Speaker 1: I live in a mountainous enforested region on the border
of Canada and the US. I pretty frequently go for
hikes and sometimes even camp a night or two, and
usually I go in with no real plan in mind.
I'll search up an uncommon trail and just see where
it takes me. I think it's the thrill of not
knowing what I'll see that makes it so enjoyable. In
case of emergencies, though, I always go prepared with multiple
methods of navigation, because you just never know. Anyway. I
was out on a hike in early summer this year.
It was, just as I said, some random trail in
the middle of the forest near my cabin. I'd never
been on it before, but I'd initially found it intersecting
a trail that I was on several weeks prior. This
one was very faint, just as most of them were
out here, but this one often had me wondering if
it was even a trail at all, or if I
was just imagining a path didn't actually exist. About two
hours in, though, I started to recognize shoe prints along
some of the more muddy parts of the trail. There
would only be a few at a time, and most
of them didn't seem to actually follow the path. They
would be going across it or sometimes walking along it
for a minute, then abruptly turning off. Then after an hour,
I came across a section of the trail that was
a bit more defined, having tons of shoe prints scattered across,
and threw it as if someone constantly came across this part.
I looked up and just ahead was a cabin. I
put two and two together, assuming someone had set up
an off grid place. But as I looked at the
cabin more closely, something about it didn't look right. All
of the shoe prints I'd seen had to be less
than a few days old, but this cabin seemed to
have not been lived in for years. The door was
wide open, barely hanging from its hinges, and some parts
at the bottom of the cabin were so weathered it
was sinking into the ground. I got a closer look,
entering the area around it that had been cleared of trees.
I don't know what it was about this place, but
it really intrigued me, and I almost felt like I
needed to see if someone needed help. Because the recent
shoe prins and the rundown cabin didn't add up. I
stepped up to the open door, and right away I
caught a whiff of a horrible odor, almost indescribable, and
as I peered inside, it was clear that this place
was not lived in. There were signs of wild animals
nesting inside, and the forest was growing through the floorboards.
I walked in carefully and tried to see what I could,
but the smell was so bad I just couldn't continue
past a few feet. I turned around to leave, and
I'd instantly felt my stomach drop as a figure was
staring at me from the forest. They immediately took off, running,
hiding in the density of the trees. I did the same,
running through the trees somewhat along the path, going as
far as I could until I felt safe. When I
got home, I called it in to report the strange
behavior and creepy abandoned cabin. I knew that something was
going on there. It took several days for a party
to go out and investigate, with my help and showing
them the way, but when we arrived, all that was
left of the cabin were black ashes and charred wood.
It had been burned down. To this day, there's been
nothing to show from the creepy nature of that cabin
and the man I'd seen in the forest, but it's
pretty clear he had something to hide, something that he
was covering up, and that if I had stayed any
longer or had gone further into the cabin, I would
have not made it out. I'm an officer for our
local police department. Shifts in our department are always switching around,
having people work ten to twelve hours on a different
schedule every week, sometimes overnight, followed by early morning, and
then overnight again. On this day, I was working ten
pm to ten am and was at the office when
a dispatcher notified me of a call about a group
of teenagers trespassing on private property. Specifically, it was a
hospital on the outskirts of town that had been deserted
for the last decade. This was a commonplace for groups
to hang out and do various illegal activities at and
the whole department I knew about this, and most of
us had been there several times before. This was my
fourth time having gone there, and I was sure it
would be a quick and typical case of walking in
and either escorting a group of friends out or watching
them run off. I was tired, so either was good
enough for me. I honestly didn't care too much to
arrest and charge them. I just needed them to leave
the property. When I got there, I was quickly aware
of a flashlight shining through the windows of the second story.
What was strange about it was that it was moving
really fast across multiple windows, like someone was running through
the hallway. I got out of my vehicle and prepped
my flashlight, then entered the building. First thing I did
was call out, requesting everyone to show themselves and whatnot,
but of course no one did. I listened at the
entrance for any noises to hopefully give me an idea
of where to look, but it was dead silent enough
so to wake me up and get my nerves going,
having me keep my right hand on the holster of
my gun. I think it was always a slight fear
that it could be a trap to lead in an
officer and attempt something, but I kept my cool and
walked through the old hallway and up the flight of stairs.
It was as I reached the top that a thud
echoed through the building. It sounded like someone hitting a
wall and was definitely from the second floor. I entered
the hallway and shined my flashlight all the way down,
not seeing anyone or even a sign of anyone, I
called out again, very aggressively, knowing that the stairs I
was by were the only way up and down from
the second story. I stayed there and listened again, but
heard nothing more than the creaking of the building. I
walked slowly through the hallway, looking through each door and
scanning the rooms with my flashlight, but there was nothing
more than old hospital beds and graffiti. When I got
to the last room, the door was closed, so I
called out one more time before swinging and open. I
cleared the room, but nobody was inside. However, there were
signs of recent activity, being cigarettes on the ground with
smoke still rising from them. This was extremely concerning, knowing
that they hadn't left the second floor through the stairs,
and the only other way was if they had jumped
out a broken window. Before I could even check, the
door behind me slammed shut, followed by something smashing against
it and footsteps departing down the hallway. Luckily, I was
able to forcefully push the door open enough to slide
through the opening. Seeing that a large hospital bed was
pressed against it. By the time I got out, who
ever was there was long gone. Back up came and
we did a more thorough investigation, also checking in with
the one who originally called in the two teenagers. What
was odd about this was that there was only one
clear set of footsteps I heard, and only one flashlight
in the window. The cigarettes still burning also showed that
they had left in a hurry, which could have been
from me arriving, But then why would one of them
have stayed behind. In the morning, we got a report
from a mother on her missing teenage son, followed soon
after by an identical report by another mother on her
teenage son. After looking into it for days and them
weeks and them months, it was almost definite that they
were not going to show up, and now six years later,
they still haven't. Their disappearance is an unlikely one, and
that's what makes it so difficult. It isn't certain whether
or not the person in the hospital with me was
one of the two kids, but the current most stable
theory is that it was someone else, and unless something
more comes up, it's not likely that we will ever know.
I live in a really small countryside town. The population
is only a few thousand in the nearest city is
a couple hours away, but most of the people that
live here are close. With there being so few people,
everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew everything that was going
on in the town. At the time, I was in
high school and had a best friend, Chris, that I'd
hang out with pretty much every day. During mid fall,
there was a lot of talk about an empty farmhouse
in the town that people were exploring. I was never
one to do these sorts of things, but Chris was,
and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious. Supposedly,
this farmhouse had been left behind by the owners years ago,
left to rot on the edge of town for the
past five years. Being in high school now, the rumors
of it spread like a wildfire as people were telling
stories about it and daring others to explore it. And
it was on one weekend night that Chris brought it
up to me. We had nothing else to do, and
Chris seemed really excited to see what everyone was talking about,
and after finding a couple flashlights, we got in the
car and drove to the farmhouse. We only knew which
road it was on, but it wasn't very hard to find.
From the road. You could see the rotting house in
the distance, but we couldn't find the driveway. It was
likely that it had been overgrown and might have not
even existed anymore, so we parked on the road and
started walking through the field the house. It was almost
one am, so the moon was lighting up the field
just enough for us to navigate through it. As we
got closer, it almost felt like the night got quieter
and quieter until we reached it. The house had weeds
infesting the whole yard and vines growing through the wooden
panels on the outside. Chris led the way, walking around
to the front, where the door was missing, giving us
easy access inside. We stepped in and started walking through
the rooms, looking at the trash on the ground and
the decaying interior, making both of us wonder why it
was even abandoned to begin with. After a minute or two, though,
we'd seen everything on the first floor and moved up
to the second. It was much darker upstairs, almost like
there were no windows to let in the moonlight. We
both turned on our flashlights and shine them around. There
were only two rooms up there, one on the left
side of the hallway and the other on the right.
Chris went up to the left, finding that the door
was locked. While he was struggling with that door, I
went into the other room that happened to be unlocked.
It was entirely empty, having moled on the ceiling and
nothing more. But there was a single window with slabs
of wood nailed to it. Curious by it, I went
up to it and wondered why they needed to block
an upstairs window. I crouched down to investigate and looked
in between two of the slabs to see what was
outside the window, thinking maybe it had access to the
roof or something, but it didn't. This window was just
facing the field we came from, and as I looked
out into the moonlit grass, I saw a figure walking
toward the farmhouse not too far away. I quickly left
the window and whispered to Chris that someone was coming here.
My heartbeat was already speeding up. I think it was
seeing the figure being alone that really freaked me out,
knowing it wasn't just some other kids exploring the place.
Chris looked nervous too, walking over to the window to
see for himself, but we immediately stopped at the sound
of footsteps entering the house downstairs, We frozen place, standing
in the middle of the empty room, too scared to
even take a step and risk being found. The person
walked slowly through the first floor, going to the stairs
and beginning to walk up. Both Chris and I just
stared at the open doorway, listening to the footsteps. Reached
the top and start coming even closer until the large
figure of a man appeared in front of us. He
was facing the other way, unlocking the locked door as
he stood in the dark hallway, just four or five
feet from us. I was holding my breath, just hoping
he wouldn't turn around, but when he opened the door,
I locked eye contact with another other man who was
standing on the far side of the other room. Our
gaze was broken when the man went into the room
and closed the door behind him, but we heard them
whispering immediately after. Chris and I made our move, sprinting
into the hallway and down the stairs, hearing the door
swing open in footsteps charging behind us. As we fled
the house and ran for the field. We didn't stop
until we got to the car, driving away. The whole
ride back to my house neither of us said a word.
We were both just in shock and taking everything in.
We had no idea what was going on in that
house or who those two men were, but out of
fear of getting in trouble for trespassing, we didn't call
the police. We were stupid to have even gone there,
and I won't defend any of my actions, but I
feel like there was something more going on at that farmhouse.
A month after that incident, the house was bought and
torn down with no reason given, and whether or not
something was going on in there will probably never be
known for sure