward cleared the bullet from the chamber, then once again pulled the trigger, but yet again the gun misfired and failed to send the bullet flying down the barrel. It was almost as if divine intervention was at play, almost like a merciful deity had decided that there had been enough bloodshed at Tita's tranquility.

But if there really was some kind of message being sent from the beyond, it was almost certainly lost on the two bloodthirsty felons. Edward Deli cleared the second stoppage from the chamber, racked a third and final round into his pistol, and fired. This time there was no failure to ignite the bullet's gunpowder, and the metal slugged ripped through Rolf Tita's face, sending him crumpling into the carpet. After executing Rolf, the two home invaders found themselves a can full of gasoline, poured some of the contents over the man's lifeless corpse, and set it on fire. They then

did the same to the rest of the cabin, dousing it in the flammable liquid as they forced the two surviving Tita girls to load up their snowmobiles with food and liquor. Then as the cabin burned, each of the men forced one of the girls out onto a snowmobile to ensure their compliance, then they took off through the snow. Tita's tranquility was certainly isolated, but the geography of Weber Canyon ensured that the sound of the gunshots echoed for a considerable distance. A distant neighbor had instantly recognized the ominous sound and had rushed outside to see the two snowmobiles driving off towards the horizon. Instinctually, knowing that something was horribly wrong,

they had instantly contacted local law enforcement to inform them of the potential danger. 16-year-old Trish later stated that she was terrified that she and her sister would simply be executed once they got to a main road, so she frantically racked her brains for a means of escape. I had all kinds of different plans to wreck the snowmobile, Trish stated, of how to throw him off into a tree, how to get rid of him. But all I could think of is I couldn't leave my sister. There's no one to help us. There was nowhere to go. Then, by some stroke of pure luck, Trish and Linnaeus spotted their uncle Randy who was out for a walk near the trail they were riding down. Assuming they were out taking some friends for a ride, Randy waved at them, not realizing that he was actually putting his own

life in danger. As the girls responded in any way, there's no doubt that either Edward or Vaughn would have opened fire on him, but in a display of remarkable composure for two girls their age, both Trish and Linnaeus ignored his greeting and simply carried on riding through the snow towards the nearby highway. I knew his life could be in danger, Linnaeus explained. I knew if these men knew Randy was her uncle, that they would have killed him. Edward and Vaughn then forced the girls to take them to one of the Tita's family's vehicles, which happened to be parked up by the highway in full view of their uncle Randy. They forced the girls into the back of the car and as they took off,

Randy watched in confusion as the girls refused to acknowledge his presence. At one point, Edward and Vaughn asked who the man waving at them was, but the girls denied all knowledge, stating that he must have been an overly familiar neighbor who had no idea what was actually occurring. Yet as the car disappeared out of sight, another vehicle came into view. It was the Tita's third snowmobile, and the man who rode it was wearing no winter clothing of any kind and had a face that was a mess of blood and charred flesh. It was Rolf Tita, who had somehow survived what should have been fatal injuries. Uncle Randy later spoke of the encounter with a major TV network, saying Rolf's face was

all swollen and caked with blood. One of his eyes was swollen shut and he actually had bloody icicles hanging from his face. It was that cold outside. He was in terrible shape. Rolf simply looked up at his terrified brother then murmured the words, I've been shot, my wife has been killed, and my daughters have been kidnapped. It transpired that the clothes Rolf had been wearing when he was set alight had been completely flame retardant, and despite the amount of gasoline that had been poured on him, his outfit had slowed the spread of the flames so that when he woke up, he was able to pull them off his body before he was completely engulfed. The bullet fired into his face had somehow failed to damage his brain or sever his spinal column,

so essentially, the shot had just knocked him out until the smell of the fire roused him from his unconsciousness. Then after waking up to find his cabin in flames, Rolf had jumped out onto the one remaining snowmobile, then raced after his attackers in a bid to rescue his two terrified daughters. Upon discovering his half-dead brother, Uncle Randy helped him into the passenger seat of his car before speeding off after the vehicle containing his nieces. Despite being a rare fixture in 1990, Randy's car was equipped with an old-style cellular phone, and as he and his brother raced after the girls' kidnappers, he made a hasty phone call to the Summit County Sheriff's Department. As sheriff's deputies joined the pursuit, a terrifying 90-mile-an-hour car chase ensued

as cops honed in on their kidnappers and ordered them to pull over. Instead of giving up willingly, Vaughn and Edward drove so recklessly that they ended up losing control of their vehicle and tumbling down an embankment. Miraculously, neither Trish nor Lene were injured in the crash, and as deputies surrounded the vehicle, both Edward and Vaughn decided it was better to give themselves up than risk dying in a hail of police gunfire. With Trish and Lene now safely in the

care of law enforcement, 25-year-old Vaughn Taylor and 21-year-old Edward Delly were each charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted first-degree murder, and two counts of aggravated kidnapping. At his trial in May of 1991, Vaughn Taylor pled guilty on the charge of murder and was sentenced to death just two weeks later. Edward Delly, on the other hand, was only convicted of second-degree murder and received a lesser sentence of life in prison. A huge boon for the prosecution was the testimony of Rolf Tita himself, as Trish recalled in a press interview after the murderer's convictions. I remember watching the look on Edward's face as he came in seeing my father.

It was very apparent to me that he did not know my father had survived, and the look on his face was priceless, like he had been defeated while my dad had survived. It was a moment of pure victory for us. A decade later in 2001, Edward Delly wrote a letter to Lene Tita, insisting that he was no longer the reckless young man who had helped murder her mother. Then, in an incredible display of mercy, Lene offered her forgiveness for his crimes, but added that she was glad that he would spend the majority of his life in prison. As for Von Taylor, he has continually pursued a number of appeals against his death penalty, arguing that it was Edward

Deli who committed the murders and that he was surprised and appalled when his partner began killing. He has also argued that his death sentence should be commuted on account of an apparent brain deficiency, and that he was manipulated into taking part in the crime by the younger and more malevolent of the two. Shockingly, his persistent pleas were eventually successful, and in the year 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Tina Campbell announced that she was overturning Taylor's death sentence because he was not given an adequate defense from his public defender. The decision was met with outrage by the surviving members of the Tita family, and a massive public campaign saw the decision reversed just last year

when a federal appeals court placed Vaughn Taylor back on Utah's death row. Today's ruling puts Taylor back on the road to justice, announced the state's assistant solicitor. But sadly, it does not end the case and permit Taylor's immediate execution. In the aftermath of such a heinous crime, Trish and Linnaeus Tita have refused to let the horrors of that December afternoon shape their lives for the worse. The family made it a point of poignant memorial that Tita's tranquility was completely rebuilt and restored, and an effort was made to make new happy memories there as a way of exercising the bad ones. Sadly, Rolf Tita passed away from cancer just a few years ago, and his daughters eulogized

him as nothing short of a hero to them. Yet this seems like a case of heroism recognizing heroism, as if it wasn't for the stoic actions of the girls on that fateful day, there's no doubt that more innocent people would have died at the hands of two evil and bloodthirsty maniacs, who were intent on ruining one of the most sacred times of year. So, back when me and my big brother were still fairly young, our parents weren't exactly very well off. Mom had been out of regular work for more than two years due to the childbirths and needing to take care of us, and my dad was still basically at entry level for his career. But because they worked so hard on carving out a life for us as a family, they were in dire need of a vacation. Only thing was, because of our financial situation, it had to be a real budget vacation,

which is how they found this cheap log cabin in the Cascades that was available for just over a hundred bucks a week. From what they've told us, it wasn't like it was one of those too-good-to-be-true kind of deals. There wasn't anything remotely suspicious about a place so rough around the edges. But from what the owner told them, it was quiet, secluded, and well off the beaten path. So the perfect place to get some peace and quiet away from the hustle and bustle of Seattle. I think all it took was making sure it was safe for kids, ensuring that there were no bodies of water around or anything, and then they went ahead and booked it for five days in June or July. I was really into animals and nature stuff back then, still am really, and my brother was a pretty chill kid so they could have taken him anywhere and he'd have found something to keep himself occupied. So when we arrived out to the cabin, we were both pretty excited with our new surroundings, even if it meant that we had to

share a bed in a small, rustic-looking one-room cabin. We didn't care if it was too small or if it was in the middle of nowhere. It was like a real adventure to us at that age. Being so immersed in nature was something I found really exciting. The first day, we arrived in the early afternoon and I remember running around the cabin with my mom before she took me and my brother out to explore the surrounding area. We had a small dinner that my dad cooked on the stove with groceries we'd bought and then we ended up playing board games until it was time for bed. Everything was perfectly normal for that first day and it was only during the night that I noticed something seemed to be off. I remember waking up

in the middle of the night to find that my dad was out of bed and was over by the small window near the cabin's front door. Mom was sat up in bed whispering to him in the low light. My brother stayed fast asleep as I asked him what was wrong and why dad was out of bed. I remember both of them kind of jumping when I spoke but I did surprise them so that figured. They told me dad couldn't sleep, how the bed was too small or something so he was just letting mom get some sleep before he went to bed himself. I do remember thinking that was kind of weird as the bed looked big enough for me, but at that age kids just kind of take their parents word over stuff like that don't they? So as they continued to whisper to each other in the darkness,

which I actually found very soothing even though I shouldn't have, I just went back to sleep. The next morning mom and dad were sat at the little table looking all worried and stressed about something. I could tell something was wrong, even at that age, but I was still excited to be on vacation, and I was definitely excited to get back into the great outdoors to try to spot some animals. I asked if I could play outside, and my parents said it was okay, just as long as I didn't go anywhere they couldn't see me from the window. If I couldn't see the window, I'd gone too far, and that's what they told me. So I opened up the cabin door, walked outside, and on the edge of the porch was what looked like this little figurine.

It was shaped like a tiny little man, and to me, it looked like it had been carved out of wood or something. I remember picking it up and playing with it for a little while, making the little guy run through the grass and jump out onto logs and stuff. Then the next thing I know, I saw one sitting on the hood of mom and dad's car, so naturally I ran over to grab that one too so I had two little stick men to play with. I was in the middle of my little game when my brother came outside. He's older than me, and back then he was definitely more attuned to mom and dad's moods. He told me something was wrong with them, that they seemed worried or sad about something, which made me sad too because it was supposed to be a happy little vacation for us,

an adventure, just like they'd said. I remember being it much harder to have fun after that, knowing that mom and dad were stressed or whatever, but still, I showed my brother the new toys I had and invited him to play along with me. I gave him one of the little figurines, but then he kept asking to play with the other one too, and it wasn't long before a childish scuffle started between him and me, and he attempted to wrestle the little figure out of my hand. It didn't take long before I started to cry, and that then prompted our mom and dad to come running out of the cabin at the sound of my cries. I don't remember them running out with any particular urgency, but years later they told us that the sound absolutely terrified them, especially in light of what had happened the night before. They asked what we were fighting over and that's how they discovered the little white figures we'd been playing with.

But right when my dad took them from my big brother, he immediately started asking us all frantically, where did you get these? Tell me where. He was so angry that my brother started crying too and just pointed at me while he said that it was me that had found them. I was already upset but I remember getting even more upset once I realized that we might be in trouble for having played with them. I told mom and dad exactly where I had found them, that they'd just been sitting there and how I hadn't stolen them or taken them from any other kid or anything. It seemed totally harmless to me, just playing with little wood carved figures. I had no idea that they weren't made of wood at all. The next thing I remember mom and dad had

rushed us back into the cabin then weirdly changed their approach as they reassured us that we weren't in any trouble, that we hadn't done anything wrong, and that they weren't mad at us at all. Mom proceeded to comfort me and my brother, but then I noticed how dad was packing all of our stuff back into our suitcases at like 100 miles an hour. He was the same way, making sure to put on a brave face as he got us ready to get out of there. And then they both explained that they had to take us home early because dad needed to go back to work on something. I can't remember the exact excuse but they promised us that it wasn't because we'd misbehaved or anything and we could carry on

playing in the backyard when we got home. I asked if we could take the little figures home with us and both of them almost snapped at me when they said no right at the same time. Again I associated this with me having done something wrong as the whole episode seemed to be centered around the two white carvings. Within maybe 10 or 15 minutes I'm not sure but I know it was fast, we were back in the car and driving back to Seattle again with this real tense mood in the car as we drove. It was still pretty tense for the rest of the day. But then the next, mom took us out into the small backyard that we had and told us that we could have our very own little nature play session right there.

It was only a small backyard, but we still had fun watching for birds and we were in the suburbs at the time so just seeing the odd squirrel made me and my brother so excited. Then we had a little picnic, ran around the grass and the sun and within a day all the trouble back at the cabin was forgotten about among me and my brother. So cut to like 20 years later. It's during the holiday and me and my brother had come home to have Christmas dinner. We're sitting around reminiscing in the TV room, talking about this and that when my brother suddenly brings up the aborted cabin vacation from when we were kids. He hadn't forgotten about the two little figures, but he wasn't entirely sure if I had stolen them or not or why mom and dad seemed to get so weirdly mad about me finding and playing with them. Mom and dad gave each other this look as if to say, here goes. Then I remember

dad being like, shall you tell them or shall I? Mom just shook her head and covered her face with her hands like she couldn't bear to remember the whole thing. That's when dad launches into the actual story of what happened back then. A story that I'll share with you too. So, remember I mentioned waking up in the middle of the night and seeing dad out of bed and he and my mom were whispering to each other in the low light? That was because as they were drifting off to sleep, dad had heard someone moving around outside the cabin. Not like just walking by either. The footsteps were slow and careful, like whoever it was didn't want to be heard. That's how Dad ended up peering out of the window so late at night and although I didn't see it at the time, he had this old kitchen knife in his hand just waiting for someone to burst through the door.

That had scared them both pretty badly, but they didn't want to just bail on the vacation they'd already paid for, the one they both felt that they needed so badly. So although they were in two minds about it, they decided to stay one more night just to make sure that it wasn't some kids messing around or something. If it happened again, they were just going to leave. But they didn't even get that far, because right around the same time that they were discussing whether to stay another night, the incident with the little figurines happened. Remember me telling you how they looked like they were carved from wood, but that the wood was all pale, like almost white? It wasn't wood at all, and my dad almost instantly recognized that the little figurines

were made of bone. I'm not going to pretend to know which bone or what kind of animal they came from, I mean god forbid they came from a person or whatever, but like I said, dad was smart enough to recognize the texture and realize that whoever had been outside the previous night must have left them there, maybe even as a warning. I mean, you don't leave bone figurines on someone's porch as a welcome gift, do you? Not in the middle of the night, anyway. So instead of sticking around like they thought they might, they just, as they say, noped out of there. Like my dad figured that he could protect my family from some lone peeping tom, but from someone who carved stuff out of there. Like my dad figured that he could protect my family from some lone peeping tom but from someone who carved stuff out of bone to leave his creepy gifts,

that wasn't anyone he wanted to go up against. Personally I think that that was a smart move and I respect them for making the hard decision that they had to. Now 90% of horror movies are the dumb teens just not taking the hint about being somewhere that they're not supposed to be. But in real life, when you have your kids around to protect, there's no thinking it over at all when stuff like that hits the fan. You just get out of there and don't look back. So, I play amateur football here in Montana, and I've played for a couple of different teams now, but this one game I played back in 2014 ended really, really badly for me. I ended up getting my bell rung, which was bad enough, but when I woke up and tried to move, what I can only describe as the worst pain of my life

just shot up through my leg. I hear one of the guys near me say something like, oh my Jesus Christ dude, look at his leg. So I knew that it must have been pretty bad. But what I didn't realize was that it was a complete compound fracture that had taken almost a full year to heal. My tibia had torn right out through the meat of my skin, meaning I needed to be rushed into surgery or I might have actually lost my leg. Then once that whole process was out of the way, I needed some serious rehab in order to get back on my feet. I put on a bunch of weight, ended up getting hooked on pain meds for a while, which was a whole other drama. I basically became a totally different person over the course of about 6 or 7 months.

I was probably at the lowest point of my life so far and I knew it was going to be a hard road to get back to playing football again. But my first goal was to lose the weight and gain back the strength in my legs that I needed for harder forms of training. Trouble was, I felt seriously embarrassed getting back in the gym, which I know was kind of a dumb issue that was completely in my head, but it felt pretty real to me at the time. So I opted for another kind of exercise to get me back into shape, and that was hiking. My hiking spot of choice ended up being this one particular trail in the Beaverhead Deer Lodge National Forest, which is about 30 miles or so south of my hometown of Butte. I drive down

to this little town called Wise River, park my truck near this awesome little saloon whose owner I got pretty friendly with, then I try hiking up to Round Top Mountain, getting further and further to the summit with every try. Between the buck and change in weight that I put on and my weak shin, it was absolute agony at first. I remember this one time when I was sitting down on a log at the side of the trail, pouring Advil down my neck and feeling like a complete piece of trash. I looked up the trail, way up, and saw this log cabin sitting there on a ridgeline, looking all lofty and king-like and staring out over the valley. I told myself,

I'm going to make it up to you one day, and when I do, I'm going to drink from my water bottle like it's champagne. That became my goal over the summer, make it all the way up to that cabin on the ridge, as surely by that point my leg would be back to normal and I'd be back to my usual 190 pounds. So that was me, for almost the whole month of July, hiking up round top at least twice a week and feeling it get a little bit easier each time. Then one day, I finally did it. And my god, seeing that cabin up close and personal came with a feeling of pure elation. Only thing was, I'd completely sank the contents of my water bottle by the time I'd reached it, and since it'd be at least another hour of a hike back to my truck, I figured that I might as well see if the owners had an outside faucet or something that I could use to fill up my bottle.

So I start walking up the trail, then turn off to walk up the path that leads to the cabin. Then as soon as I got within earshot, I can hear someone singing on the inside. That was kind of a relief to know someone was home, and I'd definitely get some water. I wasn't worried if I'd be welcome or not, as someone singing that loud to themselves would sound like a happy kind of tune. I doubted that they'd be grumpy enough to turn away a stranger asking for water, especially on such a hot summer's day. I get right up close to the front door of the cabin, and inside the man was still singing a song. And to this day, I remember almost exactly what the lyrics were.

Babies packed her soft things and she's left me, and I know she didn't mean to make me cry. It's not her heart, it's not her mind. She didn't mean to be unkind. She even woke me up to say goodbye. I looked it up later, and it's from a Jerry Lee Lewis song called She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye. Kind of a bright country kind of sound to it, but the lyrics are much sadder than the tune lets on. The way the guy was singing it all loud and stuff, he was either in sort of a good mood or really drunk, and both would probably lead me to getting a drink of water. Next thing, I knock on the guy's door and announce myself but then he doesn't respond in any way so I figure that he might have had earbuds or

headphones on or something. The door to the cabin is slightly ajar, something which I noticed after knocking on it so while half praying that he didn't freak out and shoot me or something, I edge the cabin door open to look inside and maybe give him a wave to let him know I was there. I pushed the door open and I see the little kitchen and dining room is empty, with the singing coming from the bedroom now. Somehow, the guy hadn't heard me, but that made sense considering the whole place stunk of really strong booze. But then there was something else in the air, something that smelled almost metallic. Before I had a chance to really think on what it was, the owner of the cabin

appears shirtless from the bedroom area, carrying a jug of what looked like moonshine or some other kind of homebrew. But he wasn't drinking it. He was splashing it all over the floor for some reason, and when he locks eyes with me, he had this kind of oh crap look on his face that made me very, very nervous. Then right as I'm backing out from the open doorway, I see why he looks so frightened about being disturbed. In the corner of the small room, there was a woman sitting slumped on the floor with her back to the wall and above her is this smear of blood like she just slid down the wall after being stabbed or

shot or something. I turned to run, just not really thinking about it, just knowing that I wanted to get out of there. But instead of running the way I came, which would have made for an easy shot should the guy have pulled a gun out or something, I go running through the trees at the side of the house for more cover. Keep in mind, I can't exactly run properly at this stage. My shin is still hollering at me something fierce, so if I had gone off running the way of the trail, the guy would have been able to just line me up in his sights and shoot me down like shooting fish in a barrel. My fears were confirmed when I heard this gunshot go off behind me and somehow that got rid of the

pain in my leg almost instantly. Adrenaline is one heck of a drug it turns out. I almost went tumbling down the slopes a bunch of times and I think I just skidded down on my butt for most of it but I eventually got to a point where I felt like it was safe enough for me to pull out my cell phone to try and call 911. I was able to tell the cops about the body, about the shot that I thought was fired at me, how the guy looked like he was about to burn his place down so they better get there quick. But then there is no fast way of getting up a steep hill like Round Top, and by the time the cops got there, I think the place was fully

ablaze. I think that was the case anyways. I mean, I could see the smoke all the way from my car when I hiked back there, and after I drove back home, I only got the full story when the cops came to talk to me about exactly what I'd seen. They think the guy had gone through his wife's phone or something and found out that she was cheating, then he flew into a rage and shot her. Only what I didn't see was that he'd shot his two kids too and he'd stacked their bodies on the bed before dousing the place in what the cops also believed was some kind of homemade liquor. After that, he didn't come out to take a shot at me.

He just walked outside his burning cabin and shot himself in the head. That was the shot that I heard. The one that made me run like hell. It made for a real open and shut case from what I can tell. Not much to investigate, not many questions to ask, just a whole lot of insaneness that's better left forgotten about, I suppose. But then, what if I can't forget about it? What if every time I look south, up at the hills, I think about the way he was just singing to himself after that guy had taken his own kids' lives. I just don't get why he wanted to make them victims of a situation that was so

messed up to begin with. How can a person feel that entitled to the lives of their own children? Like I said, I think I've come to the depressing conclusion that good things are only fleeting. But then, seeing something like that I did up there on Round Top, those bad things I was talking about, they have a habit of staying with you for much longer than anyone might like them to. The End Every fall, I take me and my family out to a cabin in the woods up in Maine. Don't let the whole cabin in the woods thing fool you. It's a very bougie kind of experience, and although my kids would roll their eyes at me using that word, I don't think they'd be quite so pleased with the place if it wasn't for how upmarket it actually is. It has a hot tub outside, a full kitchen, pretty spectacular internet for rural Maine,

but I think my favorite part has to be the cozy TV area with its fireplace and sliding glass door. The glass doors face out west and because the cabin is built in a clearing at the crest of a gentle slope, the sunsets are absolutely incredible. Paying for a hot tub is one thing, but seeing the way the setting sun lights up the ready orange leaves and makes them look like they're on fire,

that's something that money can't buy right there. But by some horrid twist of fate, those sliding glass doors ended up being part of one of the scariest things I'd ever seen with my own two eyes. They both protected us and presented us with something so horrifying that I don't think I'll ever get it out of my mind. And every time we visit that luxurious log cabin up in Maine, it pops into my mind at some point and it's guaranteed to make me shudder. We're going back more than 10 years for this, all the way back to 2010 when my daughter was still in middle school and my son was just only out of diapers. Me and my wife had just put my

son to bed and my daughter was in her room playing the Nintendo thing that we just got her for her birthday. So for the first time all that day, me and my wife were just enjoying each other's company in the TV room, watching the sun set and sharing a bottle of wine. We're just gazing out the glass doors, silently basking in the fact that we'd overcome so much to be where we were, when suddenly, a dog comes into view. It looked like a mongrel of sorts as just lazily wandering into our view before stopping and letting its tongue loll out of its mouth in the way that dogs do. My wife said something like, ah, look at that little guy, you think he's lost? But the dog seems to hear her talk and returns its head in our direction. That's when I noticed that there

was something not quite right about it. Its ribs were showing, which made me think it was a stray, but I also noticed those flecks of white spittle around its mouth, some of it matted into the fur at the corners of its jaws. My wife, being the kind-hearted soul that she is, asked if we should maybe give the poor thing some food and a bowl of water, since she too thought that it looked like a stray. She was halfway around to getting up off the couch when I just gently put a hand on her thigh and asked her to sit back down. She acted like I was being some sort of Scrooge, not wanting to feed and water a starving animal. But when I told her that I thought the dog might have rabies,

she suddenly understood why I didn't want her opening the glass doors. After she sat back down, I got up to take a closer look at the thing just to make sure that I wasn't being overly protective or paranoid. But just as I got near the glass, the dog suddenly began baring its teeth and began snarling so loud we could hear it through the thick glass of the sliding doors. I immediately froze in fear, amazed that even though it looked like nothing more than a domesticated dog, its anger could have such a profound effect on me. It looked truly ferocious, like it actually wanted to rip my throat out. And I realized how fortunate we are that most dogs have the friendly disposition that made them man's best friend. Rather than antagonize it any further,

I tried to just back off away from the glass doors, intending to find my phone so I could call animal control or something. But then the second I turned to show my back, it began bounding towards us, something I'd never have known about if it wasn't for my wife shouting, oh my god, at the top of her lungs. I turned just in time to see the dog's face colliding with the glass door, and it made such an ungodly thudding sound that it makes my skin crawl just to think about today. The impact drew another frightened cry from my wife, which in turn had my daughter running into the room to see what had caused it. In that moment, my priority was getting my daughter out of the room so that she wouldn't have to see what was happening.

It was extremely distressing, even for us grown adults, so I can only imagine how disturbing it must have been for her. Just seeing the slight smear of blood on the glass, and the dog walking in a dazed circle outside while yelping and hacking enough was to cause her to burst into floods of confused, frightened tears. And although I was sorry to do it, I had to yell at her to get her out of the room again. My next priority was obviously animal control, as I was never really afraid that the thing was going to break through the glass, certainly not after that first attempt which seemed

to have completely stunned the poor thing. But after that while I dialed an operator and asked them to connect me with local animal control I watched in horror as the dog tried to literally bite its way through the glass. It was raking its teeth against it, its fat, swollen tongue lolling out the whole time. And that's when I realized that it wasn't so much that it was just hot or thirsty. Its tongue was just so big and swollen to actually sit in its mouth properly. Blood was leaking out of its nostrils from the impact against the glass, with more smearing over it as it continued to try to bite its way inside. It still looked furious, like it would most likely attack us if it did somehow

manage to break through, but at the same time, a look would come into its eyes every so often that to me, looked so much like desperation that broke my heart. It was like it was silently crying out to us, help me, please help me, where there was nothing we could do. I'm not the type to keep a gun in the house and even if I was, I'm not sure I have the heart to shoot an animal like that, no matter how much it's suffering. All I could do was wait for the animal control officer to call us back, as he wasn't picking up his phone immediately and then tell him where exactly we were and what condition we'd seen the dog. It had wandered off long before the call came, but my wife had barely managed to calm herself in that time. I can't say that I've done a better job either, as like I said, the whole thing was one of the single most horrifying things I'd ever been witness to. In the years that followed, my

daughter became a huge fan of the TV show The Walking Dead, and I was always surprised that she didn't make the connection between the virus and the show and what she'd seen back at the cabin that day. Naturally, we had to explain to her that the dog was rabbit, how dangerous a disease it was, and how she should learn to recognize symptoms of such animals so she could get away from them. Personally, I find it fascinating that people like her take an interest in a fictional zombie apocalypse and talk about it like it's an impossibility. We have a zombie virus here on earth. It actually exists. Something that can turn animals and maybe people into furious, foam-frothing creatures that can pass on their disease through their bites. We don't have to imagine it. We don't

have to invent it. It's real. It's with us. And that one little fact scares the absolute crap out of me. One of the worst days of my life started when me and a hiking buddy of mine came across this run-down old hunting cabin out in the woods. I mean, it was so shabby looking that we couldn't have imagined it being anything but abandoned, so we didn't see any harm in exploring it a little before we moved back onto the trail that we'd been wandering down. We walk inside, start looking around, only to see that it didn't look that abandoned at all. The stove had clearly been in use sometime in the last day or so, as it still smelled like burning wood and there were a couple of food wrappers strewn about with what looked like some torn open first aid supplies. Someone had definitely been there recently, so instead of continuing our little trespassing thing, we decided to just move on instead of

risking making their owner angry or whatever. But then, that's when we hear this really faint noise coming from somewhere, something that sounded an awful lot like a person's voice. I look at my buddy as if to say, you hear that? Then we both stand real still for a second and strain our ears, only to hear a distinct, help me, coming from underneath us.

This hit us like a ton of bricks, and we start looking around for some kind of hatch or something, and end up finding the opening to a root cellar outside. We open it up to find some random guy, covered in blood, with what we thought was a gunshot or stab wound to one of his legs. I remember asking the guy, what happened to you? And his reply was honestly one of the most haunting things I've ever heard in my life. He just said, you have to help me. He'll be back soon. Jesus, dude. It was like something out of a horror movie. Like that stomach-dropping moment you realize that main characters have stumbled into a whole world of trouble.

Only, we were the main characters, and it wasn't some dumb story that we were going to survive with a happy ending. It was real and we had no idea what to do next. We kept asking like who will be back, who did this? But the guy just kept begging us to help him get out of the cellar. Obviously that was the first thing we did as he basically answered our questions in the way that he was all messed up and obviously scared of whoever was coming back. We helped him out of that cellar, got one of his arms over each of our shoulders then helped him limp down the trail back towards where we'd first walked onto. No one ever caught up with us. The person who had shot or stabbed him never ran down the trail behind us. But my god, the whole time I was checking behind us just expecting to see some machete-wielding psycho running out of the woods intent on killing us. We managed to flag down a truck that was passing down one of the main roads that ran through the park and the guy was nice enough to rush the dude to the hospital even though he'd gotten blood all over his upholstery.

Turned out the guy survived and that the person who had attacked him was his hunting buddy who just snapped after some kind of argument. It's crazy that a person would do something like that to someone they called a friend but I guess weirder things have happened. Definitely the scariest thing that's ever happened to me while out on a hike And my buddy says the same thing It was that line of He'll be back soon That I'll never forget though How it was just so eerie that it literally had me trembling with fear as we helped the guy get to safety And I sometimes wonder how close we were to getting the same treatment

That maybe if we had been a little bit earlier or later The guy might have done the same thing. That maybe if we had been a little bit earlier or later, the guy might have done the same thing to us, just to keep us quiet. The story happened about two years ago when I was 19. My foster sister, Kira, was 16. For the sake of the story, it's important to know that I was female presenting and hadn't come out as trans yet, nor was I presenting myself in an overtly masculine style at the time. It was the summer before I was going to college, and I mostly lived with my mom and Kira except for every other weekend, where I'd stay with my dad. Now summers, where I am, can get really hot and humid, so we had a bad habit of waiting to walk the dogs until 6 or 7pm,

because that's when it'd be cooler but still light outside. On this particular evening, mom wasn't going to be home until late, though I don't remember the exact reason why. She's a woman that likes to stay busy and often participates in choirs, bible studies, youth group events, classes, and the like, so it wasn't uncommon for Kira and I to be left home alone until 8 or 9pm. So, it was up to me and Kira to walk the dogs by ourselves, unless we wanted our younger dog, Samson, to throw tantrums due to pent-up energy. Even though we lived in the countryside and could have walked them down our street, Kira and I decided to drive out 20 minutes to a park instead.

Why? I don't remember. It could have been anything from being bored walking our roads to not wanting to have to deal with blind curves and hills. Whatever the reason, at around 7.30pm Kira and I harnessed our two dogs, packed them up in the car and drove to the park. Let me quickly explain the layout of the park so it's easier to understand why we got nervous halfway through our walk. This park isn't very big, but it's popular because of its loop. The entire park is surrounded by a mile-long looping road with its attractions like playgrounds, ponds, and a small country hall, spaced about in the inner side of the loop. The outer side is just grass, trees, and one playground at the end. Thus, it's common and expected to pass people

walking the loop at least two times if you're walking in opposite directions. But not if you're walking in the same direction, obviously. Any cars on this road can only drive in one direction because it's a one-way road. At first, everything about this walk was normal. I parked the car, we clipped our dog to leashes, and we started on the loop. Every so often we'd stop so I could take pictures for our good boys, particularly of Kira trying to wrangle Samson, who pulls like his life depends on it and weaves around cause he wants to smell everything. It was while I was taking one of these pictures that the first encounter happened.

A man who looked to be in his 40s walked past us, walking the same direction we were, up towards the playground on the outer side of the loop. He smiled at Kira, nodded, said hello or cute dogs or something like that and kept walking. I honestly didn't think anything of it. We're at a park at a time of day where it's common to walk around due to the cooler temperature, and people where I am are generally friendly. Smiling and saying hi is pretty normal, no matter who says it. We smiled back, said hi or thanks depending on what he said, and that was that.

Or so we thought. This man passed us again only ten minutes later, directly across from where we'd seen him previously. Just like he did before, he smiled and said hi. This time Kira and I looked at each other once he was already ahead of us and said, well that was weird. Just ten minutes earlier, he had passed us walking up towards the playground and subsequently broke off from the loop, and he'd been walking in the same direction as us. This time though, he cut in front of us, and he did it in a way where we had to stop to avoid running into him. Heck, he even nearly touched Kira with how close he was walking. That was already weird in and of itself. The other weird part was him cutting past us in the opposite direction. The only way he

could have done that was if he had cut across the inside of the loop, since it would have been close to impossible to pass us, at our certain point from the other direction, if he decided to walk the opposite way of the loop than us. It came off almost like he wanted to walk by us again. But, just like before, Kira and I brushed this weirdness off. The guy could have been enjoying a rambling stroll and doing his own thing for all we knew.

Besides, we had two reasonably sized dogs with us, who'd mess with us? Not even five minutes later, this man passed us again, once again cutting so close past us that he nearly brushed shoulders with Kira. Again, he smiled and said hi before walking off. This was officially the moment I decided we needed to leave. Sure, it's normal to pass a person at least two times walking this loop if you're going in opposite directions, but doing so takes a while. You have to at least get to the parallel spot in the loop from where your paths first intersected to see each other again.

But the time between running into the guy and the location we passed each other didn't match up in a way that didn't look suspicious. Plus, I really wasn't a fan of how he cut across us. The first time he passed us like a normal person, walking faster than us would, albeit a little close. The second time, he cut in front of us from the opposite direction instead of walking around us, to the point that we had to stop to avoid running into him. This third time, however, he walked up behind us, and did this weird directionally slant walk to cross the street and go in the opposite direction, cutting us off again. So yeah, I told Kira to hustle so we could get to our car and get out instead of doing a second loop, so that's what we did.

When we were almost to our car, we noticed a car creeping along behind us. We pulled to the side and stopped to let it pass, but for a second, it stopped too. We figured he was getting ready to park so we started walking again. The car started creeping along behind us soon after we did. So we stopped again and the car stopped with us. This is when Kira got nervous. We hadn't seen the middle-aged guy since the third cutoff so we figured that we had overthought the whole thing. But here we were. With this tinted window car acting incredibly sus.

Was it the same guy, back with his car? A different guy? We couldn't tell. Before anything could happen though, another car idled up to the one next to us and whoever it was sped up to the expected 5 miles per hour. We got to our car pretty fast after that and practically picked up the dogs to get them inside of it. We got in and got out of there. My mistake however was neglecting my rear view mirror and the well advised rule not to drive straight home if you're worried a stranger has taken too much interest in you. I was anxious, dumb and primarily concerned with getting home where we could be safe. Because home is safe, right? Nothing bad is supposed to happen to you there, right?

Ah, my naive false sense of security. I think we got home around 8 something. The sun had finally disappeared behind the horizon, but it wasn't fully dark yet. Just that dusty purple color the sky gets before it finally accepts that it's night time. Mom wasn't home yet so we got the dog some water, locked the doors, ate a late dinner and chilled in the living room talking about things that didn't really matter. It was almost 9.30 when the scariest part of this whole ordeal happened. There Kira and I were, sitting on different couches, talking about something or

other when we noticed the ceiling briefly light up over where Kira was sitting. An important note here is that Kira was sitting on a small couch with her back to the window that faces the front of the house, while I was on a couch on the opposite wall where I could see a sliver of the front porch. Likewise, right next to Kira was our front door which has three small rectangular windows on it. Due to our long, slightly curvy driveway, it's common to see headlights stream through that window, light up the ceiling, fade, then intensify. It means someone's just got home. So when the ceiling above Kira lit up, we thought nothing of it Assuming mom was finally coming back from wherever she went that night And we didn't take any notice of the light skipping the final arc of someone pulling all the way up the driveway either

We also didn't pay any mind to how long it was taking mom to come inside Mom has a habit of pulling in then checking her phone for god knows how long before coming inside. After a couple of minutes I noticed the small motion sensor light mom set up on a table on the porch light up again. Again I could only see a sliver of space based on my position in the curtains. Basically I could see a smidge of the table and the rails bordering our porch but not its stairs or anything approaching the door depending on how they approached it. I wasn't paying much attention either because I assumed it was my mom. Right after the light went off, we both heard the storm door open, but we didn't hear anyone pressing the code keys of our lock or jiggling the door handle like mom usually does right away. The moment that a storm door creaked open,

our two dogs jumped up and ran to the door, barking like mad. Our golden greyhound mix, Calvin, has a deep, scary bark which contradicts his adorable appearance. Samson, our dumb goofball son who is incapable of hurting a fly but a big boy, jumps up on his hind legs and scrambles to find perches on one of the small windows in a desperate attempt to see who's outside. Immediately the storm door slammed shut and we heard heavy footsteps on the cement of our porch. Calvin started going nuts and jumped up on Kira's couch, standing on its back instead of the cushions to look out the window. Samson ran out of the room and went out to the doggy door that leads to the back porch,

which has a ramp going down into a fenced off portion of our yard. I couldn't move. I've never understood really what it meant when people described their limbs turning to lead until that moment. It felt like I didn't have limbs really. Like moving wasn't an option. If I moved I might glimpse something or someone through the windows. The person could see me running around the house, freaking out and decide to come after us after all. So I sat there, my mind steadily going blank as my heart sped up and limbs refused to move. In the game of fight, flight, or freeze, I'm the freezer. Kira, on the other hand, is a fighter. She spins around and looks out the window but can't see anything because, besides the motion light on the porch, it's too dark. So naturally, she gets up, grabs a stray dog toy which just so happens to be a

tug-of-war rope with a ball on one end and opens the door. I tell her very calmly to shut the door and stay inside. She ignored me and stepped out onto the porch. She comes back inside after not seeing anything but to my utter disbelief she disappears to the kitchen, comes back with a knife, and goes outside again. This time she's gone for a handful of seconds before running back inside and slamming the door shut. Breathless, she tells me she went out a bit into the yard and saw the outline of a man by the run-down dog kennel we don't use anymore. When she saw him and froze, he moved. This time she listened to me when I told her to lock the door. I managed to call mom despite my head being empty and my limbs being lead,

and she convinced me to get up, make sure all the doors are locked, including the basement, and making sure the dogs were inside. I ended up making Kira go into the fenced up section to drag Samson back inside because I couldn't get my legs to move after thinking about doing it myself. Cowardly, I know. After mom got home and looked around, finding nothing, we called the non-emergency number for the police, not wanting to bother them in case we were overreacting. Two cops came by and walked around our yard and found nothing We got the sense that they didn't believe us but instead saw us as two overexcited girls with exaggerated imaginations Still, they humored us and told us, after we told them about the park, that If we think anyone might be following us or if someone's acting a little too creepy

Not to drive straight home and to check if anyone's following us And then they left a little too creepy not to drive straight home and to check if anyone's following us. And then they left. To this day, I'm pretty sure that the only people who believe someone with malicious intent came to our home in hopes of finding two teenage girls is Kira and me, though whether or not whoever it was was the guy from the park, we're not sure. But it's too coincidental, isn't it? That the day we have multiple encounters with this guy who goes out of his way to get close to us and a car inches along behind us, we also have an almost intruder type encounter. Plus, there were too many details that didn't add up to us having overly excited imaginations. We both saw headlights.

The motion detector on the porch turned on, the storm door opened and stayed open until Samson jumped up to look out the door's window. We heard footsteps, Keir saw someone, and the dogs don't run up to the door like that and bark their heads off if no one was there. I don't know if whoever was at our house was the same guy that ran into us at the park. If it was, I don't know if the reason he cut in front of us as close as he did was to test how our dogs would react to him, and them not caring at all or the first time wagging their tails convinced him that they weren't a threat. I don't know if he was in the car that inched behind us and stopped when we stopped. I don't know what would have happened if Calvin didn't have a scary

manic bark or if Samson wasn't tall enough to look out the high windows in the door. I don't know much of anything. What I do know is this. If you're out and about minding your own business and a stranger is taking a lot of notice of you, following you, frequently running into you or whatever, trust your gut. Don't drive or walk straight home. Meander, get to a public place or just take your time. Pay attention to your surroundings. You never know who is watching you. To be continued... My dad used to be a deputy sheriff back in the 80s and 90s and every so often we get him to tell us some crazy stories from back in the day. Then this one night, me, my dad and my brother are sitting around the fire pit my brother has in his backyard. We're just drinking beers, eating

leftover barbecue and it's ticking into the early morning when my brother starts talking about how he never heard any campfire ghost stories growing up. My dad laughs it off, telling him that regular old humans can be way scarier than any ghost story, so my brother asks if he'll tell us about the spookiest or creepiest call he ever got. Dad thinks it over for a minute or two and as he does, the jovial look leaves his face and he starts to come over all serious. Then he says something about how there were plenty of close calls when it came to armed suspects and stuff like that, but those were a more adrenalinebased fear, not the kind of thing that really creeped him out.

But then he tells us this one story about a kid who died in a really horrible way. Only it wasn't so much the way he died, it was the events leading up to it that really scared him. So, one morning, my dad gets a call that there's a body down by some railroad tracks, and when he arrives on scene, there's a body down by some railroad tracks, and when he arrives on scene, it's a total horror show. Body parts are everywhere, blood all over the tracks, and a complete and utter mess. He's trying to work out if it was an accident, or somebody had taken their own life, or something a little more sinister. So he heads over to some nearby houses to ask the owners if they saw or

heard anything the previous day. No, these houses are really, really close to the railroad tracks. So close that the security camera in this one guy's backyard, he'd been having trouble with some guy stealing tools from his backyard, actually faced the section of railroad where the kid's body had been found. My dad then asked the homeowner if he can review the footage just in case it caught anything important, and by pure happenstance, it just so happened to catch the whole thing. This kid, who had graduated high school just a month before, so in his late teens, walked up to the tracks in the middle of the night and just laid down on them like he was going to sleep. Obviously, this indicated that he was trying to take his own life, so they informed the family once they'd ID'd the body.

But his family were completely and utterly flabbergasted by the idea. The kid had just gotten word that his application to Vanderbilt had been successful, his dream college ever since middle school apparently. His girlfriend had gotten into Belmont too, so they were planning on getting married once their studies had finished. They had this real high school sweetheart romance going, so it wasn't like some sudden breakup had caused him to go temporarily crazy. In the end, no matter how much they dug into the kid's life, there was just no obvious reason why he might choose to take his own life like this. He was an all-American boy,

no drugs, no history of mental illness problems, and by all accounts, he had a great life ahead of him. So why would he ever choose to end it, especially in such a horrible way? Well, according to my dad, he doesn't think he did do it by choice, and it was all down to the way that he was walking towards the railroad tracks. He said the way the kid was walking was just plain odd. It wasn't swinging his arms at all, they were planted right by his sides, and even with the grainy security camera footage, you can tell that he had his head down, almost like he was asleep or something. This led them to explore the possibility that he had gotten really drunk, maybe even as

a way of celebrating his acceptance into Vanderbilt. Some people, especially first time drinkers or those that have drank heavily for the first time, sometimes have pretty weird or adverse reactions to alcohol, so he might have just been straight up wasted. But then after working that angle, there was absolutely no evidence that he drank any alcohol that night. Dad says they question local bars and checked their cameras, questioned the kid's friends while promising them that an admission of the truth would mean zero charges being leveled against them. They even went through the family's trash cans on the off chance that they might find an empty bottle or two, but like I said already, not a single trace of any alcohol consumption was

found. My dad said it left him with this really creepy feeling that the kid had somehow been hypnotized or something. I'll be honest, me and my brother kind of cracked up at that point, not too much and only out of like a break in the tension, a nervous laughter kind of thing, you know. I remember picturing the stereotypical thing of a dude with a chain watch swinging back and forth while saying, you're feeling very sleepy. But obviously that's not what my dad meant, and he didn't find it in the least bit funny as we suggested that that's what he meant with his half-buzz feigned bravado. It took him a second, but he rightfully corrected us that there's much

more tangible ways to hypnotize a person. How he'd looked into it to discover that the use of suggestion and relaxation techniques can make a person do almost anything when the hypnotist has the right skills. I remember asking him if he honestly thought that that was the case, that some evil hypnotist had talked a kid into laying down on some railroad tracks. I mean, it sounds too far-fetched for even the weirdest horror movie, and as much as my dad agreed that it was a very, very out there theory, he made an excellent counterpoint that the truth is sometimes much stranger than fiction could ever be.

When all was said and done, neither my dad nor the rest of the department could figure out exactly why the kid did what he did that night, and they were forced to just chalk it up to him taking his own life even though almost everything pointed to the idea that some other force was at play. Some of the other more religious deputies suggested that it might be some kind of evil spirit that took the kid in the prime of his life, making him do something that would snuff out all that potential while causing maximum pain and anguish to his family and friends. I'd like to think that we're all God-fearing people down here, my family included, but even that seemed like too much of a stretch for us.

My dad brought us up to have a more philosophical interpretation of the scripture, not the very literal kind that had Baptist preachers spitting fire and brimstone from their pulpits. Dad must have worked like a thousand different cases in his years and, surprise, surprise, it was never a demon or a spirit that robbed a store or was responsible for a hit and run. It was quite obviously always a human hand at work. He just couldn't see how it worked with the case of the kid and the railroad track. Like I said, in the end, the department had no choice but to list the cause of death as him taking his own life by train because as much as they had their suspicions, there was no way to adequately identify any kind of malevolent influence over the kid.

But just because he couldn't see it, doesn't mean it wasn't there. And the mystery of that poor kid's death haunted my dad for the rest of his law enforcement career. This experience is the reason why I'm deathly afraid of intruders breaking into my home. So I was 10 years old at the time and it was summer break after finishing 5th grade. Maybe the second or third week of June. I don't really remember why but my mom had to go to a dinner with some of her co-workers from the daycare that she worked at one night. She left my older sister, who was only 12, to watch over me. But my older sister was more so there to make sure that the house doesn't burn down rather than watching over me. So that night, my mom left for dinner and she said that she would be right back. I remember I was in the living room and my older sister was upstairs in her room. I was also

downstairs with Fenrir, who was a black Newfoundland that I grew up with my entire life. Unfortunately, by the time I was 10, he was showing his age. He couldn't walk, run, or stand up like he used to. We would usually have to help him get up and walk him outside to the backyard, which had a porch. The porch had a walkway that we had built so Fenrir could walk down easier. We would also have to bring his food and water bowls over to him, as he was always too tired to get up. So I'm watching TV in the living room with Fenrir lying down by the side of the couch. Suddenly I hear this loud growling.

I muted the TV, turned around and saw my dog growling and snarling at something. He then started barking at something. I looked over and saw that he was directing his attention at the back door that led to the backyard, but I didn't see anything as it was pitch black outside. Suddenly Fenrir just stood up with seemingly little to no effort and was violently growling and snarling and barking. Keep in mind, he hasn't been able to get up by himself in a while, so to just see him stand up like he was young again gave me quite the scare. I used to say that it was like as if Fenrir got possessed, and he was still directing his attention to the back door. Before I could react, Fenrir suddenly

jogged over to the back door and got up on his hind legs and started scratching on the glass that was on the door, still growling and barking. At first, I thought that a squirrel probably got up to the porch and came up to the door. But then I remembered that Fenrir wasn't even this aggressive towards squirrels or other wildlife. When he would see one when he was younger he would bark and chase it yes, but it was more so to scare the squirrel off rather than to actually hurt it. And to add to that, Fenrir was not an aggressive dog.

He was always sweet to people and other pets. He was also usually calm. So to see him going feral like that really did terrify me. He sounded like he wanted to kill something. I finally walked over to the back door that Fenrir was clawing at. I sort of pushed him away, surprised that he didn't snap at me, and I decided to put my face up against the glass to peek out and see if anything was there, but I didn't see anything. All the while, Fenrir was still scratching, growling, barking, and now baring his teeth and drooling to my right.

I'd then walked to the right, where there was a light switch that turned on the porch lights, and Fenrir went back into his spot, scratching and growling and whatever he was upset about. Then I flipped on the light switch, and the second that happened, I saw a man, dressed in all black, classic burglar outfit with gloves, a ski mask, and everything. At first, he was seemingly looking into the door with his face and hands pressed up against it, and when I turned on the lights, he got startled and took a few steps back. He then turned over to me and it was like time was frozen. We were both just frozen, staring at each other for a few seconds. And me being only ten and not really knowing what to do, I quickly reached out to the knob of one of the back doors, more specifically the door that Fenrir was still scratching at, and swung the door open.

The guy tried to run, but Fenrir was right on top of him. The guy wasn't even able to get off the porch before Fenrir latched onto him. When I say latched on, I mean latched on. Fenrir had first bitten down on the guy's leg and then moved and was biting down on the guy's arm. The guy tried to hit Fenrir off of him, but he just wasn't able to. And I was just frozen, staring down at Fenrir really biting down on this guy. To be honest, I was more so scared of my own dog than the guy that was most likely going to break in, since I'd never seen him be this aggressive in my entire life. I actually thought that Fenrir

was just going to straight up kill this guy. Eventually, the guy screams in agony, which I guess caused my sister to run downstairs to see what was going on. Not really sure why she didn't come downstairs when Fenrir was growling and barking the first time, but I digress. My older sister was freaking out and eventually did call 911. She then told me to go to the bedroom, which was also upstairs, so I did. I ran up to my bedroom and just stayed there, in shock of what I had just seen and the whole situation in general. A while later, the police showed up and my mom eventually showed up. She burst through my bedroom and basically gave me the tightest bear hug I'd

ever gotten from her. I remember that she was also crying, worried sick that I was hurt. While I was shaking up, I wasn't physically hurt. At one point, I finally go downstairs and see my older sister talking to a police officer while Fenrir was lying down next to her with some blood on his face, kind of like Cujo. I remember thinking, oh my god, Fenrir just killed somebody. And then I also remember that when I put my face up against the glass on one of the back doors to see what Fenrir was so angry about, I most likely put my face directly where the guy still had his face against it on the other side. So I made indirect eye contact with this guy before I turned the

lights without even knowing it. However, while the guy lost a lot of blood, he didn't die. And to be honest, I don't really know what happened to the guy afterwards other than he had to have gotten arrested. My mom was instantly looking into buying a new house and moving, and we all eventually moved when I was maybe 11 or 12. Unfortunately, before that first, I had developed my intense fear of dealing with intruders, so much so that I couldn't look outside windows when it was pitch black outside for a while because I was afraid I was just going to see a face right there. And second, a few months before we moved, we had to put Fenrir down because he was just too old now.

Needless to say that 2014, the year that my childhood and innocence died. I'm 18 years old now and I have since been able to look outside windows when it's dark outside now. While I still am afraid of intruders, it's not really as bad as it used to be. When I move out, I'm definitely getting a big dog of my own. I will forever be thankful for you, Fenrir. Had it not been for you, who knows what that guy could have done to either me or my older sister. This happened in 2019, but it's still in the back of my mind. I worked at Chick-fil-A. That night I was supposed to close, but I left at like 8pm-ish. I already know I'm going to spend like 30-45 minutes driving around to my usual Pokemon stops for Pokemon Go. At 8pm on Wednesday, there's some cars on the roads, but not many.

Smaller town with little police presence, not much crime happens here. I've done this before, I know which spots to go to. I'm driving to the spots I know I can reach from the inside of my car. Just got off of work from standing and being busy all day. I wasn't to the spots I know I can reach from the inside of my car. Just got off of work from standing and being busy all day. I wasn't about to go walking around when it was dark out anyways. The places I know have little to no cars at them. I pull into the parking lot by the high school field, spin the stops and click on a few Pokemon. I get ready to pull on the residential street. I'm kind of just sitting at the stop sign for a bit. No cars behind me. I'm not really in a hurry. Blinkers on. Then I turn

left onto the street. I see two cars in front of me. An older white SUV and a sedan in front of that. They're about four blocks ahead. I notice the SUV isn't really in its lane. It's driving in the middle of the road like it wants to pass the sedan. It definitely could have just passed it, the road was really wide and no oncoming cars. I'm glancing down at my phone in the cup holder, trying not to go too fast, kind of wanting the walking points. Then I notice the white SUV that was driving in the middle of the road is driving really slow on the shoulder of the road.

Maybe they notice me, wondering what I'm doing. Maybe I'm weirding them out. I click my phone shut and just start driving normally. I'm nearly behind the SUV now and it speeds up quickly, takes a hard right onto a street. I see the SUV pull into a driveway. As I'm passing that side street, I see the SUV going in reverse and now it's backing out of that driveway. I'm behind the other sedan now at a four-way stop. In my rearview mirror, the white SUV is turning back on the street. It's now going to be behind me. The sedan waits its turn at the four-way stop

then turns left. I wait my turn, then go straight. I'm watching to see if the white SUV goes straight too, and it does. The SUV had to wait its turn at the four-way stop so I'm a good four to six blocks ahead on this residential street. I want to lose this car so I'm going like 30 miles per hour when the speed limit is probably 20-25. I turn behind the church strip mall, the church has a playground behind it, but it's pretty much an alleyway. I lost the SUV. I stopped in the alley, waiting, looking in my side mirror, and sure enough, the white SUV is barreling down the street.

It almost passed me it was going so fast, but it spots me and turns into the alley where I'm parked, coming towards my car. I'm freaked out at this point. This alley street is dark and there's no street lights. The stores in the strip mall are abandoned but the church is on the other side and it's well lit, so I want to go there. I speed down the alley and around the building. The SUV is doing the same thing. I turn around the building, can't see them in my rear view. I stop my car and park in front of the well-lit church doors, basically parked in the first lane. I'm watching my rear view mirror, waiting for this car. I know it's back there and it's going to drive around me. We'll see that it was all just a misunderstanding. The SUV is there. It peeks around the building

corner then stops and waits a little bit before it turns towards where I'm parked. The SUV slowly drives by my car. They pass me slowly and I don't want to look at them. From my peripheral vision I just see one outline in the driver's seat. As they pass me I can feel this person's eyes on me and can see their head turning. I'm uncomfortable but I don't want to start a conversation with them so I don't roll down my windows and I do not want to look at them. I don't want to acknowledge them. I really just want them to see that I'm not who they probably thought that I was. They pass me completely and the SUV starts to drive towards the exit of the parking lot. But then the SUV starts to circle around again, making a big loop around in the empty church parking lot.

My body fills with this feeling of dread. I'm actually scared now. I gave them the benefit of the doubt doubt but now they're coming back around. I don't want to know what they want anymore. When they start to circle back around I take off out of that parking lot, but so do they. My car bottoms out and I speed down the street, and so does theirs. The police station is way out near the countryside on the outskirts of town, but there's a police annex on this street. Sometimes there's cops parked out front. I know I'm just going to park there and if they're still following me I'll call 911.

This car is following me 100%. They've turned when I've turned, sped when I've sped, and as I turn my blinker to take a right into the annex, they turn left, and they're gone. I told my friends and family about this quickly after. No one I knew drove that kind of car. It was also an older model, so I don't think that it could have been a rental. I don't know anyone who would do this to me and think it's funny. I did make a police report but didn't get a license plate so they couldn't really do anything. I also know what kind of car it was.

I would notice any older white SUV for months after. But I never saw that exact car again. I'm Mahdi, and I'm 16 years old. I live in Morocco and just lived through a creepy event and I'm so excited to be able to share it here. So here's my story. I lived in an apartment with my family and I'm in a period where I need to focus for my final exams. Today as usual I'm sick so I didn't go to school. I used this free time to practice more for the upcoming tests and at approximately 8pm my father called me and suggested me a car ride in order to spend time with each other. My parents are divorced so when I'm with my mother I see him less often than my mother.

So I was with my father for like 30 minutes and it was nice. We arrived in front of the building where I live with my mother. I said goodbye to him and I went towards the building. I pushed the button of the intercom so that my mother opens the door for me and then I saw a food deliverer with his motorcycle parked just next to me. And here comes the problem. I thought that he was going to deliver something to a neighbor, nothing unusual here, but there was something off. Firstly,

usually deliverers in Morocco, I don't know if it is the case in other countries, have like a box where they store the food in order to keep it warm. But this guy didn't have one. He was holding the bag with the food in his hand while riding the motorcycle. Also, he opened his phone, like as if he was going to check a delivery app, but as I said, he didn't have the box or the logo of a delivery service anywhere on him. So even if my mother unlocked the door, I preferred not to open and talk to the guy. I order from restaurants and fast food a lot and I'm used to seeing deliverers and even talk a little bit with them to open and talk to the guy. I order from restaurants and fast food a lot and I'm used to seeing deliverers and even talk a little bit with them to try and make them laugh. I know that it's

a hard job because of people being jerks so I try to be as friendly as possible. So I started by saying hi and how you doing in Moroccan and the guy was super nice. He had a great smile and a nice way of talking. But he took time before answering me, like as if though he was lagging. But it's okay, it happens. Maybe he was stressed or preoccupied, so nothing to worry about. I asked him what door number it is and he replied 42, which is odd because the last door of the building is the 14th. So I told him to check the app and then I tried to watch his phone even though I'm not next to him and instead of opening a delivery app, he opened WhatsApp and didn't even open a chat. Then he said door 11. And at this moment I knew something was wrong because I live at the 12th door and so the 11th door is right next to me and I'm sure that my neighbors weren't the ones to order because they were on a trip.

So then I got a little bit stressed and told him that it must have been an error because of the reason that I just told you but he insisted to go in and told me that he used to deliver at this address and that he knows where he needs to go. He also tells me that the customer knows him and that he asked him to be quick because he liked his food to be as hot as possible. I clearly said to him that I couldn't let him enter the building but that I was going to check if the guys of the 11th door were back from their trip and if so I was going to let them know that he was here. I also told him that the guard of the building was usually in the cafe next door and that he could go talk with him I also lied to him and told him that my dad was waiting for me and that I needed to go to the bathroom for a second He was angry at first but he immediately changed his attitude and became friendly again I asked him to step aside and then I asked again my mother to unlock the door and entered

I was still nervous and while I asked again my mother to unlock the door and entered. I was still nervous and while I was walking towards the elevator, I got suddenly really scared because I didn't hear the door close behind. I felt so dumb because I could have closed it myself but at this moment, I was sure that he was entering the building. I immediately started running towards the staircase and at that same time, he tried to throw the bag that he was holding at me. I don't know why but he missed me. At this moment I'm thinking really quickly. I have Crohn's disease which to be sure is a disease that causes inflammation of the intestines and pain but according to my doctor it also explains why I'm an anxious person and why I usually think too much. And so, I already thought

in the past of a scenario where I needed to hide from something in the building. I know it's weird, but I came to the conclusion that the underground parking garage was the best place, because it was really large due to the fact that it was shared by four different buildings. So I run towards the staircase and I immediately started going downstairs. Before I continue, I need to say that I'm a pretty tall guy, about 6'3", so it's difficult for me to hide easily, and so I run and I can hear him chasing me. At this moment I remember that the other buildings have their own doors in the parking lot, so I run towards one of them. I see someone from afar and start screaming for them to call the landlord as quickly as they can but he didn't react and then entered one of the doors. I go

upstairs, open the door of the building and enter the bakery just next to it. Luckily I find the caretaker or the concierge, I don't know how you say it in English but I explain to him really quickly what's happening. He immediately got out of the bakery and started chasing him but he was too far away and was running towards his motorcycle so we couldn't catch him. I was tired of all that running but strangely I wasn't shocked at all. And still while writing this I feel a little bit excited about what happened. I feel weird for kind of liking it but I'm definitely not going to tell my parents because otherwise they will forbid me to go out alone or take a taxi.

I try to look out for the bag that he tried to throw at me but it wasn't there when I checked back. I know I'm selfish for not calling the police but I prefer not to worry about it because, fortunately, they never did anything too serious. This actually happened a few hours ago and I'm still unsettled about the whole encounter. I decided to drop it over here to get it out of my system. I've had creeps tailgate me or try to grab my attention on the road and I just ignore them which always worked but this guy takes the golden medal. My shift starts at the afternoon and I was feeling off for most of the day. A beautiful sunny day mind you. You know one of those days where you drag yourself out of your bed to adult, as they say? I decided to lift my mood up so I wore something new that I had. A beautiful creamy

white fox fur vest and I hit the road. Looked like a million bucks, feel like a million bucks, right? Maybe not. I played some piano tracks and hoped that I'll get out of this funk. I just needed something to comfort me and those two things didn't cut it. While I was driving to work I decided to grab a drink. A nice crisp green tea will definitely lift my spirit. There were two branches of a famous coffee shop. You know who, a grinning mermaid who's playing Twister, ring the bell? I could have gone to the first one with the

drive-thru but they use a pretty terrible tea brand as they ran out of the good stuff. So I had to go to the one that was inside a mall. Anything to feel better, right? I parked my car and I saw a private fleet of black SUVs making it difficult to view the entrance. This is important for later. I grabbed a cold bottle of water and headed to the counter. I paid for my drink and got a cherry lollipop, cause why not. Waited for my drink and once I got it I started walking out. I had to pass a fountain in the courtyard before I could reach the exit. I slowed my pace as I noticed that I was walking too fast. I felt a bit off, but brushed it off. As I passed between the SUVs, a bus shot through quickly.

I stopped in shock as I almost walked in its path. This didn't make me realize what was happening. As I got distracted and wasn't aware of my surroundings, as I walked further I had to pass an area where there isn't anyone. It was shaded but still outdoor. Almost like under a bridge style building if that makes sense. This was the way to my car. I noticed that I wasn't aware of my surroundings till I heard footsteps on my right. Then I saw a man in my peripheral vision walking and matching my speed. At first I thought he was in a uniform so I assumed he was

a part of the cleaning staff in the mall. I felt off but I told myself that I'm being paranoid and overthinking. Next to my car and on my left side was a woman with a child who were getting into their car and this will make sense later. I was sandwiched between my car and hers. I was getting my keys out of my fur vest and then I had to turn around in order to open the driver's door as I was a bit ahead of it. Once I turned, I saw a man standing,

looking to be in his late thirties, skinny, average height. He had a dark blue baseball cap with sunglasses, a grey shirt with some print on it and black sweatpants, croc shoes with socks. He was so close that it took me by surprise and I was startled, but being nice and polite is in my blood so I assumed nothing. First thing that he said was, why are you afraid? I told him that I wasn't and asked him what he wanted. Is your car for sale? He said while grinning. I said no. Then he started to ask how my day was going and stuff along those lines. The heck, I don't know this guy. Alarm bells were ringing in my head. I smiled as not to escalate the situation. I knew I had to do something. He was blocking my way to the mall entrance and if I decided

to go the other way, which is a pretty large shaded parking lot with few people here and there. It was nice to meet you, but I gotta leave, I said while smiling. Give me your phone number, he said bluntly. I just repeated the same phrase and took a step closer to my door as I didn't want to show him that I was afraid, though I was pooping bricks at that moment. Then he said something that made me want to crawl out of my skin. Give me your phone number so I don't have to chase you around in my car. At this moment I knew I had to move fast so I opened my door and ignored him. He kept talking and I wasn't sure what he was saying as it felt muffled.

My anxiety was higher than the tip of Mount Everest now and I was hit with this realization that even in public spaces and in broad daylight with people around, you can lose your sense of safety in a split of a second. I closed the door quickly and locked it. My fingers felt weak but I managed to turn on the car. He kept knocking on my window. He was so insistent. I put my car in reverse but I couldn't back out. The woman was halfway getting out of her parking spot thus forcing me to wait. He kept knocking pretty hard and saying different things.

And at that moment I honestly couldn't hear him. All I wanted was just to nope out of there. I was so afraid and just baffled. I had to look at the window to see when the road will get clear so I can back out while he was standing in front of my window rapidly knocking it. I avoided making eye contact with him. Once the road was clear, I hit the gas pedal and sped off. I drove to random places while my eyes were fixed on my rearview mirror to make sure that he wasn't following me. It was so hard to breathe as my chest felt so heavy and my heart was beating onto my chest. I was glad he wasn't there. This creep followed me around the mall and waited for the right moment that I was alone and threatened me for me to give him my phone number and was just completely unaware of how creepy he was.

My therapist will definitely be hearing about this. I was 20, living alone on the ground floor of an apartment building. My living room windows faced the small parking lot for the building, which wasn't gated. I'd stayed up late, watching TV or playing games almost every night. It was winter when I first moved in, so I'd have the blinds down at night to help keep the cold air out. Summer came and there was no AC in the apartment, so I'd open the windows and blinds at night to help keep the cold air out. Summer came and there was no AC in the apartment so I'd open the windows and blinds at night for cool air. One night I'm lying on the couch watching TV when I get that feeling of being watched. I looked over at the window and a man had his hands and face pressed against the screen, merely three feet from where I was lying, just watching me. I let out a blood-curdling

scream and he didn't even blink. Terrified, I jumped up, grabbed the phone and screamed that I was calling the cops. He still just stood there, completely motionless and dead-eyed. At that point, I yelled that I'm getting the neighbor and started walking to the door and he finally took off. I locked the window and stayed up all night, completely on edge. My boyfriend at the time came over and stayed for a full week. He made sure to leave the blinds open and sat at the edge of the couch closest to the window to make it known that I wasn't always alone. The creeper didn't show up again so eventually I got comfortable thinking it was an isolated incident of some rando wandering around the parking lot to break into cars. Maybe another three weeks after that I get home late from waiting tables and parking the lot.

I get changed, grab a snack and head to the living room to play games. I start to raise the blinds to open the windows and let in cool air and the creeper is standing right there with his face pressed against the screen again. He was not standing in the parking lot when I pulled in as I parked right by my window. I can only assume that he was waiting around the corner of the building, watching me come home and timing my movements. This time, I grabbed the phone and immediately called the cops. I was shaking, crying, completely hysterical, and the creeper takes off. Cops come and say that they'll have someone patrol the block when they can,

and my boyfriend immediately comes over. He wants to stay with me until I can get out of there, so I start looking at different apartments. Another three to four weeks or so later, I have an apartment lined up on a high floor in a dormant building, cause at this point, screw it. My boyfriend had to go out of town for a few days, so I decided to go stay at my friend's place, cause I certainly wasn't going to be there alone. I'm at my friend's place for two nights, but wanted to run home and grab a few things that I'd forgotten. She goes with me, for obvious reasons, and we go in the afternoon, not after dark. We decided to hang out for a bit and play games together because it's daylight and there is activity around the building. No air conditioning so I hesitate raising the blinds to get some air. I'm terrified opening them now. Then just laugh to myself because I do it and of course no one's there. I open the actual window and see two

large holes cut into the screen right above the latches you push in to lift it. They were literally not there two days ago, and my blood ran entirely cold. The creeper knew my boyfriend was gone. He was watching and saw his car was gone. I left my car there as my friend picked me up, and we always left a light on in the living room to make the creeper think that we were awake. So we saw my car, thought I was home, saw the light on, yet proceeded to cut holes in the screen to break in. I have no idea if he actually gained access but seeing how bold he was terrified me. How long had he been watching me, learning my patterns and getting gradually more aggressive with every interaction. I still sometimes get a chill when I raise my blinds and it took a long time getting comfortable living in anything but a high rise. Thanks for the lifelong PTSD, you absolute creeper. This This story is from 2019.

I was 13 years old at the time, but I still remember it like it was yesterday, possibly due to the trauma. I was bored at home. I FaceTimed my best friend, who lives in the apartment building next to mine, and asked him if he would join me on a walk around the neighborhood. He wasn't there, he was on his way back home from school which is understandable because it was a Thursday afternoon. There is a jogging circuit near my house that's like 500 meters away. Due to my massive boredom, I put on my sport clothes, a basic t-shirt, a short, the short has no pockets, remember this detail, and then I was headed with my music vibing to the circuit. Arriving there, it was surprisingly not that empty at around 8-10 people in that 15km circuit.

I started walking for a bit, then ran for a couple kilometers, then laid down in the grass. I noticed two guys on the motorcycle going back and forth. I didn't care that much since I was facetiming my two best friends. It was getting pretty late, it was around 6pm and I was exhausted. I walked home but I took another path, this is kind of off of a shortcut. I had to walk through an empty big street with buildings and construction. I took this same path many times before with no problems. I had a feeling that someone was watching me and following me. I turned around and noticed the same two guys on that

motorcycle headed toward me and I whispered to my friends on FaceTime that something weird is going to happen and that they have to cut their mics and focus with me. The guys came by and one of them asked me where is the nearest barber shop. Out of stress, I gave them a random location. While the rider of the bike asked me about the barber shop, my right eye twitched and unfocused. I do have this ability, but I was still able to see with it. I saw on the bike's rear view mirror that the other guy was trying to look at where my phone is located. It was between my shorts and my belly because I had no pockets and I had my earphones on. I was freaking out. Time was starting to slow down,

seconds felt like hours and I couldn't feel my legs anymore. They went on but with a slow speed it was like they were planning a backup plan. I had three options. One, there was a taxi guy fixing his car. I could have went to him and explained the situation but my gut said what if they noticed me and came back and maybe do what they planned to do. Two, stop a random car and hop in then explain the situation. My gut said no, what if the car was locked, plus the guys would have noticed that I knew what they were planning to do and came to me after the random car left. And three, and this is what I chose, run in the opposite direction into the traffic and take the path that I came by. I instinctively ran for a straight five minutes, couldn't do it anymore.

I entered a field and started running again towards some slums. I looked back and saw the guys coming after me into the field and one of them was just screaming to just stop. They just wanted to know where the barbershop was. There's one thing about me and it is that I always trust my gut and it said, no, run as fast as you can or you will die today. And that's what I did. I ran between the slums and kept running until I arrived near my best friend's house, who I was still in FaceTime with.

And I told him to come downstairs right now. And I lay down in the parking lot. He came in and was freaking out because he knew that something was happening but didn't know what since I didn't give him any more information. My face turned yellowish and I threw up and I couldn't feel my legs nor my arms anymore. They walked me to my house and I laid down and from that moment I don't remember anything. I just remember me waking up the following day with bruises on my legs due to me running into the field full of pikes. And this whole story happened in the space of maybe 10 to 15 minutes. Now I take that same path again with no worries.

I have no idea what thecks of a salmon cannery in the middle of Alaska. 16 hour days, 7 days a week, no days off from May until August. Really cool job but lots of seedy characters. Seasonal work in remote places seems to attract people who don't really fit in with normal society or people who want to get away from something. Gary was one of those people. He had worked at another cannery in town that was owned by the same parent company and in the lead up to fishing season, he was lent to our cannery for some carpentry tasks. Gary was probably in his 40s or 50s, grey hair, weird delivery in his speech, not like a speech disorder, just like weird, like he was

smiling inside about something grotesque while he spoke. When he first got to our camp he was telling me the HR staff kept asking him all these personal questions. I asked what kind of questions and he responded that they wanted his full name and phone number. He told them that he didn't feel comfortable with that and would be willing to work for a reduced rate if he could just keep that information to himself. Ah, red flag right there. One day I'm working with a co-worker on a little welding project when Gary pops out of a doorway. He goes, hey, you guys want some meat? We've been eating cafeteria food for weeks and working hard enough that we always maintain a caloric deficit. You don't say no to food.

He cut us each off a slice. Smoked something. I don't know what it was. Now here's some personal information about me. My family is Eastern European. I was born in New York City and then spent half of my childhood in North Carolina. I've been eating smoked meats of every variety all my life. It's a piece of my culture, basically. I don't know what this was. It was

almost pork, but it was not pork. Gary goes, you guys like that? To which we respond sheepishly, yeah, thanks Gary. Gary literally laughs, like slowly and creepily, and just leaves. Now me and the guy I'm working with just look at each other and laugh it off and say, well, we just ate Gary's wife. Dark vibes, but I love that job. Anyway, later that night, I'm in the cafeteria alone eating a bagel. Gary walks in. Hey man, you like that meat earlier? Yeah, Gary. It was good, I respond. Gary goes, That's funny, man, and laughs softly. I'm pretty sure that I ate a slice of Gary's wife. To be continued... Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations.

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