Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: If you're a lover of all things spooky and eerie,
Speaker 2: then Untold True Crime Horror is the perfect storytelling podcast
Speaker 2: for a spine tingling experience. As you tune into this
Speaker 2: petrifying horror experience, do not forget to subscribe, as your
Speaker 2: nightmares are about to get a whole lot scarier.
Speaker 1: About five years ago, I lived downtown in a major
Speaker 1: city in the US. I've always been a night person,
Speaker 1: so I would often find myself bored after my roommate,
Speaker 1: who was decidedly not a night person, went to sleep.
Speaker 1: To pass the time, I used to go for long
Speaker 1: walks and spend the time thinking. I spent four years
Speaker 1: like that, walking alone at night. I never once had
Speaker 1: a reason to feel afraid. I always used to joke
Speaker 1: with my roommates that even the drug dealers in the
Speaker 1: city were light. But all that changed in just a
Speaker 1: few minutes of one evening. It was a Wednesday, somewhere
Speaker 1: between one and two in the morning, and I was
Speaker 1: walking near a police patrolled park quite a ways from
Speaker 1: my apartment. It was a quiet night, even for a
Speaker 1: week night, with very little traffic and almost no one
Speaker 1: on foot the park, as it was most nights was
Speaker 1: completely empty. I went down a short side street in
Speaker 1: order to loop back down my apartment. When I first
Speaker 1: noticed him, at the far end of the street on
Speaker 1: my side was the silhouette of a man dancing. It
Speaker 1: was a strange dance, similar to a waltz, but he
Speaker 1: finished each box with an odd forward stride. I guess
Speaker 1: you could say he was dance walking, headed straight from me.
Speaker 1: Deciding he was probably drunk, I stepped as close as
Speaker 1: I could to the road to give him the majority
Speaker 1: of the sidewalk to pass me. The closer he got,
Speaker 1: the more I realized how gracefully he was moving. He
Speaker 1: was very tall and lanky and wearing an old suit.
Speaker 1: He danced closer still until I could make out his face.
Speaker 1: His eyes were open wide and wild head tilted back slightly,
Speaker 1: looking off of the sky. His mouth was formed in
Speaker 1: a painfully wide cartoon of a smile. Between the eyes
Speaker 1: and the smile. I decided to cross the street before
Speaker 1: he danced any closer. I took my eyes off of
Speaker 1: him to cross the empty street. As I reached the
Speaker 1: other side, I glanced back and then stopped dead in
Speaker 1: my tracks. He had stopped dancing and was standing with
Speaker 1: one foot in the street, perfectly parallel to me. He
Speaker 1: was facing me, but still looking skyward, smiles still wide
Speaker 1: on his lips. I was completely and utterly unnerved by this.
Speaker 1: I started walking again, but kept my eyes on the man.
Speaker 1: He didn't move. Once I had put about half a
Speaker 1: block between us, I turned away from him for a
Speaker 1: moment to watch the sidewalk in front of me. The
Speaker 1: street and sidewalk ahead of me were completely empty. Still unnerved,
Speaker 1: I looked back to where he had been standing to
Speaker 1: find him gone. For the briefest of moments, I felt
Speaker 1: relieved until I noticed him. He had crossed the street
Speaker 1: and was now slightly crouched down. I couldn't tell for
Speaker 1: sure due to the distance and the shadows, but I
Speaker 1: was certain he was facing me. I had looked away
Speaker 1: from him for no more than ten seconds, so it
Speaker 1: was clear that he had moved fast. I was so shocked,
Speaker 1: and I stood there for some time staring at him.
Speaker 1: And then he started moving toward me again. He took giant, exaggerated,
Speaker 1: tiptoed steps, as if he were a cartoon character sneaking
Speaker 1: up on someone, except he was moving very, very quickly.
Speaker 1: I'd like to say at this point that I ran
Speaker 1: away or pulled out my peppers cell phone or anything
Speaker 1: at all, but I didn't. I just stood there, completely frozen,
Speaker 1: as the smiling man crept toward me, and then he
Speaker 1: stopped again, about a car length away from me, still
Speaker 1: smiling his smile, still looking to the sky. When I
Speaker 1: finally found my voice, I blurted out the first thing
Speaker 1: that came to mind. What I meant to ask was
Speaker 1: what the fuck do you want? In an angry, commanding tone.
Speaker 1: What came out was a whimper, what the fuck? Regardless
Speaker 1: of whether or not humans can smell here, they can
Speaker 1: certainly hear it. I heard it in my own voice.
Speaker 1: That only made me more afraid. But he didn't react
Speaker 1: to it at all. He just stood there, smiling, and then,
Speaker 1: after what felt like forever, he turned around very slowly
Speaker 1: and started dance, walking away just like that. Not wanting
Speaker 1: to turn my back to him again, I just watched
Speaker 1: him go until he was far enough away to almost
Speaker 1: be out of sight, and then I realized something. He
Speaker 1: wasn't moving away anymore, nor was he dancing. I watched
Speaker 1: in horror as the distant shape of him got bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger. He was coming back my way. He was
Speaker 1: coming back my way, and this time he was running.
Speaker 1: I ran too. I ran until I was off the
Speaker 1: side road and back onto a better lit road with
Speaker 1: sparse traffic. Looking behind me, then he was nowhere to
Speaker 1: be found. The rest of my way home, I kept
Speaker 1: glancing over my shoulder, always expecting to see his stupid smile,
Speaker 1: but he was never there. I lived in that city
Speaker 1: for six months after that, and I never went out
Speaker 1: for another walk. There was something about his face that
Speaker 1: always haunted me. He didn't look drunk, he didn't look high.
Speaker 1: He looked completely and utterly insane. And that's a very,
Speaker 1: very scary thing to see.