Speaker 1: I was taking a few days off and spending it
camping in the woods. I was in some forest a
few hours from my town and had set up camp
at the end of a four hour trail. I'd spent
the night there already and had noticed this thin path.
Speaker 2: Leading out from the campsite.
Speaker 1: I had no idea where it went, and it wasn't
on the map of the area, but having nothing better
to do on that second day, I thought I'd go
for a short hike down the path just to see
if it led anywhere cool, maybe a small pond or
a waterfall or something. I brought with me a backpack
with food and water in case i'd be out longer
than expected. Walking through the trail, it was very obvious
that almost nobody used it, or at least hadn't used
it in a long time, maybe even years. It was
very thin and overgrown in a lot of sections, and
I didn't see any signs of people, like shoeprints or anything.
This went on for several miles, taking around two hours
before I found the end, and it wasn't.
Speaker 2: What I expected.
Speaker 1: There was a house or cabin sitting in the woods.
At first sight, there was no mistaking that it was abandoned.
Moss and vines were growing out of the woods siding,
and the doors and windows were all open. Before approaching
any further, I looked around at my surroundings, just checking
for anything, as this wasn't a normal thing to just
stumble across. The woods were calm and unsettlingly still, I
went up to the doorway and poked my head in.
Looking down the front hallway, there was dust and debris
eying all over the floors, but it was otherwise barren.
I went in a little further. It smelled of mildew
and rotting wood, but as I crept through the rooms
there wasn't much to see. Feeling uneasy though, I was
about to turn around and leave, but a small glimmer
caught the side of my eye on one of the
closed wooden doors. The handle had been ripped off and
replaced by a silver padlock. It almost looked brand new
and matched nothing else in the house. My curiosity immediately
had me thinking of why there was a padlock on
the door to an otherwise empty and ruined cabin. The
more I looked at it, though, that uneasy feeling just
took over me, and I couldn't get myself to investigate.
Speaker 2: I quickly left the house and went back to the path.
Speaker 1: Just as I entered the trail again, I heard a
single footstep on the wooden floor inside the house. I
turned and looked at the doorway, but saw nothing, so
I kept on walking, trying to distance myself from that place.
As I walked back, though for the whole two hours,
I kept hearing footsteps in the distance, like someone was
following me. The trees densely covered the area, though, making
it impossible to see that far. When I got back
to the camp, I got a fire going early and
just sat and waited, listening and looking to see if
anyone showed up. By nightfall, I hadn't heard anything else,
but as the hours got later, I started hearing it again,
footsteps out in the distance, far beyond the light of
the campfire, definitely close enough for them to see the light.
It went on for several hours, hearing a line of
footsteps every ten to fifteen minutes, still though I was
never able to see them, and eventually it got so
late that I knew I had to sleep, so I
left the campfire going. As I got inside my tent,
I was in and out of sleep for the rest
of the night, waking up at every small sound the
woods made.
Speaker 2: After getting almost no.
Speaker 1: Sleep, I left. What the cabin was doing there, and
whoever had followed me that night, I'll never know. I
can't say what they intended to do, but their disturbing
stalking behavior only lets me assume the worst. But I
can never seem to stop thinking about the disturbing possibilities
of what was behind that locked door. This happened almost
ten years ago when I was in high school. Me
and my friend, while called Jake for privacy, have kept
from sharing this until now, mostly because we just don't
know what really happened. We had been talking about going
to this abandoned mall near our city for a while,
but the only thing making us nervous was that we
didn't have a group to go with. It would just
be us, and we knew that it was a sketchy
place to be. For some reason, we were both just
really intrigued by the place and the idea of going there,
so much so that we couldn't stop ourselves. We gathered
up some stuff into a drawstring bag and took Jake's
card to get there. This mall was off the side
of a long highway, but the state had blocked the
view from the road with a ton of trees, probably
to keep people from seeing the unpleasant building so close.
Speaker 2: To the city. The road to get to the parking.
Speaker 1: Lot was destroyed too, so we had to park on
the side of the highway, kind of nestled around some
trees so it wouldn't be seen by passing cars. Then
we started walking. The sun was just about setting, which
gave us enough light to not get lost.
Speaker 2: In the trees.
Speaker 1: After a few minutes, the sound of cars passing on
the highway faded out, and we reached the edge of
the massive, empty parking lot, where the abandoned mall sat
right in the middle. There were no cars, no people,
and no sounds. We stood there for a moment, just
to be sure we were alone.
Speaker 2: Then we walked through.
Speaker 1: The parking lot and up to the main entrance.
Speaker 2: All the glass from the doors.
Speaker 1: Were shattered, and inside it almost immediately became darker. We
stayed quiet at first, walking slowly and being careful just
looking around. Being inside this huge mall with no people
walking around and no lights on was super eerie and strange.
Feeling every step we took echoed all the way through
the mall, which was completely dark. As we got further
toward the middle, we stopped for a minute, taking our
flashlights out of the bag when we heard something.
Speaker 2: Someone was laughing.
Speaker 1: It was from the other end of the mall, which
was pitch black. We didn't hear any talking afterward, or
see any lights. We both agreed that it had to
just be another group exploring the place, but it didn't
really make me feel any better. This wasn't ideal, and
we were hoping to avoid other people, but already being there,
it felt like a waste of time to just turn back.
We turned on the flashlights and started walking into the
dark section of the mall, moving the light around. All
the stores were emptied and had garbageing graffiti everywhere. By then,
the sun had definitely set too, because when I looked
behind us at where we came from, it was pitch
black as well. I turned back around to tell Jake,
but he had stopped walking and was holding his flashlight
steadily ahead of him. Jake, I whispered, but then I
looked closer at where his light was pointing far back
in the store, directly ahead of us, I saw a figure.
They were standing by the entrance to the shop and
just looking at us.
Speaker 2: I think what.
Speaker 1: Terrified us so much was just how creepy it was
for them to just be standing there without saying hello,
or just walking away or something.
Speaker 2: And as more and more seconds.
Speaker 1: Passed, my heart felt like it was beating out of
my chest in terror. Before Jake finally moved his light away,
both of us turned around and started quickly walking back
where we came from. We were constantly swinging our lights
around as we navigated through the darkness. Our footsteps echoing
around us made it hard to hear anything else, only furthering.
Speaker 2: The panic we were in.
Speaker 1: Then our lights finally reached the entrance to the mall,
and just then running footsteps came.
Speaker 2: From the floor right above us.
Speaker 1: I shined my lights, only catching a glimpse of a
person running down the hallway. This is when Jake and
I started sprinting, heading straight for the exit as we
could hear the footsteps start making their way down the
escalators towards us. We managed to get out and continued
running through the parking lot and all the way to
the trees. Looking back, nobody had followed us out. As
we walked back to the car, I almost threw up
from my heart racing so fast. We got in the
car and drove back to Jake's house, and after that
we never talked about it. I don't know what that
was the way it all played out, though. I just
can't see how a couple people would plan all of
that without meaning harm. Thankfully, we didn't assume anything, because
if we had stayed there and continued exploring, there's really
no saying what would have happened that night. There's an
abandoned hotel in my town that's been vacant for decades.
It had been bought out several times before, but every
time they ended up going bankrupt after just a few years.
Our town is small and kind of old fashioned, so
there's really no reason for anyone to visit unless they
have family here, which means that there's really no reason
to even.
Speaker 2: Have a hotel as big as this one was.
Speaker 1: It was at least six stories and was probably the
largest building in our town. Anyway, when I was twenty three,
I just casually decided to check it out. I felt
like there was nothing actually dangerous or scary about it.
It was just an empty abandoned building that would be
cool to walk around and look at. I decided to
go during the day because I figured that if anyone
was there during the daytime, then they were probably just
harmless people exploring it like me. I parked at a
store that was a half mile away, then walked to
the hotel. It was mostly isolated on the side of
the road, being that most of the stores surrounding it
had already been torn down.
Speaker 2: The hotel itself.
Speaker 1: Though, looked a lot worse than the last time I'd
seen it. The brick was crumbling and the whole place
seemed like it was fading and decaying. I went up
to the front and glanced inside. It was mostly empty,
with only a few things scattered around like chairs and
old furniture. I stepped in and walked through the lobby,
opening the door to the staircase. The whole stairwell was
covered in shadows, as barely any light was getting in.
All I could see was a dim beam of light
coming from one of the floors above. It was only
just enough for me to find my way up the stairs,
but when I got to the door on the second story,
it was blocked. Something on the other side was keeping
it from opening, and a sheet of wood was covering
the window on the door. I left it and continued
up to the third story, opening the door and entering
the hallway. This was probably the most creepy setting I'd
ever been in. The hallway was dark and musty, with
only a small window on either end.
Speaker 2: To light up the corridor.
Speaker 1: I walked down a little bit, then went into the
first room with an open door. Oddly, it looked kind
of normal. There were layers of dust covering everything, but
all the furniture was set up as if it had
never been moved. There were even towels and soap left
in the bathroom. Still, as I was looking at all
of this, I heard a small thumb. I turned around
and faced the doorway, not sure if that was from
the floor I was.
Speaker 2: On or the one below me.
Speaker 1: A few seconds later, quiet footsteps creaked the floorboards.
Speaker 2: Coming down the hallway.
Speaker 1: As they got closer, I just stared at the doorway
and hoped that they weren't on my floor. After a
few seconds, though, I heard them stop, followed by a
door opening and then slamming shut on the.
Speaker 2: Floor below me.
Speaker 1: Afterward, there were no footsteps or really any sounds at all.
I tried to be quiet, walking up to the hallway
and looking out to make sure nobody else was here.
Thinking about it, though, I couldn't see why another person
just exploring the place would walk so deliberately to a
room and slam the door. And the more I thought
about it, the more nervous I got. Only adding to
the eeriness was how silent.
Speaker 2: The whole place was. Now.
Speaker 1: After a minute of standing in the hallway and thinking
I'd had enough, I quietly walked back to the staircase
and opened the door, Entering the dark stairwell and starting
to descend. There was no way to be quiet. On
the metal stairs. Each step was an unavoidable hollow thumb.
But as I passed the door to the second story,
I noticed a small gap in the doorway that definitely
wasn't there before. Then I looked down at the stairs
ahead of me. A figure stood in the stairwell only
a few steps below me, barely visible in the darkness,
but their eyes stared right at me. They looked dreadful
and emotionless. With no choice, I started carefully walking on
the edge of the staircase, passing.
Speaker 2: By them, with only a couple feet between.
Speaker 1: Us, as his eyes followed every move I made. Once
I got to the bottom, I opened the door and
ran out into the lobby, where I could finally see clearly.
I hurried back to my car and sat in the
parking lot for a while. Looking back, that was probably
the dumbest thing I'd ever done. I guess I just
didn't realize what I was walking into. I'm not sure
why that person was there or what they were doing.
Leaving when I did was probably the only good decision
I made.