Speaker 1: A year ago, in early winter, I went hiking for
a weekend in a national park not far from home.
It was supposed to be the last few days of
good weather before the winter cold and snow came in,
so I wanted to get out while I still could.
There was a trail my buddy had told me about
that went up to a nice view of a lake
and wasn't crowded, so I decided to try it out.
But when I got to the trail, it wasn't what
I expected. There were no signs or markings. There was
just a thin path going through some trees. I walked
down a little ways, and while it still had no markings,
it seemed like a straightforward trail to hike along. As
I walked, it was clear that few people came this way.
There were almost no shoeprints in the dirt, and the
path didn't seem professionally made. This didn't frighten me or anything,
but it was just something I took note of. The
forest along the path was really nice, though, full of
wildlife and falling leaves from the changing season. About a
mile in I walked past something interesting, another path leading
off into the woods. I stayed on the trail, but
I didn't really understand why there would be another path
connecting to this already rarely used path. As I kept
on walking, though, more of these side trails started to
show up. They went off in random directions, leading to
what looked like nothing in particular. It was really odd,
and then after about three hours of walking, the trail
I was on ended just like that. There was no
more path to follow. All that was ahead was an
endless row of trees, and then out of nowhere, I
heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see a guy
walking in the distance. He had a ripped up jacket
on and no backpack, and strangely, he was walking across
the trail I was on, onto one of the side paths.
It didn't look like he saw me, he was just
looking down and walking. The way he walked, though, and
how he looked made me a bit creeped out, so
I made sure to not be seen as I watched
him walk into the woods. By then, it looked like
there wasn't much daylight left, and I decided to just
abandon finding the lake and just hike back to my car. However,
it only took me a few minutes to reach an
intersection of paths that I didn't remember before. Immediately I
thought about how the one path ended so abruptly, and
how that probably meant that at some point point I
went onto the wrong trail. I looked down, trying to
see if there were any shoe prints of mine that
I could follow, but I didn't see any. Then I
heard it again, footsteps behind me. I turned and looked
out into the forest in the distance. That same man
was standing and facing me. He didn't move or say anything,
he just stood there as if he were watching me.
After a moment, a chill ran through my body, and
I turned to take whatever trail was in the opposite
direction of the man. I quickly hurried, checking behind me
multiple times, but after a few minutes I'd lost track
of the man. I went down this trail for over
an hour, still worried about both being lost and the
strange man. After a while of walking, and moved off
the path and leaned against a tree, taking a break
to drink some water. And not even a minute passed
before I heard those same footsteps. I stayed where I
was behind the tree as the sound of their shuffling
steps got louder and louder until the man walked right
past the tree I was behind. He looked focused on
the path ahead, like he thought I was still walking,
but there was no doubt in my mind that he
was following me, or at least trying to. Once he
was gone, I took the opportunity to run back the
way I came, getting to the intersection and choosing between
two other paths that were in the right direction. Thankfully
I'd made the right choice, because halfway back to my car,
all I had was the dim moonlight to guide me
through the woods. All I can say is that that
man I saw didn't look like he was out there
just for a hike, and based on the way he
was acting, I think he had some terrible intentions that
I may have just barely avoided. I had just turned
nineteen and was staying at home from college for the
next few months for summer break. My mom lives in
the city in the same house I grew up in,
but my dad moved into a small home outside the city.
It was backed up to the woods, and I always
felt so relaxed while I was there. Just being away
from everything felt very freeing. Anyway, over the course of
the summer, I got the idea to go camping for
just a night, somewhere in the woods behind my dad's house.
I had all the gear already, and I'd gone camping before,
so it just seemed like a harmless, fun night. I
didn't plan on going far out, maybe just walking for
a half hour then finding a good spot to set up,
so I left about two hours till sunset. I walked
with no music or anything, just soaking in the environment
and sounds of nature until I made it far enough
out to start setting up my gear. I pitched my
tent and got a fire going, then relaxed as the
sun set and the woods fell quiet. A couple hours
into the night, I went to bed. I had planned
to leave in the morning, but when I woke up,
I felt like hanging out for a little bit longer.
I went for a casual walk and sat by the tent. Surprisingly,
the day felt to have gone by really fast. Before
I knew it, the sun was making its way down.
I packed up my things and cleaned up, then started
walking back home. I walked between the trees, having a
conversation with myself in my head to pass the time,
but as the sun started getting lower and lower, I
realized it had been a while since i'd left. I
stopped and lifted my head, looking around. I didn't really
recognize the area. Obviously, there was no path, so I
could have just been walking in a slightly different direction,
but something seemed wrong. After an entire minute of looking around, though,
I honestly had no clue which way to go. If
I had been going in the right direction, I should
have been home already, or at least to the road
that my dad's house was on. Racing the sun, though,
I decided to just continue in the direction I was going,
hoping that at some point i'd reach a road. As
I walked, the woods got darker and darker, sending me
into somewhat of a nervous breakdown. I was looking everywhere
for anything to tell me where to go, but now
the woods were too dark to even see anything further
than thirty or forty feet. But then I saw a
light flickering in the distance. I got excited, walking quickly
toward it until I could make out a dark house
sitting in the middle of the trees. I thought it
was maybe one of my dad's neighbors, or that it
would at least lead me to a road that I
could walk along, but as I approached the opening in
the woods, I didn't see anything. No roads, no light
from other houses, and not even a gravel driveway. The
house was old looking too, resembling more of a cabin,
but there was a light in the downstairs window that
was on, so it definitely wasn't vacant. I walked around
to the other side of it, staying in the tree
line still, but there were no signs of any roads
or houses on either side. Regrettably, I decided my only
option was to ask whoever lived there for help. I
walked up to the front door, listening for a second
before ringing the doorbell. Immediately I heard footsteps running down
some stairs and right up to the other side. Knowing
they were probably looking at me through the peephole, I
called out to them.
Speaker 2: Hi, sorry, I'm just lost. I was hoping you could
tell me which direction the nearest street is.
Speaker 1: There was a pause, then they opened the door. Two
men stood there, both looking to be in their forties
and appearing kind of disheveled. One of them took a
step forward and looked outside behind me at the tree line,
as if looking for anyone else. There was a moment
where both of them were quiet. Will help you out,
one of the men said, opening the door wider and
stepping aside.
Speaker 2: I'm okay, I just need you to point me in
the right direction, please.
Speaker 1: I said, not wanting to go in some random house
in the woods and also not really seeing the point
to it. Both men frowned. Then one spoke, saying he
just wanted to talk about why I was out here.
I told them I was just camping and got lost,
but they looked at each other like I was lying.
Then one of them stepped out and stood pretty close
to me as he looked around at the trees more intently.
When he stepped out, though, he revealed the room behind him,
which only had a small lamp in the middle of
the floor, surrounded by nothing but dust. I took a
step away from the man and both of them suddenly
turned cold. Their facial expressions and body language which she
just became empty as they stood there in silence, before
the one lunged at me, trying to tackle me to
the ground. Luckily, I reacted quick enough to slip away
before the other man got to me. I sprinted for
the trees, hearing one of the men's footsteps coming up
behind me. But once I made it into the woods,
the man gave up the chase, and soon after the
lights from the house shut off. Hours passed before I
made it to a road, finding out I had hiked
miles in the wrong direction. I told my dad about
the encounter, though, and he took it to the police
to investigate. But we were terrified to hear that the
house I wandered into was an old vacation cabin that
was abandoned decades ago. Whoever those men were likely used
a generator to power the lights and whatever else they
were doing why they were there, nobody knows. The way
they were acting, though, seemed like they were trying to
not get caught, so if they had succeeded in getting
me into their house, I'm not sure if I ever
would have gotten out. I was driving back to my
hometown from a work trip I had earlier in the week.
I declined the free flight to and from because I
decided to take some time off to myself while I
was there to enjoy a small vacation. Driving long distance
wasn't something I'd ever really done before, though, the most
I'd gone was about ten hours, and that was with
a stop at a hotel halfway. But this road trip
was way longer. It was nearly twenty hours, and I
had only scheduled a single hotel. But just because I'd
never driven that long before didn't make me think I
couldn't do it. The drive started out okay, going through
cities and towns and having plenty of other cars around me,
seemingly taking the same route. As I got further out, though,
cars became a lot less common and the towns had
pretty much disappeared. The roads were nothing but fields of
grass on either side or dense forests. By five PM,
the light drizzling that it started earlier became more intense,
pouring rain down hard enough to make it difficult to see.
It seemed like the more I drove into this forested area,
the harder the rain fell. I'd hoped it would stop
by sunset, but it didn't. I was now really focused
on the road, driving really slow and trying to make
sure I navigated the road carefully without sliding into a ditch.
I drove through this off rain for probably an entire
hour past sunset, when I started to realize the road
was getting a lot more winding rather than straight. It
began taking me much deeper into the forest, where the
trees were close together and blocking all views. After a while,
I started getting nervous, thinking this was really odd for
a highway to be like this. I slowed down and
pulled off to the side of the road, stopping on
the shoulder. I took my phone out and tried searching
up the directions, but there was no service. All I'd
remembered of the route was that I had to take
the same highway pretty much the entire way there. Maybe
I was on the right road and was just paranoid,
or maybe I'd been focusing so hard on trying to
see through the rain that I'd accidentally merged onto a
different road. The problem is that I had no way
to figure out which of those two possibilities was right.
I looked out the windows in hopes i'd see a
sign or anything that could give me an idea of
where I was. All I could see through the harsh rain,
where the woods all around me fading into total black
beyond my headlights. But then, only a minute or so
after I had stopped there, a light came up behind me.
I looked in the mirror as it got brighter, rounding
one of the corners and coming toward my car. Their
headlights were so bright I couldn't even see their car,
though all I could see was the beaming glare in
my mirrors. I watched as the light started moving slower
and slower until it stopped right behind my car. Part
of me felt relieved that someone stopped to help me,
but another part of me was thinking of the other possibilities.
A whole minute passed as the car stayed there, leaving
their headlights on and showing no signs of anything, until
a door suddenly opened. It was still too bright to
see much of anything, but the dark outline of a
man emerged from the light and came right up to
my window. The man was wearing a dark hoodie and
seemed unbothered by the rain as he leaned on the
door while I rolled the window down a couple inches.
He asked if I needed help, and I responded by
explaining that I just needed to know where I was
and if I was still on the right highway. He
looked at me, then at my back seat.
Speaker 2: As he nodded, yeah, I can help you. Let me
just get my phone.
Speaker 1: He began walking off as I rolled my window back
up to block out the rain. There was something off
about my interaction with him, but I couldn't figure out
what it was. It just felt off. Why didn't he
know a road we were on, or if we were
on the highway. I watched in the mirrors until the
man went behind the glaring lights again, but I could
see him shuffling around with something in his car for
a few moments before he came back out. He made
his way over, but in the moments before he reached
my car, I caught a glimpse of something in his hand.
Just as I reacted and put the car in drive,
the man suddenly knelt down by my back tire and
jammed something in it. I slammed on the gas, seeing
the man get visibly startled and jump back as I
drove away as fast as I could. I knew he'd
probably try to catch up, so I drove in a
panic for several minutes, fearing the thought of seeing the
lights come up behind me. Luckily, though they never did.
I made it about three miles before I finally happened
upon an intersection with a sign for a gas station.
Up ahead. When I pulled in, I of course called
the police, but I also found that the man had
stabbed my tire with a screwdriver that was still wedged
into the side of the tire, hanging partially out. That
still being in there and covering the hole is probably
the only reason I was able to make it away
without breaking down on the road. If I had been
even a second too late at driving away, I don't
think I would have ever been seen after that night.