The Lets Read Podcast - 330: THERE WAS A PREDATOR IN THE FOREST | 10 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 315

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about camping & driving late at night.HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?[e-mail] ME ON -►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/♫ Music & Cover art: INEKThttps://www.youtube.com/@inektToday's episode is sponsored by:- Mint Mobile- Betterhelp

Here ye, hear ye, ye. Dragon fruit has returned to booster juice. Prepare thineself for the legendary alchemy of the Dragon Slayer smoothie. Pink Dragon Booster Mixer and Dragon Booster Ball. Sire? Dost dragon taste like chicken? Nay. Booster juice uses only delicious tropical dragon fruit.

No dragons are harmed. Get thee to booster juice before dragon fruit vanishes once more. Booster Juice, Canadian born, blending since 1999. Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BenMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. About six years ago now, I was dating a girl who I'll just call Julia. I'd been with her for about eight months when the story took place. We had, so I thought, a pretty normal, happy, healthy relationship. We did all the things a young couple does. We lived and worked in the same town. We met on OKCupid, and we had a few dates and then got serious.

After eight months, we hadn't moved in together, although I'd been thinking of asking her. Julia always talked about how she liked her independence, though, and I didn't want to make the mistake I'd made in my last relationship of coming on too strong or moving too fast. Instead of living together, we would take regular vacations together. They were usually long weekend getaways, either to visit my folks or shopping trips. One time, we did a tour of a few theme parks over the course of some weekends, and it was great, and we became the couple that vacationed together. I thought everything was going perfectly.

Like I said, I was thinking of asking her to move in, and maybe down the line popping the question. To my knowledge, our relationship was solid as a mountain. And I'm sure that since I'm saying all of this, you've already worked out that it wasn't. Instead, it became a source of crushing fear for me in a way that I could have never predicted. We'd never been camping before. We didn't want to have to spend too long in the road, so the nearby state of Rhode Island seemed like a perfect destination. It has a number of fantastic campgrounds,

and we picked the one that looked the most appealing. Something not too isolated, but not too busy either, and fairly near the coast where we plan to spend the second half of our two-week vacation. in an Airbnb. It was early fall and Rhode Island is stunning at that time of the year. The drive down took maybe eight hours, including a couple of stops, and as we passed into the forested countryside and the heart of New England, Julia couldn't stop talking about the natural beauty around us.

And in that moment, my heart swelled with love and excitement at spending two weeks in beautiful Charleston with Julia. The campsite was beautiful. We picked a quiet time to come, so there weren't that many other campers around, and our spot was gloriously isolated, tucked away on the very outskirts of the camping area with a forest right next to our sight, and a beautiful little pond twinkling in the afternoon sun just a short distance away. I think I remember using the words, I deal it to Julia, and a very breathless voice.

It was pretty cringe looking back, not because I was wowed by nature, but, well, you'll see. The first night went by fast and wonderfully. We cooked up some weaners over the campfire, spent some quality time in the tent, and then went for a late-night hike through the forest and grounds, ending beside the pond where we sat and took in the moonlight off the water. And I just sat with my arm around my girlfriend, and I genuinely thought that life was perfect. The next morning, I realized that I couldn't have been more wrong. I woke up to the sound of Julia yelling. Even at the time, I remember getting this weird feeling about it, but I couldn't put my finger on why.

I scrambled to pull some clothes on and then dashed out into the clearing. Our stuff was trashed, and it looked like this rampaging group of hogs had just come crashing through the campsite, although there was no way that could be the case. I wasn't a heaviest sleeper, and I hadn't woken up until Julia screamed. and I looked around in dismay. Our cooler of food, which we'd left sealed in the car, was completely smashed everywhere. There are only a small number of black bears in Rhode Island and none remotely close to this family commercial campsite.

Burgers, sausages, mac and cheese and all sorts of stuff lay scattered about the camp, like some kind of high school food fight gone wrong. A case of beers had been punctured and thrown around the grounds, and the whole place just stank of that old yeasty alcohol. And then it struck me that if the cooler from the car was smashed, that meant, and then I turned up to look. And of course, the back windshield of the car was smashed, and that's seemingly how they'd gotten the cooler out.

Not only that, my beautiful new BMW had these terrible gouges and scratches in the paintwork on one side, and I literally almost wept when I saw that. Honestly, that car was my baby. Julia was yelling frantically. She told me they'd smashed our phones and gestured to a pile of shattered glass and electronics at the base of a large tree. And she was right.

Both my phone and hers were completely destroyed. Something about this piqued my curiosity, though, but I was too shocked and dismayed at the whole scenario to really think much about it. There was just this nagging, unpleasant feeling about the phones. Finally, Julia pointed to the forest nearby where some of her clothes, which had been in a case in the car, were thrown over the bushes. In particular, a few of her underwear were on prominent display.

Julia immediately and forcefully began telling me her theory about what had happened. A group of guys, probably frat bros, had come rampaging through our camp at night, drunk out of their minds. They'd decided to screw with us and terrify us. And Julia had, she insisted, seen the group of frat bros camping on the other side of the campsite when we'd first arrived the day before. I asked if she'd actually seen them invade our camp,

and she was very cagey about this, said that she thought so, but it was dark and she couldn't be sure. I let it drop for now and then began cleaning up the campsite. Julia helped. As we tossed the food and retrieved her clothes, I said that it was a bummer our camping trip had been cut short. And Julia shocked me then by looking horrified, grabbing my hands, and begging if we could stay. I questioned this.

Why on earth would we stay when our things had just been trashed? The car had been vandalized and worse. These people could still be at the campsite. Now, we called the cops, of course, and a ranger came to see us. a few hours later. He said there really wasn't much that could be done, apparently, which seemed like bull crap to me. And he promised to ask around the camp anyway and told us to keep an eye out to be safe. I asked him if he thought we should move along, and he was pretty dismissive that it was just kids, kids who'd cost me a bunch of food bills and vehicle repairs and phone repairs.

And after the Ranger left, Julia pointed out that there was a store on the other side of the campgrounds, that we could just buy a tarp for that back windshield, and that it could be fixed on the second part of our vacation on the coast. There was no sense in canceling everything on day two just because of some chaos like this. Now in the moment, I told her that was okay. We'd see how it went. I was distracted, still kind of seething with fury over what had been done to my car, and also trying to pin down the nagging concern I had in the back of my mind, as all of this, for as isn't insane as it was, obviously didn't feel right. And later that day, after a lot of affection from Julia, I started to calm down.

We went for a walk to the camp store to recoup some supplies. I didn't tell Julia, but I was also keeping an eye out for Vandal Frat Boys that she alleged to have invaded our camp. I couldn't really see any group of guys that really matched that description by Julia, and I couldn't decide whether this was a relief or kind of strange. I did see the Ranger chatting to a few folks, though, and he sent me a little wave, as if to say, yep, I'm doing my job, so I guess that made me feel safe. Now, when we were in the camp store, Julie and I got into the dumbest argument.

I don't even remember what it was about, but I do remember it surprised me how much she lost her crap. I think I jokingly disagreed with her about what kind of weaners to get, and she just flipped, yelling at me that I never listened to her or took her opinions into consideration. And this was the first time I'd ever heard about this, and I guess I got defensive. Not an excuse, but I was still mad and upset about the car and also a little frustrated at Julia for wanting to stay at the campground where we'd been the victims of an actual crime. And Julia stormed off, leaving me to finish up the groceries and pay the bill. I did so, and then I wandered outside to look for her.

There was no sign of my girlfriend, but I did see a small group of guys who could possibly maybe be the frat bros if you squinted. And they seemed like chill, nice guys, but I approached them anyway and asked if they'd seen any other suspicious characters around their age camping in the park. They told me they'd been there for a few days already and hadn't seen anyone under the age of 40 other than myself and Julia. And that checked out for my observations too. Then, one of them came up to me and quietly asked if I was okay. I figured the stress of the day must have been in my face or something, so I explained that our car and campsite had been vandalized. This seemed to shock the kid, so I asked him why he checked in with me.

He told me the woman I was with seemed, and he paused here, saying, volatile and angry. I figured he must have seen Julius stomping away after our argument, but it all seemed pretty strange. When I got back to the campsite, everything was incredibly quiet except for this faint sobbing coming from our tent. I dropped the groceries on the picnic table and ran over there. Julia was sitting in the tent, and tears were streaming down her eyes, rocking back and forth. I went to her and put my arm around her.

Eventually I got her to calm down and she told me what had happened. She returned to our tent after our argument and three guys had showed up. She said they threatened her and made some lewd advances toward her, and then when she rejected them, one of them had kicked a dent in the door of the car. I wanted to go out and check as soon as I knew Julia was unharmed. But consoling Julia was more important. I started asking her questions about the guys so we could tell the cops, what did they look like, what race were they, etc.

And Julia started yelling at me, saying I was inconsiderate and thoughtless. I hadn't even asked her if she wanted to get the cops involved, and she didn't actually. She wanted to just drop it, and how dare I grill her about the details. Then she started asking me if I thought she was a liar, etc. Now I'm completely shocked and taken aback. I hadn't been entertaining thoughts like that at all. I had wanted it to know so we could identify them obviously, and now that Julia had freaked out so badly, though, again, a suspicion began nagging at me.

It did seem like Julia was hiding something. What if they'd assaulted her worse than she'd let on? And that's where my mind went first. But, man, was I naive. That night, I was adamant I wanted to leave. There sure was a dent in my car door, and the whole vacation had been completely tainted and overshadowed by this stupid series of terrible assaults. and Julia was over-the-top enthusiastic, though.

And she went absolutely out of her way to try insisting that we were having a great time, that it didn't matter if we were being targeted by harassers, that we'd be just letting them win if we gave in and rolled over. And honestly, I said I was happy to let them win if it meant safety and a harassment-free weekend, and this made Julia mad again. At first I chalked it up to the stress of the attacks. But as we sat in silence around the campfire, both of us were just kind of sulking after yet another argument, I realized would have been bothering me the whole time. Without even thinking, I brought it up to Julia.

How had the vandals smashed our phones when we'd gone to sleep with our phones in the tent the night before? They hadn't been charging in the car. We'd both fallen asleep watching YouTube and some reels, and... Julia opened her mouth, closed it again, opened it, and then closed it. closed it. She stared at me and, if looks could kill, I swear I'd be a dead man. Then she began to scream at me. She asked me where I got off accusing her and what I was trying to imply. I hadn't accused her of anything. I just asked how the vandals got a hold of ourselves when they were in the tent. I hadn't mentioned her at all. And at this point, the red flags were impossible to

ignore, and it was obvious that Julia was involved somehow. I'm sure it's been obvious to everyone that Julia was behind the vandalism, and you probably think I'm an idiot for not suspecting her right away. In my defense, it's easier to make it look that way when I'm telling the story in retrospect, and I'm not some professional storyteller or master of tension, so I've probably given away the fact that Julia was the culprit right at the start. But sure enough, that's the conclusion I started suspecting at this point. And as gently as I could, since she was behaving so volatile and erratic, I asked my loving girlfriend if there was anything she wanted to tell me, and if she knew something about the vandalism. That's when she broke down and confessed everything. She was convinced that

I no longer loved her. I was going to break up with her on this vacation, and I'd been planning to for months. She thought I was cheating on her. She thought I cared more about my new car than her, and I guess that's why she did so much damage to the car in particular. Now, please let me stress that there was absolutely no truth to any of these claims. Even in the aftermath, a few of our friends decided to believe Julia and Lo-key suspected me of having done something to trigger her behavior. And I can swear to the Lord above that I didn't. I did not so much as look at another woman in that way, and I genuinely thought Julia was the one.

And that night, around the campfire, she told me that she thought that I would start to love her again if I thought we were in danger, that my male protector instincts would kick in and I'd go back to caring about her like I used to. I was speechless, furious at first, and then sort of just sad. The love of my life was clearly having some kind of mental breakdown, and I had no idea what to do about it. The first thing I did was pack up the car. No way were we staying on a vacation under this cloud. And Julia begged me to stay one more night and check us into a hotel, but I couldn't. We began to drive home that same evening, and let me tell you,

that was the most awkward, silent road trip of my entire life. My plan was to get Julia home and then work out the next steps, maybe get her medical help or therapy. I didn't expect this to be the end of our relationship, but yeah. I have no idea what happened to Julia, and I wish I could have helped her. I took her back to her apartment in the early hours of the morning and told her we'd talk the next day. I woke up to find that she'd blocked me on everything, social media, Facebook, email, my phone number,

and then I started getting messages from friends asking why I treated her so poorly. And things escalated from there, and I eventually had no choice but to just make a clean number. break. I cut Julia out of my life. I cut most of our mutual friends out, and eventually I moved away to a completely different state. Nearly a decade later, I still occasionally get threatening messages from random accounts calling me a cheater, a rat. One time in a city far from anywhere I'd ever been with Julia, my car got vandalized again, and it was probably a completely coincidental piece of bad luck, but it's hard not to be paranoid. I have no idea of... Julia ever got help or got better.

Then it breaks my heart to think about it. I'm married now to a beautiful woman who was pregnant with my child, and I managed to suppress that paranoia. I spent a lot of our early relationship convinced that she was going to suddenly turn on me. It hasn't happened yet. And maybe I was an oblivious idiot, though, but I never saw any signs of it with Julia either. Everything was perfect, and then our first camping trip seemingly broke her. Maybe I'm just superstitious, but anytime my current wife brings up the idea of camping,

all I can say is absolutely not. Holidays are officially over, and if your wallet's still recovering from all the food, drinks, and gift buying, you're not alone. Good news, though. Mint Mobile is offering 50% off unlimited premium wireless this January, making it way easier to save. Mint Mobile's end-of-year sale is still going on, but only until the end of the month. Cut out big wireless's bloated plans and unnecessary monthly charges with 50% off three, six, or 12 months of unlimited.

Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number, along with all your existing contacts. I use Mint Mobile, and so should you. In my opinion, it's just the best way to save. If you're tired of overpaying for wireless, January is a good time to switch. Mint Mobile is offering 50% off unlimited premium wireless. plans start at $15 per month at mintmobile.com slash read. That's mintmobile.com slash read. Limited time offer. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months plan required.

$15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed. and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. Back in September 2019, I ended up meeting up with a girl in the comments section of a

Facebook post. She was really pretty and seemed really cool, so after a few weeks of talking, I decided to drive all the way from White Plains to Pittsburgh just so we could hang out for a weekend. I remember a friend asking something to the effect of, have you talked to her much on the phone? And I told him we'd spoken a little, but that we'd most of, we'd most of the mostly talked via text and Facebook Messenger. And he recommended that we talk in long form and about a lot of different stuff, too. Otherwise, I might get a nasty surprise. Well, I guess he was right.

And now I won't bore you with all of the details, but let's just say me and this girl weren't nearly as compatible as I'd hoped. And then while I'd originally planned on staying the whole weekend so me and her could get some food, maybe catch a movie, I decided to just cut my losses and drive back to New York on Saturday evening. I figured if I hit the road at around 7 p.m. I could be back home by around 1 the next morning. And no doubt I'd be exhausted by the time I got home, but not too beat that I'd risk getting into an accident or anything. So with my mind made up, that's what I did. After getting a quick bite to eat, I was on the 22 by 7.30, and then after three hours of driving with a the setting sun in my rear view, I saw a sign for Rosecrans PA. It had been dark for maybe 30 to 40

minutes, and I remember seeing a Sonoco gas station all lit up just off the highway to my left. Then just a mile or two up the road, and in timeless fashion, my gas gauge lit up with a low gas warning. Maybe that's just my luck, that it never lights up as I'm approaching a gas station, only ever when it's just a spec in my rear view. But I was also driving on one of those divided highways, the kind with a whole ass miniature park between the two stretches of highway. And this obviously meant that there was no turning around for miles. And then I asked my phone, hey Siri, where's the next gas station? And then my phone started talking about another gas station that I'd find if I turned on to US 15. I'd have to drive another 20 to 30 minutes or so, but it was there, and I wasn't about to run out of

of gas and get stranded like an idiot. And I remember checking the highway ahead of me and not seeing any other cars behind me or ahead of me, so I thought it was safe to actually look at my phone screen to make sure that I'd take the right turn. And I swear to God, I had looked for no longer than two seconds at the most, and then when I brought my eyes back to the road, there she was, dead ahead of me. I slammed on my brakes, almost giving myself a whiplash in the process, but I kept control of my car. The girl went from being a faintly lit shape on the furthest and dimmest reaches of my headlights to being only five feet in front of me. And while my first instincts were to yell, are you effing crazy at her? I quickly realized why she'd been walking in the middle of the highway.

She looked to be in a bad, bad way. Her clothes were all torn up, and they were all torn up, and they were. There was blood in her hair from what looked like a head wound, and I didn't see it until she climbed into my passenger seat, but she wasn't wearing any shoes either. The moment my car stopped, she limped around to my passenger side and then tried to open up the door. I keep it locked out of habits, so her first attempt did nothing but make a dull wrenching sound, but that was soon followed by this blood-curdling screech of,

open the door I'm begging you, please. I still had zero clue what was going on. So my first reaction was to spin around in my seat just in case who or whatever had hurt her was close by. I didn't open my car door right away, because obviously if I was going to carjack someone, using a pretty girl in distress as bade seems like a very effective tactic. But when I didn't see anyone, and when the girl gave me another very careful, convincing cry of please help me. I guess that seeing the blood up close and hearing the genuine terror in her scream, they kind of overrode my paranoia. Then after taking one final look at her,

I unlocked my car and she practically dove into the back seat before slamming the door closed behind her. And as I took off again, she says, Mr. We need to move. We're not going fast enough. They're going to Catch us. And so I put my foot down as I asked who they were. She said she didn't know. They just took her. And it was then that I noticed the handcuffs around her left wrist. One cuff was still locked around it, but the other just hung there awkwardly. I didn't need any more information other than that. I just put my foot down and burn rubber for a few miles until I thought that we were at a safe distance. I checked my rear view a few times, and then when I didn't see any lights, I slowed from around 70 to a pretty safe 35. But as we started to slow, the girl started yelling. And she says,

why he's slowing down? And before I could even answer, she says, go faster, what are you doing? They're going to be following me. I'm kind of freaking out internally, but I told her there was no one in sight. And we also wouldn't be going anywhere if a cop came. the other way and caught us doing a buck in change. But then she says, You don't get it. We want the cops. If those guys catch me, they'll kill you too.

And I guess when you think about it, I didn't doubt that. If whoever she was talking about had been willing to handcuff her before trying to crack her head open, I have no doubt that they'd put a bullet in me to get her back. It was also kind of a relief to hear that thing about the cops, too, because when I saw the handcuffs, there was a part of me that thought, Jesus, please don't accidentally be harboring a fugitive right now. But it wasn't the cops she was running from. I sped up a little, pushing things back up to 60 plus so we were moving without breaking any speed limits.

And then I was checking my rearview every other second expecting a pair of headlights to appear. And that's when I remembered my goddamn gas tank and how it was almost empty. As I can imagine, the girl was not excited when I told her that we needed to stop for gas at the next town. She didn't want to believe it at first, that the driver she thought was going to save her had a fuel gauge in the red, and she started freaking out in the passenger seat, screaming the F word over and over until I managed to talk her down. I put my foot down again, picked up some speed, and then told her to call the cops and tell them to meet us at that gas station that we were about to pull to. The girl grabbed my phone from the dash and called 911, and then over the next minute or so,

I listened to what she said and got a little more info on what had happened. She didn't go into too much detail, but after telling the cops where we were going, she explained to the dispatcher that she'd been kidnapped, taken some place out in the woods, then handcuffed to a metal pipe which she'd broken to get free. She said, I don't know a lot, so I'm assuming in response to questions like who were they,

or where exactly are you right now. But I also learned that she'd been held for a couple of days by that point, and whoever had been holding her captive had done some disgusting and evil stuff to her. It was no coincidence that when she started detailing some of the stuff she'd endured, I noticed my speed gauge creeping up to 75. It was making my skin want to crawl off my bones just listening to the stuff those creeps did to her. And in my head, I guess I imagined, them to look something like monsters.

Little did I know, I'd be meeting them sooner than I thought. So we kept on speeding down the highway until we reached the turn that I'd read about, and then after maybe five more minutes of rolling through small-town Pennsylvania and sticking to the speed limit, we came to that gas station where we were supposed to meet the cops. But they were nowhere to be seen, and when she realized this, the girl started to freak out again. She started yelling at me saying, Where are they? They said they'd be here. Where are they? And I tried to calm her down by explaining they were probably on their way.

But this did nothing to keep her calm. For a few minutes, the girl sat in my passenger seat, watching a car pass here and there and getting super freaked out about who it might be. Then when a car pulled into the gas station and stopped at a pump, she says, Oh, screw this. I'm getting out of here. She then jumped out of my car and ran off onto the street behind the gas station

and toured what looked like a thick patch of trees. Now, I screamed at her to wait, but she didn't even look back. She just kept on running in her bare feet, with that half a handcuff still dangling from one of her wrists. And then she was gone. My yelling attracted the attention of the guy, who just pulled in to pump gas, and for a second, I thought that he might have been the guy the girl was running from. But when I told him everything was under control and the cops were on the way,

he nodded quietly and returned to his vehicle. Since the girl was sure that she was being followed, I'd parked my car facing the whole gas station, not near a pump. But since the girl decided to run off and take her chances elsewhere, I figured that I'd do what I went there to do in the first place and actually fill up my tank. And so I got back in the first place. And so I got back to my car and drove around to the pumps and was opposite the guy that I'd talked to about calling the cops. Now, at this point, I'm just kind of reflecting on everything, but we swapped a little small talk about the girl and I explained how I'd picked her up on the highway, scared out of her mind. And he agreed it seemed like something really bad was going on, and then he wished me luck

with the cops before he paid for his gas and drove off. But no sooner had he pulled out when another car came rolling into the station. It was a four-door sedan, a pretty nice one too, and it pulled up to the pump just behind me. Three men then got out, all real regular-looking guys, probably in their 40s or 50s, and then instead of pumping gas

or walking over to the store to buy snacks, they started looking around the area like they were searching for something, or maybe someone. I'm keeping one eye on my gas pump in one eye on the guys that just pulled up, and then suddenly, the oldest of the three says, Hey, you haven't seen a little lady walking around here, would you? Now, I've always been a really bad liar, and I knew a straight no probably wouldn't pass

with this guy, so when the older guy asked me if I'd seen her, I said yes. But then, instead of telling him the whole truth, I told them a version of it. I said that I'd seen a crazy-looking brought in the middle of the highway who tried to get me to stop. But since I was pretty sure she was about to try and carjack me, I kept my door locked and drove around her and sped off. I knew not to look him dead in the eyes. So I looked around him and his buddies and then asked, why? What's this about? She escaped from like a insane asylum or something? And the three of them just sort of laughed, and I figured that I might have, you know, sold them on my performance. But then as the older guy stayed in front of me,

his two buddies started flanking me on either side, with one looking at my car and the other looking off in the direction that the girl actually ran. The older guy then suddenly asked me, Did you call 911? And again, in what was a version of the truth, I told him I had. I didn't mention anything about arranging to meet the cops at that game, gas station. I just said that I called them because I was worried some crazy B-word was going to end up splattered on the highway, and some poor schmuck like me was going to end up going to jail

over it. I'm not saying it was an Oscar-winning performance, but I tapped into some genuine emotion there. Yet no matter how convincing I thought I was, the guys' two friends weren't moved in the slightest, and one of them was now looking through my car windows, clearly looking for any sign of that girl. I think those were some of the scariest, most nerve-wracking moments of my entire life, praying that girl hadn't left anything behind on the passenger's seat when she'd bolted, something like a scrunchy or maybe some of her clothing. I also got terrified that I left my phone on the dash and that the guy might see a blood smear or something on that from that girl, and so you can imagine my relief when I felt the weight of it in my pocket. I was at that point I decided to be a

aggressive, and I don't mean that in a sort of I tried to fight them way. It was almost like a normal person would want to know why their car was being inspected, and that's what I asked. I turned to the guy looking into my car and was kind of rude and standoffish when I said something like, hey, what are you looking for, buddy? And he looked at me and started backing off away from the car with nothing but a smile. The older guy then said something to the effect of, don't mind my friend there, he's just a curious soul. Something really creepy like that, and then they made their excuses and moved on. As I went to pay for my gas, the three men were still walking around the gas station. They were doing it less urgently than when they'd first arrived,

more subtly too, but they were still looking for that girl. I walked up and down in that store after paying for my gas, making out like I was just an indecisive snacker. And then a few minutes after, the three guys got back into that sedan and left. I then made myself some coffee, ate a few protein bars while I told the clerk that whole story, and then walked outside to meet the cops when they showed up maybe 20 minutes after I'd hoped they would. I repeated the story, included the part about the three guys showing up, and with added emphasis on how damned unnerving the same.

all had been, like they had the girl fitted with a tracking device or something. And that sounded like a little too sci-fi for me at first, but the more I thought about that afterwards, the more it shifted into the realm of possibility. I know I was on a lonely stretch of highway, and at this point it was almost 11 p.m., but the fact those guys seemed to know exactly where to stop, which car she'd been in, and which direction she'd run off in, it makes me think that that might have just been the case. Even the cop that I spoke to agreed that if it was some kind of kidnapping situation, the girl could have been fitted with some kind of tracking device,

most probably in the handcuffs that she was still wearing when she got into my car. And before he left, one of the cops thanked me for calling it in and added that, even though it had been a stressful and potentially traumatic situation, getting the police involved was the right thing to do, and meant that we were one step closer to bringing everyone involved to justice. and the guys chasing the girl had potentially made a huge mistake in getting their faces and license plate on the gas station's cameras. And if it was me that it led them there, I should feel proud of myself. It was pretty cool for him to say that and definitely made me feel a little bit better about this whole thing,

but it was also just about the only thing that really did. Because all my other thoughts about it were dark and dark and more dark. And they played out on the rest of the ride home too, which was a whole three-out. hours of wondering what the hell had I'd almost gotten myself into. I got a call from a detective a couple of days later, and after retelling that story to him, with as much detail as I could remember, I asked if the girl had been found. And according to him, they hadn't found anybody but the owner of the vehicle the men had traveled in, and that basically they were still trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

The detective said if he needed to ask me anything else, he'd give me a call, but that was the last I heard from him or any Pennsylvania cop for that matter. And I still think about that girl every now and then. I wonder who she was, who those men chasing her were, and if she ever got far enough away from them that she wouldn't have to live scared anymore. But a part of me thinks that in the same way she wouldn't just give in, the same way she'd patiently engineered her own escape, those men chasing her won't give in so easily either, especially when she still has a voice to tell the truth about what happened to her.

Some days, when I'm in a brighter mood, I like to think she got away, and that she's raising kids with a good man someplace, with all that darkness being just a memory for her. But then other days, when I'm not feeling so swell, I get this bad, bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I feel like I know they got to her, and that they shut her up for good. Hey, Jolo, I'm an English lad who used to be well into camping when I was a teen. Me and some buds used to go on to the Moors whenever we got the chance, and we just pile into Cheggar's car on a Friday night and F off into the middle of nowhere with some tents and some bevies,

some disposable barbecues, and more meat than we knew what to do with. We got into camping and orienteering when we did the Duke of Edinburgh stuff in school, which is basically a series of challenges relating to wilderness survival and community stuff. One of our mates, Milo, had gotten so into it that he'd effed off to join the army, but the rest of us just kept the tradition up during holidays from uni. We weren't all sporty guys or anything like that. Well, some of us weren't. Powell was, and he was a proper mad rugby lad doing a sports science degree. But then there was Cheggers, who was teased for being a proper nerd because he'd studied engineering, even though he was the one

with a decent car and the de facto leader of the group. And then there was Brody, Sammy and me studying physics, English-lit, and drama, respectively. Yeah, I'm a theater kid. I'll admit it. I was a bit of a rowdy twat back then, too, though. So were all of us. We were well aware of it, and we wanted to be seen as polite, sensitive voice. That's why we like to go out in the absolute middle of nowhere. And all the mud and cow crap and English-piece super mornings and just let loose.

That's what we always did. It's what we got up to on our first night that summer, and what we planned to do for the next six nights when we were all back in town for our second year summer break. So imagine our surprise when we all woke up with stinking hangovers that one Saturday morning rolled out of our respective tents and were faced with an old hippie-looking couple pitching their tent in the adjacent clearing to ours. We'd found this isolated forest a year ago and had come here a few times since. We made a semi-permanent fire pit out of bricks and there had never been any indication that anyone else had used it besides us. Quickly sobering up and warning pal to behave nicely, we strolled over to the

older couple to introduce ourselves and ask if they wanted any help setting up. Most of us were pretentious little scroats back then and considered ourselves very world-wise and cultured, so we quite like the idea of camping next to an old hippie couple who probably had good stories to tell and hopefully some weed if we were lucky. You could smell that they smoke, though. The late lady looked to be in her 60s. She was thin, gawth, really, with frizzy hair and a kind of manic smile. She had these huge, thick glasses that made her eyes look almost comical, and I immediately found her adorable. The guy was big, built like a brick outhouse, and he had the biggest, bushiest beard I'd ever seen in my life. He wore that old green army jacket that every young guy in the

UK seemed to own in the 2000s, but he was much older, and the jacket didn't fit him well. He also wore this fascinating weird hat that was covered in badges, pins, fishing flies, all manner of stuff, really, and it was like a punk school backpack, but on his head, and it was the hat that first jog my memory. Hey, are you Mr. Hamrodden? I blurted out after some small talk. Used to be an art teacher. He said he was.

He smoothed the beard down and I could see it. When he taught me art in secondary school, he'd been completely clean-shaven. He'd been my favorite art teacher in years 7, 8, 9, and 10. But then he'd left the school halfway through my GCSE years, and I never knew why. It kind of sucked because the new art teacher we got after him was a battle axe who had very strong, strict opinions about what art had to be, and I was glad to ditch her for my A-level art course. Cheggers and Sammy had been in my art class in year seven to nine as well,

so they were made up to recognize Mr. Hanrodden. Not his actual name, by the way, just very similar. You can probably guess it, but I don't want to get sued. Now, Brody vaguely remembered him, too, even though he'd never had classes with Han Rodden. I looked around for a pal, but saw that he went off into the woods and was disappearing among the trees. Anne Rodden introduced the woman that he was with as his partner, Sainsbury's.

This is actually what she called herself, like the supermarket. No idea if it was her real name. They had some Sainsbury's bags with them, so I always figured that they'd just taken the name from that. I just didn't see how it could matter at the time, and I thought they were trying to be funny. You don't really suspect that old people were up to no good, especially old beloved teachers. Utterly dumb, I guess, but hey, I'll happily admit to being an in. idiot when I was a teen in the 2000s. We helped Homrodden and Sainsbury set up their tent. They told us that they'd parked in the same car park that we were in and that they'd seen

Cheggers' car. We asked them how they knew about our little hidden forest spot and whether they had been here before. They said they had, many times, and had made use of our fire pit, which they were grateful for. Like I said, we'd never seen any indication that anyone had used it, but It's not like we went over it with Batman Arkham Asylum Detective Vision. We shared some lunch with a couple, then went our separate ways to go on a hike. Powell was nowhere to be seen, which wasn't super unusual. He'd sometimes go off hiking by himself. And looking at it now, I think Powell is neurodivergent in some way,

because he needs these periods of alone time every now and then, and when we were kids, he'd often just disappear without telling anyone. Needless to say, we don't think anything of it when we didn't see Powell all afternoon. He wasn't back at the tent when we returned from the hike either, but Hanrodden and Sainsbury were, and we ended up hanging out with them all night, listening to music on Brody's battery-powered stereo, drinking some beers and then frying up some stakes on the camp stove. Hanrodden regaled us all with stories about his time as a teacher, his time as a hippie in the swinging 60s, and his time in the army of all things,

and then his recent life as a touring camper with his girlfriend. Sainsbury kept relatively quiet, chipping in every now and then about her vegan lifestyle, joking about the meat where you're eating and stuff, although not in a judgy, unpleasant way. Han Rodden chowed down on some steak, and I noticed that they didn't contribute any food or drink all night, but I still had hope that they'd share the weed that I knew they had.

And as the sun was setting, handrodden brought out a selection of baggies from his pocket. Brody and Sam had passed out drunk by this point and crawled into their tents. Powell still wasn't back and I was beginning to get a little concerned. Cheggers said it was fine though. He even had a mobile phone reception so he managed to fire off a few texts to Powell. And there was nothing to do but wait so I turned my attention back to my old art teacher. I'd expected him to have some weed and he did.

but there was more than that. A strip of what looked to be LSD tabs, a bag of pills, and a huge bag of mushrooms. Han Rondin claimed that they'd picked the mushrooms that afternoon on their hike, but that obviously wasn't true. They'd been meticulously dried out and packaged, and I knew from experience that drying out magic mushrooms of any kind takes ages. Cheggers was down for a joint, but he really had to persuade Han Rosh. to share. It was like they didn't want to waste anything on him. On the other hand, both Han

Rondon and Sainsbury were really keen to get me to drop a tab of acid. When I absolutely point-blank refused, they offered me a pill. I'd always imagine pills to be the go-to drug for ravers and 20-somethings on lad's holidays, not aging hippies in their 60s. Probably prejudice, but hey, either way, I wasn't buying what they were selling, no matter how much they insisted was free, no strings attached. I smoked part of a joint, just so I could let Cheggers have some, then they started to go on about mushroom tea. I didn't really have any say in the matter, I guess. They were already boiling up the water in our kettle over our camp stove, and chucked a whole handful of the mushrooms in. I asked if they were sure the shrooms were safe, and I remember even though the haze of a pot and beer,

I felt a very sobering chill when Hanrodden waved my question away and vaguely said, I guess so. After they brewed the tea, Cheggers snatched up a cup before the couple could protest and downed it. I didn't think he'd ever done shrooms before, so I was a little worried. And sure enough, he very quickly stood up and began to wander around the woods. I get a nagging panic in the back my mind that I needed to take care of my friends. Cheggers was stumbling around hallucinating gnomes and Sammy and Brody were passed out, and Pow was God knows where. Unfortunately, I was forced to primarily focus on myself. Panrodden and Sainsbury were trying to force a huge mug of mushroom tea onto me in between more attempts to get me to drop a tab.

It was all getting a bit much for me, and I felt the fear build up in my chest. I was pretty stoned in regretting my decisions immensely. The cold chill of paranoia gripped the back of my head and I started puking into a pile of leaves. Sainsbury came over to me and put her thin arm around my shoulder. She led me back to the campfire and hand-rodden, and hand-rodden held up a cup to my lips and tried to feed me that mushroom tea. I pretended to drink, closing my mouth to the lid and smacking my lips like it was the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted. Puking had caused me to start sobering up. Cheggers was frolicing through the trees, trying to catch a gnome or a fairy or some such thing that he was yelling about.

My vision was blurred and confused and panic was starting to grip me. I felt Sainsbury rubbing my shoulders, and then Mr. Hanrodden doing the same. He was talking about a commune in the 60s or something, free love and nudism. He asked me if I wanted to take my clothes off. I said no. and both their hands were all over me, prodding and poking and groping. They tried to put a pill in my mouth and I spat it out, shouting at them. Nearby, Cheggers lets out some whoop of joy and then collapsed into a heap on the forest floor.

And to this day, I have no idea how much of what I saw was panic and how much was a skunk-induced hallucination. The weed-eyed smoke had to be laced with something. There's no way that the residue of the mushroom tea against my lips would have caused any hallucinations. I don't think. Hanrodden took on the appearance of the devil, a demonic face glaring from his huge beard. Sainsbury was a crowing harpy, and the forest around us was filled with laughing, shadowy figures, and Hanrodden was telling me that everything would be better if I just gave in and took my clothes off with him. Then he started doing things to himself.

Even as a 19-year-old, it made me sick to see an adult, old man doing that toward me. And I began to scramble away, blinking frantically to clear my mind of the fog and confusion they'd forced on me with the drugs and booze. And then I heard it, a visceral, furious bellow from the forest. For a moment I thought it was Bigfoot, or a werewolf or a mountain man. And then my mind cleared, and I saw my mate Powell charging through the trees. swinging a great big stick as he ran. He hooted at Hanrondon, telling him to get off me and leave me alone. Then he swung the huge branch he held and crushed Han Randon's tent in one smash.

That guy was scrambling away from Powell, dragging Sainsbury with him. Powell ran to me and held a can of Coke to my lips. He had me drink and then slapped my cheeks gently. The sugar and the shock helped me sober up a bit more, and I joined Powell in screaming at that old art teacher, who was struggling to pull up his pants as he scrambled along the forest floor. Powell advanced on the elderly couple, swinging his tree branch, and I watched them exchange words.

Powell grabbed him Ronden by the collar and shook him, shouting and spitting into the old man's face. I could vaguely understand why, but everything still seemed like a chaotic nightmare. My head was spinning, my heart was pounding, and I watched his pal escorted Hamrondon and Sainsbury into the trees and away, and slowly I passed out. I woke up in the tent as the sun was rising, and crawling out I came face to face with two

very hungover friends, Sammy and Brody. Powell was there too, fresh-faced and rested. He hadn't taken anything the night before, so for once in our lives, Pao was actually the designated sober guy. and he explained that he had chased off those weirdos and made sure that they'd gotten into their car and left. At first, I freaked out, forgetting the events of the night and thinking Pal had forced them to drive drunk and stoned. But then things came back to me. It also struck me that not once had I actually seen Hanrand and himself smoke or drink,

and it seemed like he'd just been intent on me getting absolutely messed up. Eventually, Cheggers got up too, and after being sick as a dog in the woods, we all had some coffee in a long chat. And Powell told us everything. After we recognized that art teacher, he'd stalked off because years ago, in year seven, he had a horrific experience with a teacher and never told anyone. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, Powell said, and he wouldn't give us any real details. But here's what happened. Powell had been a slow developer and had special classes in year seven and eight for kids who were behind. For some reason, this involved a weekend trip to a farm, and Han Ronden was one of the other teachers chaperoning it.

According to Powell, that guy had walked in on him in the showers every single night on the trip and continued to make creepy remarks to him after they'd returned to school. Powell said that he didn't think it was enough to tell anyone about it, which we sort of chastised. him for that, but when he realized that the old guy we'd met was Hanrond, and he saw red and had to go for a hike to cool off. He also said that he couldn't prove this, but he'd heard that that guy had left our school when he did, because there had been some other accusations aimed at him regarding his behavior towards some of the kids. I have since looked into this and verified that this is in fact likely true, although nothing was ever proven in court. I'd love to name and shame this guy. He's

still alive even today from what I can gather, albeit an ancient man. And I hope he suffers crippling arthritis every day. What a creep. I never could actually uncover who Sainsbury was or what her story was. And I was a little miffed at Powell for leaving us with a guy he suspected of being dangerous. But we were all grown adults, even if only just, and Powell was the only one who eventually came and saved us all after all. But yeah, that's a little one. That's a little one. That's the story of how my former art teacher drugged and groomed me. Kind of put a damper on the camping trips, and I can't help but wish that Powell had cracked that dirty old man a proper one with his tree branch. It's truly what he deserved. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. In

26, rather than chasing a new you, how can you let go of what's weighing you down instead? This year, feel lighter. The new year brings a fresh start, but that doesn't mean you have to completely reinvent yourself. We all carry our burdens and signing up for therapy with better help can help you understand what's been weighing you down while also opening up exciting new possibilities for the year ahead. It's a little step of bravery that can lead to really amazing changes, because you can't chase your dreams without first making room for them. The new year doesn't need a new you. Feeling lighter doesn't mean doing more. Sometimes it means carrying less. Just as an example, I've decided to focus more on myself instead of trying to keep everyone else happy.

all of the therapists at BetterHelp are fully licensed in the U.S. and follow a strict code of conduct to ensure you get the best support possible. BetterHelp makes it super easy for you by handling the matching process, so you can concentrate on your therapy goals. Just fill out a quick questionnaire to share your needs and preferences, and with over 12 years of experience, we usually nail the match on the first try. Plus, if you're not feeling your therapist, you can switch any time using our personalized recommendations.

BetterHelp is a friendly giant in the online therapy space, boasting over 30,000 therapists and having helped more than 5 million people worldwide, all while earning a fantastic average rating of 4.9 out of 5 from over 1.7 million client reviews. You can't step into a lighter version of yourself without leaving behind what's been weighing you down. Therapy can help you clear space. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash read. That's BetterHelp.com. com slash read.

So I understand that you're a submission-driven channel, and after hearing the story of an English journalist in a video titled Wrong Turns, I am reminded of one of my own well-worn tales. You see, although I have long since retired, I too worked as a member of the press, and from the late 1960s to the early 2000s, I wrote dispatches for the likes of the Times, the BBC, and the Associated Press. and my career took me all over the world, from Africa to the Americas to the far and the Middle East. But perhaps no place on earth has affected me more acutely than the one I'll write about today. And that place is Afghanistan.

So on Christmas Eve of 1979, and after a period of political instability for their marionettes in the Afghan government, Soviet paratroopers jumped from the skies over. over Kabul and captured the Capitol's airport. The next day, the Soviets confirmed what the world already knew. They invaded Afghanistan and they were there to stay. My colleagues and I were gripped and for two reasons. The first was that if Afghanistan fell, the Soviets had almost unimpeded access to India, a nation they had been courting away from the West for quite some time. And for the second was all of the empires and great powers that had tried to subdue Afghanistan, not a single one had achieved its long-term goals of controlling it.

The Persians tried, the Greeks tried, then the Mongols, and the British tried, on three separate occasions in the case of the latter. But no one ever managed to conquer what became known as the graveyard of empires. Then again, the Mongols only had stepponies, not thousands, of cutting-edge battle tanks, and so at first, all bets were on for the Soviets. But it's a good thing they weren't made with a bookmaker, otherwise a lot of people would have lost a lot of money. At first, rural resistance melded away in the face of the Soviets' overwhelmingly superior firepower. But as the spring fighting season kicked off in March of 1980, the native

Mujahideen, which roughly translates to holy warriors, came back with a vengeance. quite literally in some cases. As ambushes on Soviet convoys increased, the country they'd once declared conquered didn't quite seem so conquered anymore. And as 1981 rolled into 1982, Soviet casualty numbers kept on rising. But as the number of Russian deaths rose,

so did international interests in the plucky rebels who had swapped their shepherding crooks for AK-47s, and were giving the Russians as good as they got. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where your humble narrator enters the story. One of the largest backers of the Afghan Mujahideen, aside from the Gulf Arabs, was the United States who channeled their support through the friendly nation of Pakistan. Weapons, ammunition, food, and medicine were all smuggled through the mountain passes of the Afghan-Pakistan border. The same applied to journalists, too, and once editors discovered they could send us in and out without getting us killed,

they started issuing assignments left and right. They were all voluntary, of course. You could opt out if you so wished. And men with families and young children often did. Me, on the other hand, I was young, single, and eager to prove myself. So I flew to Peshawar, Pakistan, not far from the Afghan border. And Pashawar, I met a man named Navid, an Afghan who'd been studying English at Kabul University before the invasion.

Many of his fellow intellectuals were supporters of the Afghan communist regime, so they welcomed the Red Army with open arms. Navid saw things differently, and unfortunately for him, his colleagues were all too aware of it. Navid fled Kabul once people started getting arrested, and he joined the Mujahideen. But since he spoke English almost fluently, he was of much better use in the rear with a telephone

than on the front lines with an AK-47. His job was to be the Mujahideen's mouthpiece and garnering international support for their cause. And as a result, he was well known among the many Afghan refugees taking shelter in Peshawar. When I first arrived, Navit took me to an Afghan chai Kana, which translates as Tea House, where many of the country's refugees congregated. He introduced me to a woman who lost all seven of her children when Soviet helicopter gunships targeted. her village. She was a broken woman, dead behind those eyes who claimed the only thing keeping her alive was the hope of seeing the communists driven from her homeland. I met several other

people with similar stories, people who'd borne the brunt of their occupiers attempt to drag Afghanistan into their unholy empire. At the end of the day, Navid asked if I was ready to meet the people fighting for those refugees and for their right to return. I'd never been more ready for anything of my life, so the next morning, we began planning our journey into Afghanistan. Navi told me that Soviet helicopters patrolled the border regions by day, meaning we had no choice but to travel by night if we wanted to avoid them. But crossing the borders by night was potentially even more dangerous than crossing by day. It wasn't just the Mujahideen or Spetsnaz operatives we'd have to be careful of either.

Bandits roamed the areas which were prone to landslides and the mountains are also home to wolves, bears, and snow leopards, all of which would be only too happy to make a meal out of stranded motorists. There was a bloody good chance we'd end up stranded, too, as the only car Navid could get his hands on was an old Tajik jalopy that only seemed to start after Navid set a complex series of prayerful invocations. But even with everything stacked against us, there was no way that I was about to turn around and head home without at least trying to do my job. So that evening, once the sun was sinking low, we climbed into the car and off we went. As we drove away from Peshawar, the road rose to meet us as we drove closer and closer to the mountains.

They loomed large in the distance like a family of sleeping giants, silhouetted by the orange glow of the setting sun. I drove for the first few hours since I could quite easily navigate by the remaining daylight. But then once twilight started to set in, we pulled over to the side of the road and, Navid took a turn driving. He'd been given detailed instructions to follow by his Mujahideen contact, and this route was the only one which would guarantee our safety, so it was crucial we followed said instructions to the letter. Fortunately, Navid knew the mountain passes like the back of his hand.

There was just one small problem. He was a terrible sufferer of migraines. It had been full dark for about an hour when I noticed him beginning to rub his eyes every couple of minutes. And then when he cursed under his breath, closed his eyes and began pinching the bridge of his nose, I could stay silent no longer. I asked if he was okay, and if there was anything I could do to help. He explained he suffered terrible headaches, and so after giving him a couple of pills to alleviate the pain, I took over in the driver's seat for a while. But this only caused Navid's headache to worsen. You see, as an Englishman,

I was taught to drive on the left-hand side of the road. This is usually the case for those who grew up in Commonwealth countries, as they're generally taught in the style of their former compatriots. But the same cannot be said for Afghanistan. Afghans might have inherited our love for cricket, but they did not inherit our motoring sensibilities, and every so often I'd hear Navid in the passenger seat saying, Mr. David, please, you must drive on the right.

I'd apologize and correct myself, but in trying to follow his instructions as I peered out into the darkness beyond our headlights, I'd find my old instincts kicking in again, prompting another word of warning from Navid. Eventually, he gave up, declaring drive on whatever side you want, Mr. David, but be prepared for heaven if you stray for the right. I tried, I really did, but habits are hard things to break, even when your personal safety is on the line, and while it didn't cause an accident, my driving may or may not have contributed to us taking a wrong turn. We first realized when Navid gave me an instruction to make a turn. I waited for it, trundling along no faster than 10 miles an hour maybe, so I wouldn't miss it. And then I waited and waited and waited some more.

But still no alternate path presented itself. I told Navid that I think we missed the turn, or that I might have made a mistake further back and driven us down the wrong track. Every time Navid got annoyed with me, he'd say, God forgive me, in Arabic, and you can bet your arse he let out one hell of an astropholula after I admitted to the wrong turn. If we weren't on the road the Mujahideen were expecting us to be on, we were in a very precarious position. But turning back might end up with us getting lost even further.

We had to simply push on and hope Navid started to recognize our surroundings because If worse came to worse, we might end up running into some Russian special forces, which would be compromising to a permanent end, as they say. Navid's migraine was at peak painfulness by then, possibly from the stress of having me drive him around, but this also meant that there was no switching over. I was the driver for the foreseeable future, and unfortunately that meant driving on the left-hand side of the road. And so we pushed on, driving along winding.

mountain roads in almost pitched darkness while Navid struggled with both his migraine and navigation. I kept us going as best I could, sticking to the track and moving slowly and steadily. But then suddenly, a large floodlight burst into life ahead of us, and we were instantly blinded. I heard somebody suddenly barking at us in Pashto, a language only Navid understood, and he started to get out of the car and then told me to follow with my hands in the air. I'd been in some very sticky situations during my career, but nothing quite as hair-raising as that. We didn't know if they were Mujahideen, government troops loyal to the Russians, bandits or Spetnaz operators, who just so happened to have learned enough Pashto to order us out of the car.

The man behind the light shouted another order once we'd slammed the doors closed. Then Naveed told me to do as he did and began walking towards the light. I remember thinking, this is it. This is how I die. Shot by some Afghan bandit for my fancy boots and sunglasses. Or perhaps tortured to death by Russian special forces convinced them some kind of American spy. But after a few slow steps that dragged out into what felt like much, much longer,

a voice behind the light called out a soft question that included the word Navid. Navid's demeanor changed instantly, like he just heard his lottery numbers called out or something. And I later learned that he said, Yes, yes, it's me, Navit, and Pashto, at which point the entire situation turned on its head. His Mujahideen comrades shut off the spotlight at their checkpoint and then began walking towards us, lowering their weapons as they laughed.

The men began hugging each other and saying their salams before Navid introduced me to the men. They seemed very pleased to meet me, which was a huge relief. Yet after a round of handshakes, there seemed to be a lot of excited gesticulation between Navid and his friends. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but what I could gather is that after Navid's friends asked him a round of questions, they began explaining something about the route we'd just taken. One of the Mujahadine pointed to the road behind us, and Navid seemed to turn around in horror for a moment before turning back. Then after a few sentences of what I can only assume was explanation,

Navid turned to me and embraced me so hard it forced the wind out of my lungs. Thank you, Mr. David, he said. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I patted him on the back, feeling nothing but confusion as he trembled against me. And then after stepping away and wiping a tear from his eye, Navid began to translate what he'd just been told. The route Navid had been given by his friends in the Mujahideen had been a very specific one, as it was just the only path in the entire province that wasn't either mined or covered by sobiot checkpoints.

And the road we'd just driven down had been positively littered with pressure plate IEDs. Navid's friends had wanted to know how the hell we hadn't blown ourselves to smithereens. And after a few questions of his own, Navid figured out what? Why? To save on resources, the Mujahideen wanted to plant their explosives in the most effective places possible. So when they booby-trapped a stretch of road, they were expecting the Russians to drive down. They planted their bombs in a very specific place to make sure the explosions were as close as possible to enemy vehicles, and that place was the right-hand side of the road. It wasn't just the Afghans who stuck to the right side of the road while driving.

The Russians did too. Then when the Afghans noticed, they realized the best place to hide a rigged artillery shell was in the dirt off the right-hand side of the road. That meant that in sticking to the left, I avoided the ones with pressure plate detonators and prevented us from being blown to bits and a heartbeat. And when I realized this, the knee-wobbling thrill of the near-death experience kicked in hard. The Mujahideen commander was reportedly furious that we'd almost wasted his explosives

and exposed his men's positions to the Russians. But by the time we reached him, he'd calmed considerably and shared the opinion of his men that we were somehow blessed by God. I conducted an interview with the commander and spent some time at a Mujahideen camp taking photographs and interviewing fighters. Then, after a few days, Navid and I climbed back into the Tajik Jalapi and drove back to Pashawar with a motor vehicle outrider ensuring that we didn't take another wrong turn.

I had my story. Navid had his payment for being my fixer, and my editor back in London was over the moon. We had a scoop that would turn the other broadsheets green with envy, and I was heading home without so much as a sprained ankle. So all in all, it was a huge success, and I was free to move on to my next assignment. At least on paper I was free, because what I'd experienced ensured that there was some small part of me that would forever remain in Afghanistan. I made two more trips to the country, one in 1992 and one in 2001 shortly after the American invasion. My second trip in 92 filled me with hope, hoped that the warring factions could put aside their differences following the Soviet withdrawal and the defeat of the communist government.

But that hope was sadly misplaced. I thought Afghanistan would get itself back on track, so to speak, and return to a trajectory of prosperity. But, as you know, thanks to a man named Osama bin Laden, among many others, Afghanistan was doomed to another 20 years of war, factionalism, and ultimately suffering. I've never quite lost my sense of hope for that place. There's still a holdout somewhere in my heart that refuses. to give up the ghost. But as each day goes by, I come to realize that if Afghanistan has peace

and prosperity in its future, it certainly won't be arriving in my lifetime, or rather, what little of it I have left to enjoy. So in the early 2010s, my buddy and I, my buddy being Sean, used to go camping in the Sierra Nevada. We'd usually pitch up a tent somewhere near Mount Whitney or go hiking around Lake Tahoe, but we went all over the area. We were both native Californians, and our beloved mountain range was our absolute favorite place to spend time when we needed a break from the rat race. One time, we settled on the spot we'd never explored before. It was a fairly remote site off the beaten track, and we couldn't find any evidence that it had ever been camped at, exactly the kind of spot Sean and I'd like to check out and document. I was a bit of a

journaling nerd, and at the time I think I was using live journal or Tumblr to post sincere, intensely purple, travel, and nature writing. Now, I wish I still had an archive of most of it. It was incredibly abominable, but I had so much fun doing it, and that's the main thing. Sean was more of a photographer, and he still is, and basically spent most of our trips with a camera glued to his eye. Never ever suggested that man that he used a cell phone for photography, though. You'll get a rant about how it's sacrilegious to use a camera thinner than a DVD case. Me, I'm happy to snap pics with my Samsung. And back then I wrote everything down in notebooks and Sean would capture it on his Nikon or whatever expensive piece of equipment he was using at the time.

He'd been entering some online photography competitions, which is why he was stoked when he found this pristine camping spot that none of the Sierra Nevada forums we'd frequented had ever mentioned. We set up a tent and spent the night beside a bunch of trees, and we cooked up some burgers on our little stove there and then settled in for the night. And everything passed without incident, and we awoke refreshed the next day, ready to explore the area. The area where we camped was segmented by a small river. We followed the water upstream through the outcrops to the base of a small mountain. Sean paused to photograph what he insisted was a golden eagle. flying overhead, and a bit later we spied a mountain line prowling across some rocks,

thankfully in the far distance on a different mountain. Now eventually we broke for lunch in the shade of a cliff face. I scrawled some notes in my journal while Sean snapped some more picks, and he disappeared behind some rocks, and then I heard him calling to me pretty excitedly. Now, stopping my writing, I headed over. Sean had found a cave, Something about the gaping, dark opening in the rock gave me the creeps, though, and I suggested that maybe we should move on.

The area is home to some black bears and various other things, like mountain lines, obviously, and this could have easily been their layer. Sean said that he wanted to get a few photographs of the cavern entrance, and we were both armed and had bear spray and all that good stuff, so it didn't seem too risky. We stepped into the opening and almost immediately we were swallowed by the darkness. It was eerie. It felt like we'd stepped into liquid shadows. Behind us, the sun beat down, but inside the cave it was pitch black. I snapped my flashlight on, warning Sean, not to take any flash photography just in case it startled anything that might be lurking in the cave. The cavern seemed to descend deep into the rock. I stepped forward, curiosity getting the better of me and something crunched under my foot.

I looked down. It was some kind of bone, the leg of a deer or cow or something. I felt Sean's hand grabbed my arm, and he whispered something and nudged my flashlight upward. There was movement deep in the cave, and I tense, trying to decide of I should reach for my gun when Sean spoke again. It's a person, he said. A shadow darted across the beam of the flashlight. It did look like someone was up ahead. A humanoid shadow flashed across the wall for a split second, and I was sure that I saw some pale flesh in the beam.

I called out. Hello? My voice echoed through the dark cave. Sean was whispering that we should high-tail it out of the, there, and I knew he was right, but the explorer in me was winning out. It was curious. There are all sorts of rumors about mountain folk living in the Sierra Nevada. My uncle used to tell one story about a family that he'd known that were so poor that they lost their house to the bank and had to go live in a cave. He told it to me as a cautionary tale, a reason to be

thankful for what I had, but I'd always found something romantic and fascinating about the idea of impoverished folk living in a cave in the mountains. I dreamed of it as a kid, and now there was a chance that I could meet someone who actually lived here. It was fascinating. Then Sean brought me crashing back to Earth with, Dude, don't be moron! And began dragging me forcefully by the arm out of the hole in the rock.

I called out one last time. Hello? Get! Echoed back. Get gone. In a string of curse words, I won't force you to read for your YouTube monetization reasons. It certainly didn't sound like some feral mountain man. In fact, it sounded very much like the junkies I'd seen panhandling on the strip

or on any low-income street you'd care to walk down. And at that moment, my illusion was shattered. We ran out of the cave, tails between our legs, and decided that was enough explorers. for one day. Time to head back to our tent. And by the time we did, it was mid-afternoon, and I was looking forward to kicking back and getting some writing done. Nothing doing, though, because when we reached the tent, we were met with a completely terrifying sight. Our tent was covered in blood. At least that's how it looked at first in our momentary freak-out panic. We've been talking about mountain men and cave-dwelling junkies for the entire walk back,

so I'm not surprised that we'd jump to conclusions. But when your tent is covered in red liquid, what do you assume? Now up close, it was much clearer that it was some type of paint. Someone had tossed a can of red paint all over the outside of our tent. Thankfully, we hadn't left anything important behind, but the tent itself was clearly ruined. More paint had been splashed into the interior, soiling the soiling the sort of, sleeping bags too, and there was even the word leave, having been written in pain across the canvas. And at that moment, of course, we did. It was a couple of hours hiked to the car, and we had

no shelter and nowhere to sleep, so there was nothing to do but drive to the nearest town and get a motel for the night. We hung out in a bar just down from the motel and got talking to the bartender. We told him about our close encounter with that feral mountain man, and he just left. He just laughed. Apparently that area was home to a gang of meth cooks, and their junky clients would often camp out or hang around the mountainside. He said it was surprisingly only bumped into one of them. There's normally a few trailers dotted around that area, meth heads letting off guns and all sorts of stuff. I still don't know to this day if he was actually screwing with us, but he seemed amused and surprised that we'd escape that encounter intact. According to him,

There was a shooting around there almost every week. Sean and I decided not to go camping off that beaten path after that. We still went exploring for many years after, but we stuck to places that weren't home to murderous meth addicts or feral cave dwellers. So I live in Chicago, and the job I was working at the time had me on 12 till 10 shifts. So 12 in the p.m. to 10 in the p.m., six nights a week,

and sometimes I wouldn't actually get out of the place till maybe 10.30, so I'd always be driving home late, and I hated it. Right when I was at my lowest, my most hungry, my most tired, Chicago's crazies and outlaws would be hitting the streets to do whatever they do at night. Sometimes I'd bump into one outside the liquor store when I'd stop by to buy smokes. Sometimes I'd make it all the way to the parking lot of my apartment building before someone jumped out of our dumpsters to start trying to run. rob me. I got used to it after a while. I still hated it when I was used to my driving home

having this crazy edge to it. But then one night, it got way more crazy than usual. So I was driving along one night and it had been a pretty quiet one so far. I'd done my liquor store run, stopped to buy some groceries from a late night store, and both stops have been nice and quiet. I figured that I might have gotten lucky on the old crazies front, but once I was back on the road, there was an incident. I think it started when one of the cars ahead of me tried to pass another, because there was a loud honk of a horn before someone in one of the cars stuck their arm out of a window to flip the other one off.

No such passing took place, so the two cars drove one behind the other until the second set of lights we reached, at which point they managed to draw level with each other. I was right behind them by this point, with one car dead ahead of me and the other just to the right, and they're both right at the head of traffic on the stop line. I remember thinking, if they're going to do anything, it's coming now. And I wasn't wrong because after that, the passenger in the car on the left flipped the other car off. I thought they might start yelling each other through open windows before the light turned green, but the driver in front of me opened up his door,

climbed out of his driver's seat and then walked towards the other car before slamming his fist into the passenger window. He started yelling, get out and say that to my face, mother F. But the passenger door didn't open. I thought, uh-oh, these guys don't want the smoke, because they didn't roll down their window or open their doors, and I figured they were just going to zoom off when the lights turned green because they'd mess with the wrong dude. But looking back, I think it was more like the other way around. The man who got out of his car didn't know who he was messing with. The lights turned green, and the cars on either side of us started getting back on the move, but everyone who was stuck behind me and the two cars started honking and yelling for them to make a move. The guy out of his

car yelled at everyone to shut up and mind their business, which kind of made me laugh at the same time because we're all literally just trying to get where we're going and this dude stopping us. but as the guy is yelling at the cars behind, the passenger side window he'd just been punching started to lower, before stopping maybe halfway down. I'm also guessing the guy heard something from inside the car because he turned to look just in time for me to see two flashes and hear two bangs.

It was like a real quick pop-pop, and I knew instantly from the sound that it was shots fired before the car that it came from suddenly. sped off that what must have been 80 to 90 miles per hour. At first, I thought the shots missed, because the guy that got shot at didn't move a react or anything. He just kind of stood there and watched the car speed off. But then he turned to walk back to his own car and I realized the shots, or at least one of them, hadn't missed. The guy looked fine, but then like I said, he turned and I saw the shots had carved away a huge section of skin and muscle around what I'm guessing was his right eye.

He kind of staggered as he walked with all this blood pouring out of his head, and then remember how he put a hand up to his head and saw the blood on his hand when he pulled it away. If that was me, I'd have been freaking out, but the guy barely even reacted. He just sort of kept stumbling towards his car for another step. or two, before his legs seemed to stop working altogether. I saw the moment he realized it, too, like he looked down maybe thinking his foot was caught on something, but it wasn't. And I'm guessing one of the bullets scrambled his brain or something because he just sort of lost the ability to walk. Then he fell down, just onto his knees first,

and then onto his hands, too. He reached out for his door like he was trying to grab it for stability, and I could see his fingers gripping and tensing like it was just within reach, only it wasn't. The car door was at least a foot or two away, but I guess from how messed up his vision was he couldn't tell, and then he passed out reaching for something he'd never feel. I remember hearing someone behind me honking their horn and yelling out of their window at me to move, but then in the moment after the shots were fired, it was like a starter gun for pure K. chaos. Cars are zooming left and right, trying to get the hell away, because they still don't know where the shots were coming from or if the shooter was still active. For me, shit, all I did was freeze looking up at that guy's body. You could see bone, like a pinky white underneath the flesh that had been ripped away by either one or both of the bullets, and blood was pouring from what looked like a hole in his skull. It was probably one of the worst things I'd ever seen, but I couldn't look away.

And I ended up calling 911 and joined a bunch of people who'd walked out from the sidewalk to see if they could help the guy, but we could all see how bad he was hurt, and I think he was dead by the time the EMTs got him on a stretcher. I told the cops everything I'd seen, but

I hadn't managed to get the shooter's license plate either. Or I mean, the car that had the shooter in its passenger seat. After that, I was free to go, but it wasn't over for me. not by a long shot. I had a couple of nightmares where I'd see the guy's face all messed up like it was, and I didn't realize how badly the thing had me messed up until I ended up getting super sick. I wasn't sleeping properly, and I wasn't eating well, and I wasn't getting outside

enough. And I guess after a while, it all came to a head, and I ended up talking to a girl I knew about it who recommended therapy. Now, I can't say it worked wonders for me, like it definitely wasn't just a couple of appointments and then I was cured. But it definitely helped me rationalize things and over time it helped me get to the stage where I could finally start living normally again. When I was a much younger guy, I did a lot of stupid things to try to impress a girl, most of which I don't really want it to get into right now, but maybe the most reckless one that I'm willing to admit to was I agreed to protest a fracking development in a small village in Sussex. I didn't know what I getting myself into when Amy, the girl that I was into, took me to buy camping gear.

I thought we were just going to make some noise and wave some placards, not spend the night there. She was telling me about how important this was, and I tried to look like I understand. The next morning, about a hundred of us pitched our tents by the side of the road, ready to block any traffic into the drilling site. Someone had rigged up a PA and was playing Black Sabbath, and every how a car passed through the road, we ran out to block it and chanted our slogans. As one passed, I tried to get enough signal on my phone to text my mom that I wouldn't be back that night. Later in the day, when everyone had eaten all the snacks they brought, one legend had brought a whole barbecue and enough burgers and sausages to share, almost evenly cooked, and we all went back to our tents.

We got there a bit too late to get the best spot, so ended up a bit further back to the next. the rest of them, but I didn't think that would matter. As we both got to our tents, in the camping shop I jokingly suggested it would be cheaper to get one big one, or at least after she said no, I said it was a joke. Amy pulled out a cooler and offered me a cider. I'd hoped I'd done enough to make her think I was boyfriend material. I'd even shown her how to put the guy ropes in, which she'd had to move. We were woken up a few hours later by the owner of the tiniest edge of land we'd inadvertently been camping on. In my sleepy state, I couldn't make out a word he was saying, but the moonlight made clear enough the shotgun he was waving at us. He looked very angry,

and I assumed he was saying something along the lines of get off my land. We had just about enough time to run out of our tents before he could shoot at us. The farmer began screaming and hollering, and I have honestly never been more afraid. I only had my underwear on, and luckily Amy had been sleeping in a Spider-Man t-shirt, which in different circumstances, well, looking back, I'd have just grilled her about comic book trivia, so I'd only have embarrassed myself. In our panic, we didn't run towards other camping protesters and safety, or at least numbers, but in the other direction. The road we'd been protesting on was between two villages, and I knew that there was no chance we'd make it to the next one before the farmer caught up with us. In this darkness, we could

easily get lost if we went off the road, but so could he, so this seemed like the best option. I tried to get Amy's attention, and then grabbed her hand and ran into the woods, hoping she'd run with me, which she did. It was at this point I regretted having seen the Blair Witch Project recently. The woods quickly became dense enough that we had to give up holding hands, so I had no idea how far away she was. I hope that she was still near me, but in the almost total darkness, I could barely see her or anything. A few times I nearly ran into a massive oak tree. It might have been the same one. And once, I tripped on a route, feeling my knees smashed into the earth before I could reflexively put my hands out to brace myself. I must have lost Amy a while

ago, but I couldn't even be sure when. I was also very lost myself and not sure how far I'd be able to run now. I considered just lying there to wait in the cold and dark for the morning light to come. And then I heard a cry. It was Amy. Imagining the farmer with a shotgun and the trouble Amy could be in, I ran towards where I thought I'd heard the sound. I think I must have hurt myself a few more times and tree branches or something because the next morning I had a lot more cuts and bruises. I managed to catch up with Amy, but so had the farmer. I suppose as a gesture of politeness, he wasn't pointing a shotgun directly at me, which I assumed he probably would if it was me, found. But it was still a threat. He hadn't noticed me yet, but I didn't really want to hurt him

when, out of the three of us, he'd probably had the best idea of how to find the road. I pleaded with him that we hadn't meant to use his land, that we wouldn't do it again, that we were lost, and that it had been my idea to join the protest, so he should at least let Amy go. I don't know what he'd been planning to do or what he would do. I just hope that by taking the blame, it might wrong foot him enough to not hurt us. I guess he must have been a bit lost himself because after a few seconds, he started laughing. And I later found out from his wife that the shotgun wasn't even loaded and was too rusty to fire. Luckily, the protest camp was still noisy enough that, without confusion of the chase,

we could more or less just walk towards it. As we started to talk about why we'd been camping there, we even managed to bring him around a bit and offered to take some leaflets once Amy had gotten back to her feet, because obviously she didn't have any on her. I think at that point he noticed I'd lied about it being my idea to come. But with attention gone and it being a noble lie anyway, he just laughed it off and offered us into the farmhouse for a cup of tea. I never did get a date with Amy, but we became very close friends,

so I don't look back with too much shame on that night. I guess there's something about being at the other end of a very angry farmer holding a very real-looking shotgun which brings people together, even if it doesn't work well for romance. I never did return to the protest, and sometimes I wonder what happened with it. My name's Nick, and I'm from England. Back in the mid-90s, when our son was still only four, we went on a family holiday to Tuscany in Italy. My wife had found this incredible villa in a holiday brochure, which was up in the hills above a place called Luc Elena. It looked like a little slice of paradise, and it was shockingly cheap compared to some of the less rural villas and apartments.

So without delay, we booked it for two weeks, paid the fees and deposit, then counted the days into our dream holiday. We landed in Pisa in the late afternoon, and while our young son Tom hated the flight, he loved the ice cream that we bought him before the journey out to Lucalena. It was a good three-hour drive from Pisa, so by the time we were within maybe half a half of the flight, an hour of Lucalena in our village, it was completely dark. We were right out in the countryside, too, so the stars above us lit up the sky, and little Tom fell asleep after staring out the window at them. My wife was struggling to stay awake by the time we came to a crossroads, and I was pretty exhausted from the days traveling myself. So rather than make a gut decision on which path to take, I stopped the car, got my map out, and consulted it before making the appropriate turn.

I reassured my wife that we were only a few miles away and that we'd be at the villa within 15 to 20 minutes, and then I drove up a steep path that leveled off at the top. Because of the slope, I couldn't see what was at the top, so I made sure to crest the hill nice and slowly to avoid any kind of collision. But then, as I did, someone jumped out of the bushes at the side of the road and was lit up by my headlights. I could see that he had a long, double-barrel shotgun in his head. his hands, and he was aiming it right at me. I slammed on the brakes as my wife started to panic.

Then I was struggling to get the car in reverse when all of a sudden I heard no, no from outside the car. A second man had jumped out of the bushes and was lowering the first man's shotgun while telling him no. They both shot us a look of horror, realizing we were not who they thought we were. Then the second man, who stopped the first from shooting, walked over to the driver's side window and tapped on the glass. When I rolled it down, he gave me and my wife this big nervous smile as he said, Me despatche motos, signore. Which I knew from my Italian phrasebook meant I'm very sorry, sir.

I didn't really speak much Italian, and what little I'd learned went right out the window when that guy pointed a shotgun at me, so all I could manage in reply was, Parley English? Or do you speak English? And the man said, No, no. And that melodic drawn-out Italian way,

and then said, No English, me disbiace. I then heard my wife ask, Are you police? Policia? And the man replied, Yes, see, Policia. With the same big smile in his face

and then told us, Vonti, go, go, right, which just means, come on then, move along. And we both thanked him, and by that point, Tom had woken up in the back seat and was getting very agitated asking, Mommy, Daddy, who are these men? We told him it was the police, but they had been very friendly and were letting us go. I think my wife believed them at the time, so she was very convincing and reassuring Tom that there was nothing to worry about.

But me, I didn't believe a word he'd said about being the police. I didn't say anything with Tom an earshot, and I didn't want to scare him, and arriving at the villa really took the edge off, too, because it was even nicer in the flesh than it was in the brochure. But then, once we got in Tom all tucked into bed and had a few moments to settle down, I told my wife what I'd been thinking. I told her how I didn't think those men were the police. They weren't in uniform. That shotgun looked like it had come off a farm, not from a police arsenal, and they didn't even attempt to show us any badges. or identification or anything like that. She asked me, if they weren't police, who were they? And I replied,

The Mafia. My wife just sat down in bed in silence as I made my case, and when I was done, it made sense to her, too. A couple of mafiosos had been waiting to ambush someone, and they thought that person was us. The only thing that stopped us freaking out completely was that we were at least a couple of miles away,

from that ambush site, so the chances of running into them again seemed minimal. She suggested we call the police in the hopes they had an English speaker down at the station, but even if they did, I wasn't sure that was a good idea. The idea of rocking the boat like that made me feel even more nervous than having that shotgun pointed at me and my family, because while that whole thing had apparently been a mistake, having a snitching on the local mafia on our first day in Italy, was a deliberate act that might well bring us some undue attention. I'm not saying it was an easy decision to make. I was furious that some idiot had pointed a gun at us, but it quickly became a question of, if we're going to be staying there for two

weeks, what was the course of action that was going to keep us safest? And that's how we decided to honor that age-old mafia tradition of keeping our bloody mouth shut. The next day, we decided to walk down to Lucillena to do some exploring, and that's how we found this little bar that served Panini's espresso and assortment of little pastries. I got a coffee, and then while my wife and son got coax and played around with a table football set in the little games room they had, I sat at the bar and discovered the bartender actually spoke English. We talked back and forth, and he gave me some restaurant recommendations, and suddenly, a group of older men who were drinking coffee and playing cards started gesturing toward the bar's television.

The bartender turned up the TV, which was showing us a news report of some kind. I asked the bartender what it was about, and after listening to the news lady speak for a minute or so, he turned back to me and said, There's been the murder. Not far from here. His was a businessman who got killed. Terrible thing. I asked him exactly how far away the murder had been,

and after consulting with some of the older men, The bartender confirmed my suspicions. It had taken place in almost the exact spot where those armed men had jumped out of the bushes ready to fire at us. I didn't rush to tell the wife. I didn't want to frighten her any more than she already was. But later that day, once we were back at the villa and getting ready to head out for dinner, I told her about the murder. Again, it wasn't like anything we could do about it, or rather,

it was nothing we were willing to stick our necks out over by getting involved with local crime. The best thing we could do was try to forget about it, head to Lucilena and enjoy some incredible home-cooked food. It was so good that her young son Tom suddenly didn't mind trying new things when they were all so delicious. And so we ate our fill and when we were all finished we asked for the bill. The waiter then comes out with the restaurant's owner, and the pair of them explained in very broken English that the meal

had already been paid for. Then when I asked who the generous person was, they explained that it was someone we'd had a misunderstanding with. At first, my wife and I didn't make the connection, and we tried explaining there hadn't been any kind of misunderstanding. We loved the food, and we wanted nothing more than to support their business by paying our bill. But the owner insisted, our money was no good there. Then when we ate there again the second night,

with every intention of leaving a large tip, they once again explained our food was free. But by then, we'd figured out who was paying for our meals. It was the mafia. It didn't happen anywhere else, and we made sure to visit plenty of other places because we felt terrible. I mean, as far as we knew, the mafia hadn't really paid for our food, and those poor people were being forced to cook for free. But then, every time we did eat there, they seemed to be. really happy to see us and the waiter would always bring our gelato for our four-year-old son

without us asking for it. My wife didn't always approve of all that ice cream, but you better believe Tom did. That made us think that maybe those mafia guys really were paying the owners for all our food, and that they were running a little scam of their own and giving us as much as possible so they could claim it all back from the mafia. But since we didn't see them ever again, I suppose we'll never know. They never reached out to us, and we didn't see those two armed guys around the village at all, but I suppose it was probably a case of they saw us. We just didn't see them. It was an amazing but very intense holiday, but the next time we visited Italy, we went to a completely different part of the country and had no repeat encounters with any nocturnal assassins.

We had to pay for all our meals, which my wallet definitely wasn't thanking me for, but we still found that second holiday much more relaxing than the first. My name's Anton and I'm from Germany and please pardon if my English is not perfect. I learned to speak it from watching American TV and visiting America and I taught myself. I'm an adventurer and hiker and I spend much of my time camping and hiking all around Europe. Anywhere worth visiting, I've visited it, but the rest of the world had not been my playground yet. This is why for many years I harbored a dream of visiting finest Appalachia, the location of so many excellent scary stories and atmospheric adventures that I've seen. I'm a solo hiker and I challenge myself to explore and survive in the wilderness alone.

This has always been perfect for me as I am a solitary individual, and throughout all of my travels in Europe, I have never encountered more than a few minorly troubling incidents. And this is why I, foolishly, embarked on a soul. solo visit to the Appalachia Trail in the summer of 2014. I flew over to the States for my first visit and stayed with some friends that I had known for some years online. Then I rented a car and drove to the foot of the trail that I was going to hike. I had promised my friends that I'd followed the marked trail rigidly, as they were concerned about me doing this alone, but secretly I had decided to go where the wind took me. I did stick to the trail for the first day or two, but then I diverted.

I have many years of experience as an explorer, so keeping track of my route was no problem for me. I headed into an area that appealed to me. The trees were so huge and towering, unlike anything we have in Europe, and I was taken by the beauty surrounding me. That night I set up my tent beside a small pond. The beauty of the American countryside took my breath away,

and I bashed in the silence and tranquility of this new world. Back in Germany, it is stunning, but Appalachia, at least where I was, was very unique and I was awestruck. That night, I drifted off watching the stars and eventually I crawled inside my tent to sleep. I awoke later to sounds, howling and calling. At first I thought it might be a pack of wolves. I didn't have a firearm as a German person on vacation in the States, but I had a hunting knife, and it is this that I held as I was just, frozen there in my tent, listening intently. The howling soon settled into human voices,

and I couldn't understand their words at first, if they were saying words at all, but then they began to chant. If you leave, you'll die. If you leave, you'll die. I called out to them, as it was clear that they knew that I was inside the tent. Leave where I asked. Leave the tent, they said. If you leave the tent, you will die. Will you kill me? I asked. No reply. A voice howled again, and then another said, If you leave, you'll die. And next I heard footsteps. It sounded like they were circling the tent. Fear gripped me, unlike anything I had ever felt before in my solo adventures. Was this to be the end of me, here in some foreign land? Was my life to be cut short by these

Americans who I had for so long held in such high regard. I shifted in the tent and a voice called back. Do not come out. I listened and instead gripped my knife tighter just as fear gripped me. More steps than the sound of someone running, shouts and a commotion that seemed to have nothing to do with me. A voice outside the tent spoke and told me to stay put, and so I did. I had lit a fire in the pit that night, and now I saw the light from my fire flaring back up, lit by one of the strangers outside. Another jolt of panic. What if they burned me alive? But I could see the fire was not too close to the tent even through the canvas. I held back a scream as I heard one gunshot, and then another. The voice outside the tent reaffirmed that I should stay put. I thought about

challenging that voice, emerging with my knife and fighting for my life. But for what? They told me that I would be okay if I stayed inside, and so I did. Two more gunshots, and then some more hooting and laughter. Whoever was out there, they were having some kind of fun, and I didn't know what violence was occurring, if any, and I did not know how serious the danger was directly to me. All I knew was that the men outside continued to tell me to stay in the tent where I was. At some point during that long, terrifying night,

the fire was extinguished again, and this allowed me to relax somewhat, knowing that I would not be set ablaze by unseen hands while cowering inside my shelter. Somehow, eventually, tiredness caused me to pass out. When I awoke, I could see the sun had risen. For a moment, I forgot about the events of the night before, but I urgently needed to urinate and started to unzip the tent. Everything returned in my memory, and I froze, then called out. No reply. I waited. listened, gripped the knife, and opened the tent. I could see no signs of anything that occurred in the night, except for the fact that some of the undergrowth had been trampled down.

Sitting by the fire, though, was a six-pack of beer. I did not been there when I went to bed. I didn't drink it. I just left it where it was. Two days later, I emerged from that Appalachian Trail area with my dream trip cut short. I've since hiked the Appalachian Trail again, but not alone, and within the safety of the trail markers. I have asked many people what they think I may have experienced that night. Nobody has any clear answers, and I don't either. I try to convince myself that I was the victim of a cruel prank, but it's hard to know for sure. They say strange things happen on the Appalachian Trail. Germany is the same, but not quite as much. Appalachia, is beautiful and haunted and dangerous.

I will go yet again someday, and as I do every time I visit that most remarkable of areas, I will pray that I don't encounter those men ever again. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST.

Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.