Scary Stories For Dark Dreams - Volume 17 | ATRD Podcast
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If you have a true scary story you'd like to share with the podcast, go to astheravendreams.com and click the button to send it my way. Also, if the platform you're on has the option to rate the podcast or leave a comment, please consider doing so. And as always, thank you. Have you ever experienced a place that makes you so uncomfortable that you avoid it at all costs, but at the same time it draws you into it?

There's this forest in my hometown that my parents used to take me camping in as a kid. I loved camping for the most part. When we camped out by this little beach or over in Tennessee, it was fun. But as far as I can remember, anytime we went to camp in this forest, it was dreadful. I remember as a kid being really scared and nervous when we were there,

and my parents just tried to assure me that it was because the trees were really tall. They weren't wrong about the trees, though. I don't know what kind of trees they were, but they were extremely tall and thin, with even thinner branches that all curved straight upward. Because the trees were so slim, though, there were a lot more of them, and looking straight up, it seemed to be overwhelming. Again, as a kid...

I just believed this, because my parents were adults and smart, right? So that must have been the truth. I tried to reason with myself, but it would never go away. I always felt like they were watching me, or targeting me, and if I wasn't looking at them, they would engulf me, or something like that. I know, I sound crazy or just very imaginative for a child, but I really felt like I was in danger.

Obviously, I didn't have fun when we went here. I hardly slept. I worried I would be taken. I was afraid to go swimming in the nearby stream or river or whatever it was. I would fish with my dad. That way I was near someone in case I was drawn into the water or something, but I wouldn't ever do anything alone. Then, as I got older...

I expected this irrational fear to fade, but it got worse. I started getting physically ill or dizzy while I was up there. I remember one time I helped my dad set up our tents and then went in and tried to sleep, but I kept feeling like I was being rocked, like what I would imagine it would feel like as an infant. To make it worse, it would fade about an hour after we left, so my parents would think that I was faking it.

It pretty much ruined camping for me, because that was typically where we camped, so I would try to suggest another place, or I would end up faking feeling ill for a day or two before just to try to get out of it. Sometimes it worked, and I would be left at my grandparents' house, but not every time. Thankfully, I got older and was no longer required to go on these miserable attempts of family time.

My parents split up, though they were never actually married, and I lived with my mom but was never required to go over to my dad's. So if he went camping and I was going to be there, I was typically busy that weekend. Many years later, I'm an adult, living on my own, and I just recently moved back in with my mom.

I started getting into a few subreddits about paranormal and unexplained events, and it made me think of this forest. I started talking to people about it, and one of the most common questions I got was if I had gone back as an adult, and of course at first I thought, well, hell no. But then again, I was trying to be reasonable and tell myself that it had to just be a fear.

A lot of people wanted me to return with a camera to see if I could catch anything on film. I didn't have anything going on as I was between jobs, which is why I actually moved back home, so why not go and see if I really was a paranoid kid or if I'm about to go viral. So, I headed out with probably too many safety items.

including a radio, my phone, a battery bank, a first aid kit, a pocket knife, and other things that I don't remember, as well as my crappy old GoPro that I got cheap from a yard sale. I strapped it to my head so I could get everything that I was seeing, too. The battery was supposed to last about eight hours, and I wasn't planning on being there for more than an hour, so I figured I would be set.

I pulled into the parking lot and texted my mom and a friend to let them know where I was, in case I didn't come home, and I headed in. As I got maybe a foot or two in, the sinking feeling immediately hit me. It felt like you just ran into something that you didn't like for the first time in years, and you knew that it wasn't going to end well. I took a deep breath, and I continued in.

I checked my phone and noticed that it was around noon at the time. Then, the feeling started to get worse. The air seemed thick and heavy, but it didn't feel like it was humid, beside the fact that the humidity had been low that day. Then, that feeling of being watched came back. I looked all around, and I saw no one or nothing that could possibly have been watching me.

I even called out if someone was nearby, and there was no answer. In fact, it was dead silent. There wasn't even a crunching of leaves or sticks on the ground, that slight swaying of trees, or even the sounds of squirrels. Stupidly, I continued in, though, to find the area we always camped at. I remembered and studied the path to make sure that I knew how to get out,

In case anything happened to me or my parents, but when I got there, the only trace left was the rocky area leading down to the water where we used to fish. It seemed like there were even new trees that were growing where we would set up our tents. As I started explaining this to the camera, I started getting disoriented, and I mentioned this. That's when the overwhelming sense of dread came. I still heard nothing,

I saw nothing other than the trees, but it seemed to fall even more silent. I couldn't even hear the water rushing nearby. I didn't want to pass out in here never knowing what could happen to me, so I started making my way out. As I started walking back, I looked at my phone and noticed that it was about 12:40. Knowing that it took me about 30 minutes to walk back as I looked around,

I expected to be back out at 1:30 at the latest. Knowing that I was walking faster, I kind of expected to be out sooner. However, as I started walking back, I again started to feel like something was watching or following me. Then the feeling grew even worse, and I finally broke into a sprint to get out of there. After what felt like forever,

I made it back to the entrance, ran past the older couple that was taking pictures, and I hopped into my car, locking the door. As I sat there, trying to compose myself, I noticed that the sky was a pink and orange color and that the sun was setting. I thought this wasn't possible, since it would only have been around 2pm when I pulled out my phone and noticed it was nearly 6. I had lost 6 hours.

and that's when I noticed I had several missed calls and texts from both my mom and my friend. My friend knew how I felt about these woods, so they tried to make sure that I was alright. I know that I didn't get the best reception there, but I had missed texts in between 1 to 6pm, since I had been out. I turned on my car, and the clock on it also confirmed that it was around 6pm.

I still have no explanation as to how I lost so much time. To add to my fears of this place, I went home, passed out, and checked the footage the next day. To my surprise, or rather my confusion, the battery was dead, and there was only about 2 or 3 hours of footage on it. It all started as I remembered it. Walking to the camp area, talking to myself, I walked up to the water,

And then as I was talking about where we camped, the video seemed to cut in and out, and then it was just horrible static with a bad grainy video of these trees. It was like that for most of the video, until it came back to me talking about leaving and running back. How could there be so much time of just trees, but then cut right back to the video like there was no time missed? It was like this footage was added to it almost.

So, I have the video showing I was there for 2-3 hours, but according to my phone and car, I was in there for nearly 6. I showed my friend, and they thought it was creepy as well, but now, several years later, I honestly can't find where I kept or saved the footage. And that GoPro was stolen, so unfortunately, all I have are these unwanted memories of this place.

I still don't know what to make of it, and if anyone has any ideas, I am more than willing to listen. I don't know if there's some kind of spirit there, or if it truly is those trees, but I think I got lucky on that last visit, and therefore, no matter what, I will never be going back. When I was younger, sometime in elementary school, we had moved into a new house from our previous trailer.

I was a scaredy cat as a kid, and I have memories of being scared and having nightmares in the trailer, but nothing like what I experienced in the new house. Within the first month of living in the house, I'd started to see what I can only describe as a shadow figure with a fedora. I never gave him a name or even gave him too much thought throughout the day, mostly because I was scared of him.

He lived in my closet, and he gave me terrible night terrors, all with him as the centerpiece. Eventually, my parents got tired of rushing into my room in the middle of the night to calm me down, so they just let me sleep with them in their room. I don't remember any instances of him trying to harm me in waking life. All I can remember are the night terrors that he gave me.

There's one in particular that I still remember in vivid detail today. To understand the dream, here's a little context. I live in Texas, and my grandmother's house at the time had woods next to it with very big trees. I remember being creeped out by this one particular tree because it looked a little like a silhouette of a man hushing with his finger. That's the context. Now to the dream.

In this dream, I was standing on my grandmother's porch. There's a very dim porch light as my only light source, and I can barely see into the yard. What I do see is the tree, right in the front yard, instead of in the woods where it was usually. Under the tree, I saw the silhouette of the man that lived in my closet. I couldn't see his face as the tree shade engulfed him in shadows.

I do however notice him lean forward and do the same hushing motion with his fingers, telling me to... After that, the wind started to pick up and he faded away like a mist. The leaves in the tree began to shake violently from the wind, and eventually the leaves turned into bats and then flew away, leaving the tree looking dead. 18 years old, and these dreams still come to me in flashes sometimes.

They genuinely send chills down my spine just thinking about some of these dreams. I still have some of these nightmares to this day, but none necessarily scare me as much as those I had as a kid. The dreams that bother me nowadays are more disturbing or gruesome than creepy, and to this day, I don't know whether I just had an overactive imagination as a kid

or if something was really following me and giving me these night terrors. Since being very young, my brother Jamie would often do or say strange things. There are many instances, but these are the ones that I remember most clearly. He was, and remains, a very thoughtful and intelligent child, often deep in thought.

I first noticed that you could be cooing and playing with him, and suddenly he would cloud over with a deadpan expression, and it could take minutes to get his attention again. As he started stringing sentences together, he sat down with my mom and told her, ''Do you remember before, mommy?'' She said, ''Before when?'' To which he replied, ''Just before, when I had a different mommy.''

My mom simply told him that she was his only mummy, and he didn't say anything anymore. He then spoke to me, and told me that he remembered when I came out of mummy's tummy. I told him that he couldn't remember that because he wasn't born yet. He got pretty irate with me, and said, "'No, not when I was born this time. Before.' I asked him what he meant."

And he said,

and it's rarely ever discussed, so there was absolutely no way he could have known about him. Then, one day on the way home from the park, around three years old, Jamie asked me, "'You know when you die?' I was taken aback, but I said, "'Do you mean what happens after?' He said, "'I've been thinking about it, because I think it's really dark forever, and you can't see anything.'"

I explained to him in a child-friendly way the different beliefs that people have, such as heaven and hell, nothing, ghosts, reincarnation, and when I told him about reincarnation, he nodded and said, "'Yes, it sounds nice, but it takes so long. When I died last time, I had to stay the same for ages before I was a baby again. Honestly, I was super spooked. Jamie is six now.'"

and still he will speak about things that he really shouldn't understand but does. People often remark how knowledgeable he is about the world around him. Maybe that's just the way he is. Or maybe it's because he's seen it all before. I suppose I'll never know. But all the comments that he's made, and even in his mannerisms and behavior, we all have thought that perhaps Jamie...

is Uncle Jamie. Hi there. So, this was something that happened to me when I was traveling alone. I had lost my partner of eight years after a long battle with an illness that they'd had, which caused me to take some time off to try and heal to find myself again. I decided that during the spring break, I would move from Mass back to my home state of Oklahoma to be close to my mother.

On the way there, I made some planned stops at places that my partner and I enjoyed or were memorable for us, as a way to honor them. One of those places was a state park. We were both avid outdoorsy people and loved camping, hiking, and just being one with nature, and this particular park had strong memories, so I knew that I had to go.

Once I got there, I called my mom and let her know that I was there, stuffed my phone and my keys in my backpack, and marched on. The site was beautiful, especially early mornings in spring, when you could still see the dew sitting on top of the grass and kind of hanging above the rocks. I was able to just take in the sights and let anything out that I needed.

A woman that I was passing actually snapped a really great picture of me by an overhang that I still have to this day. I saw a few people on my hike who were willing to share their stories and wish me well on my journey. It truly was a therapeutic experience for me.

I was and always will be a very giving person, and willing to help those in need that I come across too, so when I made eye contact with a man that seemed a bit distraught, or maybe just overwhelmed, I stopped and asked if he was okay. When I approached him sitting on the edge of this cliff with his feet dangling, I noticed a very strong alcohol smell. He said he was fine, but just asked if I had water.

I always carried an extra bottle, so I just gave him the whole thing, telling him to keep it. If that man was out there drinking, then he was going to need water. I don't know how many people would have stopped for him, let alone give him water, so I did. He thanked me, and we had a small conversation. He told me that he used to go there with his parents when he was younger, and that he was just struggling at the time.

I didn't want to make it too mushy, but I tried my best at a small inspirational speech for him to which he seemed to cheer up a bit. He then asked me if I was single or if I wanted to get drinks, to which I politely declined. I didn't want to bring up my partner, but just said that I wasn't looking for anyone at the time. He shrugged it off and seemed to handle it well by laughing. We then shook hands, wished each other well, and I carried on my path.

At one point, I stopped at a small stream and splashed some water on my face and rested. While sitting there, I started getting this feeling like I was being watched. This was a bit off the path, so I rarely saw people over here. I looked around and confirmed that no one was around, so I assumed it was either just me, or maybe there was an animal. I was, after all, in their territory.

so I decided it would be best to move along. I got back to the path and after a bit that following feeling started to come back again. I again looked behind me and I didn't see anybody, but that feeling would not go away. My instincts were starting to kick in and overwhelm me, so I sporadically made the decision to break into a run to see what would happen.

It was probably a stupid idea, if it actually was an animal, but I really just wanted the feeling to go away. After a bit, I slowed down to catch my breath and again looked around, not seeing anyone. But this time, I heard heavy breathing. That path is not easy if you don't take steep inclines like that on a regular basis. So I looked around a little closer and walked back towards a large boulder.

On the other side was that same guy that I saw earlier. When I saw him, I didn't know what to do other than ask if he was okay again. He again chuckled and said yes, but seemed like he meant it more this time. I asked him if he was following me, in a joking manner, to which he replied that he wasn't intentionally, but just wanted to catch up to me to thank me again because it meant a lot to him.

I told him it was no big deal and that I was glad to help. After some awkward standing around, I then said that I had to get going. He waved me on and I headed out, thinking that this was a bit awkward, but at least it was solved and over with. But as I made my way to a part that loops around, I started getting that same feeling of being watched.

I was a bit less worried this time, expecting it to be the same guy, but saying I was a bit annoyed sounds too harsh. I'm really not sure how else to put it, though. I wanted this experience to release any emotions that I had been holding back. Yeah, I stopped and talked to a few people, but I wasn't really here to meet new people. I wanted to be able to continue this journey on my own.

I continued on this time thinking that maybe if I didn't stop to pay attention to him, then I wouldn't have any more run-ins. Yet, because this circled around, we ended up walking towards each other. This time, I just smiled at him and tried to keep walking, but was startled when he grabbed my arm. I've never experienced anything like this, so I didn't know what to do but look at him.

He told me again that what I said really meant a lot to him and that he wanted to make it up to me. I told him it wasn't necessary as I was just being nice. I tried pulling my arm away as I said this, but he only grabbed it tighter. I started becoming a bit scared for obvious reasons, and he picked up on this as he looked at me, smiled, and asked, ''Are you scared?'' This made me sick to my stomach."

There was no one else around in this secluded area but us. What the hell was he planning? Why would you even say something like that? While choking back tears, I managed to just say, "Please, just let go of my arm." After a few more seconds of staring at me and smiling, he finally did let go and started laughing. I didn't waste any more time, and I quickly ran. I was familiar with the path, and I knew that I still had a bit to go before I got back to the entrance.

but I remembered that there was a small opening in the trees to a field with a few benches where families typically stopped at to take pictures or have lunch. I was just praying that I would run into some people and that hopefully I would be able to just walk near them so that I wasn't alone. Thankfully, I did come across the spot and there were a few people there. I tried to calm down and look like I was just there to rest as I didn't want anybody to be worried about me.

I sat at the bench and looked around, concerned that he may show up and cause another scene, but thankfully he never did. After some time, I was able to calm down and try to enjoy the last bit of my trek. I was obviously upset. This was supposed to be a time for me to heal and move on in my life, and while this was pretty terrifying, I refused to let this ruin it for me.

I gathered myself, headed back to the entrance by myself, I started a brisk walk until I was back into my jog, and then I finally reached the entrance. I stopped by the restrooms to freshen up before I was ready to head back to my car, but as I exited the restroom, I, of course, would make eye contact with this same guy heading into the shop, but he looked slightly different.

He lost the old dirty jacket that he was wearing, and the jeans he was wearing now looked like they'd been cut at the knees. Could he have changed them? Quite possibly, but since they seemed jagged and uneven, they looked intentionally or sporadically cut. And, of course, as soon as he noticed me, he stopped and turned like he was about to walk towards me.

This time, I was not going to lie down like a scared little girl. I rolled my eyes and immediately turned around to walk to my car with my keys clenched between my fingers. I heard someone shout, Hey! from behind me, but I didn't stop. I didn't even turn around until I heard the footsteps getting faster, causing me to run as well. I managed to get to my car, get in and lock it as he finally caught up and started pulling on the door handles.

When he realized it was locked, he became enraged. He kept screaming to open the door and was banging on the window and kicking the door panel. It didn't last long before a ranger noticed and came rushing up to us as well, but he took off. They didn't catch him, but he did stupidly run backwards into the park, so he would have to leave eventually. The ranger asked me what happened, and I agreed to stay to tell an officer.

Throughout this whole time, they never found the guy, so I ended up leaving and giving them my contact information if they had any other questions for me. I left there relieved for multiple reasons. Relieved that I would never see that man again, but also relieved that I made it through the trail alone for the first time. It felt like a weight being lifted off of me, like I was being tested and I passed it, and this was just going to make me stronger.

I even got a call from an officer telling me that they did catch the guy, and since the ranger had saw him, I didn't have to come back to identify him. They also told me that he had warrants, so he ended up going back with them anyways. Overall, I felt like the trip was successful, and I was already feeling better.

I'm not going to say that it's made me more suspicious of people, as I still look for the best in others, but I'm also mentally stronger and know how to handle situations better, both physically and mentally. And to the guy that I met that day, I hope that you are truly doing better. I don't know if this really belongs in this subreddit, but here goes. I have a pretty great memory of my childhood.

Especially of the things that had a lot of impact on me. Since I was a child, 4-5 years old, I've had sleep paralysis, but I can recall when it started. Once I had this dream, and for the first time I was very aware that I was dreaming. And so the first thing I remember trying to do was flying, and I did it, but just for a little while. After that, for some reason,

I thought I wanted to see how I looked in my dreams, and I started looking at my hands. And then I created a mirror so I could have a proper look, but then when looking at myself in the mirror, everything turned to black, and I started listening to a deep voice. I didn't recognize the voice, nor do I remember exactly what it said at the time, but I know it left me really scared.

to the point where I just curled up on that void and started screaming that I wanted to wake up. And finally, I did. I woke up, but I couldn't scream and I was gasping for air, and there was still something black around me. I knew I was awake because I felt the air, but I couldn't move, and I screamed for my mom, but no sound came out. I had never felt this scared before. After that, for days...

I wouldn't look at mirrors without starting to scream for my life. My mom tells me that I begged her to get rid of all the mirrors in our house, which she did not, so she had to go with me to the bathroom and I stopped entering my parents' room if I was alone. After some weeks, or maybe a month or two, I don't remember exactly, but some time had passed, although not a lot,

I once again had one of those dreams where I was aware that I was dreaming. I don't remember exactly how it went, but I know that at some point I looked at my hands and suddenly everything went dark again, and there was the voice. It was again deep and scary, and I forced myself to wake up, and again I couldn't scream or move or do anything. I don't remember how many times I had dreams like that.

The void would always embrace me, and the voice would be there talking to me. And after that, I would wake up trying to breathe and scream and run away. And I couldn't. I started avoiding mirrors altogether or looking at myself. At the age of six, I started biting and hurting myself every time I looked at my body. And then I made it stop. One night, I had that voice and darkness appear in my dreams again.

and instead of crying, I screamed at the voice to leave me alone, to disappear. I screamed so much that I woke up screaming, and after that, I never had the same dream again. My mom remembers that night, and she says that afterwards I had a headache, and I said that I was seeing many colors, and that it made my head and eyes hurt. I still had episodes of sleep paralysis after that, until my adult life.

I still currently get them, actually, but less regularly. I still had difficulties looking at myself in the mirror or looking at my own body, although I gradually got better. But that voice never appeared in my dreams again. I still wonder what that voice was saying to me that left me so scared, and I still wonder why it stopped after I screamed at it. I have a weird experience that I wanted to share that was just...

I honestly don't know what words to use to describe it. It was creepy in its own right, and honestly it left me feeling a bit shaken. Thankfully I came out of the whole thing unscathed, but I kind of feel like it could have gone much, much worse. So, to start off, I'm a delivery driver for a restaurant that isn't the normal kind that does delivery.

I'm the only driver for this specific restaurant, and while we aren't as busy as, say, pizza shops, we do get enough orders to keep me busy for an entire shift. Because of this, I put a good number of miles onto my car, and I drain my tank pretty frequently.

Sometimes I have to stop at random stations along the way or in between deliveries to make sure that I have enough miles left to get to the next stop or stops, and then back to home base. It takes a good amount of coordination, and I have honestly pushed it once or twice to a limit that I don't like to push it to. This was, unfortunately, one of those times.

It was near closing time, and I was on the last three deliveries. It was a triple, so I had to take one, then the next, and then the next as quickly as I could. I had gotten the first one done, looked up the location for the next, and as soon as I did, I noticed that the mile counter on my car showed three. Basically, I had three miles to go until I was on a hard, empty road.

I wouldn't say that this is the most accurate reading, but again, I don't want to end up randomly stranded with two people's dinner sitting in my passenger seat. I hit the button for the nearest gas station, and sure enough, there was one that was between a mile and two miles from where I was sitting. It looked like it was kind of tucked in between a couple of neighborhoods. Like, this was a really weirdly placed station, but I was thankful that it was closed.

I pulled away, made the quick trip to the station, and sure enough, it was there. Google wasn't lying to me this time. The building was dark, like they'd closed up the shop for the night, but the pumps had card readers and were definitely still on based on the light shining on the screens and overhead. I pulled into the parking lot, got up next to one of the pumps, got out and swiped my card.

Basically did all the things that one does when they're going to fill their tank. After a couple of seconds, I noticed a couple of guys standing next to the building. One of them was sitting on the ground and smoking. I could see the embers glowing in the dark. And the other was staring at me from underneath his hood. Of course, I was a bit on edge. I did have cash on me from the deliveries.

But at the same time, with where he was standing, I would have had time to throw the pump and jump into my car before he could even get close. So, assuming he didn't have a gun or anything, I was cautious, but pretty sure I would be safe. I go back to filling up, and as the amount hits five gallons, the pump just suddenly stops. I stare at it, squeeze it once or twice, but sure enough, it was done with me.

I looked up at the machine and then towards the building, as if there was going to be someone there to help me, when I noticed that the man with the cigarette in his mouth was now standing at the emergency shutoff valve, which explained why the pump stopped working. Within the second that it took me to realize that it was just him, I heard footsteps behind me and thought, I really just let this happen. After telling myself that I was going to be fine, and that I would have time to jump in my car...

I'm seriously about to get robbed by this creep. I turn slightly, and as expected, the man with the hoodie on is approaching me. But strangely enough, he's not getting very close. Like he was walking towards me, but stopped about six or so feet from me. He lifts his head a bit to stare at me, and I look at him, and there were several awkward moments that we shared while standing at this gas station pump. The whole time, I'm just thinking, I'm dead.

while glancing between him and the man at the shutoff valve on the building, making sure that neither of them is getting closer or pulling a gun or something. I honestly have no idea why I did this, but I looked up at the man in the hoodie and just kind of shyly said, um, the pump isn't working. Like this man worked there and was going to go troubleshoot my problems. I really don't know why I said it,

I guess it was just me being scared and confused as to what was about to happen. The man smirks, looks down at me and then up at the machine and says, Station's closed. As if I wasn't already being awkward and weird, I pointed toward the card reader and said something like, Oh, but I should be able to still get gas, right? The readers are 24-7. The guy in the hoodie seriously started laughing.

Like I had just told him the most hilarious joke and he could not hold it in. After shaking that off, he shook his head and looked back at me to say, "'No, mate. The station is closed. No more gas. Hint, hint.' And then motioned for me to get into my car and leave. I stood there for a moment and thankfully my brain finally clicked that he was telling me to get the hell out of there."

I nodded, replaced the pump, and told him to have a good evening and got back in my car. As I did, I looked in my rearview mirror and I watched this guy put his fingers up to his head and motion as if he was shooting himself and start laughing again as he waved at me. I obviously took off from there, and it took a few moments for me to really get a grip on the whole thing, but I think he was basically telling me that if I came back, I was dead.

I made a note of where I was, and, well, I left. Now, I'm not sure, but I think that his original plan was much more sinister than what he'd ended up doing. And I think that my awkwardness may have actually saved me. Like, I made my dumb comment, and it tickled him to the point that he felt bad. And he thought, "'Oh, I can't kill this pitiful idiot.'"

Obviously, I have no idea if that's true or if he was just willing to give me the opportunity to leave, and if I didn't, then he would take action, but I'm glad that he decided I wasn't worth his time. Thankfully, that five gallons was more than enough to get me to my destinations and back to the store to clock out. I made a mental note to never go back to that station, and I haven't. Thankfully.

If I have a delivery over in that direction, I fill up before I go that way, just in case. I know it's not the creepiest of stories, but it scared me, and like I said, I came out unscathed, but I feel like I was pretty close to something pretty terrible happening to me. A few years back, when my son was four and my daughter was two...

My son went through a phase where he would claim his great-great-grandfather would come to visit him. Not wanting to encourage or feed into it, because it sort of creeped me out, I'd usually just listen and say okay, then brush it off. Finally, one day, I asked a few questions. I asked my son what his name was, and he told me, he doesn't want you to know his name.

Okay. So I asked what he looks like, and I get a... He's tall, almost to the ceiling. Because he floats? And he talks, but not with his mouth. That night, we're all three in the living room, and he brings him up again. Almost exasperated, trying not to be freaked the hell out, I asked... Okay, well, where is he now?

Both kids simultaneously focus on one point on the ceiling way across the room, and then proceed to follow it with their eyes until they finally land right next to me on the couch. And my son tells me, ''He's right next to you, Mommy.'' Fast forward about six months, and we're eating dinner, just the three of us, and my back is to our open laundry room door. My daughter is sitting across from me eating,

but she keeps looking over my shoulder, so I ask her what she's looking at. She tells me, "There's a man in there." I turn, look, and then say, "Baby, there's no one in there. It's okay. Just eat your food." She says okay, goes back to eating, looks back up, covers her eyes, and then peeks through them and tells me, "But I see him." Great-great-grandfather stopped coming around shortly after.

Neither kid has any recollection of it now. I wish I could say the same. I've been debating on posting this. Not because I've been scared, but simply because this is my first post since joining Reddit. I'll start off by explaining the area so you can get a good picture of where this occurred. We live in a small neighborhood. All of the surrounding streets dead-end into a half-circle park.

Behind the park, there are some woods and a railroad track. When we were younger, we all played in the front part of the woods. We never ventured too far back. This was our play area for years. We never had an issue or scare. This area was a pretty and well-lit wooded area. Anyhow, one day, my brother Jimmy, my best friend Sarah, and my brother's best friend Ian...

We're all building a dam in the middle of a small creek that ran through the park in the woods. The boys decided that they were going to head back to Ian's house for some snacks. Sarah and I said we would stay and finish our camp area. As we're moving rocks around, I get a very odd feeling come over me. A strange feeling that we're being watched. I immediately think it's the boys trying to scare us and just continue with what we're doing.

Sarah and I load up some big rocks and head back to the creek and put them down at the dam. I get that feeling again, and as I stand up, I see something straight in front of me about 30 feet away. I can't clearly make out what it is yet because it's behind a bush, but I do see that it has a pattern of red and blue.

I know that's nothing the boys had on, so at this point I'm just trying to focus and figure out what it is. As I'm scanning up the bush, I start to realize it's a clown. I kid you not, my heart started pounding immediately. The clown in my eyes lock. He's wearing a blue and red hat with a reverse pattern red and blue jumpsuit. I grab Sarah's shirt and immediately pull her upright.

and she notices the man right away. He's smiling with the full face of makeup, and he has a huge knife. We both say nothing and start running as fast as her legs can take us. He begins to follow. We can hear twigs snapping and ground crunching, but we're booking it. We run through the front of the woods through the side of the park and up her dead-end street.

Ian and Jimmy are two houses up from the end, and see us running and are screaming what is going on. While running past, we scream, there's a clown, and they start laughing. We're still running, screaming for our lives, and finally make it to the middle of the street where Sarah's dad, Danny, is now running out the front door because he hears us screaming.

We meet Danny right at the beginning of the neighbor's house, and we're trying to explain what we saw, and he says, Girls, stop it now. This is ridiculous. What are you even talking about? We try to catch our breath. By this time, Jimmy and Ian have caught up to us. We're crying and pointing and telling Danny again that we saw a clown with a knife.

Jimmy and Ian are laughing, and Danny is asking if they played a prank on us. About this time, an old yellow pinto-type car comes up from the dead end at the park and pulls right up next to the sidewalk of the yard we are in. Sure enough, plain as day, it is the freaking clown. No hat this time, but knife in hand, and he's telling us to come here.

Danny starts shoving us all towards the house, and he himself is scared and running now. The car drives off down the street, we get inside, and Danny calls the police. We had to give statements, and the police patrolled the neighborhood and the park for a few weeks. We were never allowed to go in the park again, and a few months after that, the city started to clear out the woods.

They cut down many of the trees and made a walking area that you could see through all the way to the train tracks. My friend and I used to talk about this many times up until her death. No one would believe us had they not seen it as well. It was just so scary. I think they only got to see him because whoever it was had to go down the dead end street to leave the neighborhood.

Either way, this man was not afraid of us, nor the small group of people that had gathered from our screaming. He very bravely stopped right in front of us, as her father tried to comfort us and calm us down, all while flashing his knife. We are lucky to be alive, I feel. Had it just been one of us left in the woods, which sometimes occurred, I don't think there would have been a group of four of us any longer.

Sarah's dad actually stopped drinking that day. And we all now have a fear of clowns. My four-year-old son started to talk about an imaginary friend named Bobo when he was about three and a half. He would say things about what Bobo tells him or where he saw Bobo playing. So I asked him what Bobo looked like and he said...

Just like me, but with black hair. My son is a blonde. Bobo started to become a more frequent topic. He would say things like, Bobo is at the door, let him in. To which my husband would open the door and say, Oh, come in Bobo. Haha, and we would all laugh. Recently, about two months ago, my son told me that Bobo now looks different. He has alligator teeth.

He keeps talking about the things that Bobo does, and he'll say, Bobo is at the door. Then, one day, he goes, Bobo has a friend. I asked him what Bobo's friend's name was, and he says, oh, his name is Bobo too. We also moved recently, and for the first two weeks, he would say, the Bobos don't know where I live.

Now, this week, he stopped mid-play and goes, Do you hear that? I need to get the door. The Bobos are here. He then runs to the door and opens it, then counts to 16 and says, Wow, 16 Bobos. Now, he's making a picture with glitter glue for his... friends. Why do they have to have such a creepy name?

My grandparents bought a house that was once owned by a creepy, evil old guy in, like, the 70s. Now, my mom's side is very superstitious. When they moved in, strange things would happen. Once, when the family was watching TV in the living room, my uncle told my grandfather that a man was watching them. But when my grandpa went to look, nobody was there.

Strange things like that continued to happen, and here are a few that happened to me. Flash forward to when my sister and I were born in the 80s. My mom told me that every night, at the same time, I would wake up and just start singing to somebody. Keep in mind that I was a toddler at that time.

I'd gotten to the point where every night my mom would wake up and tell the person that I needed to sleep and to please leave me alone. We soon moved away, but every summer my sister and I were shipped to my grandparents' house. In one instance, we were sleeping in my grandma's bed when my sister woke me up. "'Cissy, there's a man in the rocking chair.' "'No, there's not,' I told her. But when I looked, sure enough...

There was a man in the rocking chair, staring at my sister and me. He put his fingers over his lips and just said, "We stayed under the covers that night." Throughout the years, small instances would happen. The man would return, but he would bring a friend. Dark shadows would hover over my grandmother when she slept. I saw a figure walk across the doorway when everyone was asleep.

My dog would chase random things, and the air in the den would be very heavy. To this day, I refuse to be alone in that house. A little bit of background about myself. I've worked my entire adult life in the Pacific Northwest woods. Over 15 years in total, with about 7 years of that being for the park service at Olympic National Park.

Many, many experiences over the years could warrant the title of creepy. This one in particular has always stuck with me. While working for the park service, one of my jobs was that of a restoration carpenter.

We would travel to old backcountry historical cabins, emergency shelters, homesteads and chalets tasked with repairing and restoring them to their original historic, accurate states. This was a wonderful and demanding job. I'd spend eight days at a time living off the beaten path, usually deep in the backcountry. Sometimes we'd be flown in supplies,

Sometimes we'd use llamas or mules to pack our gear, all the while sleeping in thinly-walled single tents, cooking over a fire or whisper-light stove, using the same tools and techniques the original homesteaders had at their disposal in the late 1800s to construct and survive this unforgiving environment. One late fall,

I was assigned to work near Lake Ozette at an old homestead off the trail, near the constructed boardwalk. For those unfamiliar with the area, Lake Ozette is 8 miles long and 3 miles wide. It sits as the largest unaltered natural lake in Washington. Lake Ozette has a large and rich history of Native American culture.

The Makah Tribal Center in Neah Bay houses discoveries found in the area dating back 2,000 years, along with a local village that was well-preserved over 300 years ago by a mudslide that left most of the artifacts intact. Neoset Loop Trail, which the homestead was directly adjacent to, is approximately 9.4 miles through and through.

The man-made boardwalk takes you under giant cedar groves, meanders through huge patches of chest-high salal, before delivering you to Alstrom's Prairie, about two and a half miles from the trailhead. Alstrom's Prairie, a giant soggy meadow, was once farmed by two Swedish immigrants. They constructed a small cabin and some outbuildings on the 150-acre bog, with cattle, sheep...

Vegetable gardens, in the help of a little Swedish ingenuity, managed to etch out lives for themselves here over 50 years ago. Over time, the forest, as it always does, decided to take back what was once its own. The now decades-long abandoned farm was hardly recognizable.

Our job was to beat back the encroaching forest, put new windows in the main cabin, pipe in a new stove, apply some fresh paint, and fix up portions of the semi-delapidated barn. The ultimate goal being to allow guided tours to take place sometime in the future. For about three weeks, we stayed at the OZ bunkhouse while working at Alstrom's. This was good duty for us.

We weren't sleeping under the rain, our beds were warm, our hike was short and the terrain not difficult. We even had TV. The bunkhouse was located near the highway and ranger station. We would hike the five mile loop every day, bringing with us boards, tools, paint, and everything else that we needed on our backs. These were full ten plus hour days.

Usually started our morning hike around 0700, and beginning our evening return hike back to the bunkhouses around 1700. At one point during the fall, there were four of us working this project, but at the time of this event there were only two of us remaining. Most of the hard work had already been finished, we needed to hike a few last boards into the prairie to complete a portion of the woodshed before we could call the job done.

I volunteered to be the pack mule for the day, my only job being to carry as many boards as I could muster in each trip to the prairie before returning to the ranger station for the next load. It was late in the season for hikers at this point, the weather had turned and we'd be lucky to see two to three people a day doing the loop. After around my fourth or fifth trip, I was pretty wiped. It was getting late in the evening now, around 1600,

and my coworkers had called it a day. I thought I could get one more trip in before it got too dark, my rationale being the more trips I did today, the less I would have to do tomorrow. We passed on the trail, I told him my intentions, and continued on. I delivered the last of the boards for the day, took a look around the prairie as the sun started to tuck behind the trees, and started my hour hike back to the ranger station.

The lighting on the boardwalk was quite low at this point. The cedars were blocking most of the ambient light left by the setting sun, and making visibility quite diminished. I'm not a nervous hiker, and I fail to spook easily. Having solo hiked for weeks on end in the backcountry, I've been stalked by cougars, confronted by Kodiak bears in Alaska, I even ran into a few demented hillbillies over the years.

As I left the prairie that evening, the hair on my neck stood on end. Goosebumps erupted from my forearms. An uneasy feeling swept over me. Suddenly, I wanted to walk faster, jog, and then sprint. I didn't. Instead, I convinced myself I'd been reading too many fantasy novels before bedtime. I walked another five minutes or so before I started to hear something faint. Something that sounded like music.

Impossible, I told myself. I'm the only one out here and still at least two miles from civilization. That civilization in reality being likely the only other soul out there. My coworker. Sure enough. However, I heard music. More specifically, a piano. It started out so faint, I had to stop and actually try to hear it. The steps on the wooden boardwalk being too loud. Every time I paused to hear it...

It became unmistakable, and it got louder. I stood there, sun now fully hidden behind the horizon, in total silence other than this piano. I became aware that there were no longer the sounds of life. No birds, no insects, no wind, no rustling of leaves or underbrush. Absolutely nothing other than this piano sound, as if everything was being weighted down by a fog of emptiness of some sort.

I've encountered this dead time before in the woods, certain places have it, but this was different somehow, unique to this place, unique to this moment in time. I tried to focus on the keys, but I couldn't recognize the composition, unsurprising as I mostly listened to Metallica and Korn at the time. It was playing with a purpose, it was controlled, in tune, thoughtful,

It was a song, and somehow I felt that it was meant just for me in this moment. I started walking again. Almost on cue, the music once again got louder. As my pace increased, so did the tempo of the keys, but still in tune, never faltering. It reached a climax. The perfect combination of my haste, my dread, my heartbeat, and the tempo of this music. Then, as quickly as it came, the piano just stopped.

whooshed away in the fraction of a moment. It didn't trail off, it didn't fade into extinction, it was just gone. Suddenly, everything that was absent was swept away as if by a gust of wind. The stillness was gone, the gloom, the stagnation and weight of everything was lifted. My next step on the board was once again in reality.

The evening was just as absent of light as before, but it felt like life, somehow, was once again injected back into the forest. The woods seemed normal again. I didn't hear that piano again that night, nor since. I told my coworker every detail when I reached the bunkhouse, and he showed no sign of disbelief.

We didn't talk about it again until years later, when something similar happened to another Park Service employee. When I told my grandfather about what had happened, as he was a retired Park Service ranger who had worked nearby at Mora, the next station over, without the least bit of hesitation he asked, ''Did you hear the bagpipes along with it, or was it just the piano this time?'' ''It seems as if I've learned and experienced since then.''

that there's a lot more to that place, a lot more to the Olympics in general, than anyone really knows or is willing to admit. So, this is my first time writing a story for the public, but it's the only real cool story I can think of that has an unknown mysterious origin. This is the time that I officially saw my first in-person encounter with a UFO craft.

which was very fascinating. It happened around some time towards the end of the year. I was about 15 or 16 at the time. I'm 34 now, so that would have been around the year 2003. This takes place in the city where I'd spent most of my life, in San Francisco, California. I was quite the adventurous kid who didn't exactly listen to their parents, and of course my friends who I hung out with as well.

I forgot where me and my best friend were going at that time. It was like 1, maybe 2 in the morning, as we were waiting at the bus stop for the Owl Bus, a few blocks from my house, close to San Francisco General. The bus only came every hour or so, so we were just sitting and waiting for it for a little while. That's when I gazed up.

and noticed across the street and to the left, a little above the first-story pizza restaurant, above the roof, was this UFO-like craft, a disc shape for sure that was just hovering silent, no sound whatsoever. It was about the size of that one UFO craft from the movie Independence Day.

I barely got to notice the details of this thing that long, but like I said, it was disc-shaped, dark, metallic in color, and a bottom that had a circular, rectangle light pattern in which it would rotate, and the four different colors in these rectangles were blue, red, yellow, and green. Like, four going clockwise, and four going counterclockwise. Then, before I knew it,

The bottom got a little bit faster, and then a lot, a lot faster, and incredibly fast, all in like three seconds, and then it jetted straight diagonally upwards, and before my eyes, it had pretty much become a laser beam that just went out of this world in what seemed like light speed, and it was gone. There was no sound. I said wow to my friend, did you see that?

and he confirmed that he had, yes. I remember myself saying, you know, I always knew aliens existed, but this is just confirmation of what I already knew. That was undeniable truth that beings from another place in this cosmos do come here, no doubt about it. I never really seen anything I can think of that would be like light speed, but I can imagine as fast as I can see this UFO turn to a laser beam and go up in the sky...

It was like a blink, and then it was gone. And this whole time, nothing made any sound whatsoever. There's a certain feeling when you see something and another person is there with you, and they saw the same thing. Now, when I say it turned into a laser, a good, almost perfect example of what I'm talking about is like from the old show Star Trek The Next Generation. Like that jump to hyperspace.

It was truly an amazing experience, and I just wish I could see something like that again. Well, there was my story. I hope you all enjoyed, and if you've experienced any craft as well, let me know. I've been wanting to share this story for a while, but I wasn't really sure of where to go. But after listening to some of the stories on your channel, I think you could tell this story well enough.

It's a bit different from the normal stories that you do, but I think your listeners will enjoy it. I have a story from way back whenever I was a teenager. I won't mention where I lived at the time, mostly because I don't want people to look too far into it and potentially bother the people that still live in the area, and there's a reason for that. Back when I was around 18 or so, which would have been in the mid-80s,

I was dating a girl that was Native American, and she lived with her family on Native land. Just to add, though it's not super relevant, we are actually married now, and we no longer live on the land, but do live in a city nearby. Now, some people in her family had a major issue with us dating. I'm not Native at all.

In fact, I'm mostly Hispanic, but her parents accepted me as if I was their son-in-law from day one. They were, and are, super loving people, and they saw that their daughter and I loved one another, and that that's what mattered. Now, back when I was this age, I would often spend a day, or the whole weekend, with her and her parents.

They would just hang out and do whatever they had planned, so long as it didn't require time with the people of her tribe. Like I said, her parents accepted me, but I was looked at a bit differently. And I totally get that. For the most part, as long as I didn't insert myself into their dealings, they didn't really have much to say to me. During the last summer, before she and I tied the knot...

I was staying with her family pretty much full time as, by this point, they already knew we were planning on getting married. I remember that, while sleeping in her room, I kept hearing something scratching at the wall by the window. It was almost like a cat or a raccoon was trying to climb its way up to the glass. I remember that it was rather subtle.

and I would mention it to her dad, that they had a raccoon that liked to come around at night. He told me that he hadn't heard anything or even noticed any signs of a raccoon, but that he would set up a catch trap to see if he could maybe get him away from the house. I agreed and moved on, thinking that that would be the end of it. The same night that he set up the trap,

I heard what sounded like the cage for the release trap being smashed or hit by something large, and I wasn't really willing to go outside, mostly because I was thinking it was something trying to get at the small animal that he had caught, maybe? I just remember thinking, well, that can't be good for anything that was in the trap, and then going back to sleep.

The next morning, we went out and checked the trap, and... no joke, it was completely destroyed. And when I say destroyed, it almost looked like someone had run over it with a car. I asked her dad what could have caused that, and he basically told me not to be concerned about it, and to just forget it. At first, I was a bit taken back, but...

I had to remember that this man held very deep beliefs that I didn't personally understand, and maybe this was a situation of not speaking about the thing or mentioning it by name. I nodded in understanding, and just told him that hopefully it would just go away. And it did for a while. There was a bit of a stretch where there wasn't any scratching at the window, or really any noise outside the house for a bit.

But about a month after the event with the trap, I woke up in the middle of the night to hear someone speaking. I could hear a voice, but I couldn't really make out what was being said. Like they were speaking with their backs turned to the window in a really quiet tone. I sat up thinking maybe it was her father and looked out the window to see if I could see him, but all I could see was what looked like someone standing at a nearby tree,

and staring in my direction. In my half-asleep stupor, I stared for a few moments and thought maybe it was him or one of her siblings or something, but then it got weird. While I was staring, I started hearing whatever or whoever this was say my name.

Now that wouldn't normally be a huge deal, everyone in the area knew who I was, so maybe it could be someone trying to get my attention outside. The problem was that the person's voice, the voice that was calling my name from outside, was my fiancé's. The woman that was clearly out cold, lying right next to me. I could hear it clear as day saying my name, almost in an inquisitive tone.

It was kind of like it was being playful and calling to me. I shook my fiancé awake without making too much movement, and I asked her if she heard what I was hearing. She paused for a moment and said, It's probably just an owl or something. Go back to sleep. I just kind of put my head back down and stared up at the ceiling the entire night, while this thing kept randomly calling for me.

I tried to ignore it, but part of me seriously felt like if I went to sleep, it was going to show up at the window. It eventually stopped when the morning came, and when I looked back outside, that figure out by the tree was gone. It was seriously creepy as hell to me. I have no idea what it was, and I didn't ask her nor her dad, mostly because I didn't want to invite it further into my life by knowing more about it.

That was the last night that I heard anything outside the window, and the only time that I ever heard it talking. We did move away a few years after, but I never mentioned this to her parents. I did tell her, and she laughed at me, saying that I had been watching way too many scary movies. Back when I was either 6 or 7 years old, I had a nightmare. A nightmare that changed everything.

One night, I stayed up with my father watching alien movies. Stuff got too real, so I went to sleep. A few hours later, I woke up due to a horrible dream that I had. I called out for help, but no one came. Even the ones that I shared a room with didn't wake up. I gave in and decided to go to my parents' room. I got out of bed, turned on the lights, and then I quickly ran across to my parents' room.

Mom? Dad? No response. I got on the bed and tried waking my mom up, and she didn't wake up. I tried my dad, and fortunately he did wake up. We tried to wake my mom, only to find that she had passed out. We called for help and then went to check on my sister and the housekeeper, and they were both unresponsive. Help arrived. The neighbors and the watchman...

Well, later on, my father discovered that the housekeeper had forgotten to remove the charcoal grill, and it had led to the poisoning of the air due to the carbon monoxide. That's why everyone passed out. I'm kind of glad that I stayed up and watched the movies with him, otherwise I would have probably had a peaceful night and woken up to a house full of dead people.

A few years ago, my girlfriend, myself, and four of our friends rented a cabin for a few days during spring break. We just wanted a place where we could all chill and do whatever. The only determined plan that we did make was for all of us to go rock climbing together. The cabin was bigger than expected, too. It had three bedrooms, one with a master bath and then another separate bathroom, which was great.

The living room was spacious enough for us all to watch a movie in, and the kitchen was big enough for one of my friends to cook a full course meal. He was going to culinary school at the time, so he was always willing to cook for someone, and we were always willing to be the guinea pigs. The kitchen had a door to the back covered porch, which then led out to an open field with big fire pits and trees that lined the back of it. It was perfect, especially for the price.

If it wasn't obvious, there were three couples and we all drove separate cars and met there. We all chipped in and split the cost for our food and drinks and entertainment, and legitimately all worked out really well. I think that the worst part that we'd experienced was Mike and Jess missing a turn and having to guide them backwards. Well, that was until the second night.

The night had a slight chill to it, but nothing that a bonfire couldn't fix. So, we went to start a fire and realized that none of us had brought lighter fluid, so we started looking around the cabin for a lighter or matches or anything. We finally found a lighter that barely worked in the bathroom and was able to get our fire started. We all grabbed some drinks and sat by the fire just talking and screwing off when I noticed Leslie was staring off.

I nudged my girlfriend, Madison, to look at her and she called her out. That's when Leslie pointed out a figure standing by the trees. Isaiah, being the guy that's not afraid of anything, called him out and asked if he wanted to join or if he at least had a lighter. After we all sat there snickering, we watched as he slowly turned and walked towards the driveway and down the hill, until we couldn't see him anymore. This place was like a campground, but with cabins.

so we weren't really in the middle of nowhere. At first we just assumed it was someone at a neighboring cabin that was watching us, possibly mad at us for being outside, possibly being too loud. That was actually a tame night, but some people are pretty whiny like that. So we decided to just take it back inside, since the fire was pretty weak anyways. The rest of the night was just us playing a game inside and went just fine.

The next day was our rock climbing and hiking day, and we all piled into Jess's jeep and headed to the place. The event went great, and we were all having a lot of fun. We ended up coming across a lake at the bottom of a small cliff, and being the dumb young people that we were, we all made bets and dared Isaiah to jump into the lake from the top of the overhang. Like I said, it wasn't that high up, and swimming was permitted in the lake, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

It was more so just that his girlfriend didn't want him to do it. But, as dumb guys sometimes do, he did it anyways. Once we all got in, I just enjoyed floating on the water and people watching when I noticed someone who stood out. It was a guy standing over the cliffside that Isaiah had jumped from, but the reason that he stood out was because of his choice of clothing. While everyone else around was in hiking garb, bathing suits, or even just shorts and a t-shirt,

This guy was in black dress pants, a black suit jacket, and a black hat, like a fedora style. He had the hat on pretty low, however, so I couldn't really see his face, yet I could feel his gaze. He was definitely staring in our direction. This time I said out loud to everyone, ''Are we being stared at?'' This caused everyone to look in the same direction and notice this guy as well.

We all just waited in the water, having a staring contest and talking amongst ourselves, trying to figure out why someone would possibly be here and dressed like that. Not long after, Isaiah again shouted out to the guy, which caused some other people nearby to look around. I assume others noticed the oddity as they began staring, talking, and pointing, which then caused this guy to turn around and walk straight back behind the ledge, until he was gone.

We all thought that this was weird, but I, at least, didn't connect it to our previous night's experience at this point. I just thought it was some guy being weird. We ended up leaving shortly after to go get stuff for dinner, as well as some lighter fluid to be prepared for our next fire. After dinner and some freshening up, we decided to have a bonfire again. This time, it went a lot better, and we had loosened up and were having a blast.

We were talking, teasing. The girls were even pushing their limits and making a fool of themselves. It was just genuinely a good time. That was, until... Leslie was again caught staring into the trees. That's when we all turned to look and saw the same guy. The form was the same, and with a giant flashlight that Mike had bought, this time we could shine the light right on him. He was wearing the same pants and suit jacket and hat...

When the light hit him, he didn't really budge though. He leaned his head down some, probably to block out some of the light, but otherwise he didn't do anything else. Isaiah, again, yelled at this guy, but this time it was a bit more threatening. I don't really blame him though. The girls were getting pretty nervous, and this guy had obviously been following or watching us.

But this time, after a bit of shouting, I think most of us started feeling uncomfortable with the situation and all agreed to go inside. Once in, Madison actually called the cabin management office and told them that someone was being creepy around our cabin, and they said that they would send someone out to take a look. The rest of the night wasn't as eventful as the staring guy kind of made us sober up some, but we did watch another movie until some of us started getting drowsy.

Leslie and Isaiah went to their room, Madison went to bed before the second movie ended, and I followed after it was over, leaving Mike and Jess in the living room. Mike was already snoring, so I assumed they weren't going anywhere. I don't know the exact time that it was, but I know it wasn't more than an hour or so after I went to bed that I woke up to a piercing scream.

Madison had been startled awake too, and after confirming that it wasn't her, I ran out of the room to find out what the hell had happened. I found Jess screaming in the living room, the front door wide open, and Mike was gone. She then explained that she woke up to a scratching sound, and when she looked at the window behind the couch they were on, she saw someone trying to open it, or at least standing at it. She then said that Mike ran out the door to catch the guy.

Isaiah and I ran out after him, but found him shouting towards the trees. When we caught up to him, he said that he'd caught up to the guy and knocked his hat off, but the guy fought back with pepper spray or something to the likes. He said that something hit his face, which made his eyes burn, and it was really hard to breathe. We brought him back to the cabin, and this time we called the cops and the office people. This time Madison was not anywhere near as nice.

The police actually showed up pretty quick and took our report, and then looked around the cabins. They even went to a couple nearby and questioned those people too. They, of course, never found the guy or his hat. This guy was most likely brazen enough to go back and get it and still miss the cops. Jess took Mike to the hospital and Madison agreed to go with her while the rest of us stayed behind. We never saw the guy again that night, but none of us went back to sleep either.

After a few hours, the others came back and confirmed that it was just some sort of pepper spray, so he was going to be alright, but the trip had kind of been ruined. Jess, Leslie, and Mike were definitely not interested in staying the rest of the trip. No one could blame them either. After some talking, we ended up packing up all of our stuff that night and the other four took off.

Madison and I were pretty shaken up too, but we still had this booked for one more night, and she really wanted to give the front desk people a piece of her mind. I guess they didn't seem too concerned about the situation when she first called, and yeah, they probably should have been because it was their property that could have been damaged. So, we put all of our belongings in the bedroom, locked the doors, and tried our best to sleep there.

The next morning was exhausting, as we didn't really sleep much. Management did call us to apologize, and said that they couldn't give us a partial refund, but they did offer to move us to a different cabin. After informing our friends, they told us to enjoy, but they didn't want to come back. They did move us to one that had an indoor hot tub, so I guess that was pretty cool. We didn't have another run-in with the guy, but they also never found him.

We still, to this day, have no idea why he targeted us, or what his intentions even were if he were to break in. And the fact that he had the pepper spray makes me think that he had intentions of using it, or at the very least, thought he was going to need it. We haven't been on a trip with the others since, but we do all still hang out, and we remember that creepy spring break that got ruined for us.

I work the overnight shift at a gas station that is situated in a suburb area that isn't fully incorporated. By that, I mean that there aren't houses everywhere, and there are quite a few spots that are just dense forests. When you live and work near areas that are just trees like this, a lot of weird rumors and stories get thrown around, and this area was no exception.

I had actually heard some dumb stories about the woods from coworkers. There was a rumor that they, whoever they were, had found a bunch of mutilated deers out in the woods, and that a man had once been camping in the woods and got attacked by something. I don't know why a man would be camping in the woods behind a neighborhood, but it is what it is. They were just silly stories told by people to scare others.

Of course, now, I'm a bit more of a believer because of the fact that I saw something in those woods that I can't really explain. It was a pretty quiet night. We weren't very busy, so I was taking the opportunity to do some restocking and cleaning of some of the shelves. As I was stocking some of the chips, I heard what sounded like a thud coming from where the dumpster was on the side of the building.

Unfortunately, we'd had issues with the homeless guy that kept trying to sleep in our dumpster, and as much as I felt bad for the guy, I couldn't let him do that, because the truck came for the dumpster at like 4 in the morning, so if he was sleeping in it overnight, well, bad things could happen.

I stepped outside to check it out and see if it was him, and if it was to tell him that he couldn't stay there. As soon as I stepped outside, I got hit with something that I actually struggle to describe, beyond a hit of adrenaline that sent chills down my spine. It was like I needed to be scared of something, and my body knew that I needed to be scared, but I didn't know what I needed to be scared of.

I slowly turned toward where the dumpster was, and I really don't know what it was that I was looking at. Whatever it was, it had dropped the dumpster onto its side, and it was tearing into the trash. I just sort of stood there staring at this nasty mass of fur that was eating the garbage. I think I was trying to place a name to this thing, and it was like some kind of dog.

Or like a wolf or a coyote? But no. I can say with certainty that this thing was canine-like but was not a normal canine. Its body was lanky, like its limbs were extended like a person's, and it was way too large to be any sort of dog. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

If I had to put a number to it, I would say that it could have easily stood six foot tall. Its fur was matted and dirty and dark, and I could see that this thing had hellish claws on its hands or paws or whatever. After a few minutes of me just standing there and watching this thing, it noticed me. It kind of just sniffed in my direction, but then ended up turning away and crawling back into the trees.

I watched it as it went back into the forest, and just kind of stood there watching me as I watched it, though it was probably just waiting for me to leave. I was watching it because I was horrified. When I regained control of my legs, I ran back into the station and just stayed at the counter pretending that this whole event never even happened, because I didn't want to think about this possibility that that thing could be out there, lurking.

I tried to rationalize what I saw numerous times, saying it was a wolf or just a really, really skinny bear, but I know for a fact that it wasn't. I don't know what it was, but I don't have a name for it, other than creepy, dog-looking, cryptid thing.

I'm sure that someone else will probably say what they think it was, and I welcome that because any information would be helpful. I haven't seen it since that night, and I still work the same shift, but it hasn't come back, thankfully. Though I will say that now, every time I hear something out by the back of the store messing with the dumpster, I tend to ignore it. A few years ago, I went camping for the first time in my life.

I was about 11 or 12 when we headed out to the forest nearby our house. We were in Poland for the holidays, as every year, and right next to our house was a huge forest. So, one day, we decided to take out my mom's old tent that she still had from the 90s and just stay for the night or two in between some wildlife. Good thing.

The place we chose to sleep at was only about 20, maybe 30 minutes away from the house. Bad thing, there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of wolves, foxes, and boars out in that forest, and honestly I kind of regretted going there in the first place. We set everything up at around 6pm, and my sister and I set up the campfire.

My dad chopped down a smaller tree earlier with his oak axe, and that's important for a later part of the story, and by now it had dried out enough to catch fire. We sat around it for quite some time, probably around four hours, until it was dark so we decided to just head to sleep then. My two sisters and I on one end of the tent, and my parents on the other.

It was probably just the fear of getting eaten alive by some wolves or maybe homesickness, but I couldn't sleep at all. I heard my dad tell my mom he was going to go out into the forest to get some wood for the morning while it was still fairly dry, or it would have all soaked up the dew by then. The thought of not having my dad around made it even worse for me to close my eyes for a second.

I'm not too good at telling what time it is by just staring at the sky, or trying to figure out how long it's been, so I'll just say it was around 12 or 1 in the morning. I was actually falling asleep when I heard some rattling outside the tent. My first thought? Wolf. I was terrified, and so I just popped out my head through the little curtain that separated the two halves of the tent, and I was able to see the tent.

basically a thin piece of fabric just hanging on some threads, to see if my dad was back. He was still gone, and it had been about an hour since he went. I laid back down and just tried to fall asleep, but when I turned myself on my side and saw this faint human shadow outside of the tent, I froze and let out a tiny squeak. The person seemed to be holding some sort of axe, shovel thing in hand,

And so, I thought it might have just been my dad coming back. The shadow walked toward the entrance of the tent and just stood there at the zipped up door for maybe 30 seconds. I began to wonder why he wasn't just coming inside. The person finally ran off into the forest, but they dropped the axe. You could hear the footsteps fade in the distance, and a thump just happened along the way.

Maybe a minute or so later, I hear my dad walking back from the opposite side of the forest and enter the tent all tired, and just fell asleep. It seemed kind of sketchy and fishy and scary to me, but it was so late that I couldn't even think anymore and I somehow fell asleep. The next morning, I woke up after my dad dropped his phone on his face, letting out an ouch sound.

I peeped through the curtain at him, and he just smiled back while rubbing his nose. I needed some fresh air, because I was feeling a bit sick, maybe from the nerves in the morning or homesickness, but I really couldn't tell. Both of us got out of the tent and walked around for a while. We circled around the campsite for around 10 minutes until we came back to our tent. That's when I noticed something that ran the chills down my back.

A few meters from the tent, in the corner of my eye, I managed to catch a glimpse of something red. It took me a hot second to realize that I actually saw something, and when I turned my head to see what it was, it was a red and black rubber axe. It was not there before. I knew it wasn't my dad's, because his was by the pile of wood that he collected at night. From my dad's reaction,

I probably turned pale because he started to freak out a little, like I was about to pass out or something. He turned his gaze to where I was looking, and we both just stared for a few seconds before he called out for the rest of the family to wake up and get moving. We were all packed up within an hour, and we rushed back home. I later told my dad what I saw that night, and he wouldn't believe me at first.

I carried on with the story until he finally realized that I was telling the truth. To this day, I still have no clue who the hell that was, but I'm just happy he didn't investigate our tent any further, or any other animal in that forest. So, to the axe man who was outside my tent in the middle of the night, let's not meet. I just heard about this subreddit from Matthew Santoro.

and it reminded me of a story from when I was a toddler. I'd almost forgotten it until now, and I thought it would be nice to share it here. My parents used to bring this story to the table whenever people talked about the supernatural at family reunions. This happened very often due to many people in the family claiming to have had an encounter with paranormal beings,

or sightings of extraterrestrial presence. My mom says that she never believed in anything of that nature, which is why to this day, she still gets the chills when telling the story of when I was a toddler and talked about him. The first instance my parents recall this was one night when they were sleeping in their bedroom.

I must have been like one and a half years old since I was in my nursery room due to my mom being pregnant with my sister. They heard a rat-like chewing noise in the living room and quickly got up to check it out. When they turned the lights on, they saw me sitting by the cupboard with a box of cookies between my legs and a cookie in my hand.

They were surprised that, at my age, I didn't mind being in the middle of a dark room at night. And they say they remember asking me questions in the same way you do to young children where you make a baby voice to be cute and don't really expect an answer. Until at one point my dad asked if I was being brave because I knew my guardian angel was looking over me.

to which I replied, ''He.'' This caught them off guard, so they tried to ask me who he was, but I just repeated, ''He.'' without giving any sign as to who I was talking about. According to my mom, since there was nobody else in the house, they both assumed I was talking about an imaginary friend, and they just let it go.

The second instance, which is when my mom started to get really creeped out, was weeks after this incident. They realized they had to keep cookies, candies, etc. in the upper cabinet and out of my reach. Now, I've loved cookies since forever, but I never threw a tantrum for not getting them, even when they were in sight. My parents say that they were happy I wasn't one of those kids.

At least until they found out why. This occasion was in broad daylight. My dad was at work, so it was my mom who experienced this. She was busy doing house chores, but would come into the living room every now and then to check on me while I was playing.

She says that from the other room, she would hear me babble, as if I were talking to someone, but that when she went into the living room, I would go silent. She assumed I was just babbling nonsense, so she'd go back to do laundry or wash dishes and whatnot, knowing that as long as she could hear me, I wasn't up to something. This was until one time, I stopped talking while she was gone.

and she says that, for a moment, she didn't realize I was quiet, and by the time she did and came to check on me, I already had a cookie in my hands. She remembers searching around the room to see if I could have somehow made a ladder of drawers or picked up a leftover cookie from somewhere, but everything in the room was clean and orderly. She still doesn't know how I could have possibly gotten the cookie,

if not by some paranormal activity. Eventually, she asked me how I got the cookie, and all I said was, he. This strange situation of me getting cookies out of nowhere happened a few other times in the next couple of weeks, but now, other people were home.

In essence, my grandparents, uncles, cousins, etc. Which, to me, added credibility to my parents' story, since those relatives actually confirm that no one ever gave me cookies, because my parents had told them not to, and they could have sworn they never saw me go anywhere near the cupboard to get them myself, or else they would have tried to have stopped me.

My dad says he even started to believe I was hiding a few cookies somewhere I could reach, so that I wouldn't have to wait for them to give me one, but now says that he doesn't truly believe I could have plotted that at such an age. Either way, they found the whole thing creepy, and my dad decided to stop buying cookies altogether, which seemed to work for a time.

The next, and allegedly also the last time it happened, was weeks before my sister was born, at least three months after the first incident. This is also the creepiest event for my mom. She says she was just relaxing on the couch watching TV while I played on the ground with a toy that I got for Christmas, until eventually I said, "'Hungry.'"

She used to have a schedule for when I was supposed to eat, so she told me I had to wait, and vividly remembers that I scowled, turned around angrily, babbled something, and then she heard someone whisper, I swear I see her shudder every time she says this part, so I can tell she really believes that she heard it. Now, as I said before, she's not a superstitious woman.

and still says that she's unconvinced about the paranormal, but she says at the time she just wanted to be safe, so she told my dad to buy cookies again. They say that after this, it never happened again. They never found me with a cookie that they didn't give me themselves, and I never mentioned him again, but they both still find it creepy, and cannot explain what happened during that time.

My dad says that since whoever he was never did anything malicious to me or to them, maybe it was a guardian angel of sorts. Or at least he prefers to believe that over any other alternatives. About 12 years ago, before I moved to the Midwest to transfer to a different school, I worked as an intern for a local radio station in my area.

At the time, I was a 21-year-old college student and was hoping to land a career in voice acting or some type of broadcasting. I was able to land a job doing a three-year internship for a radio station and was hoping this would help me get my foot in the door. For the first few months, my job mainly consisted of answering phone calls and providing info on each caller to the DJs and hosts.

Soon after, the hosts actually allowed me to do some talking on the afternoon shows with them, so I got to know some of the fans of the show. It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed the interaction and being involved with the events and activities the radio station would participate in.

I quickly began to become familiar and acquainted with the fans who would regularly call in and attend the various events that our station would host. There was one fan in particular, who we're going to call Stacy, for anonymity of the story, that would call in frequently. She would either request songs, participate in contests, or to ask general questions.

She would also attend a lot of events that I would be at with the station, so she and I had gotten to know each other. There was one time where she had won one of our contests, and so I had to obtain her personal email to send her more information for her prize. Shortly after that, she began emailing me through the email address that I used at the radio station. Usually it was just a standard, Hey, insert radio station name here,

I just wanted to send a hello message to my favorite radio intern, Blake. I hope you're having a good day, etc. For the first few messages, I would be cordial and respond, and then I eventually was allowed to create my own Facebook account with the radio alias name so fans could interact with me. Stacy, of course, had found my account and had sent me a friend request, and I added her back.

She would like and comment on nearly every single one of my posts, and at first, I didn't mind, because I just chalked it up to her being a loyal fan to the radio show and the DJs. In early July, our radio station hosted a small event in one of the local parks as a sort of a 4th of July bash. There would be food, games, prizes, and a few small bands would be performing.

Stacey attended, and as soon as she saw me standing with a few of the other radio hosts, she made a beeline for us. She and I chatted for a few minutes, but I was also extremely busy working and also saying hello to the other fans who had showed up. I noticed that throughout the entire event, Stacey didn't really seem interested in the bands that were playing or the games. She mostly hung out near where I was set up and would just watch me.

and I noticed that she hadn't shown up with anybody else. One of the main hosts of our morning show also noticed this, and pointed that out to me, and even teased me about her probably having a crush on me. I brushed it off, but it did seem a bit odd that Stacy only seemed to be interested in talking to me the entire time.

As the event wrapped up towards the end of the night, Stacy was still pretty much glued to my side. I tried to be as polite as possible, but I had definitely become more aware of her clinginess, as well as notice her attitude had seemed to change whenever another female fan or colleague would talk to me. As we packed up all of our equipment and items after the night was over, Stacy was still

I told Stacy thanks for coming, and that I hoped that she had a good time. As I started heading towards my car, she started walking behind me, as if she was wanting to continue chatting. I was exhausted from the day's event, and I wanted to get the equipment back to the station so I could just go home. I said goodbye to her one more time, and she stepped forward, and reached out her arms, gesturing for a hug.

I felt a little odd about this, so for a few awkward seconds, I just stood there and finally, just wanting to get rid of her, I stepped in and gave her a quick pat on the back and told her to have a good night. She held on and embraced me in this long, uncomfortable hug, and once I pulled away, she then asked if it would be too much trouble if I could drive her home. I stood there, dumbfounded.

She had hung around talking to me all night and now had waited until the night was over to ask for a ride home. I sort of stammered and asked her how she managed to get a ride here to attend the event earlier. She says, "I drove myself, but I'm just feeling a little tired and I don't think it'd be safe for me to drive when I'm this tired." I told her that while I normally wouldn't mind giving her a ride, I was exhausted.

and my car was already packed with all the stuff and set up equipment from the day's event, and really, I just wanted to get it all back to the station so I could go home. She looked a bit disappointed, but finally said she understood and started to turn and head towards the other cars in the parking lot. I thought that was that, and 30 minutes later, I was finally home and ready to get some sleep when my phone went off.

I checked it, and I saw it was a Facebook chat message from Stacy. She wrote, I had a really fun time with you tonight. Thanks for making it such a memorable night. XOXO I didn't know how or what to respond to that, and I was too tired to think of a response, so I left it on red and went to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I saw that I had more messages from Stacy, as well as a Facebook notification that she had updated her relationship status to In a Relationship With Me, which needed me to accept the status change. I read through the messages that she had sent me. They ranged from Had Such a Great Time With You Last Night, Heart Emojis,

to "Can't sleep, been up all night thinking about you" to "Can't wait to see you today" This was too much for me. I messaged her back telling her that while I enjoyed being friendly acquaintances with her as a fan of the radio show, there was and will be absolutely no romantic relationship between us.

I apologized if my actions had somehow misled her to think there was something more going on between us, but I had to kindly reject her advances. I saw that she had opened the messages, but did not immediately respond. I thought that was that, and went about my day. Later that evening, I went to my parents' house for dinner and had to spend some time with my family.

My younger sister, Kara, who still lived at home, was also there, and while we were all sitting around chatting, she checked her phone. She asked me if I knew a person named Stacy, and had mentioned that she had sent her a friend request. I immediately felt sick to my stomach, and let out an annoyed sigh. Kara then told me that Stacy had sent her a direct message on Facebook, and had told her she was dating her brother,

and thought that it would be nice to add her as well so she could get to know my family. This both creeped me out and pissed me off. I thought I had made it very clear to Stacy in my last message that there was nothing going on between us. And then, also to add to the creepo fact, I had never talked to her about my family members.

I told my sister about Stacy and what she'd been up to, and she advised me to block her and cut off all communications right away. She blocked her as well, so she couldn't send her any more messages. I pulled out my phone and sent another long message to Stacy, once again telling her to please stop trying to reach out to my family members and repeated that there is still no relationship between us.

I told her it was fine if she was still a fan of the radio show, but she needed to stop telling people that we were in a relationship. From there, I didn't even bother to give her a chance to respond to my message, and I blocked her account. I had hoped that this was the end of it, and by the time I had gotten to the station on Monday morning, it was out of my mind, up until the lead host of the radio show pulled me aside.

He told me that a fan named Stacy had applied for another intern position we had open for the radio station, and that she had referenced me as a referral. She also added that she and I were dating, and that I had told her to apply for the intern spot. I was shocked. I quickly updated the host that I was in fact not dating this person, and had never told her about the new intern position nor to apply for it.

I told him that she was basically stalking me ever since the summer event the station hosted last weekend, and that I had actually blocked her and kindly told her to leave me alone. The host informed me that they would not be proceeding with hiring Stacey, and advised me to be extra cautious with diehard fans, as there are situations like this that can happen. Throughout the day, I was a nervous wreck and was barely able to focus on my work.

I kept worrying every time the phone would ring at the station that it would be Stacy calling. For the next couple of days, nothing else happened, and I was starting to get optimistic again that the issue was resolved. However, on Friday night, as I was walking out to my car, I saw that the driver's side door had a huge scratch on it.

Someone had taken a screwdriver and intentionally carved a long, deep scratch into the paint. I was shocked and livid at the same time, and like a clueless idiot, I stood there for a few minutes looking around the parking lot. I called the station manager and informed them of what was happening and what had just been done to my car.

Unfortunately, there were no security cameras in the parking lot, so there was most likely no way to show who exactly did this. I drove home, making sure to be extra cautious of my surroundings, and was constantly checking my rearview mirror to make sure I wasn't being followed. I texted my sister and told her what had happened.

She told me not to unblock Stacy and reach out to her. No matter how angry I was, as this would only be playing into her game further, she told me to document everything else that happened and to be careful. Later that night, I got a new notification on my Instagram and saw that I had a new follower. Yep, you guessed it, it was Stacy. She'd sent me a message on Instagram which said, ''I think we need to get together and talk.''

Despite my sister's warnings not to respond to anything, I messaged her back asking what she thinks we would need to talk about, adding, She responded with,

I noticed that she was being clever by not admitting over text that she was the one who had keyed my car, even though I was 100% positive it was her. I still ended up screenshotting the messages from her, and proceeded to block her on Instagram. I was pretty much on edge after this, worrying about her calling in at the station, or if she would end up randomly showing up at work, or try to do anything else to my car.

Stacy did end up calling the station a few times, each time requesting to talk to me. By now, the rest of the staff at the station had known about her and had denied her from talking to me each time she'd called. She had tried to get through by telling them that she was my girlfriend, and that it was either an urgent issue or imperative that she speaks to me. Every time, the person answering the phone would deny her from talking to me and would end the call after.

Over the next month, this was a normal occurrence. I was very fortunate that my boss and the staff at the radio station were so understanding and supportive, but in all honesty, I was miserable. It is a terrible feeling, feeling as if you constantly have to be looking over your shoulder every time you go out, or getting a sick feeling in your stomach every time you're told that your stalker had just phoned you at work.

The radio station manager had actually contacted the police and asked what could be done about the situation. Unfortunately, there wasn't much that could be done about this unless Stacy were to actually do something in person. And although she had most likely been the one to key my car, there was no proof or evidence that she had done it. Lucky for me, the story pretty much does end there.

About two months later, I ended up transferring and moving to a different college in the fall, and I didn't end up hearing from or seeing Stacy anymore. I know the story doesn't have a super terrifying or frightening ending, but for those few short months during that summer, it was extremely stressful, and was definitely affecting my mental health for a while.

I'm just glad that Stacey didn't end up trying to contact me, but I sincerely hope that by now, after almost 13 years later, she didn't end up doing this to someone else, or that she got the help that she needed. Many years ago, my girlfriend, Maya, and I spent our spring break on a road trip to St. Louis, Missouri from New Mexico.

We wanted to see the Gateway Arch and check out some other sites nearby. She also had grandparents that lived in the area and they welcomed us to stay with them while we were there. This gave us a bit more wiggle room in our budget and helped us greatly. We planned on leaving super early to get a head start on traffic and taking turns driving and sleeping so that we could save more time and money on hotels, which did work out in our favor.

Well, for the most part. Most of the drive went smoothly. We had printed out our drive and directions, and even planned our stops. And yes, I said printed directions. This should tell you how long ago this was. We ate, made our planned stops with minimal detours or extra stopping, and slept all according to plan. What we didn't account for, though, were the Midwestern storms.

We had stopped at a gas station in eastern Kansas to fuel up, and it had then started raining. No big deal. We had a fully functional car, so the wiper blades worked just fine. We got back on the road and continued on, knowing that we only had about four, maybe five hours left of our drive. But it hadn't even been an hour later when the rain began pouring. I've lived in New Mexico all my life. Now, I'd seen some rainstorms, and some pretty bad ones...

but I had never experienced anything like this. So, yeah, I'm not afraid to say that I got a little nervous. Maya, however, wasn't as concerned and just offered to drive if I wasn't comfortable. Seeing her calm demeanor did help calm me down some, and I continued on. Unfortunately, the rain would not let up, and it became louder as it hit my car. That's when we realized it wasn't just rain. It was also now hail.

I've never seen hail so big in my life, and still haven't since. It became so loud and heavy that I thought it was going to smash my windshield. I couldn't really hold back my fears, so Maya suggested that we pull over so that she could drive. This time, Maya agreed. We pulled into a gas station, and I went in asking to use their phone. Maya didn't have a phone, and I just had a prepaid one that I was trying to save the time on in case of emergencies.

I called my parents and let them know where we were. I then explained how bad the weather was, and my mom sounded worried and suggested that we take shelter at a hotel until it passed. Of course, this didn't really help relieve any of my concerns, but I told them I would consider it and ended the call. I went back to Maya, and after sharing with her, she said that she would continue the drive, saying that we would probably be fine.

I tried my best to remain calm and just trust her judgement. We continued to drive, but it seemed like we were honestly going further into the storm. The rain and hail continued and the wind was so strong, I thought it might even blow us off the road. And speaking of the road, I could barely see the lines on it, let alone a few feet in front of us.

We were on a pretty empty stretch of road with no exits nearby, but I looked over at Maya to ask if we should maybe just pull over and wait it out, and her face told me all that I needed to know. She no longer looked so confident. I pleaded with her to pull over, and she agreed. We were now on the shoulder and parked, and we sat there in the dark and silence just trying to decide the best thing to do.

I grabbed my phone from her purse to at least call her grandparents, or my parents, with an update, and of course I didn't have any signal. It was a bit disconcerting to see, but I told myself that we were parked so we should be okay. We tried keeping each other calm by just talking and occupying ourselves, which did start to work. We probably sat there for about 30-45 minutes when we noticed that the hail had stopped.

It was still raining pretty hard, but since the hail cleared up, we could see the road a bit better and decided to give it another go. But as it goes, there's always something. Now, the car wasn't moving. It started just fine, but it appeared to be stuck. We got out and checked, and sure enough, the tires on the passenger side had sunk into the mud. This road didn't have any sort of barriers on the side, so it just went from road to grass and dirt.

I tried pushing it while Maya steered, but it was not budging. Then, when we finally got some movement, it began sliding more into the shoulder, almost like it was fishtailing. Sorry, I'm not good with cars at all, and I'm not sure how to better describe it. At this point, there was no way we were going to be able to get the car out alone. We got back in the car, now soaked, and grabbed our beach towels from our bags. Cue the worried feeling again.

Now, we were definitely stuck in this storm, in seemingly the middle of nowhere, late at night, and we had no real options. I still didn't have a signal on my phone, and neither of us had any other ideas. I just really hoped that we weren't going to start hearing the tornado sirens. We just grabbed some snacks from our food bag and tried to wait it out and hoped for the best.

Honestly, this whole thing took a lot out of us. Not to mention the whole drive prior, so we both started getting pretty drowsy. As we were laying back, trying to relax and just stay calm, we saw lights coming from the opposite direction towards us. To our surprise, they actually slowed down, stopping next to us, and they rolled down their window. It was an older man in a pickup, and he said probably the best thing I had heard that night.

"'Y'all need some help?' We probably should have been a little hesitant at first, for the reasons mentioned above. Middle of nowhere, stranger, dark road, etc., etc., but we were so desperate that we decided to take the risk. The man got out of his truck, put some kind of board between my back bumper and his front, and pushed my car while Maya steered it. It came out like it was nothing, and the man's truck plowed right through the mud, too."

By the end of it, we were all completely exhausted, soaked and freezing, but finally with the man's help we managed to get our car back on the road. He even followed us to the next exit, which had a McDonald's to make sure that we made it out okay. We were incredibly grateful to that man. He could have kept on driving, he could have been a creep and we would have had nowhere to go, but instead, he stopped.

and he helped two dumb girls stuck in a ditch. We tried to pay him as a thank you, but he refused and said that he was just happy to help. We went in and used their phone to call my parents and her grandparents to give them an update, and then decided to sleep in our car in the parking lot for a few hours, hoping that by the time it was lighter out the rain would have dissipated. Thankfully, it did, and we made it to her grandparents' place with no other issues."

Overall, it ended up being a great trip, but I told Maya that I would never again drive anywhere with her in the rain, only partially joking, but it was also nice to see that there are still good people out there that are willing to lend a hand. My five-year-old daughter was sleep-talking in kind of angry tones. I went to go wake her up a little and get her back to bed more soundly.

She was saying, "I don't like you." I kind of rubbed her arm and said her name and she sat up. I gave her a drink of water and asked her if she felt better and wanted to go to sleep. She said, super lucidly, "Yeah, I just wish that strange baby over there would stop smiling." Then she went back to bed. So now I'm dealing with that.

I moved into this place in 2016 with my 9 year old son and I lived there until 2019. This was early 2018. There was an apartment about 2 down from mine in a cross. For almost 2 years it was always being painted, or at least it always smelled like paint and chemicals. They were coming from the door, seeping into the hallway.

Sometimes they had painters coming in and out of the building, and I assumed they went there, but they never seemed to be going in and out of that specific apartment. One day, at the front foyer, I noticed a condemned sticker ripped half off of that apartment. I contemplated, bugs, or drug house, or even a murder could have happened. I mean, who paints an apartment for almost two years?

Eventually, a family of four or five moved in. I'm not exactly sure how many, as I didn't talk to them much, other than a hi in the hallways while getting the mail. There was definitely two children, a mother and a father, that lived there. We live in the ghetto of my city, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, so it's not unusual for police or firemen, or even an ambulance, to be heard or seen.

I hear pounding on a door and a man frantically asking his children or someone. He wasn't speaking English, as many immigrants do live in my building. It was maybe 10 at night or so. I looked out my door into the hallway to the left toward the noise, and it was the father of the family that had moved into the painted apartment. He had a laundry basket next to him. He looked as if he had grabbed laundry from the laundry room on the next floor.

He was pounding on the door with wide eyes, as if he was locked out, and I asked him, "Is everything okay?" He said, "No, my baby. My babies are inside. I can't get in, but I didn't lock the door." Now, this is what I understood with his thick accent. I saw his children previously. They were like two and four, so there's no way that they could reach the deadbolt. He claimed his wife worked nights, and he was on the phone with the police by this time.

I told him that maybe the kids somehow got to a stool or something and locked the door, thinking it was funny, but the kids were screaming inside. Well, one was. I could only hear one child when I knew that there were two. I went back to my apartment hastily as my son was there alone, sleeping, over the noise. My door was still unlocked and all calm. The police got there and had to bust their door in after like half an hour of pounding.

They moved less than six months after that, and I'm pretty sure it's still vacant since the last people only lasted a month. But every once in a while, I get a paint smell, or ammonia when I walk by. I unfortunately was with a drug addict of a boyfriend at the time, which I've never done hard drugs in my life. I smoke here and there, but nothing else. We were fighting one day arguing about how he had no money,

when he had gotten paid two days prior $1400 working as a mechanic. This small green plate that I keep on top of the fridge with weed on it and papers, so it's out of reach of my son, flew to the floor and smashed into pieces. We stopped, looked at each other, I said "I told you this place is haunted."

As months before, the bathroom door closed on its own, and he swears up and down it was me since he was in the bathroom with his back turned and the door slammed shut. I'm no longer with the toxic people, and the apartment can't keep tenants or the tenants won't stay. But either way, it was creepy. This happened back in the first week of the year 2000.

At the time, my husband was a supervisor for a large railroad company. The phone was constantly ringing, even after work hours, because there was always trouble on that railroad and my husband is the type that can't say no. He would always answer the calls and troubleshoot the problems with the maintainers and the phone. A lot of the time, he would even go out into the field to help them in person. So, in short...

Nine times out of ten, if the phone rang, it was one of my husband's workers. One day, it was after work hours, and my husband, myself, and our two daughters were watching TV in the living room. I'd just gotten up to use the bathroom, and the phone rang. Now, remember, this is the year 2000. Cell phones were not that mainstream yet. My husband did have a work cell, but he usually left it in the truck.

knowing the workers would just call the landline if he didn't answer the cell. When the phone rang, since I was already walking by it, I said I would get it. I picked up the phone and said, Hello? There was a thick static, very loud. Hello? I repeated. I heard a very, very faint voice at the other end of the line. It was a male voice, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. I said, Hello?

I can't hear you. I told my husband that I think one of his men must be in a bad coverage zone, trying to call him. He told me to just hang up and let them call back, but I felt like I shouldn't. The voice sounded somewhat scared, so I tried again. I said, can you speak louder? I can't hear you. Then, the voice was way more clear. The man yelled, Lisa! Lisa!

Now, needless to say, I'm freaking the hell out at this point. My husband's coworkers did not know me like that. They called me Ms. Rosenblatt. On top of that, the voice rang a familiar bell. I thought to myself, I think I know this voice. As I'm thinking this, the voice again screams my name. Lisa! That's when I recognized it. It was my father. He was my estranged father because he had been an abusive alcoholic.

He beat my mother and abused my sister and I. The thing is, he had died of cancer two weeks prior. I freaked. I slammed the phone down immediately hanging up. I could feel the color draining from my face. My husband jumped up and ran over to me asking what was wrong. My throat was dry and my heart was racing, but I said, ''It was my father.''

My husband said, ''Are you sure it wasn't someone that just sounded like him? He's dead, remember?'' I said, ''Of course I remember, but I know his voice. I heard it my entire childhood. In the days following, my husband asked all of his men if they had called our home phone on that day at that time, and none of them had. I couldn't get the sound of the way his voice was desperate and panicked out of my head.''

I thought about it constantly for days. I swear, and I know this sounds nuts, but I think my father was calling me from hell. I am a Christian, and I believe in forgiveness, so... A couple of days after the phone call, I dropped to my knees in prayer. I asked God to spare my father, and that I forgave him for everything he did to me and our family. Of course, I can't know the outcome of my prayer, but it gave me peace, and...

I do sincerely hope my father is in a better place. I was on a long drive trip a while back, heading to another state for a work event that I was pretty much told I needed to be a part of. I was given the options to fly, or to drive a rental car out there, and if I drove, I had to do it over the weekend, and I wouldn't be paid for mileage. Which, whatever.

I am terrified of flying, so I chose to drive. There's no particular reason for me to be terrified of flying, but the two times that I have been on a plane, I've had full-blown panic attacks that have ended in myself vomiting. I think it's just me. I get freaked out and I panic. So, obviously, I told my boss that I would get a rental car and just drive to the conference.

The trip took way longer than I honestly anticipated, and I was driving pretty late into the night, and at the point where this event happened, I was running low on gas. I wasn't low enough that I would have ended up on the side of the highway, at least I don't think so, but I was low enough that I had made plans to fill up at the next station that I saw on an exit sign.

I went for a while longer, saw that there was a station at the next exit that indicated it was open 24 hours, and thought that I should consider stopping to use the restroom, getting something to drink, and then fill up my tank. I pulled off, and after a little bit of searching, I did find the station.

It was decently lit, so that wasn't a huge deal for me, but as I parked, I noticed that in the same parking lot as the station was what looked like an old motel that was boarded up. It kind of looked like a stereotypical old motel. Two floors, three rooms on each floor, and then the one extra room on the bottom that had the word office on the door.

A couple of the rooms were missing their doors. Some of them were just boarded up and some of the windows looked smashed. Honestly, it's not relevant, but it was a bit unsettling. But I wasn't there for lodging, I was there for gas. I headed into the station and it looked decent at the very least.

Like, sure, it was a bit dim and a couple of the fluorescent bulbs were burned out, but the floor was clean and everything looked well-stocked. It wasn't a small station either. There was actually a good amount of space and everything looked open, so it was kept up. There were two guys standing at the front counter talking to the clerk, and honestly, none of them looked too threatening. They just looked... normal.

As I walked in, the clerk turned his attention to me and he, very politely, asked me if he could help me find anything. I asked him if he had a restroom and he motioned toward the back. I nodded and headed back and did my business. While I was washing my hands though, I heard what sounded like all three men giggling like school children. At what I don't know, but at the same time, people laughing isn't necessarily a bad thing or creepy.

It was just something that I noted. When I walked out of the restroom, though, I could literally feel the three of them just staring at me as I went over to the drink cooler to get something for myself and grabbed a snack. I thought that they would look away or break their stares as I walked toward the counter, but nope. They all three just kept watching me as I approached.

I tried my best to ignore it as the guy scanned my items, but after a few moments of my skin starting to crawl, as the other two were glaring, I looked over towards them with a stare of, Alright, I know you're staring. You can stop now. As soon as my attention was turned toward them, one of the guys took this opportunity to say, We were making a bet on something, and I wanted to know. What would you rate me out of a ten?

This caught me a bit off guard, and I wasn't really sure what to say. I just kind of scoffed and turned back toward the clerk. Unfortunately, he was in on their game, and he was just staring at me with his eyes wide holding my Red Bull. At this point, I was annoyed, so I just said that I would like to pay for my stuff and go. He then told me that he would give me my things when I answered the question.

I said that I wasn't interested in whatever this was, and that I would just like to pay and go. Once again, he laughed and said, Not until you answer him. At this point, I decided that it wasn't worth my time to put up with this, and there were three of them versus one of me. I turned and walked away from them, but as soon as I reached the door, I felt a hand reach out and grab my hip.

Unfortunately for the person that grabbed me, which was the man that had asked me to rate him out of 10, as I was walking towards the door, I had actually unhooked my pepper spray from my keys. I had a small cartridge that had a keyring on it, and he took the full blast of it to the face. The other two men started yelling at me, he started screaming, and I turned and took off towards my car.

Thankfully, the car had a push start, so I was able to get the engine going and get out on the road before the three of them could even get out into the parking lot. The whole time I was pulling away and getting back on the highway, I was staring back at my rear view and seeing if they were following me, which, thankfully, they weren't.

After about five minutes of being back on the highway, I pulled over and resituated myself, trying to calm down and get through the anxiety attack that was definitely about to hit me. In the end, I was just thankful that I had the mental wherewithal to grab my pepper spray while I was walking. I just had that feeling that one of them was going to try something...

I ended up going for about another half an hour until I found a gas station in a much less creepy and more populated area, and I filled up without issue. This was definitely the event that made it click that these things can happen to me, and I'm way more aware of my surroundings now. Before the guys started in on being a creep, I really didn't get any red flags from them.

But even those that don't seem like creeps can be the worst. I'm not saying be paranoid or be scared of everyone, just that being prepared is always a good idea. I've worked at a small gas station in what I consider a middle-of-nowhere town for quite a few years now. I used to work the day shift, but I decided that I would take the pay increase and lose my social life and work the overnight shift instead.

Not like I had much of a social life to lose, but to be honest, I've been married for about 10 years now, and we don't exactly go out to parties or hang out with our friends or anything. Thankfully, my wife doesn't mind that I work the overnight shift, and we've made it work between the two of us. Honestly, the job has been incredibly uneventful for the years that I've worked it, with very little exception. Obviously, this is an event that is an exception.

One important thing to note about this station is that we are, mostly, a 24 by 7 station, with a one hour exception each night for us to count down the drawer and do the receipt drop in the back. Basically, we close the store for one hour to mark the end of the business day for the business and pull the numbers.

They used to not close to do it, but there was one point where the store was actually robbed by a former employee during the count because he knew the time that it was done, and the door was unlocked, so he took advantage of it. Ever since then, they've made it to where the store is closed for one hour every night. It's a weird system, but it does work in the end.

On this night, I had closed down the store at 3am, as I was scheduled to do, and I had counted down the drawer first and then did the receipt print for the card transactions. I had actually gotten it down to about 40 minutes, so I had 20 minutes until I needed to reopen, and I decided that I would go ahead and just take a few moments to myself behind the counter, kind of like a power nap sort of thing.

Not really sleeping, but just dozing off for the full 20 minutes. A couple seconds after I had sat and closed my eyes, I started hearing what sounded like a banging noise. It was enough to pull me from my light nap and make me jump. I looked around at the doors, and there was a woman that was smacking one of the doors and pulling on it as hard as she could.

At first, I instinctively started saying, We're closed until four, I can't unlock the door until then, but as I started talking, I could tell by the way that she was frantically pulling at the door and staring at me that something was seriously wrong. Since I'd already counted down the drawer, I figured that I could let her in and at least see what the hell was going on.

I walked around the counter and unlocked the door and asked what I could help her with. She told me that her car had broken down a few blocks down the road, and that she was trying to get here so that she could have someone pick her up, since she wasn't from around the area, but then said that for the last block or two, there was somebody that was following her. Now, this was definitely a creepy story, but I was a bit skeptical at first.

It almost felt like one of those stories that you would tell to scam someone, or to get them to let their guard down. I actually asked her what she wanted me to do about it, and she said that she just wanted to come inside to call her husband so that he could come and get her. After a few moments of her reiterating things, and me feeling like she was probably telling the truth, I decided to just let her in and lock the door.

I told her that we weren't technically open, so I couldn't have her anywhere in the store other than right there. She said that she understood, and that she would stay at the front door and apologized for the whole thing, saying that she didn't mean to be a bother. She was just really scared about what the guy that was following her was planning on doing. At this point, I felt like she was leaning too heavily into the story to actually be lying to me.

So, I told her that it wasn't to bother and mentioned that, if she sees him, that I would go ahead and call the cops for her. After a few moments of her talking on her phone to whom I'm assuming was her husband, and then her waiting and just staring out the front door, she started making a bit of small talk, which was fine. I still had a couple moments before I could reopen, so I kind of welcomed the conversation.

No sooner than when we started just talking about whatever, I heard another loud sound, but this time, it wasn't just a person smacking the glass. It was the sound of something smashing the glass on the side door. Thankfully, the door was designed so that smashing it would not allow access, as the glass was reinforced, wasn't very wide, and there were four metal bars across it.

but this guy was seriously doing everything he could to smash the glass so that he could get in. Like, he was pretty clear in what he was trying to do. The woman screamed. I kind of yelped like, "Whoa, what the hell?" and turned to look at the scene in front of me. After realizing what was happening, it occurred to me to hit the panic button.

I know you're not supposed to hit them until the robber leaves in order to prevent a hostage situation, but I knew that he wasn't going to be able to get into the store with what he was doing. I'm sure that this whole thing played out in like 10 seconds, but it felt like forever. Just standing there, watching this guy rabidly smash the glass in the door and trying his hardest to get into the station.

All the while, the woman is screaming that this is the guy that was following her. I'm yelling at her to get behind the counter and trying to figure out what the hell I could do. I guess the guy finally realized that he wasn't going to get in, and he just kind of stood there staring at the two of us with this horrible grin. Like, you could see the malice just pouring out of this dude, and he kept pointing at the two of us and shaking his head. It was terrifying.

At no point did he say a word. He just stared, smiled, pointed, and shook his head back and forth, which honestly felt more threatening than if he had been screaming at us. Finally, I started hearing the sirens as the officers started to pull into the lot, and this guy took off behind the building and out of sight. A couple of officers took off after him, and another one came to the door to check on us.

I went over and opened it, and well, that was a fun time. Explaining to him and the owner when he showed up what the hell had gone down. The woman explained her side, I told my side. It was pretty much the same story, honestly. She had no idea who this guy really was, and I obviously didn't know him. This was just some dude that was an absolute psycho and had ill intentions with this poor woman.

The officers waited for her husband to show up to come and get her, and I ended up having a long night with them and the owner going over everything, and going through the footage on the cameras. The owner wasn't too happy that I let her in during our closed hour, but I straight told him that if I hadn't, this guy would have gotten to her, and that would have been a lot worse than a bit of property damage.

Thankfully, this was the most eventful situation that I've ever had on this job, and I hope that it stays that way. I don't know if they ended up catching the guy or if he got away from them that night, but I never saw him after that, nor did I ever see her. I was definitely a bit nervous to go back the next day, but it was just normal operations after that.

I did have to explain to a few of our regulars what happened to the door, which got old, but it is what it is. So, to that lady, I hope that you're doing okay and that this didn't traumatize you too much. And to that guy, I hope that you and I never meet again, you absolute psycho. I'm new to this sub, but I think that this belongs here.

A few nights ago, as I was getting my two and a half year old ready for bed, she started saying strange things. It started with her talking about her other daddy or sometimes her old dad. I kind of played along for a minute, but that's when it got creepy. She kept saying that she was a bad baby. We told her, no, you're a good kid.

Then she said, "No, I'm bad. Bad babies start fires." That was when I stopped playing along, as I actually had a house burned down when I was a teenager, so I don't play when it comes to fire. I was really just wondering if anybody else has had a child say something like this, and what would the proper response be?

We just told her that she's not a bad girl and that she's actually a very good girl and very smart, and that fires are dangerous and could hurt people, and also that she only has one dad, and that's me. She hasn't said anything else like this since. As a child, I frequently suffered from awful nightmares.

I would dream almost nightly of a young person being hurt, murdered, or just straight up dying in some way. It led to my mother keeping her door unlocked at night so I could crawl into bed with her instead of waking her up. It would drive me to hysterics. It was the same girl every night. I could only make out that she was young, blonde, and always the same every single time.

She felt really familiar, but I figured it was because she was the same girl in all of my nightmares. At one point, they stopped. It was a few weeks after this that my cousin stayed the night, as my aunt was going out of town. She had a lot of medical issues, but they were managed by medication. That same night, I had another nightmare, a repeat of what had already happened.

I woke up to my cousin sitting in the corner of the room, soaked and crying and begging for me to go get my mother. I later realized that this was sleep paralysis. As I went to go wake up my mom, I found my actual cousin on the living room floor having a violent seizure. If I hadn't woken up that night, she would have died. She had fallen on our hardwood and had a head injury from the banging.

It was fixable, but it wouldn't have been if I hadn't caught her then. I was in the hospital, and I noticed that my cousin looked similar to the girl that I always dreamed about. I can't pinpoint if it was really her in my dreams. The dreams were always very blurry, but I didn't have one again. Personally, I believe some angel or ghost gave me a premonition that saved her life.

Last week, I was sitting in my living room and talking with a friend. After a while, my four-year-old son asks, Hey mommy, who is that guy? And when I look over at him, he's standing at my bedroom door and pointing into my room. No one else was in the house besides my friend, my son, and myself.

So I get up, walk over to him, and turn on the light to my room so he can see. He all of a sudden looks confused and says, "'Oh wait, where did he go?' I assume he thought his dad was home, so I replied, "'See, baby, there's no one in there. Daddy went to work.' I turn off the light and my son says, "'Wait, see, mommy, who is that guy?' while still looking into my dark room."

Needless to say, I slept with the lights on all week. Back in 2018, my best friend and I made plans for our first spring break style road trip. We had both pretty much grown up together since middle school, and we knew what we wanted to do after graduating. I wanted to become a teacher and her a veterinarian. So we hunted for the best school that could work for both of us, so we could still be close.

However, the school was in another state, so what else do we do but also find a place to share, which even saved us some money. We actually budgeted pretty well. We always pulled out the money we needed for rent and other bills so we knew it wouldn't be spent. However, between work and school, we didn't have a lot of time for play, so we decided to do something for ourselves.

We planned a trip to North Carolina for spring break. We had plans to go to the beach, go hiking, and of course, party. We actually got a pretty good hotel and airline package thanks to her work, which saved us more money to actually spend on the trip. So, onward to the actual trip. It had actually been going great. We took it easy the first day and just hit up the beach and went shopping.

We went on the hiking trail the next day while we still had the energy. On the third day, we lounged around in the hotel, went to a local diner, but otherwise we're just taking it easy. So we took this as our party day, or rather night, I suppose. Both looking our best, we headed out to a local bar to start with some drinks. We started a game of pool and were genuinely just having fun.

At some point a guy approached us, giving my friend advice on how to shoot as she was losing to me, miserably. He offered to help. She agreed and after a few practice shots, she started figuring it out and almost beat me. We all started talking and laughing and he introduced himself as Johnny and we introduced ourselves as well. He seemed like a nice guy and genuine too.

My friend, Jamie, seemed to be pretty interested in him and he didn't give off any weird vibes so I stuck around to hear him out too. Eventually he mentioned a beach party that was going on that night and said that it was open to anyone that brought drinks, offering to take us there if we wanted to go. We had no reason to really say no and thought it could be a lot of fun so we agreed.

He did offer to drive us there, but we did have some sense to us, so we declined. It was the same beach that we had went to a few days earlier, so we said we would take an Uber back to the hotel, change into our swimsuits, and then just walk there from the hotel room. He didn't even push the matter, so I thought that that was pretty cool too.

So, we did exactly as we stated, and when we got to the edge of the beach, Johnny was standing nearby and greeted us. He offered his arm to both of us and walked us through the sand. We could see a group of people near a fire, some were standing around drinking, some were playing beach volleyball, and some were just sitting and watching. As we approached, Johnny called out a few people, and we were all introduced and offered drinks. They were closed cans, so we accepted it.

We sat with some of them and talked and eventually tried to play volleyball. Neither of us had really played before and being buzzed, we were all over the place. But we all seemed to have a good time. They started playing music and we were dancing and playing some dumb drinking games. Jamie was definitely enjoying Johnny's company.

I found myself chatting it up with another girl that was there alone, playing a ukulele actually, who said that she was just visiting like we were. After a bit of time had passed, it was getting pretty dark with just the light of the fire and the nearby lights. I wasn't quite ready to end the night, but I was getting a bit chilly.

I wanted to go change or at least grab my jacket, so I thought I would ask Jamie if she wanted to go with me or if she wanted me to grab something for her. She wasn't on the bench where I last saw her, so I just looked around the beach, scanning the area of the party, and I didn't see her. I asked the girl who I had been talking to if she saw her and she said no, same with a few others, so I started walking around.

I ended up walking the whole shore hoping to find her, maybe walking with Johnny at the least, but still no luck. I went back and asked a few more people around, and some told me they didn't see where they went, confirming that she was still with Johnny, and others told me that they didn't even know who I was talking about. At this point, I was feeling a bit sketch, not to mention frustrated.

We were the only two girls that seemed to not understand volleyball, and were constantly falling and bumping into others. How do you not remember this person? I was also confused and upset that Jamie would just leave without telling me. Part of me did have it in my mind that maybe she took him to our hotel room, but was fighting myself because that's just not something that she would have done.

We shared a room, so she would have at least sent me a text telling me not to go back yet. So, I decided to risk the embarrassment and went back to the hotel room alone. I texted her asking where she was and that I was going back to our room, hoping that maybe a warning might help or that I would at least get a response. Yet, I got nothing by the time I inserted my room key into the door.

I wish that I could say that I found her passed out in there, but instead, what I did find made my heart drop. Our room had been ransacked and torn apart. Clothes were everywhere. The drawers were open. My purse was open and my wallet was missing. Jamie's entire purse was missing. We even had one of those book safes that was in my luggage that had been broken open. We kept our extra emergency funds in there in case anything happened.

I was devastated and terrified. The only thing I had of value on me was my phone, a little cash, and my ID, and thank god that I took that with me. But more importantly, while the room looked like this, Jamie was still missing, and she never responded to my text. I immediately tried calling her while I was in the room, but her phone went straight to voicemail. I was terrified and felt sick to my stomach.

I was in a state that I didn't know, surrounded by complete strangers. Most of our stuff was gone and the one person that I did know was missing. In between crying, I ran down to the front desk to report the state of the room and to call the cops. The hotel staff made a report and when the police arrived, I told them about Jamie and our whereabouts.

When they went up to our room, they concluded that it hadn't been broken into, and that a key had to have been used. Thankfully, they had cameras in the halls, and they went to check the footage immediately. To my horror, I watched as Johnny approached the door, used the key, and went in, alone. Jamie was not with him. Because of this, the police thankfully agreed that it was suspicious and started searching the area.

Some checked all the cameras to see if she wandered off somewhere else, some searched all over the hotel and the beach, and I even rode with one as we searched the nearby streets and stores. No luck. I was inconsolable as they took me to the station to make a more in-depth report. One of them then drove me back to the hotel, and surprisingly, they offered me a new room since one of the keys was obviously stolen.

I accepted, thinking maybe that she would show up in our old room, or maybe Johnny would come by again and we would be able to question him. That was a sleepless night. I kept calling and texting her phone, hoping that she would eventually reply, but I got nothing. We were supposed to be leaving in two days, and I was not going to leave without her.

I had so many thoughts going through my head, not to mention the fear and sadness of putting my best friend in a horrible situation. There was no way that I was going to be able to sleep. Then, early that next morning, I think it was around 4am, I got a call from the detective saying that they thought that they had found her. They said a woman showed up at a local hospital, in a state of stupor and due to other things they noticed...

They called the authorities to report the incident. I took an Uber to the hospital where I met the detective, and they took me back to the room to identify her. And, thank God, it was her. She was awake and very aware of who we were, where she was, etc. And then she told me what all happened. She told me that, after several drinks, she and Johnny were walking around the beach when they both made hints to go somewhere else.

They started walking to his car when she realized that she hadn't told me yet, so she pulled out her phone to text me when Johnny started to distract her and grab her phone from her. She said he was doing this in a playful manner, so she didn't think much of it at first, but then a woman came up to them and grabbed her phone from him, which caused her to panic a bit. Unfortunately, he had managed to get her in the car with the help of this woman, but

and that was the last thing she remembered until she woke up on a bench in the park. She then walked about a mile until she ended up at this hospital. She was still in her bathing suit, but her cover-up was gone, and she had nothing else on her, of course. They ended up doing tests and did sadly confirm that she had been drugged, but otherwise didn't have any signs of SA, thankfully. They did do the normal precautions just in case, though.

The detectives then explained to us that they had seen similar occurrences to tourists, men and women alike. They were found drugged, had been robbed, so they most likely did this in hopes of a quick payout, I guess. But since all that we really had on us were our phones, IDs, and room keys, they went for the room.

Her purse was later found in a trash can behind the hotel, but of course, all the cash, cards, and ID were gone. Her phone was never found. She apologized profusely, but I wasn't even mad. All of that stuff we could just replace or figure out, but I couldn't replace her. So, I was incredibly thankful to have found her.

But from then on, we doubled down and promised each other that no one, not a man nor a woman, would come between us. And while we're traveling, we always stay within each other's view. Okay. I had a very interesting morning one day back in 2021. I was sleeping away, and while I was sleeping, I heard my closed bedroom door open.

Mind you, I always keep my bedroom door closed. 24/7/365. Then, I heard footsteps. Next, I feel this very soft touch on my back, which causes me to wake up looking at my closet door, only to find nothing. What the entire hell was that? Who was there? Oh, and to add more questionable intrigue to this entry,

I also hear footsteps going up and down my basement stairs, and when I stand at the foot of my bed, near my open bedroom door during the day and night as well. There is one other catch. The basement door has to be open, too. Just, wow. So I think I got a ghostly visitor who doesn't want to leave his house. Hello, Raven. I have a scary story of my own to tell, so here we go.

So, for some background, I'm a 43 year old male and this happened to me about 3 years ago. My wife worked second shift as a nurse at a nursing home. At the time we only had one car, so I would drive her to work and pick her up so I could use the car during the time that she was at work. One night on the way to pick her up, I decided to stop at a gas station to grab a famous Circle K Polar Pop and a snack for both of us.

Now, I need to explain the layout of the parking lot in the store. This was a small Circle K with a very small parking lot. On the right of the building was a small alley tucked between the store and a chain link fence. There was a car parked in front of the alley, but down from it just a bit, which left a small gap that a tiny car could fit through between the car and getting through the narrow alley. I hope that explains the scene okay.

As I got out of my car, another car decided to try to fit in between the parked car and into the alley, but it didn't. It scraped up against the car parked in front of the alley and dented the front end, and left huge scratch marks. I was pretty shocked. Before I could even get in the store, a man walked out and headed towards the damaged car. I said, Sir, someone hit your car as it squeezed into the alley. He then yelled, Sir?

What?

He began to wave it around and scream and yell. He then said, "I'll shoot him. I'll shoot anyone." At this point, I was just flat out terrified and frozen in place. I wasn't sure what to do. Should I make a beeline for the store? Or my car? My fight or flight kicked in, and I decided that surely flight was the better option.

As he continued his tirade, I decided to turn around and walk at a brisk pace back towards my car. My muscles tightened as I could only think about a bullet piercing my back or, God forbid, the back of my head. I've never felt more unadulterated dread in my life. I've never had to deal with a maniac with a gun. Finally, after what seemed like a solid five minutes, which I'm sure was only about 15 seconds, I was in my car.

I let out a huge sigh of relief. I turned my car on and burned out of the parking lot as fast as possible, shaking like a leaf. I thought about calling the police, but then decided against it. I don't know if that was the wrong or right decision, but what I do know is that the right decision now is to mind my own business.