Speaker 1: When I was twenty one, I went on a vacation
to Washington. It was somewhere I'd been dreaming of going
since I was a kid. My plans were to hang
out around Seattle and stay in the city for the
most part, but I figured it was only right to
go camping in the massive forest and woods that Washington
had to offer. I only wanted to camp for a
night and then head back to the city. I'd been
camping a few times before, but never on my own,
so this was a first. I rented out some camping
gear from a local shop and found a small trail
with camping grounds. I drove down there and got going
as soon as the sun was up. The path to
the camping grounds was very easy, and it took me
less than three hours. It was basically just a flat
plot of land that had some clear signs of previous
campers being there, like old equipment, rusty cooking pots, and
some trash. I set up my tent off to the
side next to a tree where the area was clear.
As far as I knew, there weren't any special sights
to see nearby, so I was just there to chill
and be at peace. At sunset, I got a fire
going and brought out my ziplock bag that I had
prepared full with s'mores ingredients. I made an unhealthy amount,
and when I was done, I just sat next to
the campfire and spent some time thinking. That was until
I was interrupted. A man came up behind me from
seemingly nowhere and sat at the other end of my campfire.
Oh hey, you camping around here too, I asked, trying
to make the strange encounter less awkward. He looked at me,
but he didn't respond to my question. I looked around
behind me and to the sides to see if anyone
else was here, but it was just us. A moment
went by before he stood up and walked away. I
don't recall if I was more nervous, creeped out, or confused,
but nonetheless I stayed there and kept my eyes open
for the next hour. Eventually, I put my fire out
and went inside my tent, staying up for another hour
before falling asleep. I woke up in the middle of
the night to a strange sound, the crackle of a campfire.
I opened my eyes and saw the orange light flickering
in front of my tent. My heart beat grew faster
and louder. As I unzipped the tent. My campfire had
been rekindled, and four men sat around it, all looking
directly at me. One of them was the same man
who'd come by previously. I slowly stepped out of the
tent and looked at each of them in horror. Before
I could say anything, one of them spoke something in
a foreign language, and then two of them got up
and grabbed me, patting me down and taking my phone
in wallet. These guys were way bigger than me, and
there was no pin and resisting. After a good search,
they then dragged me away from the camp site. We
walked for a good twenty minutes out into the woods,
and I was holding back tears, pretty sure this was
the end. But then they shoved me on the ground,
hit me over the head, and ran away. I think
they were trying to knock me out, or at least
dazed me enough to not follow them, but I felt
like it was pretty obvious that, given the circumstances, I
wasn't going to go strolling back toward them. I got
up and immediately started jogging in the direction that I
thought would take me closer to the interstate that ran
between the forest. Once all the adrenaline was out, though
my head was killing me and it was hard to
think straight, not to mention it was pitch black and
I was stumbling over fallen logs and tree roots and
had no way of knowing if I was walking straight
or not. Then, I'd say about thirty minutes into walking,
I passed out. It was likely from a mix of everything.
But when I regained consciousness, I realized that I had
even less of an idea of which direction to go in.
I walked, and what I prayed was the right direction,
knowing that there was a chance that I could just
get even more lost. After an hour of seeing nothing
but large trees in dark woods, I spotted a light
in the distance. It was a flashlight, moving around like
someone was carrying it. As I approached, I screamed for help,
only to see the figure of a man turned toward
me and shine the light in my direction, followed by
three more figures appearing behind him. Without hesitating, I sprinted away,
but they didn't seem to follow me from that encounter,
Although scaring the shit out of me again, I saw
the way they were walking and was able to keep
myself going in that direction. Two more hours of walking,
and at break of dawn, I reached the interstate. After
another half hour, I finally waved down a car and
was safe from there. After getting back to the city
and contacting police, I got my car back and gave
the officers the best description of the events that I
could give. I still had to pay for the lost
rental items, but that was far from the worst of it.
Lucky for me, the men who robbed and attacked me
didn't seem to be in the killing business, but leaving
me out in a vast force like that in the
middle of the night was giving me slim chances at best.
As odd as it sounds if I hadn't seen them
for a second time, although as horrifying as it was,
it's likely the only reason I'm still here today. I
was on a road heading back from a job interview
I had across the States. I stayed for an extra
couple days to make it a mini vacation, which was
why I drove instead of taking a plane. Anyway. It
was pouring outside, which would usually make for a relaxing drive,
but it was the middle of the night, so it
made visibility difficult. Most of the drive consisted of going
through dense forest on long one lane roads. The drive
was supposed to be around ten hours, and obviously, with rain,
I expected a slight delay. It was just past one
a m. When I checked my phone and saw it
was sixty two miles until the next turn. For some reason, though,
Apple Maps was taking me on a different route from
the way I'd taken before. I didn't see it as
a problem at all, and continued for a while, maybe
thirty minutes before I glanced over at my phone again.
It's still said I was sixty two miles away from
the next turn. I looked closer, and my car wasn't
even moving on the map. I tried clicking on it
and restarting the app, but it was frozen on that screen.
To make things worse, all it said was turn right
in sixty two miles with no road or street name.
Without that, I had no idea where I was going
or when to turn, other than a tiny memory of
a street name and had shown me before. It was
one of those where if I saw the street sign
then I'd recognize or remember it, but I couldn't fully
remember it on my own. Despite the inconvenience. I continued
driving for a while in hopes that it was just
an internet connection thing and once I was out of
the dense forest, it would fix itself. An hour or
so of driving later, I was still in the forest
and the rain was still pouring down. But I saw
an intersection coming up on the connecting street. There was
a truck parked on the side, and I figured they
were probably having the same problem I was having. I
slowed and looked at the street sign, and to my surprise,
I thought I actually recognized it. It could have just
been some coincidence or a false memory due to my
lack of sleep, but I ended up turning and taking
my chances. At first, I was fairly confident in my choice,
thinking I might have actually made the right call. But
after an hour of driving, I was still in the forest.
I knew for sure that I didn't spend even nearly
this much time driving through the forest on the way there,
so something was wrong. I checked my phone and still
had no luck. But up ahead I saw a faint
glow of a billboard sign a motel right there in
the middle of this isolated forest. It seemed like an
odd choice for a motel, but I pulled into the
parking lot so I could safely figure out my situation.
The whole lot was empty, not a single car. A
minute later, though, that same truck i'd seen back at
the intersection pulled in and parked a few spots down.
I couldn't see much through the rain, so I just
ignored them and continued with trying to get my phone
to work. I want to say I probably sat there
for fifteen minutes before giving up. Just before deciding to
go into the motel to either ask for help or
get a room, a knock on my window startled me.
Hey can you help me? He yelled through the rain.
I rolled the window down a crack, letting rain splash
all over me. As I asked what he wanted. He
said he needed some directions and told me a very
specific address, as if I were to know where it was. Sorry, man,
I'm just as lost as you are. He frowned, then
smiled and said to have a nice night, walking back
through the rain to his truck. After a minute, I
got out and ran into the motel. The front room
was dark and empty. Nobody was at the desk. I
leaned over the counter to see if someone was in
the back. But then the front door opened behind me.
I turned and saw that man from the truck outside.
He was soaked with water dripping from his long hair
and beard. The look on his face was cold and sinister,
and he had one hand suspiciously shoved in his pocket.
In that instant, I quickly tried walking past him. He
stayed firmly in my way, but for whatever reason, he
didn't stop me from squeezing past him and out the door.
As I quickly walked to my car, I heard the
man exit the building behind me, and his footsteps catching up.
I got in and turned on my car. Just as
the man came up to my window and through the rain,
I heard the sound of my door latch click. Thank
god my car auto locks, because as soon as I
heard that and looked up at him, he stared at
me with disturbingly rage filled eyes and began forcefully trying
to open the door. He was pulling so hard the
entire car was rocking back and forth. I pulled out
and drove off so fast I almost ran him over.
I got back to the intersection and sped down the
way I was going before. Thankfully, I made it to
a city after twenty miles and was able to get help.
It turned out the motel I was at had closed
down a couple months back, and for some reason the
sign still worked, which nobody could explain to me. I
don't know what that man's intentions were and whether or
not he had planned that whole thing out, but one
thing I am sure of is that I got very
lucky with my escape from that motel. I lived on
my own for the first time in my life when
I turned twenty five. It made me want to explore
doing other things by myself too, and one thing I'd
always wanted to do was go for a long hike.
It might sound a little weird, but it was just
something that I thought sounded like an accomplishment to do solo.
I had no experience in any outdoorsy activities, so this
was my first big trail. Online it said it was
eight hours, so I packed as much water and food
as I could, and on Monday morning, I set out
on the hike. The first thing I noticed when I
started walking was how thin the trail was. I didn't
know if this was normal or not, but it was
barely wide enough to walk on without stepping on the
borders of the trail. While being thin, it was still
very defined, and I knew i'd be back well before dark,
so I wasn't worried about it. Although I didn't do
much hiking, I was still in decent shape, so walking
long distances wasn't an issue. Most of the way up
the trail, I was feeling great and having no problem,
but as I kept going it did start to wear
me down a bit. I checked my watch constantly, and
once I was six hours and still hadn't reached the end,
I was starting to worry. Supposedly, the end of the
trail was a small overlook of the valley, so there
was no way I could just walk past it or
miss it somehow, but according to the website i'd seen earlier,
I was two hours behind. Then I started to think
maybe it meant the trail was eight hours to complete
one way and was not including the walk back. But
I just knew that I had to turn back at
this point if I wanted to be out of the
forest before dark. I turned around and began walking back
the way I came. As I walked back, I noticed
a few things that I hadn't noticed on the way up. Specifically,
there was a line of prints that went perpendicular to
the path, going right across from one end of the
forest to the other, and just kept going as far
as I could see. I thought maybe I didn't see
it before because of the different point of view, but
I was already a bit worried and this wasn't helping
my case. Then three hours into the hike back, and
nearly nine hours total being in the forest, the trail
I was walking on started to widen. One thing I
knew for sure was that the trail was thin the
entire time up, so when I saw this, my stomach tightened.
I didn't know how, but I had gotten onto the
wrong trail, maybe taken a side path accidentally. I stood
there like a terrified child for a few minutes, unsure
of my next move. The sun was already setting, and
if I had taken the wrong turn in the daytime,
how would I make sure to follow my way back
and not make the same mistake in the dark. I
knew my choices were limited, so I had to turn
back again and hope for the best. I started walking,
but not long into it, I saw footprints again, not
the same ones from before, and I knew these weren't
there just ten minutes ago. I looked out to the
forest in the direction they were going, but it was
now too dark to see much. Soon I couldn't see anything.
The moonlight provided a dim overcast, but I hadn't packed
the flashlight. It was the middle of April, too, so
the nights would get pretty cold where I lived. As
I walked, the only sound was my footsteps on the
gravel and the soft noises the forest made. That was
until I heard something ahead, someone else walking on the gravel.
I stopped and stared ahead into the dark, but after
a few steps the sound went away. I carefully moved
forward until I saw the footprints and the gravel going
straight across the trail. I turned my phone light on
and pointed it into the forest. It was still too dim,
but I knew someone was out there. Hello, I called out.
There was nothing but silence. I held my phone light
up still, and after a moment I saw a very
slight fog from some one's cold breath rise from behind
a nearby tree. They were maybe ten feet away from
me into the forest, but seeing as they were hiding
made me scared as to what they were up to
and why exactly they didn't want to be seen. I
quickly walked further down the trail, and after thirty minutes
I found where I had accidentally turned off. Several hours later,
I made it out and got to my car. I
hated myself for weeks after that for having gotten myself
into such a bad situation, but it only got worse.
I think it was exactly three weeks since my hike
when I saw in the news that two bodies were
found in the forest I had hiked in. They didn't
give exact locations, but it was in the area near
the trail I had taken. I don't think they found
who had done it, but I'm almost positive that at
one point I was standing just ten feet away from them,
close enough to see their cold breath in the dark.