Speaker 1: I was eighteen and I had just moved into a
new state to start college soon. I only had a
few days before classes started, but I wanted to explore
a little while I had the chance. The area around
the campus was full of forests and hills with tons
of outdoorsy stuff to do, so I found a trail
that I thought looked nice and drove down one afternoon
to walk it. Online it said it was only a
two hour trip, so I didn't bring much, only a
camelback for water. There were no other cars parked at
the specific spot, which made me assume nobody else was
on it. But not far in, I walked past another hiker.
He was sitting on a fallen tree off the side
of the trail and nodded his head at me as
I passed by. It looked like he was on his
way out because he was sweating and looked somewhat dirty,
like he'd been outside for a while already. I kept
walking for about thirty more minutes, just keeping to myself
and listening to music, when out of nowhere, I heard
a man's voice yelling. I turned around and saw that
same person i'd passed waving at me to get my attention.
I stopped and waited as he jogged up to me.
He said the trail name I was on in a
questioning manner, and I responded, yeah, that's the one I'm following.
He then pointed to my right. I looked out, and
going into the trees was another trail. It looked pretty
much identical, as neither trail was more than just some
thin line of dirt. People tend to get lost in
this section going down the wrong way. I smiled and
thanked him, but it definitely was a bit odd. He
seemed nice enough, though, and not meaning to be anything
but helpful, and as I started walking down the trail
he told me to He continued along behind me. He
explained that he's lived here for years and walks this
path almost every day and hates to hear about new
hikers getting lost out there. I guess it made sense
to me at the time, and I kept up with
the small talk, not really having any choice since he
was right behind me. But after a few minutes the
conversation fizzled out and we just walked in silence for
a while, still right by each other, but just not talking.
The trail went straight for a long time, and it
was after a good forty five minutes that I realized
how far Wheat walked. Knowing it was only supposed to
be a two hour trail, I thought by now it
would have started looping around. While I was just starting
to think about this, I stumbled over something. It was
a rusty railroad track, half buried in the dirt. I
was surprised and looked back up, seeing not too far
away from the trail an abandoned mine. It was this
small hole going into the hill with three old wooden
beams around the entrance in some railway tracks going into it.
I walked up and looked inside, but the light from
outside didn't go very far at all. It was pitch black,
with no way to know how far down it went.
As I stood outside the entrance, the man came up
behind me. I turned around and saw him standing just
a couple feet from me. But his face was straight,
and I don't know how to describe it, but he
no longer had that harmless look. Go, he said, in
an eerily monotone voice that was nothing like how he
was speaking before. It was demanding and terrifying. I took
off running without hesitation. He tried to reach out and
stop me, but once I got a few feet away,
I didn't hear him chasing me. As I entered the trees,
I looked back and the man was gone. He must
have went right into the abandoned mine. I ran all
the way back to the first part of the trail,
then got back to my car and left the forest.
That being my first real experience outside of my hometown,
was really unfortunate, but I think it taught me a lot.
I blindly trusted a random person I just met, and
it could have been the last thing I ever did.
If I went into that mine, I don't think I
would have ever left. This was in twenty sixteen. I
was living alone in a small home on the countryside.
Rarely would anyone come by my house unless it was
a delivery person. This day, I had gotten out of
work at eight and made the long drive home, arriving
around nine. As I went down the dirt driveway and
got up to my house, though a woman was standing
at the front door, I was rightfully startled to see
someone at my house so late in the day and
there wasn't even a car anywhere. I parked on the
driveway and got out cautiously looking around as I walked
up to the front door. The woman looked like she
was in her late twenties and had a large smile
on her face, waving at me as I approached her.
What are you doing here? I think you have the
wrong house, I said, stepping past her and putting myself
between her and the front door. She said she was
trying to get some directions from here to get into town.
It was a strange request since she had no car,
and it didn't answer the question as to why she
was way out here at my house. Regardless, I told
her to go down to the road and make a left,
and that it would take her all the way into
the center of town. She looked at me, still smiling,
and thanked me, but instead of walking away, she tried
to keep talking to me. It was unmistakably in a
flirty manner, which in this context was almost creepy in
a way. I tried to cut off the conversation multiple times,
but then she asked if she could stay with me
and warm up for a little bit. I obviously said no.
She still smiled though, and tried to convince me, but
I again stated that I would not let her in.
Then I opened the door, going inside and locking it
behind me. I even debated calling the police because everything
about this was really strange. However, I heard her walk
off the porch and watched out the window as she
went down the driveway and faded out into the dark,
heading toward the road. Seeing she finally left, I left
the window and grabbed a drink, then sat on the
couch and tried to forget about it. I opened my
laptop and put on a Netflix show while I wound
down for the night. I was really tired and I
dozed off maybe fifteen minutes it's in, but shot awake
to a knock at the door. There was only a
few seconds before they knocked again, and then a woman's
voice called out, asking for me to come to the door.
I knew it was the same woman from earlier, but
I got up and rather than going to answer the door,
I went to the window. I was just going up
to confirm it was her before calling the police to
take care of this. But when I looked out of
the window, there were almost a dozen men standing outside
my house. Some were scattered around in the trees on
the side of the driveway, and others were right up
near my house, waiting by the porch. I called the
police and was literally shaking as I waited, hearing them
moving around the house and talking to each other. One
of them mentioned something about another house, but I couldn't
figure out anything else on why they were here. They
never tried to break in, though the woman kept knocking
and calling out for me, but that was all. When
a patrol car finally came down the driveway, all of
them sprinted into the woods in a direction that led
to nothing but denser woods. Eventually, though, three days later,
I found out some unfortunate and horrifying news. One of
my neighbors that lived in a house down the road
was missing. After no sign of him, they found his
front door unlocked and his house looked normal, like there
was no forceful break in. I think he may have
fallen victim to exactly what happened to me, which makes
my encounter with those people even more terrifying, knowing that
I could have been missing. Right now. I'm an uber
driver in my city and was working a later shift
than usual this night. I had something come up in
the morning, so I didn't get started until well past
eight pm. This was my first time ever working this late,
so I didn't really know what to expect as far
as how busy or not busy it was going to be.
I got my answer pretty quick, though, because by eleven
i'd only done four drives. I was even thinking about
switching over to Uber Eats for the night and seeing
if I had better luck there. But then another pickup
request came through. It was a thirty five minute drive,
which was good for me because it meant i'd get
paid more. I accepted it and pulled into the pickup location.
It was a train station a few minutes from me.
I drove through the parking lot slowly looking around for
any signs of the person I was supposed to pick up.
After making a full circle through the lot and still
not seeing them, I parked and just waited. There wasn't
a single car in the parking lot, and I don't
even think any passenger trains were running at this time
of night. I thought they might have even set the
wrong location, But before I texted them, I saw a
man coming up to my car. He had a dark
sweatshirt on with the hood over his head, and aside
from confirming the ride was for him, he didn't speak.
I began the drive, and the man stayed quiet in
the back seat, not even taking his phone out or anything.
He just sat there looking ahead. I didn't want to
be that that always tried to make conversation, so I
just drove and stayed quiet as well. While driving, a
couple times I quickly glanced at him in the mirror.
His eyes were staring directly back at me. This wasn't
an uncommon occurrence when driving people around, but for some reason,
with this guy, it felt really unnerving. He didn't look
away either. He stared at me until I looked away.
After a pretty unsettling thirty five minute drive, I finally
got to the drop off location. It wasn't an address,
it was a specific location that the man had pinpointed
on the map. This specific location was at the end
of an open field that was covered in dense fog.
I looked back in the mirror, seeing the guy staying
in the car and not moving get out. Not sure
if I heard him right, I turned my body and
looked at him. He looked me in the eyes with
a terrifying stare and set it again. Get out. I
felt my body tense up and before I could think
of what to do. I saw from the corner of
my eye multiple other guys running up to my car.
There were two or three of them, all holding bats
or knives and wearing dark hoodies that covered their faces.
They swarmed my car just as I put it in drive,
but they were able to get the two back doors
open and tried to jump in. The man inside the
car was yelling at me and trying to reach over
and open my door, probably to push me out. As
I started gaining some speed though and getting away from
the group, the man inside fell into the back seat
again and then jumped out onto the road. All the
men disappeared to the fog right after that. I kept going,
pulling into a gas station a few miles down the road.
Both of the back doors were still open and swinging around,
and there were dents all over my car that I
think they did while I was driving off. An officer
met me at the gas station to take my report,
and another went to the field that happened at, but
the whole group was nowhere to be found. They did
find a phone on the road, though, which was the
one used to book the uber. It probably fell out
of the guy's pocket. When he jumped from my car,
but it turned out to be a phone that was
reported stolen not even an hour before I picked up
the guy. This seemed to all be an elaborate plan
to rob a bunch of people, including me. Though it's
hard to assume they would have just let me go
with no harm done and let me contact the police
right away, they probably would have done something to ensure
they had the time to get away in my car
without getting caught. I don't know what would have happened,
but I know I barely got away that night.