The Lets Read Podcast - 360: I'LL NEVER CAMP ALONE IN THE WOODS AGAIN | 8 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 346

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Camping Alone & RoommatesHAVE 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 --> Code: [READ]

A couple friends of mine listen to your podcast regularly and keep encouraging me to write into you with the story. Now, hopefully you find it as creepy as I did because even though it happened over 15 years ago, it feels like yesterday whenever I remember it. To this day, I still don't know if I should have done something more than I did, and whenever I tell the story, nobody can give me a decisive answer of what they think I should have done either. So maybe you or your listeners can shed some insight or open my eyes. to a new perspective. It drives me mad thinking about what else I could have done to help the guy in question in the story, maybe because it ended with me being so helpless and useless to him.

Now, for some background when I was younger, I used to see myself as a bit of a wild explorer survivalist type. I had read all the books, seen all the shows, and kind of enjoyed having this air of rugged mystery to myself. I'm an extremely tall, broad fella, and combined with a sense of immortality you have in your early 20s, I felt pretty invincible. So all of this said, it's the reason why I spent a lot of my time camping by myself. One thing I'd say is that camping by yourself isn't actually the best idea. There's a whole bunch of things that can go wrong, especially if you're deep in the wilderness. If you need help, there's likely going to be nobody around to offer it, and if you come up against any adversity, man, or nature, then more often than not, your body's going to be

food for the crows never to be found. Now, I've done my due diligence with warning you about the dangers. I can say that my years camping by myself are freaking awesome. There's nothing like braving it in nature all by yourself knowing that your own survival relies solely on you and your decisions, and that one wrong step could send you spiraling to your doom, sometimes literally if you stumble off a cliff in the dark. Now, thankfully, I never managed to injure myself in that kind of way, which is a miracle when I look back at how reckless and stupid I could get. At the time, like I said, I enjoyed being a quiet, stoic man of mystery, so I didn't often recount my adventures to friends either. But when I did, they'd always scold me for being

so irresponsible and tell me that one day I'd end up dead in a tree. Always in a tree, too, according to one friend of mine who very much enjoyed the comforts of life. Not sure why he always assumed that I climbed into trees, but according to the tree, him, that's the way I was going to die. Maybe a leopard or something pulled me up there. I always laughed and brushed them off, and I don't think it really struck me at how correct they were until I found myself responsible for someone else's life. As much as I'd like to brag and tell you all about my death-defying exploits, it's this one final event towards the end of my camping days that really sticks with me. As I've said, I really focused on survival and isolation, so it was pretty rare for

me to meet anyone else when I was out hiking. And so one day, four days into a planned eight-day hike, I was hella surprised when, almost out of nowhere, a guy came ambling into the clearing where I was setting up my tent. Immediately I was on the defensive, being pretty much in the middle of nowhere and not having seen another living soul for days. And then when I finally took in the guy's appearance, I felt more confused than defensive. Everything about this dude was wrong. at least in the middle of nowhere in the forest, that is. The main thing was that while I was decked out in full hiking gear, covered in mud and who knows what else,

this guy was wearing what appeared to be a casual business suit. He looked like he'd just come strolling out of the office, at least in terms of what he was wearing. And the more I look, though, the more disheveled I realized he was, and the more confused and scared he appeared to be. The first thing he said to me was to ask me where we were. I told him very gruffly and still in the defensive, and at first I wasn't sure that he'd heard me, because I have a tendency to sort of mumble and talk quietly.

And then I realized his look of puzzlement was because he thought I was lying to him. We engaged in a bit more discussion, and I allowed myself to open up a little and accept that this dude wasn't out to kill me. I soon realized that he was very lost and unsure of himself. I kind of wondered if maybe he was drunk, but he also reminded him. me of when my great-grandma had suffered from dementia. There was this sort of glassy look in his eyes that disturbed me a little. Relaxing and deciding this guy wasn't a threat, I started being more gentle on how I spoke to him. I managed to coax the info out of him that he had no memory of how he'd woken up in the forest out here in the middle of nowhere, and the last thing he could

remember was leaving work for about four days before. Either this guy had gone on the mother of all drinking binges or he really was suffering some kind of severe head trauma. I tried asking if he could remember a blow to the head or anything like that, but he seemed completely unaware of anything that could have led him to where he is now. And let me just stress here for a moment, we really were out in the middle of nowhere. This wasn't somewhere that you could end up after wandering for an hour or so or even for a day. And it really struck me how wild it was when the guy asked me for help and getting back to civilization, and we went over my map. Unless my wayfinding had somehow become way off,

we were about three days from where I'd left my vehicle in one direction, and about the same distance to the nearest town and the other. I figured that town must be where the guy had come from, and when I mentioned the name, his face actually brightened a little. He lived there with his girlfriend, he said, and he worked in the city during the week. Feeling kind of like an adventurer-hero, I suggested to the guy, that we camp out where I'd set up my tent so we could get some rest and warm some food up before we began to hike back to civilization the next day.

It only struck me a bit later that I was inviting a stranger to watch over me while I slept, who could potentially be very dangerous whether knowingly or not. At the time, I didn't even really consider the ramifications of this, and like I said, I was young and reckless and arrogant. Thankfully, when I woke up the next day, the business suit guy hadn't murdered me in my sleep. He was in fact snoring in an extremely deep sleep cramped up next to me in my one-man tent. I somehow managed to slip out without waking him and wash myself up and then went about planning our most optimal route. I figured that I'd let this business guy sleep as long as he needed.

We could even set out a day later if we had to, and I had enough provisions for probably at this point a year. year of survival, and the guy seemed to be in perfect physical health. Mentally, I wasn't sure, but I was confident that I could handle or wrangle this rogue businessman. But I prayed that he was just on something rather than suffering from head trauma or dementia. And after he'd woken up for the morning, it became clear that unfortunately this guy was suffering from some kind of mental issue, though. He'd frequently drift off while talking to me and his memory of lost events didn't seem to be any better than the previous night. Occasionally, I'd catch him looking at me in some strange way,

almost hungrily or dangerously. And now it's probably obvious that I'm a stubborn idiot at this point, but at the time I refused to accept that this guy could be anything less than legitimate. Hell, maybe I'm only remembering these predatory looks by thinking back on it, I'm not really sure, but either way, I was at least sensible enough to insist that we head towards civilization that day. I loaned this guy some of my spare hiking gear, so he was at least a little equipped for the wilderness. And now that he wasn't wearing a suit, he almost passed as someone who belonged out there with me. And at the very least, he didn't unsettle me every time I looked at him. And as we walked through the woods, I realized that he was a surprisingly competent hiker.

Too competent, it felt, looking back on it, but again, that just could be the benefit of hindsight. And as we walked, picking our way over some pretty rough terrain, the guy started talking about some fairly weird stuff. One thing that really sticks out to me was that he kept asking me what my views were on morality, specifically if I believed in an afterlife and what did I think happen to us after we die, etc. Again, looking back, this was really unsettling for a meeting with a stranger out of nowhere under these certain circumstances.

Now, back then, I kind of was pretentious, though. sort of a wannabe intellectual, so I treated his weird conversation topic with sincerity. I guess maybe some of it was adrenaline and denial as well. There wasn't much I could actually do about being stuck out there with a super weird guy, so the best survival tactic I had was denial and to just keep pressing on. This guy really shouldn't have been able to keep up with me if he really was an unprepared, mentally sick guy who found himself in a situation like this. I'm absolutely certain of that now.

At the time, though, he managed to keep pace with me despite being a lot shorter and smaller than me, and I really pushed us both through our paces. I should add, too, that the guy looked to be maybe late 30s, early 40s, and I was in my early 20s, so I guess there was a degree of wanting to impress my elders, and there was also the fact of being unaware of just how much difference that age gap should have made to his overall fitness if he was unprepared. After a day's hard hiking, I found a clearing that I had previously camped in by my myself and told the guy that we'd set the tent up here to take a break for the night.

It was by a small creek, so it was a nice camping spot that I used a few times, and we both enjoyed a refreshing wash in the creek, and I settled in to share some rations with him. I hope that by talking to the guy that I might be able to shake his memory loose, but all I got were these stories about his day job. Most of them sounded kind of made up, like he'd taken them from books or TV shows, but there was nothing I could prove to be a clear lie. The next day, after somehow surviving a second night sleeping next to this dude, we began again. Now, I call this second day Predator Day, and thankfully not because Business Guy revealed himself as a predator, but because he became convinced that we were being stalked by one.

Now, I'd like to add at this point that the reason I continue to call him business guy is that he never actually told me his name, and I was too much of a hothead to slow down and really ask. and it started within an hour of us going out for the day. The business guy grabbed my arm and slowed me down. At first I got kind of defensive and thought, oh God, this is it. He's making his move. But I summoned my inner Zen and I asked him what was up.

He acted like I was stupid for not realizing it, but clammed up like it was some big secret. And then when I coaxed it out of him, he leaned in and whispered to me in a very exaggerated way to say that we were being followed. I told him we definitely weren't, that I'd train myself to detect if I was being followed. I know I was kind of pretentious. I told you this already, but business guy sort of sneered at this and made as if he was going

to say something smart-ass and then just didn't. Now, looking back now, I'm convinced that he was going to say that I hadn't noticed him following me previously, but I can't be sure. I managed to convince him that we weren't being followed and to keep up the pace. About an hour later, he grabbed my arm again, though, and said something about how he was certain now. We were definitely being stalked. Again, I told him we weren't, and I generally don't think we were. I asked him if he thought it was a person or a creature, and he said he wasn't sure.

He said maybe it was a bear or a mountain line, and I explained to him that neither of those animals were most likely going to be in this area, and that I definitely wouldn't be camping alone in an area with those kinds of things. Now, the business guy sort of jeered at this as well, as if he knew better than me. And I reminded myself that this guy wasn't well mentally, and I was just supposed to be helping him escape. Now, some more time passed than the guy started really freaking out now. He was yelling for our stalker to come out and face us. He started shouting that we had a gun and weren't afraid to use it. Now, as it happens, I did have a gun, a small pistol for protection, but I'd made sure not to reveal that to this guy at any point.

just in case. I wanted at least one piece of protection for if things went south. At this stage, I was fairly certain that they were about to go south too with all the screaming that this guy was doing. He acted so convinced and certain that we were being stocked that it started making me paranoid as well. And suddenly every movement was a threat. Every noise was an animal creeping up on us. Sure, bears and cougars weren't super common in this area at all, but that didn't mean that there couldn't be a stray killer animal out of its natural habitat, right? And at one point, I just about had a heart attack when a rabbit went dashing past us, disturbed by this business guy's yells. Now, I successfully managed to coax him into calming down and following me again, but this is

where the guy starts to unravel. At the time, I assumed it was fatigue or illness affecting him, but sometimes when I play it back, I wonder if it was kind of a hunger. If this guy was planning on doing something terrible to me and I stress that to this day I still don't know for sure, then maybe the itch to do it was getting under his skin. I don't know if maybe I was subconsciously thinking of this at the time, but I do remember that I pushed us real hard that day and we continued hiking a while after the sun had gone down, which again is a really stupid thing to do, but at the time, I insisted that we'd be fine to hike by flashlight. I knew the area pretty well and I also didn't want to stop while this business guy was still muttering about how we were being followed.

Now, I'm fairly certain by the end of the day I was convinced that we were being followed too, even though I knew that that was impossible. Certainly, if we were being followed by an animal, it wouldn't have been able to stalk us unseen for an entire day. And finally, I allowed us to set up camp. And by my calculations, which were probably wrong looking back on it, we could reach my car by the next afternoon. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself at our progress. I was also still convincing myself that I'd save this lost guy while ignoring all the red flags that I'd seen in retrospect. Or, if not red flags, then at least pieces of evidence that prove things were entirely as they seemed at face value. I've retold this story countless times,

and every time I do tell it, I remember something else I probably should have picked up on. And that night is where everything came to a head. We found a camping spot in the dark, as I said, which was a small miracle given how obscure the area was. My tent was one of those pop-out tents, so it wasn't hard to set up in the dark, and then go about setting up the portable camp heater that I've been carting around. No campfires in unapproved areas, of course. At least I'd like to abide by the rules. And we sat around that heater for the third night,

and I tried coaxing more memories or details out of this guy. And for the third night, he continued to insist that all he remembered was leaving work in the city, and then waking up in the middle of the forest. By now, even back then, I was really starting to question this whole thing, given that this guy had managed to hike back with me just fine despite being allegedly unprepared. I figured that if he hadn't killed me after three nights, then he wasn't going to, though, and he had some other reason for wanting me to guide him out of that forest. It felt safe to play along, is really what I'm trying to say. Now, we were ready to go to bed to our tents when the men came bursting into the clearing with flashlights.

One of them shouted at me to stay calm and that everything was going to be okay now. Meanwhile, a couple of other guys had grabbed the business guy and were now handcuffing him. I squinted against the light shining in my face trying to make out who these guys were. Now, the way they were acting, they seemed like they were FBI or some other kind of law enforcement agency. And I think they were wearing unmarked jackets, though. Or at least I couldn't see. any identifying marks in the dark. The guy who'd spoken to me flashed a badge at me, which looked vaguely legitimate, but again, it was very hard to tell in the nighttime.

And I also couldn't see specifically which agency the badge was associated with, although in later years I've identified it as being almost certainly FBI. Now, it was an absolute whirlwind. This one guy, an agent or whatever he might have been, was constantly telling me to stay calm and that I was safe, almost as if he was trying to disdain. distract my attention from whatever was going on with that business guy. I tried to look around the man blocking my view while shielding my gaze from the flashlight in my eyes, and it seemed like they were bundling that guy away through the trees, and

it struck me later that business guy didn't even say a word or make a sound throughout the whole ordeal. I swear I can remember him grinning as they took him away, but again, I could just be adding that detail in my mind. Now, eventually, it was just myself and two, of the agents, including the one who repeatedly told me I was safe. I expected them to, I don't know, debrief me or something, at least explain the situation. But no, nothing. They literally told me that I was safe now, and that I had avoided a terrible fate and then headed off into the trees. Now, at the time, I was completely baffled. Of course, I didn't find out until later that I'd majorly miscalculated our entire route, so we were camping only about a half-finding.

hour from the road. Finding this out later, it at least made sense how the men were able to locate and reach us, but it still left me with a few baffling and creepy questions. Who the hell was business guy? And why did he put on such a show of pretending to be a lost little sheep, if only to escort me back to my car. Was this the most elaborate carjacking ever? I don't know. And it also kills me not to know if the men who showed up were legitimate law enforcement or not. Either I, you got saved from some terrible fate or I handed business guy over to one. And over time, I've come to manage to convince myself that that guy had something awful planned for me. That's only because the other possibility is probably too horrible to think about. What if I let a person in a genuine need

get snatched up by God knows hill? Now, I'm fairly certain that that guy was at least a bad player, though, because of a few things. One, that night after everything had died down and the men had left, I checked my pack for security. Now, it was horrified to discover that my gun, which I kept in the holster and the hidden compartment in the bag, was gone. The so-called law enforcement agents never went near my tents, so the gun could only have been taken by that business guy. And as I mentioned, I never told him about the gun.

He must have been searching my belongings pretty thoroughly to find it. Secondly, I discovered that the small amount of money that I kept in the same pocket was also gone. Now, it was only about $100 or so, but enough to feel the sting at the time. And thirdly, when I reached the car the next morning, after finding it was much closer to the road than I thought, I made one final horrifying discovery. I have no proof that this was connected to the business guy in any way, but someone had slashed one of my tires. Thankfully, only one, so I was able to replace it with a spare easily enough, but it was almost as if it had been done as a delaying, tactic just in case. Maybe to give that guy the time to jump me or who knows what.

Some of my friends are adamant that I encountered an unidentified serial killer of women who'd been operating near the area for a few years before I camp there. Now this would explain why he was so sinister but didn't kill me, although it wouldn't explain what his plan or motive really was. Now I genuinely have no idea, but the more years that passed, the more I'm certain that I narrowly avoided something terrible. I just can't decide if that fate would have been at the hands of the business guy or the men who showed up at the end. And as much as I want to, I can convince myself that I didn't just let dangerous people snatch up a vulnerable man. And it's kind of weird to actually hope for the fact that you spent multiple nights sleeping next to a predator, but I prefer that than to think

that I'd let him down. I just wish that I knew for sure, or maybe I'm better off, not knowing. So let me tell you a story about how the best living situation I ever had turned into the worst living situation I ever had and why there's never been a truer statement than never judge a book by its cover. So many, many moons ago now, I was looking for places to live in the city I'm at when I came across this pretty amazing apartment while going through the listings. The decor is awesome, it's all furnished, and it was maybe 15 minutes walk away from my job, too, so literally perfect in almost every possible way. The only drawback was that it was a shared apartment.

Now, I wasn't completely averse to living with someone, but I also knew that if there was a clash of personalities or something like that, then things could get pretty tense, pretty quick. I'd previously lived with a guy. I'm a guy myself, by the way, who could only be safely described on YouTube as a Neolithic Savage, because if I go into any detail, I'll probably get this video flagged if you actually read it.

Now my point is, I knew that there was no point in me living in that place if the roomie was going to be difficult, and so I asked the landlord if I could meet him during the viewing, and that is how I met Todd. And Todd seemed like the dream roommate, honestly. He said he worked a lot and that he liked going to the gym and all of that in his spare time. but when he said that he'd be out of the apartment a lot, he wasn't kidding. I had the whole place to myself pretty much all day, every day, and the only times that I'd catch him chilling on the couch was when the game was on or when he had an injury or something like that. But even when he was home, I was stoked to have him around. He was a funny guy, he was clean, and he was chill too,

so generally nice and easy to live with. But then came the night when everything changed. So the place had these two big, bedrooms, these on-sweet bathrooms, the works. Mine had a lock on the door too, but I didn't think that I'd need it, you know. Todd was a respectful and mature enough person to knock before entering and whatnot, so while I briefly considered using the lock, in the end, I was sort of thinking, why bother? Now anyways, I've been living there for just over a month with absolutely zero complaints all around, and the whole time Todd was the ideal roomy. But then one night, I was one night, I was

woke up needing to pee in the middle of the night like usual and when I rolled over in bed, all I could see was this dark figure standing by the open doorway. And I freaking screamed. So loud. I pretty much dived backwards off the bed, still screaming at the top of my lungs, then by the time I grabbed the little folding knife I kept in the drawer, Todd had switched on the light. It was him, standing there in his underwear, but, As weird as it might sound, he was just as surprised as I was.

You see, Todd wasn't aware that he'd got up out of bed and walked into my bedroom because he'd been sleepwalking. Now, I said he probably should have just told me that once I'd moved in, but as it turned out, Todd hadn't done any sleepwalking for years. He said he used to do it a bunch when he was a kid, especially after he and his family moved house one time, and he figured it was probably the change of me moving in having. triggered it or something and said that he'd never had neglected to mention if he'd been actively sleepwalking. I just wanted to get to sleep, honestly, so I just told him everything was fine, and then went back to bed. Now, the next morning, I texted him to say basically, hey, sorry if that was weird,

and I'm sorry about your condition coming back. I hope everything's okay. He told me we were good, but then maybe I should start locking my door in the future. I text him back saying, sure thing, Captain Obvious, with maybe a laughing emoji, and then we were pals again. Now, from then on, I started locking my door at night, but it also wasn't like Todd wasn't doing anything about it. He said he went to some doctor who gave him a prescription for mild sleeping pills, and then for about a week or so there was nothing. And then one night, I'm asleep in bed, and I hear bang, bang, bang, bang, on my bedroom door. Now, once again, I'm just about jumping out of bed, but since Todd's knocking, I figured that he must be awake, so I asked him what's up.

But I get zero response. I knew he must have been sleepwalking, so I called out to him to say, Hey, hey, wake up, all that kind of stuff. But again, I got no reply. I got up out of bed thinking, please don't make this a regular thing. And then when I opened up the door, there's Todd. Buck naked, with his eyes all rolled up in their socket, it so all it could see was the whites.

I yelled something, slammed the door, and I think that's what woke him up, because the next thing I hear is him saying sorry and then running back to his room still apologizing. I didn't follow him. I was mad, but what the hell could I do? The guy had some serious condition. It wasn't really his fault. And so I went back to sleep, went to work the next morning, and then called Todd at lunch to see how he was doing.

He kept apologizing for waking me in. up, but I made it clear that as long as he was seeking help, then it was fine, because sooner or later the issue would be resolved, and that's aside from the fact that he couldn't really help it. He was super grateful, which was fine, because what choice did I have other than to work with him, and then again, that same sort of pattern played itself out. He went to the doctor, got more powerful sleeping pills, and even started hammering cardio at the gym after work to really tire himself out, you know. and there were another couple of weeks without incidents, and then once again,

I woke up to Todd banging on my door in the middle of the night. I was just getting so tired of it by then, almost every time we thought he'd handled it, it came back all over again. I started to suspect that he might not be sleepwalking, and that this was sort of like a weird way of trying to force me out. But I guess that was my paranoia and exhaustion talking because, well, I guess you'll soon see. And so he bangs on my door, wakes me up, and I start telling him to wake up and go back to bed. I put my head back down on the pillow and he didn't knock again,

but I also didn't hear him wake up or walk back to his room, so I got up, walked to the door, and started listening out for him. I figured that he might have maybe quickly walked off to another part of the house, but I also didn't want to just open my door up just in case he was standing there naked again. and so as I said, I listened, and what I heard sent a chill run through me. Todd was standing on the other side of the door all right, and I knew that because he was whispering something. I knew it was just his unconscious brain working and that what he was saying probably didn't mean a thing, but just hearing him whispering on the other side of the door gave me the creeps big time.

I ended up waking him up by banging on the door back at him, and it sucked to hear him get scared and frightened, but at least it let me know that he was for real. I started questioning why him knocking on my door didn't wake him up, but me knocking back at him did. But I guess it was sort of like the outside stimulus throwing him off his sleep rhythm or something, because, like I said, I don't suspect him of faking this anymore. Now, anyway, the final time it happened before I started to consider just leaving at the end of that month, I recorded it to show Todd that next morning, and I guess just so he could see things from my perspective. Now, he started hammering on my door again, and I tried waking him up by banging back, but for some reason that didn't work and he started whispering again. Now, I banged a second time thinking another round of knocking back might do the trick,

but all that did was make Todd start speaking louder. And it was then that I heard what he was saying for the first time. And it was almost like a prayer, but all kinds of jumbled. There was a lot of our heavenly father, Lord hallowed by thy name. But none of it actually went anywhere. It was all these phrases just sort of looping and spiraling until it sounded almost like nonsense talk, just like an edge of reason to it. Now, we spoke in this weird voice, too, like in the back of his throat almost, and I honestly

think that it was one of the single creepiest things I've ever heard in my life. If I just woke up to that on the first night it happened, then I'd have been even more spook than when Todd just appeared in my room. But since I kind of knew what was happening, I just went back to bed with a pillow wrapped around my head and tried to get some sleep. Now, the next morning before I left for work, I showed him the video I took the previous night. It obviously didn't show much of him, but it captured all the creepy-sounding nonsensical prayers that he recited in the back of his throat voice of his. I massively regret showing him that video, and I didn't do it to be mean or anything like that.

I just needed him to see how serious it was and how bad he was disturbing my sleep. But oh, man. The second he heard himself, it was like the stuffing had been knocked out of him. He went quiet. He said sorry. and then after telling him I'd see him later and we could talk about it after work, I figured that he'd head out the door like he usually did. Only, he didn't.

He just sat down to the kitchen table and he started to cry. Now, later that day, I got a text from Todd saying that he was checking himself into some kind of medical facility and that he might not be back for a month or two, maybe more. I had the apartment all to myself for a while, which was nice in a way, but I was really worried about Todd. We kept in touch, and I'd ask him how his treatment was going and all of that, but he'd always give me one-word answers and then change the subject like he didn't want to talk about it. I remember thinking it probably wasn't going well since he didn't want to talk about it much, and then after two months, Todd told me that he wouldn't be moving back to live with me,

and he'd be sending someone over to gather his stuff. It was sad, knowing this super-capable guy was having such trouble with a medical condition. and I mean it was creepy as hell being in the middle of all of that, and I think it would have been a hell of a lot more frightening if I didn't know what was going on. But I did, and there was a rational explanation for it. It just sucked it was happening to him, and I lost his number after losing my phone,

so these days I can't reach out to see how he's doing. So Todd, buddy, if he just so happened to be listening to this somehow, I hope you're doing much better, and I still think about you from time to time. When we were kids, summer meant freedom. No homework, no teachers, no school, just a whole lot of time to do whatever you wanted. And honestly, I think summer still means freedom as an adult, especially when you can free yourself from an overpriced wireless bill. That's why Mint Mobile's summer sale is pretty exciting.

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Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash read. That's it. There's no catch. 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 networking. is busy, includes up to 20 gigabytes hotspot, capable device required, availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. If you go camping off the beaten trail in a bunch of places in America, but especially the Appalachian Trail, you're guaranteed to find some very weird things. Now, I have a whole catalog of strange sites I've seen, either in groups or by myself, but nothing beats the time that I stumbled across an entire set of dining furniture.

rotting away in the absolute middle of nowhere. Now, when I say the middle of nowhere, I absolutely mean it. This wasn't somewhere that it was feasible to dump your trash. This table and six chairs must have been carried for days through the woods, as far as I could tell, and would have taken a bunch of people to carry it here. And that's why it was so strange and unsettling. And the chairs were actually set up around the table,

as if it had been installed here as some kind of picnic spot. only this wasn't any actual trail or any location that would be nice to chill and hang out at. It was just sort of there in the overgrowth. The wood was all wet and rotten and insects and crap were sworn all over it, and it was pretty disgusting and naturally a lover of the creepy and strange, I loved it. The dining set might not have been a good spot, but there was a clearing a few hundred yards away that offered a perfect camping site. I decided that this was as good a place as any to set up for the night.

And so I pitched my tent and went about heating up some stew on my camp heater. Now, later that night, I was lying in the tent completely unable to sleep. I was just taking in the sounds of the forest and the chill vibes of being alone in nature. This was my favorite part of the whole experience, honestly. At least usually it was. That night, though, I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my arms as I heard a number of footsteps coming through the forest. Not super close, maybe a few hundred yards away, and you can guess exactly what direction they were probably coming from. I waited for the sounds to die down, then all I could

hear was the low murmur of talking. I unzipped the tent, ever so slightly, and crawled out. There was a faint light coming from the direction in which I'd seen the dining table, and so I got my singular binocular out and tried to watch. There were three younger men seated at that rotting dining table, and then one older guy who, I swear to God, even had an eye patch. The night was near silence so I could hear snatches of their conversation, and it seemed like they were playing some type of card game at the table, but they were also talking about their kills.

They were very clearly poachers because they were talking about shooting and stealing deer from some nearby private land, and then I heard one of them asked something about what they were. were going to do with the other body. As I listened in horror from some time, it became pretty clear, at least in my head, that these four men had killed another person and were planning on how to dispose of their body. From what I could tell, the man that they'd killed was some type of family member, and he had it coming, according to them at least, but they were discussing the best way to discard of that

body. I tried to convince myself that I was wrong, that they were talking about an animal, but the more I listened, the more I was sure. And then I realized that I had a major problem. They had no idea that I was there, but if they found out, would they even hesitate in doing something bad to me as well? I had no idea what to do. I could stay silent and dark in the tent, or I could try crawling away to hide just in case. I knew running would be a mistake because they would almost certainly have firearms and knew the land way better than I did. And my God, I'm so glad that I picked the option to crawl into a hiding place.

I dragged myself out of my tent and sort of army crawled across the ground until I've found an overhang ditch that I'd seen earlier in the day. I tucked myself in there and covered myself with some grass and bush, hoping that even if they saw my tent, they would probably overlook me. Well, they eventually did see my tent. And when they went to look and eventually decided that I must have abandoned my campsite, I was actually surprised at how quickly they gave up because, hot damn, the way they talked about things, I'm 100% certain that they would have ended me if they'd actually found me. But nonetheless, I stayed in that ditch for hours, long after the men had left, just lying in that hole, too scared to really even breathe or step out.

I had to pee myself twice. I'm not ashamed to say it, really. And eventually I gathered the courage to drag myself out of my hiding place and just high-tail it out of there. As soon as I reached the car and could drive to a spot where I had cell reception, I phoned the police. Now, this was a few years ago, so finding cell reception wasn't easy, and I wasn't able to give the cops much. I didn't have a clear description of the men, and I wasn't able to pinpoint exactly where I'd seen them. They asked me to go into the local station, and I did, but they seemed more frustrated and annoyed with me than anything else.

The cops promised that they'd let me know if they needed anything else from me, and I gave them my home phone number and email asking them to promise to give me any updates. Well, I never heard anything else. And in the years since then, I've scoured any sort of local news of that area in Appalachia for any news of a body being discovered. But here's the depressing thing. The answer isn't there was never a body found. Instead, bodies are found all the time out there.

I have no idea if one of the many unidentified dead people who have been discovered in the years since were potentially the victim that I'd heard about. All I know is that it's very dangerous out there and you probably shouldn't go hiking alone like I used to. Now I know I know. You probably heard it in Zelda, but it is dangerous to go alone. Camp in groups, friends, don't find yourself hiding all night in a ditch like I was. My name's Ryan, and I'm a grad student here in NYC, and I just managed to escape from the worst roommate I've ever had. I've been a fan of the show for a while now, and I've always kind of hoped that I'd never have a reason to contribute. I thought I could just listen to everyone else's creepy stories and never experienced one of my own, but I guess that all changed when I met Kurt.

I won't bore you with all the ins and outs in my housing situation in September last year, but let's just say that I needed a place to stay and I needed it badly. And so I ended up going to view a single room in a shared apartment where my roommate would be a guy called Kurt. And Kurt wasn't there during the viewing. And I'm guessing that not only was that on purpose, but the landlord had the place scrubbed down to make it look like a regular sane person live there. After some couch surfing, I moved in on a six-month contract starting October 1st of last year.

and when I first met Kurt, I had absolutely no measure of what a creep he was going to be. He seemed like a quiet guy into his old school heavy metal with his long red hair and beard, and they honestly figured the only issue might be loud music or something like that. But pretty quickly, Kurt showed his character. And the first thing, and probably the least creepy thing relative to everything else, was his music. He played bass guitar and at first me and him were pretty cool, so I asked him what band he was into after hearing him play one day. Now, he was into much more extreme stuff, but we talked about bands like Sabbath, Zeppelin,

and my personal favorite, ACDC for a while, and it was cool to find some shared interests. But then, Kurt asked if I wanted to listen to something he wrote. Now, I responded saying, sure, go ahead, and then he gets out his phone, and starts playing this recording that's just his bass line and a drum track. It sounded pretty cool at first, like kind of creepy sounding, but still pretty good, and it kind of reminded me of Dawn Patrol by Megadeth, if you know the song. Some vocals kicked in, something kind of weird sounding I had to almost concentrate on to hear, but then I realized I wasn't hearing anyone singing.

It sounded like a young woman talking, and she sounded very upset. I figured it was some kind of spoken word thing that he was working on with someone, but then as the girl kept on talking, I realized that she was the survivor of a violent, carnal assault, and that she was recounting her experiences either in court or some kind of police tape. I said, dude, is it real? And not like a sort of, oh, man, that's cool kind of way, like, what the F kind of way. But Kurt just smiled and nodded and then started telling me about the exact crime it was from and things like that. I didn't say it to his face, but I thought using that audio was in very, very poor taste.

But, like I said, I didn't want to start an argument or cause any tension. And so I just palmed him off with something like, eh, good art is always provocative, I guess. And then turned our talk onto something else. I only had to live with a guy, and I didn't think his weird taste in tunes meant that he was a serial killer or anything like that. But then I guess in that department, the thing he did now, next did him no favors. So I come home, I'm hungry, I open the fridge, and there's a bunch of

what looks like organ meats and unlabeled jars, and the whole fridge stinks like vinegar. I felt like his stepdad or something going up to his room and asking him like, hey, buddy, what's that you left in the refrigerator there? It's awfully stinky for shared food storage, don't you think? Now, Kurt's just sitting there, blasted out of his skull and listening to the Melvins, and while yes, the Melvin's rule they don't pair well with pickled organ meats. Kurt apologized, told me they were sort of not-so-live models for an art project that he was working on and said that he'd have them out of the fridge by the end of the week. Again, this wasn't so bad, because while it wasn't nice looking at it a shriveled-up pig's heart

every time I grabbed some creamer, it wasn't affecting my quality of life or anything like that. But then, come the end of the week, the way Kurt chose to dispose of those organs pushed things to a whole other level. I woke up to take a leak at about 4 o'clock in the morning and I had to be up at 6.30, so I'm pissed that I'm actually losing out on sleep. I hit the upstairs hallway in my boxers, breathing through my nose all half asleep and then bam. This smell like sour death just punches me in the nose. I can hear frying coming from downstairs, and so I kind of know. knew what Kurt was doing before I saw it. But I went down anyway to make sure, and when I saw him frying those pickled organs in a goddamn pan, I said, dude, what the actual F are you doing right

now? Again, Kurt was all apologies like he always was. I promise that's not an Nirvana reference, but that time I was actually pissed off, because once I went back up to bed, all I could smell was that sour death smell after it had gotten into my room. I couldn't go back to sleep at all. Like half because of the smell and half because of how mad I was that he'd try and cook that crap at 4 in the goddamn morning. It made him sick too. Like he pretty much occupied the bathroom for the next 48 hours,

meaning that I was relegated to peeing in bottles whenever he was camped out in there or whenever I was too scared to witness the aftermath. And that kind of knocked the pep out of him for a while, I suppose, because there was no more weird behavior out of Kurt, at least none I could see. Now, the next thing happened maybe two or three weeks later when I came home to find a piece of meat hanging from some string he had tied to a cabinet handle, just sort of hanging there over the workspace. It didn't have a hook going through it like you might be imagining.

It was sort of all wrapped up and tied in a string, but then the string had little tiny pieces of metal hooked on them, and so the meat looked like it had maybe four or five of these little metal tags on it. Each tag had weird little symbols on it that was different to the others. Now right away I'm thinking, Kurt, what the hell, man? And while I wanted to just toss it because it was a freaking dripping onto the counter, I just wrapped it up in plastic and put it in the fridge for him. Kurt comes home asking why I moved his meat and then asked me not to do it again because he was curing it. I asked him if he put any salt on it, like fully knowing that he didn't because I saw it,

and when he said no, I said he needed to put a lot of salt on it if he wanted to cure it. Now, he says, oh, okay, thanks. And then when I visit the kitchen, there it is again. No salt, no rub, no nothing. It's just there. I looked up to how to cure meat, and what I read says you actually do got to put it in the fridge while it's salted. And so at that point, I'm thinking, okay, why the hell is it? he lying to me? I didn't want to argue with him. I like the quiet life, you know. And so instead of

actually telling him what a disgusting creep he was being with his little hell-raiser ornament, I very politely suggested that he keep his meat in his bedroom so he wasn't making the kitchen unsanitary. I also added that he was going to make it a safety issue. I had no choice but to contact the landlord. I wasn't a dick about it. It was more like, just work with me, dude. And since he wasn't a total a-hole, Kurt agreed to do just that and keep his meat in his room. The final straw was when the smell of rotten meat started seeping out from under his bedroom door, and then it wasn't long before I noticed an uptick of flies in our apartment. I got in touch with the landlord and asked him to perform some kind of apartment inspection

so he could personally tell Kurt to stop just letting raw meat rot in his bedroom. He said he was busy for a couple of days and he would be over the first chance he got. But before then, I realized why the apartment was starting to smell worse and worse. It wasn't just seeping out from Kurt's door. He was hiding pieces of it around the apartment and letting it rot. He didn't get violent or yell at me when I confronted him about it. He gave me some evil-looking death stare, but he didn't say anything. He just slammed his bedroom door in my face.

Told me he didn't want to talk to me anymore, and at that I called the landlord again. and told him not to bother coming over, or at least not on my behalf anyways, because I wanted out. I still had to pay him a month's rent at the start of this month, but I honestly thought it was worth it just to get away from Kurt in that apartment. I think he's a scumbag because I figured that he'd deliberately hid Kurt's character for me, who, by the way, was having his rent paid by his goddamn parents. I also used to wonder how he could afford to live there without any discernible source of income, but on the way out, the landlord mentioned it and it all suddenly made sense. The same landlord actually offered me an alternative place to stay,

but there was no way in hell that I was about to trust him again. Not after he basically tricked me into living with a freak, like Kurt. So I've got a quick story about the time my then-girlfriend kicked me out. Now, don't worry, it's not some psycho-relationship-gone-wrong story, but it's about the camping trip that I took afterward to commisive. Now, I know you seem to like outdoorsy stories, so I figured that I'd shoot my shot and try submitting something. This happened about seven years ago. My then-girlfriend, I'll just call her, Aaron, here, was finally sick of my crap and kicked me out. I don't blame her. I was a hot mess back then.

No jobs, no prospects, happy to just coast through life on her dime. And the only thing I was really passionate about was vacationing. The camping had been Aaron's thing, and I was was more into partying with the boys and going on spring break-type vacations, but Aaron had convinced me to try camping early in our relationship, and I was immediately hooked. I got to party and have fun in the evenings, but hike and feel it one with nature during the day, like it was actually achieving something. We had this one campsite we'll go to regularly, which Aaron had been visiting with her family since she was a kid. It wasn't completely remote, but not super commercial either. A mixture of individual campers and groups dotted around an area that had sporadic park ranger patrols.

Aaron and I had our usual little spot, and that's where I dragged myself on my lonesome, tail between my legs. Aaron had thrown me out and told me it was over, and I was feeling extremely sorry for myself. We planned the camping trip for months, and I convinced myself that I was somehow defying her and her accusations that I was co-dependent by going alone. Now, I'll also admit that I had the faintest hope that Aaron would show up at the site herself, either alone or with her family, and we could have some big reconciliation. That didn't happen, obviously. A family did show up, though, only it was not errands.

I was kind of surprised to find a car near my tent on the second morning of my vacation. It was unusual for people to camp raid next to each other if they were strangers, and in all my time visiting that campsite, I'd never seen anyone camping in that particular spot either because it wasn't exactly the best ground for it. But that morning, as I blinked and ate my way through a hangover, I watched as the Johnson family, as I'll call them, unloaded their stuff and set up their tent. I picked up that they were the Johnsons by sitting there in my fold-out chair,

defiantly munching on sausages and staring at them in the hope that they'd go away. I wanted to make my presence as unwelcome as possible and either pick a fight or be left alone. It reflected the dark mood that I was in, and I'd come here to get away from everything commiserate over Aaron alone, and here was some nuclear family with 2.4 children in a perfect life. It felt like a kick in the face from the universe. I continued to watch them later in the day, looking over the top of the book that I was reading, and it soon became clear that they were far from the perfect family. For one thing, the mother and father barely spoke to each other.

All I could hear was the dad constantly yelling at the two kids, a boy and a girl, and he kept saying things like, The Johnsons do not conduct themselves like this. And the Johnsons help each other. And the Johnsons don't act like brats. The name wasn't actually the Johnsons. I forget what they actually called themselves. It was something similar, though.

And it started to give me a headache, hearing him yell at his. his kids in his high-pitched, nasally voice. And it kind of amused me, though, to see how the kids just entirely ignored him. They acted as if he wasn't even there, and occasionally, when he'd really raise his voice, they might glance in his direction or even laugh at him. But for the most part, they just sort of chased each other around. They only seem interested in hurling insults at each other, these two weird little kids. Now, they must have been about eight to ten months old, but some of the crude things that they were yelling were way too inappropriate to share here on YouTube, and the worst their insults to each other were, the angrier their dad got.

Meanwhile, the mom of the Johnson family sat on some portable sunning chair, the one thing that she'd removed from the car by herself and just sort of watched. When the day started to get really hot, I kind of just was shocked and a little embarrassed and noticed that she'd started sunbathing without a top on. The dad seemed to notice this too and saw that I was looking, and it stressed him even further. Now, I could tell that he wanted to say something to me, but he also wouldn't let himself. Now, for my part, I was in a bad mood and wanted to pick a fight, so I refused to be intimidated or move.

And besides, in the language of the schoolyard, I was here first. And I started doubting whether I wanted to get into a fight with the Johnson's, though. The father got increasingly angry with his kids, speaking to them in a way that I'd never even heard a parent. speak to their children before. And in one point, he grabbed the son's arm and yanked it so hard that I was certain that the son would react. He did react, but not in the pained and hurt way that I expected. Instead, he just called his dad some slur and ran off chasing his sister again. And the entire family was utterly and horrifyingly obnoxious. While I'd first thought the universe was taunting me by showing me what I could have had with Aaron, now I thought,

it was saving me by, well, showing me what I could have had with Aaron. Childish, but I was directing my anger at her towards this awful family, sitting there just scowling at them while nursing my beer. Eventually, it became overcast and the mom got dressed again. The family built a campfire in their designated fire pit, the one benefit to the place I'd chosen to set up camp. I watched as a horrible children ran around it, getting dangerously close to the fire.

Dad Johnson kept shrieking at them, threatening to beat them. The mob kept stealing looks at me and offering me little smiles, even a flirty wink. Now, I knew I should have turned my chair away or got off to do something else, but I was being an idiot. I was also kind of enjoying how angry this father was getting and reveling in my role in it. I'd circle back around to the kind of drunk where you're happy to pick a fight and don't care who it's with. Only a few beers deep, but enough to be a dick. Now, this is probably one of the reasons Aaron kicked me out.

You could tell the father wanted to say something to me, too, and I was kind of disappointed when the evening ended, and he hadn't, and I was forced inside my tent by a chill wind that had whipped up. Now, I went inside my tent to read by flashlight and had to listen to the screaming awful children and the screaming awful father for what felt like forever. Now, eventually I realized that I drifted off to sleep and the campsite was silent. I needed to pee badly, so I crawled out of my tent and made an excursion into the outskirts of the woods.

By the time the Johnson's tent was silent, there was no sign of any disruption or trouble. I went back into my tent, suddenly freezing cold and tried to go back to sleep. Shortly after, though, I heard yelling from the direction of that horrible family. I rolled my eyes, figuring that we were back to bad behavior again, but I quickly realized that the yelling and screaming had taken on a different tone. The mother and daughter both seemed to be screaming at each other about something that the daughter had done, and I don't know whether they were talking about the father or the son, but I'm sure that I'd heard the mother yell something like,

What did you do to him? That one sentence made my blood run cold. I tried to summon up some of the bravado that I'd say, felt earlier so I could drag myself out of my tent and go over there to see if they needed any help. Then I heard a crack and a slap and some more screaming and decided that, yeah, maybe it was probably best if I stayed put. I did have some cell reception though, so I placed a quick call to the cops to inform them that, you know, that terrible family camping next to me might literally be killing each other right now. Now, hopefully, this dispatch put me through to an officer who informed

me that the campsite was outside the local police jurisdiction so I could call the park ranger for any non-emergency issues. I tried to explain that it was pretty sure that they might be hurting each other, but I guess something about my slurred words or delivery caused them to doubt me. Now, meanwhile, I tried to reconnect the painfully slow 4G to Google the number for the park ranger. And on the next tent over, the Johnsons seemed to be shrieking at each other again, and one of the male voices had joined in that fray. I couldn't tell if it was the son or the father with how high-pitched and shrill the father could get. I don't know for sure, but taking into account the things that they were screaming at each other about, I'm almost certain that one of the kids had either killed the father

or killed the other sibling. At least the mom seemed to think so, and was screaming at them about getting out of here and making things right. I know I was a total coward by hiding in my tent, but I cannot stress just how intimidating and horrifying this family had become. To this day, I've never met people like it, so I kind of just continued trying to call the park ranger while pretending I wasn't actually there. Eventually, it became too hard to ignore, though. The screaming died down, and through the wall of my tent, I could see what looked like flames starting to glow. Now, I was pretty certain that it wasn't the campfire either. That was it. And enough was enough. Time to insert

myself into that situation. And so I dragged myself to the door of my tent and began to unzip it. I was going pretty slow, trying to delay the inevitable. And that's when I glanced up and saw the family's four-by-four light up and start gunning right towards me. And holy God, they were going to run me down and crush me, it seemed. And I would be absolutely. absolutely obliterated by their vehicle. I managed to tear that tent open and throw myself out of the path of their vehicle just in time. And everything I'd brought camping got churned up under the wheels of this now speeding vehicle, and I watched in horror as the Johnsons, whichever members were alive anyway, went barreling off in their vehicle.

I'm still furious at myself that I wasn't able to memorize their license plate. I called 911 again, and this time they took me seriously. seriously when I told them someone had tried to kill me. The cop showed up shortly after, by which time I managed to put the fire out that those Johnson's had left behind, literally, and the blaze that I'd seen through my tent had been their tent on fire. It wasn't as serious as it looked and I managed to extinguish it with just a few water bottles and dirt, and as I doused it, though, I was almost certain that I'd seen a body in the smoldering wreckage, although whether son Johnson or father Johnson, I wasn't sure. I didn't see a body, though, so instead I was left to dwell on the sickening sight of that

four-by-four speeding towards me in the darkness. I was extremely lucky that the driver, the mom, I assumed, switched the headlights to a low beam. If they had been off entirely, then I might not have noticed that the vehicle was headed straight towards me other than sound. If they've been full, then they might have blinded me. I run all the different variations over my head whenever I think about it. It's the closest I ever come to dying by far. I'm not ashamed to admit that even five years later, I'm still in therapy over this,

and it's the sight of that car charging towards me that I always end up coming back to. The rest of the story really isn't that interesting. I gave my story to the cops. They promised to keep me informed, and they never did. I have no idea if any member of that family died that night, and I do know that they would have happily killed me if I hadn't dodged out of the way at the final second, though. I don't know if they were aiming for me or simply forgot that I was there. I just hope it was the latter, but I think it was the former. Either way, screw you to the Johnsons.

I hope that your horrible family was caught for whatever crimes you committed, and you never had a chance to hurt anyone. I hope those kids managed to get the care that they needed, and the one silver lining was that my encounter with those Johnsons made me feel grateful that I was single, and I kind of stopped dwelling on errand very quickly after something like that. I'm still single to this day, and if married life is anything like it was for the Johnsons, then I'm happy to stay away. Hey, Joel, my name's Phil, and I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, in the 80s and 90s. Now, I didn't do great in school, so I dropped out when I was 17 and got a job working in a bar.

to get myself some money. I snuck around for about six years learning all the tricks of the trade. And then by 2006, I was practically running the place under the guidance of the old owner-slash-manager. That place was my meal ticket, so I ran a tight ship. And if you ask me, we had the best bar in South Tacoma. Well, it turns out someone else thought so, too, and that someone ended up making me a job offer I couldn't refuse. It's not there anymore, but there was this restaurant in South Lake Union called Gastropod. And the guy I served drinks to that night was the owner, and he wanted me to be the place's new general manager once the current one turned over his keys at the end of the month.

And he was willing to pay me very handsomely for my services. I said thank you and goodbye to the old crew, moved up to Seattle towards the end of the month, and then spent the next few works getting over the imposter syndrome as I settled in, into my new role. Now, I love my job, but the best thing about moving up to Seattle by far was my new apartment. Aside from the steep rent, there was basically no downsides to living there. It was a really nice neighborhood, and when I say it was quiet, I mean, it was crazy just how peaceful it was, and that was in no small part down to my roommate, named Adam. And Adam was, in a word, a ghost. It actually took a whole three weeks after moving in before I met him,

and I tried knocking on his door down in the lobby a whole three times and got no answer every single time. I was just getting home from work around 11.30 at night when I ran into Adam in the lobby while he was headed out. And the dude looked legitimately spooked to see me at first, and then even after I introduced myself as his new neighbor, he didn't seem to warm up at all. He wasn't rude, really, just anxious.

And after he said he worked in tech, I invited him up for a beer sometime, and he replied very nervously saying, yeah, sure, maybe, in a way that suggested that he was never going to do that. But hey, there are worse things than a quiet roommate, right, so I wasn't really complaining. And I lived in Seattle for a whole six months without anything to complain about, besides the rain, of course. until one day when my awesome, brand new life turned into a complete nightmare. It started towards the end of March 2007. I finished up at work, said goodbye to everyone, and locked up for the night, and then as I was walking along waiting for a vacant cab to appear,

a black sedan with tinted windows rolled up next to me. I could spend like a paragraph or two describing the guy who appeared in the open back window, but nothing really sums him up better than fat Bill Burr. He was bald like Bill, he talked like Bill, and he even laughed like Bill, and the only difference was the guy in the back seat must have had at least 60 pounds on him. In this loud Boston accent, he says to me, Hey, buddy, how's it going? I told him fine, that it was on my way home, and then he says,

Why don't you jump in? I'll give you a ride. I told the guy that I'd rather wait for a cab and then he responds, You're the manager of that gastropod place, right? When I said yes, he told me that that was what he wanted to talk to me about. And if I got into his car and went for a ride with him, I might just find myself looking at a very lucrative money-making opportunity, both for me and the restaurant. I hesitated, but he gave me this look and said,

Ah, come on, what do you think I'm going to do? Just get in, and even if it's a no on what I got to say, you got yourself a free ride home. Now, I wasn't some nerd and capable of defending myself, so I got in, and we took off, and I listened to what he had to say. But from the moment he started talking, I knew that I'd made a huge mistake. Now, the first thing he said was basically, All right, I'm going to come clean. I don't give a crap about your crummy job. But you're in the car now, so shut up and listen.

The guy's demeanor shifted completely after I got in the car, and I can't lie. It definitely made me a little nervous when he forcibly told me to shut up. And it wasn't just him and a driver either. It was a guy in the passenger seat looking around and very much mean-mugging me. And the guy started off by saying that since he knew where I lived and he knew where I worked, we'd be seeing plenty of each other in the future. And there was no point hiding or any of that crap, as he put it. but if I kept cool and did my job, then, like he said, there was money in it for me.

All I had to do was find a way of getting into my roommates part of the house so I could look for something for him. It was real small and so small that he might be able to hide it in some pretty creative places, so I'd have to look long and hard if I wanted to find it. But when I did find it, the guy didn't want me to take it. He just wanted me to let him know that it was there, and more importantly, where it was being hidden. Now, I remember kind of reflexively saying, I can't do that, to which he responded that not only could I do what he asked, but I would. He said I didn't look stupid, so he knew I'd do the right thing and do as he asked. I asked what would happen if I didn't,

and the implications were clear. He said I'd recognize the thing he wanted me to find from the letters D-F-N-T-L written on it. I didn't have to memorize. I didn't have to memorize. it though. I don't even think it was those exact letters either, to be honest, but it'd be the only thing in his place with those letters on it, and then when I found it, all I had to do was tell him it was there. He left a kind of pause, waiting for me to say something, but all it could bring myself to ask was if he was, like, with the CIA or the FBI or something. The guy laughed and then told me if he was, he just arrest me and throw my ass in a cell, then threaten me with prison time till I cooperated. But since he wasn't, since he was a nice guy, as he put it, he was going to pay me

to do it instead. On the other hand, he could make a phone call to some associates of his who'd head over to my place in the middle of the night and beat the location of the object out of my roommate. But he knew that it'd be noisy and messy and have the cops crawling around, and since I probably had my own stuff going on, I most likely didn't want that. Just to make it clear, I did not have my own stuff going on, and I'd have been more than happy to have gotten the cops involved there and then. But he had that whole thing covered with the next part of his little speech. He said the cops in Seattle were dumb and couldn't run a goddamn bath, let alone a city. And they were also more corrupt than an NBA ref, at least according to him anyway. And so if I talked to them and made any kind

of report about him or what was going on with my roommate, he'd know, and there'd be trouble. Now by this point, I'm just a complete mess in my head, and all my energy was going towards not showing that. My head was spinning, I can feel myself sweating, and at one point I was legitimately thinking, this can't be happening. I passed out on the pavement, and this freaking fever dream is occurring right now. But it wasn't. What was occurring to me in that moment was real, and there was no getting out of it. The guy even picked up on how scared I was after he directed his driver to take me home, and he started saying how I didn't have to worry about a thing if I just did as he told me. And there was no time limit on it either, since my priority was almost not alerting my roommate that I was

going through his stuff. And the guy said if I spooked him, he might leave, and I really didn't want him to do that. If I did, he might leave and take that little object with him, which was something he would not allow to happen. I tried once again to tell him that I wasn't right for the job, that I'd mess it up and he should just find someone more professional. Now he responded with a pee-wee baseball coach saying stuff like, sure you can't, kid. You're his roomy. I'm sure he trusts you.

And he added that Adam, the name of my roommate there, might even have the object that I was looking for lying around on a coffee table or something. All I needed to do was head down there with a six-pack while the game was on and take a little look around after asking him to use the bathroom. I remember telling the man that Adam wasn't that kind of person, but he only said, I'm sure you'll think of something, kid. You'll see. And a few minutes later, the guy was dropping me off a block over from my place, saying he'd be in touch the following week. I got out, just feeling numb as I walked back to my place, and then I spent the next few hours

wondering what in God's name I was going to do. I tried asking the guy's name before I got out. I tried asking who they were with, too. I got answers to neither, and the guy just said, It's not important. And then after asking me not to slam his door too hard, he and his boys took off into the night. I didn't even try to memorize the license plate because I believe every word of what he said about the cops,

and even if he didn't have anyone on his payroll, they wouldn't be able to protect me from him, not in the short term anyway. And so really, what choice did I have other than to do what that weirdo said. And so I spent the next couple of days fixating on two things. Firstly, I wondered how the heck I was going to get into Adam's place without alerting him. And secondly, I wondered who the hell he was to have landed himself in so much trouble. All I knew is that he was anemic looking, worked in tech, and liked to stay out all night.

And then if he was just some nerd, why not snatch him off the street? Kind of like they did with me. and then get what they wanted that way. And if it was that important, why not just kick his door down in the middle of the night? Why get me involved? Was Adam dangerous? And if so, how? Those are all of the thoughts that were running through my head over the next week or so.

And since I didn't know the first thing about robbery or burglary, I figured my best chance was to sort of fake a break-in. I can make it look like something it wasn't. and if the little labeled object I was looking for didn't move, then maybe he wouldn't take off with it. And I was still toying with that idea the next time I ran into the man in the black sedan. Now, I was walking in my car after work when I spotted his car,

and while I'd been just about flinching at anything that looked like it for the past week, this was the real deal. The back door swung open, and I heard that same Bill Burr Boston accents say, Hey, buddy, what do you say we have ourselves a little talk? I thought about running, but I knew that I'd just piss him off, and so I climbed into the back seat with him, and we had ourselves that little talk. At first, he asked me how things were going, if I'd made any moves yet, stuff like that,

and I was honest with him. I told him I was still in the planning stages, that it was pretty inexperienced with things like that, and that he'd have to give me more time, a lot more time to get it done. And the guy kind of nodded, but added that he didn't have all the time. in the world, so I should start making moves now. And that's when the second part happened, the scary part, because when I once again suggested that I wasn't the right guy for the job, because I didn't have the moves he was referring to, and I was sure that I'd messed things up, the guy asked me, so how's Annie doing?

Now, the question had the color draining from my face. I literally felt lightheaded when he said it, like a damned bobblehead, just trying to keep my head pointed the right way up. My heart started beating faster. I got that cold, sweaty feeling all over again and try as I might, but I couldn't stop my hands from shaking, because Annie was my grandmother's name. Now, I didn't act like some tough guy. I didn't tell him if you ever lay a finger on her or anything like that. I was just too stunned to speak, and I stayed too stunned until the guy reassured me that she wasn't in danger. He just wanted to know how she was doing. I didn't answer him.

I just told him I'd have the job done by that time next week. And that's when the third portion of our conversation commenced, and he gave me a little advice. He told me to case the place, familiarize myself with it, and to do it soon. The guy then smiled, asked me not to slam his door again, and that marked the end of our second meeting. I thought about what he said, about casing the place, I mean, which, for those who are don't know is basically the word criminals use for recon or scouting out or looking around. Getting a look at the place before I actually look for the thing would give me an idea of where everything was and where I most likely needed to look. And so as strange as it might sound,

I tried the idea I originally dismissed and showed up at Adam's door with a six-pack of beer, some energy drinks, and two boxes of that chef's choice sushi. I figured I could pass the whole thing off as a sort of thanks for being a cool neighbor gift, so even if he didn't drink, I could talk my way inside with that good sushi that I brought. But even so, getting inside was no easy task. When I knocked on his door, Adam obviously didn't seem too excited on letting me inside. A few weeks back, I'd have put that all on him being nothing more than shy, an anxious person maybe, but right then, I knew there was something bigger going on. That didn't stop me from keeping my cool, and I guess that was down to me not having to pretend to be interested in him. I've been wondering about what he did,

how he lived, and what his part of the house looked like for months by that point, and so I didn't have to put on some Oscar-winning performance to make that believable for him. I only really sold the idea of me coming inside by saying I'd basically never ask him again. All I wanted to do was get a feel for my not-so-new roomy, and then I'd leave him in peace like I usually did. He still didn't want to, and that much was obvious. But he knew that accepting my offer meant that I'd leave him alone in the long run, so he invited me inside. Adam's place was spotless. The decor was minimal and monochrome, and he didn't have a television that I could even see, and he had those two huge bookcases filled to bursting with all kinds of computer and tech-centric

books. And after he put the sushi in his refrigerator, he showed me around a little. Not saying all that much, but just trying to be polite, I guess. Now, I started asking about his job, and he said he worked mostly from home. But when I asked to see his setup, he lost what little of the friendliness he had about him and just said no. I tried to play it off like I was just being curious. I wasn't set on and expecting every nook and cranny, even though I was. But then, as I carried on getting vague non-answers to my questions about his job, I was looking around the room and seeing a lot of security cameras.

I saw a lot. There were three of them set up around the living space and kitchen, all pretty sleek and small ones too. But that was three more than I had, and seeing as they made my job that little bit harder, I couldn't help but ask about them. Now I turned it into a little joke, I suppose, asking if he was just paranoid or I needed that kind of equipment

for my own part of the house. Adam just kind of looked at me, like he couldn't think of an explanation, and then murmured something about how it was good to be safe. He didn't seem like a bad guy, you know? I mean, maybe it was just how scared he was, but I couldn't imagine him really doing much harm to anyone or really anything. He was just some computer nerd, one that had done pretty good in life to afford that kind of living arrangement, but a computer nerd nonetheless. And if the mysterious man in the black sedan was sort of like the villain of this story, then maybe Adam. was the victim. And if both things were true, then I figured it presented me with the perfect

opportunity to make myself the hero. Maybe the phrasing of that makes me sound a little up my own ass or whatever, but I can promise you, fear and the relief of having extracted myself from a difficult situation were also very strong motivators here. I knew that I didn't have it in me to get all mission impossible and break in there after deactivating his cameras and hacking his computer and blah, blah, blah, blah, Hollywood nonsense. I had to talk to the guy. I mean, really talk to him so we could figure out something together. And it wasn't something I planned before walking into his place.

The urge just sort of took me, then and there. And when I asked him again why the cameras were there, and I got another non-answer about security, I asked if the reason he wanted security was because he'd taken something that didn't belong to him. And the second I asked him, The friendliness dropped away again, only that time he looked frightened, too. He asked who I was, like who I really was, because I guess he figured I worked for someone.

In response, I literally said nobody, absolutely nobody, and I wanted to stay that way, too. And then before he had a chance to really panic or anything, I told him exactly what happened with a guy in that black sedan, and how he seemed to know everything, how he was threatening my grandmother and how he was looking for something that was D-F-N or whatever the label was I wrote earlier. No, I added that all he wanted me to do was report back on where I'd found it and not to take it. And so whatever it was, he could just leave it someplace, tell me where, and then get the F out of town before the sedan man's goon showed up to collect it, it seemed. Because I was pretty damn sure they'd collect him along with it, and while that'd be rough on my conscience, it would most likely be even worse for him.

Adam agreed, and he actually got kind of emotional as he thanked me for telling him, but I was still very much in the mode of, we need to fix this crap and now. And so I had to sort of hurry along the buddy-buddy moment and figure out what we were going to do and what was going on. Adam said he needed to copy what was on that drive, as he called it, and he also needed to erase and destroy all the computer stuff he had before leaving. and then including the time he needed to pack some stuff and arrange for someplace else to stay,

he figured he could be gone in about 12 hours, so 7 o'clock the next morning. And when he left, he'd leave that D.F. drive, that he called it, tucked behind the back of a picture frame hanging from a wall in his workspace. And that's where I could tell the guy that I'd found it. And since I couldn't do that until the next time I saw him, Adam would have plenty of time to get far, far away from Seattle. He tried to thank me again, but I wouldn't accept it, because it was now all on him to make sure our little deception wasn't uncovered.

He needed to put that drive thing exactly where he'd said it be, and he needed to keep the hell away from the entire Pacific Northwest for all I cared. Because if they found out I'd helped him, then we'd both be screwed. Adam promised he'd disappear and that the men threatening my grandma would find what they were looking for, just not the only copy of it. and he only very cryptically reassured me that whatever was on that drive, its release couldn't be traced back to the agreement we'd made. I don't know if that was true or not at the time,

but I guess me still breathing is a testament to Adam's honesty. At the time, though, nothing could have fully reassured me. And then after shaking his hand and wishing him luck, I went up to my part of the house, and in the morning, he was gone. I honestly thought dealing with the situation would be like a weight off my shoulders. After all, I'd done what was asked of me and located that little drive. So what else was there to worry about? Well, turns out a whole lot, actually,

because I still needed the guy in the sedan to buy my story and believe that I hadn't tipped Adam off before he vanished. At times, I thought about vanishing myself, because if this guy saw through my act, and he was probably going to do just that since he seemed to know everything anyway, then I was screwed. even if they got the little drive thing they wanted, the guy would be pissed that I'd lie to him, and big successful criminals don't get that way by being nice and forgiving, do they?

Well, a few days go by and then lo and behold, I finished work one night to see that same black car sitting a few spaces down for my own. The back door opens up as I approach, and then I sit down in the back seat with that smiling jackass sitting next to me. I didn't have to act like I was sick of seeing him, and neither did I need to act nervous about the drive being where Adam said he'd leave it. So, all in all, I guess I was pretty convincing when I said they needed to make their move, so that the drive would still be in the place I found it when they did. I remember saying something along the lines of, I'm not having you guys blame me if he moves it. I did my part already. Now leave me the hell alone.

And the guy starts laughing that Bill Burr laugh. of his, he and then told me to calm down, and that he'd make their move that night. He said I better go check in a hotel or something, that I should concoct a story about meeting up with a girl or something to that effect, if anyone asks, because when the cops got involved,

it'd be easier for me to just say, I didn't see anything because I wasn't there. And the last thing I said, and I figured this be the last thing I ever said to the guy, was, what about my money? Now, don't think I was dumb enough to expect to get paid, I'm not that naive when it comes to the criminal underworld, but I also figured not asking would maybe raise suspicion somehow, so I did. Now, I'm sure this won't come as a surprise to any of you with fully functioning brains, but when I asked to be paid, the guy just laughed that he laugh of his, and asked me why he'd pay me for something I just did for free.

I took the guy's advice. I didn't want to make him think that I had a whole parallel plan going on, so I got the hotel room. And the next morning, when I made my way back to my car and drove home, one of the front doors had been smashed open, and Adam's apartment had been broken into as well. I called the cops, acted totally ignorant of everything, and just like the guy said, I was able to sort of say, I didn't see anything because I was in a hotel with a girl that I met at work. And a uniform cop later asked me why I hadn't brought the girl back to my place, but he seemed satisfied when I looked very sheepish and told him that, We didn't want her husband finding out. And he gave me one hell of a judgmental look, but he didn't question anything further. I then had the landlord call me to ask me what the hell was going on,

and she stopped by that same afternoon to take a look around. She seemed relieved that Adam's place was the only one targeted, and that neither of us had been home when whoever it was broke in. After that, I thought that was pretty much it, that I'd somehow navigated dealing with some big-shot gangster without getting anyone hurt, and given enough time, the info or whatever that Adam got away with might get around to biting big fat Bill Burrow on his freaking fat ass. But then came the night he and his boys showed up outside work again

in their big black sedan with its tinted windows. I didn't have to act or play pretend when I responded, I thought we were done. What else do you want for me? But that time, Big Bill Burr didn't play pretend either. He didn't say, oh hey buddy, how's it? going like he normally did. It just leaned out a little and then growled at me to get in the car before he had his guy dragged me in. Now, I knew that was the last time, or I mean, I didn't,

but that's what I told myself as I headed for the car. Just one more time, and then this whole goddamn nightmare is over. I thought it'd be the easiest one, with all the hard stuff having been gone, and I even figured that the guy might even see it good to pay me now that he'd gotten what he'd wanted. But that's not what happened. After I climbed into the back, and one of Fat Bill Burr's goons closed the door behind me, I tried to basically go on the offensive. Any kind of nervousness, and I might as well just right, I tipped him off on my forehead with a Sharpie. But even after saying, What do you want now, dude? You said we were done. He completely shut me down by saying, I know what you did. I had to keep going. I couldn't just quit right there and then, and so I pushed

back saying, yeah, you do. I risk going to jail for you, maybe even got myself shot. But here you are still bothering me. I didn't get past the Here You Are part before they cut me off again, told me the only reason I was still alive was because he couldn't prove that I tipped off my roommate. He admitted to getting his hands on that drive, the one with a DF code on it. But as I suspected, he wanted his hands on Adam too, and he was angry. he slipped through his fingers. He asked me straight up if I'd tipped Adam off, and when I said no, he just rolled his eyes and called me a lying sack of crap. He then told me that for my information, I should know that a body washed up on Alki Beach that very morning, and the cops thought it was

my roommate, Adam. But Fat Bill Burr knew it wasn't. He said the reason the cops were so convinced it was Adam was because the body that they found had Adam's teeth. But it wasn't Adam, and fat Bill Burr wanted me to know that the blood of that random homeless dude was on my hands and not his. And that was the only time I couldn't hold up my act anymore and Bill Burr saw it. He then says, Oh, you didn't think about that part, did you kid? He didn't really take the time to find out who your little roommate was, huh? I think I must have stammered or made some gesture because he seemed to know what I was going to say

and anticipated it with, you didn't need to know, so we didn't tell you. And even if you didn't tell him anything, you had one job to do, kid, and you messed it up. I remember telling the most unconvincing lie ever saying, I swear I didn't tell him. But all that guy said in response was, get out of my car, before reminding me once again, not to slam his door. And that was the last I saw of Fat Bill Burr. I wasn't sure, and I'm still not 100% sure if this guy just sort of made all that stuff up as a way of making me feel guilty. Killing me was just more trouble and I guess so was beating the crap out of me and giving me a real reason to go to the cops.

But planning something like that in my head, a lie that I couldn't ever really confirm or disprove, I think that was supposed to be his parting shot. I'm happy to say that it didn't hit the target, not after a while anyway. I did a whole bunch of digging online and not a single body has been brought in from Alki all year, and the last being maybe 18 months previous to this. So Fat Bill Bird just had to have been lying, I think. Adam wasn't a bad guy. He might have done something dumb to have the mob on his ass like that,

but I feel pretty confident that I'd done the right thing in warning him. I still feel that way, and I feel like I managed to navigate my ship through some very stormy waters, and somehow I managed to thread. the needle in a way that saved both mine and Adam's asses. I feel pretty proud of myself sometimes, and it reminds me that taking the hard road and doing the right thing even when it's tough and scary is always the right way to go. But if I go to the rest of my life never having to make tough choices like that again,

I'll be a very happy man, and wherever Adam is these days, I hope he's okay, and that him and that fat Bill Burr will never cross paths again. I'm a female listener in my early 20s. Before I start the story, I'll tell you all up front that I am safe, warm, and well these days. I have a long-term partner who I live with, and I'm no longer homeless or in any danger. That wasn't the case a few years ago, though. I was living rough, either sleeping out in the open in the sleeping bag, or for a while I had a small pop-up tent until it got all slashed up.

I know some people prefer the term unhoused for when they, were living rough, but not me. I know what I was. I was homeless. I did not have a home. I didn't have a community or a single safe place to stay. And it was hell. I hated it. I felt like I had to be constantly on the move, sometimes multiple times within the same night. And it was an extremely unsafe, unpleasant world for a young woman like me. And it's frankly a miracle that I managed to come out the other side of it relatively unscathed. Now, I generally do believe. that it was a miracle, like someone was watching over me, and I had so many narrow misses and managed to scare off so many different predators. There was one incident that really stuck with me, though,

and it was the closest I ever came to something terrible happening. It was the final day I got to spend with my pop-up tent. I didn't know that at the time, of course, but yeah, I was dog-tired because I've been walking all day, so I set the tent up under what seemed to be a remote overpass. It felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, as I've been walking kind of aimlessly for a while, I guess. Now, I'll admit, I was floating on some kind of substance I won't name right now, and when you're living rough, you take whatever escape you can get. I always tried to keep things very grounded, though, just enough to take the edge off. I had a little food squirled away in the tote bag, so I allowed myself something to eat to lessen the gnawing hunger that I always seemed to feel. It was fall and fairly mild, but the weather was set to worsen soon.

I was not excited about the prospect of spending another winter on the streets. I read a few magazines that I managed to find in a three-day-old newspaper that I've been holding onto for warmth. The location that I picked seemed completely remote and isolated, and for the first time in days, I let myself drift off and drop my guard. Now, I woke up startled. There had been a loud sound from outside my guard. tent, sort of like a bark or something. I heard it again and realized that it was a laugh,

like a single, raspy laugh. And the laugh sounded like it was coming from someone very old. I could hear the tell-tale rattle of smokers cough in their lungs as they laughed a third time. I had to make a decision, stay hidden in the tent and hope this guy moved on, or introduce myself and make it clear that I wasn't someone to mess with. I didn't actually have time to side either way, before I even had a chance to move, a very heavy body plunged onto the tent. It was almost like he jumped on me from a height, and I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he did. It was almost like some type of wrestler move, except I'd soon discover that he was just some dirty old-ass man. Now, he managed to come ripping through my tent fabric with some kind of blade.

Now, I picked up on the blade first and was immediately on high alert. A fat hand holding some kind of box cutter burst through the wall of the collapsed tent, flailing towards me. I kicked out and managed to catch him by surprise so he actually dropped the knife, I think. Now the first thing I did was grab it and cut the tent wall behind me so I could pull myself free from the fabric. I scrambled onto the cold, dirty ground and dragged myself to my feet. And that's when I saw him.

This huge monster of an old man who'd apparently swan dived onto my tent. tent while I was sleeping. He was absolutely filthy and he stank of, well, you can only imagine what homeless people stink of. And the whole time he flailed and wriggled, he kept letting out this single rasping laugh too. There was a single flickering light under the overpass so I was able to see a few details about this man. His face was completely scarred and his nose was kind of burned away like an addicts. He had a cleft lip and his tiny evil little piggy eyes. eyes. When he actually saw me, as in he saw that the inhabitant of the tent was a young, small female, he managed to get to his feet very quick. He had this look on his face then, predatory,

but also wary. I guess he knew that a lone woman sleeping rough can be hella dangerous out of necessity, especially now that I'd already gotten hold of his knife. And because of the way he was looking, I assumed that he'd cased me out and be careful. But no. Before I even had a chance to realize what he was doing, this huge, stinking man barreled into me, crashing across the ground and pinning me to the floor with his huge belly. Now, his knife went flying out of my hand and I immediately felt my heart sink. No time to dwell on that, though. His bulk was completely crushing me, and I could feel him pressing against me in ways I really obviously didn't want.

And since I'd lost that blade to defend myself, I decided to just try and punch him, heatedly on the side of the head instead. His head seemed to be his weak spot, I think, and after a few hits, I even started to see a cut, dripping blood onto my own face, and that stinking old guy was just howling. Still laughing, too, though, like he was extremely high on obviously something. He rolled off of me, and I scrambled away. The dude was rolling back and forth on his back like some fat turtle, and it would have almost been funny if I hadn't been so terrified in that moment, my heart absolutely pounding. All of my worldly possessions were in that crushed, slashed tent, so I couldn't just run either. I had to grab up my tote bag first, and no way was I

leaving everything for this eh-hole. I quickly ran across the tent and fished out my bag out of that wreckage. And just as I thought that I was about to get away, I felt some hand, grab, and me by the ankle. I slammed to the ground hard, and I later found out that I actually sprained my wrist pretty badly, which was kind of a miracle to think that that was the worst injury that I suffered from all of this attack. The guy pulled me towards him, muttering something I couldn't understand in the moment. I don't even think it was English. He didn't seem to be American at all, but I have no idea what language he was even speaking. Maybe nothing coherent. His mouth seemed to be bleeding from me cutting into his frail skin, and one of the

his eyes was sort of leaking this disgusting, yellow crap. It was an actual monster in my eyes at that time. And this was my worst nightmare, the kind of thing that I dreamed about at my lowest point. There was no way that I was letting my life end at the hands of this disgusting predator, and so I swung my bag hard, hit him again in the side of the face. He tumbles backwards, and I stomped down on his crotch with all of my strength, and then I just ran. I didn't stop running until the sun was up, and I was back in a populated area. Now, this was the wake-up call I needed to straighten my life out. Now, I won't go through all the explanations on how I did that because that's the

non-scary part. Thankfully, I did, though, and in the time that it took to finally get a bed to sleep in, I never encountered anyone else like that horrifying guy. This was only a few years ago. I wonder if he's still out there, though. It's not like I went to the cops or anything, as that would have been totally out of the question for a person like me at the time. On the other hand, he'd look like he was basically falling apart, so I'd be surprised if he'd survive much longer beyond that. Now, maybe it's

not very Christian of me, but I kind of hope he's dead. He was a monster who tried to suplex a sleeping woman than do God knows what, and I'm pretty sure he has nothing positive to offer the world. All he exists as now is the face that I see when I have the worst of my nightmares. Be careful if you're ever forced into homelessness, kids. Don't do drugs, as there are all sorts of horrors out there waiting. So I have this absolutely weird, quick story from a time when I went camping alone. I guess it's not the most safe thing that you can do, but I did it a lot and still do. And this one event caused me to take a little break from camping by myself, though, and it still

creeps me out to think about it. So I was off the beaten track on a trail that I'd plotted myself out in the Adirondacks. I'd hung out in this area a few times, just reading and chilling and not for a couple of years, though. Now, this time, I was two days into the three-day trek that it would take to reach my usual camping spot. Now, on the way, I saw some pretty odd things. Specifically, I saw a bunch of trees filled with holes. Now, okay, you might say to yourself, some hunters have been using them for target, practice. That's what I thought too. At first, anyway. It wasn't really a hunting area, but that wouldn't

have stopped some local kids from coming out here and firing harmlessly into the trees for fun. When I examined the holes more closely, though, they didn't look like bullet holes. There was no splintering and not much breakage in the bark around them. It looked like they've been drilled. Now, I remember watching a YouTube documentary about a farm in Canada that makes maple syrup, and and it reminded me of how trees get tapped for that. Now, I'm pretty sure that these weren't syrup dispensing trees, though, or even maples at all. They did leak sap, but it was normal, stinking tree sap that had dried in a few of the holes. Now, the further I went in towards my planned camping spot, the more trees that I found with the holes drilled in them.

And I was super confused. Was this some kind of woodpecker or maybe a creature? Now, the deeper into the woods I got, the fresher the holes I got, the fresher the holes that seem to be as well. Some of them were still leaking the sap, and they absolutely stunk. I have no idea what kind of trees I was encountering. I really wasn't all that into nature or like a nature buff or anything, but they absolutely stank of, well, how do I really describe it? You know the scent when you've just mowed the lawn, but you leave the cuttings out a bit too long, and they start to sort of smell bad and maybe even weird, and then you throw some wet bark in there and maybe some food leftovers and make compost.

that's kind of what it smelled like, but maybe more tangy, certainly nothing like delicious maple syrup. Now against my better judgment, I put my finger against the sap and licked a tiny dab from my fingertip, and it was freaking gross. Nobody would be tapping this to eat it, I imagine. Well, I was proven wrong as I made my way through the tree some more and saw the man. He was drilling a tree with what looked like a handle-operated hand drill. He hadn't seen me, so I crouched down and watched him from behind a trunk. The guy was drilling into the tree and then sucking the sap directly from it. After he'd inhaled a bunch of that sap, he'd throw his head back and make this disgusting

lip-smacking sound. I felt kind of sick, knowing how plant-like the sap tasted. If the guy hadn't been wearing clothes and using a human drill, I would have thought that I'd encountered a Sasquatch or something like that. He was huge. He was tall, hairy, and he was sick. sucking on a tree. That ain't normal human behavior, bro. And so you can imagine why I wanted to just sneak away and avoid interacting with this guy, right? Well, screw my life, I suppose,

because I tried to sneak away very stealthily and covert and immediately stepped on a stick. And it cracked like a freaking bomb blast in that silent forest. Now, straight away, I heard the sound of thundering footsteps and turned just in time to see this tree sucker charging right at me. And he seemed absolutely furious that I'd been watching him drill and suck on trees. And yeah, it sounds funny to describe it, but trust me, it was not funny to have some huge angry man charging you down in the middle of nowhere. He was waving that drill over his head too, and all I could focus on was the handle spinning around. Thankfully, I snapped out of that daze real quick and managed to start running.

The guy was intimidating and scary, but he was huge and slow, and I was... young and fit. After a few hours of heart-pounding pursuit, I was confident that I'd lost him. I'd also managed to run off onto a different route and could no longer see any drilled trees, so I felt more secure knowing that I was in an area that that guy obviously wasn't familiar with. I managed to reach my car and civilization by pushing myself pretty far. I took a couple of naps in some ditches, not wanting to set up my tent or do anything that could slow me down. It was a miserable and scary experience. And later, when I was close to the car, I found more trees with holes drilled into them,

and that put me on the defensive again, but thankfully that sap sucker didn't show up again. I made it back to the car and high-tailed it out of there, and I have not been back to that area since, which I think is quite understandable. Now, I don't know what the huge tree-sucking forest guy would have done if he caught me, and I certainly don't want to go back there and give him the chance to catch me again, and find out exactly why he was even doing what he was doing. 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.