Horror Stories

00:05 Hello everyone and welcome back to Horror Stories. 00:08 I know many of you use these episodes to fall asleep, so before you drift off, I'd love it if you could leave a comment letting me know where you're listening from around the world. 00:17 Also, don't forget to like and subscribe if you're enjoying the episodes. 00:26 Story 1 Many years ago, I lived through the most terrifying experience I had ever imagined I could go through. 00:34 It was something that to this day I wish I could erase, undo, or stop remembering. I found myself involved in a situation I never thought I would end up in. 00:44 My family and I had gone on a camping vacation to Wachita National Forest about 10 years ago. 00:49 At that time I was just a child, and on top of that, a very curious child. 00:55 My poor parents always had to remind me to stay close to them and stop wandering off. 01:00 Even when we went to Walmart, for example, it only took a few seconds before I was already roaming the Isles, exploring products, objects, and anything that caught my attention. 01:11 I have to admit that I got scolded quite a few times for behaving that way, but my curiosity was always part of me. 01:18 However, now I know I should have listened to my parents. 01:21 On the first day of camping, after setting up our tent, my family and I decided to walk along some of the trails in the area. 01:28 The place was beautiful, almost hypnotic, with trees so tall they seemed larger than life itself. 01:36 I was enjoying it so much simply walking through nature. Birds were singing everywhere, as if the forest did not care about our presence at all. 01:44 Nature kept following its own rhythm, just as it had before we arrived and as it surely would continue to do after we left. 01:51 The trails turned out to be much longer than I thought. 01:55 We walked for about 20 minutes, and at no point did we turn back or head toward the campsite. I did not mind. There was so much to observe that it was hard for me to understand how enormous those forests were. 02:07 I was young and could not imagine that so much land could exist with so few people living on it. 02:13 During the walk, I suddenly heard the strangest bird call I had ever heard in my life. It sounded similar to a nightjar, but much deeper and longer. 02:22 At the end of the call, the sound seemed to vibrate as if it were trembling. 02:27 If I had to describe it another way, I would say that what stood out most to a child like me was that it seemed to be coming from a bush right beside the trail. 02:35 I had to see it. 02:37 I had to see that strange bird that sounded like an especially large or heavy nightjar. 02:43 I ran toward the bush without thinking that I might scare it away. 02:46 Of course, my noisy steps made something fly out of there. It did not fly toward the bush, but maybe about 12 feet behind it. But I was determined. This time, I moved forward on tiptoe and continued toward that other bush. However, I never saw anything fly out of there. When I searched, I did not find any bird. I also checked the nearby bushes in case I had missed it while it was trying to avoid me. But there was nothing. Finally, I gave up and decided to return to the walk. But when I turned around, I could no longer see the trail. 03:19 In what could not have been more than 90 seconds, I had not only lost sight of my parents, but I had also completely lost the path. 03:27 Instantly, my heart began pounding hard inside my chest, overwhelmed by the thought of what I had just done and what could happen to me. 03:35 The first thing I did was call out to my parents. They could not have gotten too far away, right? 03:41 Apparently, I was very wrong. No matter how much I shouted, no one answered. How is that possible? Even if they were a mile away, shouldn't someone out there have been able to hear me? 03:53 Shortly after, I realized I was crying uncontrollably. 03:57 I ran in directions I assumed were correct. Although in reality I was probably only making my situation worse. 04:04 Maybe I should have stayed still, but I was not sure. 04:08 Everything around me began to look threatening. Suddenly that place no longer seemed like a wonderful world. The forest had become a nightmare. 04:17 My nightmare. 04:19 It was around 5 in the afternoon when we started the walk, but the hours must have passed quickly. Because before I could realize it, before I even wanted to accept it, the sun was already setting. 04:31 Very soon I was surrounded by darkness. 04:34 Up to this point, the experience already sounds like a horror story. But what I am about to tell next takes a much stranger and more inexplicable turn. 04:43 When I thought all hope was lost, the light of the full moon suddenly revealed a figure in the distance. 04:49 It was a silhouette that looked human. 04:52 I got excited. I was being rescued. Someone was there. Someone had found me. Whoever it was, they were about 80 feet away. 05:01 Then I heard it speak. Are you hungry? That was the moment when my joy turned back into fear and terror took over completely. Because that voice was not right. It was not a human voice at all. It was a deep guttural growl that somehow managed to form understandable words. 05:19 It was saying words, yes, but it seemed not to understand what it was saying. 05:24 It was as if it were only repeating something it had heard before. 05:28 Then that thing, whatever it was, began walking toward me. 05:31 I turned around and ran with all my strength. 05:34 But after all the crying stress and thirst I had endured, I was exhausted. 05:40 Even so, the thought of what could happen to me if that thing managed to catch me pushed me beyond the pain. 05:45 I was not even looking ahead. 05:48 I kept my eyes on that tall, dark figure that seemed to be approaching quickly. 05:52 Suddenly, I was forced to stop. 05:55 I had crashed into something. I was running with so much force that the impact against whatever it was knocked the air out of me. 06:02 I looked up and saw standing in front of me a man I had never seen before. He was pointing a flashlight directly at my face. 06:11 Little by little I began to hear shouts and voices around me. Several people were calling my name. The man shouted to the others, Here, and immediately hurried footsteps began approaching me. 06:24 I looked behind me expecting to see that tall dark figure only a few seconds away, but it had completely disappeared. 06:31 In that area the trees were thin, so there was no way it could have hidden so quickly. 06:36 And yet somehow it was gone. 06:38 I was reunited with my mother, who was crying, and with my father, who was visibly relieved. 06:45 They gave me granola bars and a bottle of water while asking me question after question. 06:51 They were terrified, but I was okay. I was only mentally wounded. 06:55 That was all. 06:57 Then another man approached me. He was wearing hiking gear and a backpack. He looked to be in very good shape and had an extremely serious expression on his face. 07:07 He knelt in front of me and began asking me some questions. 07:10 He asked if I had hurt myself and what had made me wander away from the safety of my parents. 07:16 Then he asked me a strange question. He asked me if I had seen anything. 07:21 I was a child. 07:23 A frightened child. So when he asked me that, I got nervous. 07:27 I felt like I was in trouble for several reasons. 07:30 I knew I would probably be scolded for wandering off, but now this man made me think that the figure I had seen was something I should not have seen. 07:38 Feeling guilty, although I did not know exactly why, I lied to him. 07:43 I told him no that I did not know what he was talking about, but he continued explaining some things to me. 07:49 This is what he said, exactly as I have remembered it all these years. 07:54 Always stay with the group and never be the last one in line. The moment you set foot on that trail, you were already lost. 08:01 It was not an accident. There are things in these woods that know how to take people. They know how to separate you without any problem. 08:09 When those things want you, there is no escape. You are lucky we found you. 08:15 My mother and father started to look very concerned about the fact that this man was speaking that way to a child who had just gone through the worst experience of his life. 08:24 But I was intrigued and horrified at the same time. 08:27 The man stood up, saw the confused faces of my parents and continued. 08:32 I have worked in search and rescue for the last decade. I have told them stories, the things I have seen. 08:39 Sometimes I think it would be safer to leave these woods alone. 08:43 Then the man turned around and walked away. 08:46 It was the most mysterious conversation I have had to this day. 08:49 I will never forget what I saw, and I still wonder what would have happened to me if that search and rescue team had not found me exactly when they did. 08:58 Be careful in the woods. That officer's words may seem crazy to most people, but now I believe. I truly believe there is something out there, and it does not have the best intentions toward us. 09:15 Story two. 09:17 My older brother, Gregory, was always a person very dedicated to volunteering. He participated in different activities whenever he could. 09:26 He used to volunteer at our local school when they organized the Special Olympics. And he also went to the shelter to help serve food to homeless people. 09:35 I would not exactly say it was a soup kitchen, because around here what was usually served were sandwiches. But even so, it was important work. 09:44 Many people considered my brother a good person and I definitely agreed. 09:49 As his younger brother, I do not remember many negative moments with him. He was never the one who started fights with me. 09:56 I regret admitting that when we argued or fought, I was almost always the one who provoked him. 10:02 Usually it all started over something he had and I wanted. 10:05 As a child, I had a slight tendency to want everything. 10:09 Well, on one occasion, Gregory went through something that he himself ended up considering a life experience. 10:15 It happened when he volunteered to be part of a search team for a missing child in the nearby woods. 10:21 That forest surrounded our small suburban community, and I grew up in a small backyard that faced directly toward a huge line of trees. 10:29 I was always afraid of those woods. 10:31 Even when my mom told me to stay away, she did not really need to repeat it. 10:36 Once I said I would not go near those trees. I simply did not do it. 10:40 But a younger child thought differently. A child had gone into the woods just beyond his house. 10:46 By the time we arrived, he had been missing for about three hours. His parents were desperate and both the police and firefighters were working together to search the area. 10:56 They were accepting any volunteer who was willing and able to help. 11:00 Of course my brother volunteered without thinking twice. They gave him an orange vest so he would be easier to see in case he got lost himself. 11:08 Then he entered the woods while my parents and I stayed waiting at the edge of those trees, completely tense. 11:15 We stayed there for about two hours before we had to go back home so my dad could go in again and so we could eat something. 11:22 Before leaving we sent my brother a text message telling him to call us when they were finished. 11:27 With some luck they would find the child and we could bring Gregory back home soon. 11:32 That same night near midnight we were still awake waiting for my brother. 11:36 He had been gone for about eight hours and we were more than worried. Then at the last moment the door opened and we all got up to greet Gregory. 11:44 We had many questions for him. We needed to know if he was okay. But everything felt strange. I mean my brother was not the type of person who ignored messages. 11:55 However, he never called for us to pick him up, and when we asked him how he had gotten home, he simply answered, I walked. 12:03 He stood in the front entrance still without looking us in the eyes. 12:07 Something was wrong with Gregory. 12:09 I had never in my life seen him behave that way. 12:12 After heating some food in the microwave, he took his late dinner, went to his room, closed the door, and did not come out until the afternoon of the next day. 12:22 We tried to get answers from him, but he simply ignored us. 12:26 My mom was worried and my dad was somewhat annoyed. I do not think any of us really knew how to handle that situation. 12:33 Gregory had never been a troublesome kid and I could tell my parents did not know what to do. 12:38 In the end, we got most of the answers from the news, which my mother watched closely until something appeared about the missing child's story. 12:46 They still had not found the child and the police continued investigating. 12:51 Poor family, my mother murmured while she kept watching the report. 12:55 But honestly, I was more worried about my brother. 12:58 I thought that if he did not want to talk to our parents, maybe he would talk to me, his little brother. 13:05 It could not hurt to try, right? 13:07 I knocked on his bedroom door, but there was no answer. 13:11 Since I was a stubborn child, I tried the doorknob and saw that it was not locked. 13:16 I went in and found him lying on his bed facing the wall. He had obviously heard me come in, but he seemed not to care. 13:23 I asked him what had happened. I was curious and worried, and it was hard to hide those feelings in my voice. 13:30 We did not find him, he said in a monotone voice. 13:34 We know, I answered. We just saw it on the news. 13:38 We found parts of him, though, he said in the same emotionless voice. Parts of him. 13:43 My stomach turned as I imagined it. What had my brother seen? 13:48 Gregory continued. 13:50 Pieces of flesh. That was what I saw. In the same area where he had entered the woods. 13:57 Then his voice started to sound more filled with emotion. 14:00 He was only four years old. 14:03 He sat up in bed and looked at me. 14:05 That boy's parents must be destroyed or in denial. I do not blame them. 14:11 Then he looked at the floor and said one last thing. 14:15 What the hell is in those woods that would do that to a child? We have lived here and I have never seen anything like that happen. 14:22 I was completely stunned to see him that way. I did not know what to say. 14:27 So he lay back down and remained silent for the rest of the night. 14:31 The child's body was never found. 14:34 Over time, Gregory managed to come out of that state of trauma and depression. 14:38 He was someone who wanted to help more than anything else. But he entered those woods only to find the horror of the person he was supposed to save. 14:46 From the beginning, it was a lost cause. The strange thing is that we had never even had coyotes in those woods. That is why I really wonder what happened to that child. Who or what took him? What tore him apart? 15:00 And what scares me most, to be completely honest with you, is the idea that whatever did that is still out there. 15:07 After that night, things changed for Gregory. Before, he used to be energetic, positive, and always willing to help others. But after that experience, something went out inside him. He spent days locked in his room, barely speaking to us and avoiding everyone. 15:23 My mom was worried and my dad, although he did not show it too much, was worried too. 15:28 We had heard about trauma, about how people could change after witnessing something terrible. But seeing it in my own brother was completely different. 15:37 We tried to take him to therapy, but he refused outright. He said he did not want to talk about it, that he only wanted to forget it. 15:45 But I knew he would not be able to forget it so easily. 15:48 None of us could. Weeks passed, then months. Gregory began leaving his room more, but he remained distant. 15:56 Sometimes I saw him staring out the window toward the woods with an empty look in his eyes. 16:01 It broke my heart to see him that way. He never volunteered again after that. 16:07 Even when the community organized events, he stayed home. He said he was busy, but I knew there was something more. He had lost something inside himself in that forest, something he would never be able to recover. 16:20 Our family was never the same after that night. There was a constant tension in the air, as if we were all waiting for something else to happen. 16:29 My parents tried to move forward to appear strong for us, but I knew they were affected too. 16:35 Sometimes I wondered if I should have followed Gregory into the woods that night. 16:39 Maybe if I had been there I could have done something. 16:42 Maybe I could have prevented him from seeing what he saw, but I knew I could not change the past. I could only move forward. 16:50 As time passed, Gregory began to smile again, even to laugh once in a while. But there was always a shadow in his eyes, a constant reminder of that night in the woods. 17:01 We never talked too much about what happened, but some nights, when everything was quiet, I could hear him muttering in his sleep. 17:09 He said things about blood, about pieces of flesh, about the child lost in the woods. 17:16 That night in the woods changed my brother forever. 17:19 He was no longer the same cheerful and brave boy he used to be. He had seen the dark side of life, something no amount of volunteering could have prepared him for. And although the question of what happened to that child and what lurks in those woods remains unanswered, I know my brother will never be the same again. 17:38 Something was lost in him that night, something he will never be able to recover. 17:43 And I, as his younger brother, will always be there for him, to remind him that he is not alone, that we are in this together, no matter what. 17:57 Story 3 When I was young, at 16 years old to be exact, I lived through an experience that left a huge mark on my life. 18:06 Back then I was about 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed around 110 pounds. 18:12 I had walked and hiked my entire life. 18:14 I live in a remote farming village in England, and most of the time the place was boring and repetitive. However, one of the things I enjoyed most was being part of the local search and rescue unit. 18:25 I liked learning, helping people, and having something to do besides going to school and coming back home. 18:32 That was where I met my only friend. Let's call him Lucas. He was a boy from school that all the girls swooned over, although I never saw him that way. 18:41 He was approximately 6 feet 6 inches tall and was a huge gym enthusiast. He also loved playing jokes on me. 18:49 It was the middle of summer and I had spent the whole day at the search and rescue headquarters studying maps of the local area. 18:56 My eyes were beginning to get tired so I decided to take a break and went to the soda vending machine to buy something to drink. 19:03 I was about to sit down to take a sip when we received an emergency call over the radio. A couple was missing. 19:10 The last time they had been seen they were heading toward the canyon, the most dangerous place in the area and suitable only for experienced hikers. 19:19 I should have known that well. I had been there before and ended up breaking an arm. 19:24 We got ready quickly and then had a briefing. Within 25 minutes we were ready and on our way. 19:30 Luckily for us, they had left their phone turned on, so the local police were able to trace the call. 19:36 My father was not very happy about me going to that place. He is the police chief of our village and he gave me a very serious warning. I had to stay with the group. 19:46 When we finally arrived at the hills, it was already twilight and we were losing daylight. We took the northern route which led us along the spine of the hills. 19:55 We walked while checking everything with our flashlights. Every valley, every corner, every space behind the rocks, But we found nothing. 20:04 I started to panic and prayed that we could find them soon. By then darkness had already fallen and we were surrounded by dark and gloomy hills. 20:13 I went ahead to check the area where teenagers used to gather to drink beer, but there was no one there. 20:19 The wind seemed to intensify as I went back down. 20:23 I hurried to catch up with the group, adjusting my sweatshirt around my body. 20:28 I was not worried. I had studied and walked that trail a million times so I never really felt scared. 20:34 The worst thing we had around there were foxes. They could jump out of nowhere, yes, but they would instantly run away from you. 20:42 I found a stick on the path and picked it up to help me move through the terrain. 20:46 I assumed the group must be waiting for me in the clearing ahead, so I headed there. But I was surprised to see that all the usual dead debris that used to cover the ground had disappeared. The whole area was clean. That was strange because no one was supposed to interfere in that area. We were supposed to let nature run its course. For example, if a tree fell in the forest, we were not supposed to move it unless it blocked a road or a trail. 21:12 As I got closer, I could make out a faint glow of fire. 21:16 Then I saw that someone had made a clear circle on the ground, with stones placed around the campfire. 21:22 I did not see anyone, and in that area it was illegal to leave a fire burning unattended. In fact, doing so could bring a considerable fine. 21:31 I was distracted by that, thinking about reporting it, when something pulled me out of my thoughts. 21:37 I saw movement ahead among the trees. There were four figures. 21:41 All of them were dressed in dark green robes and hoods. They were walking, but as they did, they swayed from side to side. 21:49 At least one of them seemed to be murmuring, although it was doing so too quietly for me to hear exactly what it was saying. 21:56 I froze. I could not run. 21:59 I raised my hiking stick in front of me, as if that little stick could protect me from those men. But I did not know what they wanted from me. 22:07 Just as I came back to myself, I felt a very soft touch on my shoulder. 22:11 I turned around and saw a middle-aged man, somewhat older, smiling at me. He had the most perfect teeth I had ever seen in my life. They were bright white. He spoke in a soft, low tone. 22:23 Hello. My friends and I were wondering where you were. We have been waiting for you, he said. 22:30 I was petrified. I did not know what that man was talking about. I had never seen him before in my life, and I definitely would have remembered that smile of his. 22:40 I tried to sound brave and say something like, stay away from me, but instead I ended up stammering. That only made him smile even more. 22:49 Then he said something else. 22:51 We have been waiting for a young pure girl who needs to learn some amazing lessons. 22:56 He simply would not stop smiling. 22:59 I felt sick. 23:01 He reached out his hand to place it on my shoulder, but I screamed and kicked him. 23:06 I think I hit him in the knee. Then I ran. 23:09 I did not know what he was talking about, but that man gave off the worst possible feeling. 23:15 I ran downhill along the slope of a river. I slipped and scraped my knees. 23:20 I stayed there, in the water, until I heard the chanting getting closer and closer, louder and louder. 23:27 Soon I began to hear movement at the top of the slope I had just come down. 23:32 I got up trembling as I tried to move. I knew every turn and every path, but they were approaching quickly. 23:38 I was in a panic. Then I recognized where I was. 23:42 Suddenly I knew where I had to go. 23:45 I was able to retrace my steps and that led me back to the start of the trail. 23:49 Just as I turned the corner, I saw flashing blue lights and my father leading a group of officers up the steps. 23:56 I ran toward him, filled with joy at seeing him. 24:00 All I could say breathlessly was that there were bad men up there and that I did not know what they wanted to do to me. 24:07 I buried my head in his shoulder and he sent his men forward. 24:11 He held my head and calmed me while we went down the hill. 24:14 When we got to the bottom, I calmed down enough to tell him what had happened. 24:19 I sat in the back of his police car with my dog, Arthur. 24:23 Arthur was a retired German police dog, and being with him made me feel safe and protected. 24:28 Unfortunately, they did not find the men I saw that night, but they did find a piece of green fabric torn from their robes, and they also found the place they had prepared because they left the campfire there burning unattended. 24:41 When I was old enough, I moved far away from that area. 24:45 Now I have my own family. I ended up marrying Lucas and we have two beautiful children, and still I never leave his side when we go out walking. 24:59 Story four. 25:00 My cousin Joaquin was the kind of person who did not leave home to go to the woods, but rather left the woods to come back home. 25:08 He camped constantly. Many times he went to work after waking up in a tent beside the creek. 25:14 He completely loved being out there. Ever since we were children, Joaquin always asked me to go out and play with him, although he had a hard time convincing me to step away from my GameCube. 25:25 Basically, Joaquin lived his whole life out there. 25:28 I think that if it were not so dangerous, he would probably abandon civilization forever and stay living in those woods. 25:36 Once Joaquin was asked to be part of a search and rescue group. You see, a child had gotten lost in those same woods that Joaquin practically considered his home. 25:45 So he decided to use his experience in the area to help find him. But he did everything wrong. Joaquin thought he was doing the right thing by separating from the group to cover more ground. Because of that, he ended up completely abandoning the team and continued searching for the child throughout the entire night. 26:03 The problem was that after about four hours the group had already found the child, but they had no way to communicate with Joaquin to let him know the search was over. 26:12 He had good intentions, but he could be quite stubborn. 26:16 As Joaquin walked through the forest that night, he soon found himself surrounded by strange noises. He said they sounded like deep, low, slow howls. He was used to hearing coyotes almost every night. 26:28 He usually fell asleep listening to them howl among themselves and making the dogs in the nearby town start barking. 26:35 But whatever was howling that night was clearly different. 26:39 It did not sound like a coyote at all. 26:42 Also, he had gone deeper into the woods than he normally did. He had been calling the child's name, but those howls frightened him and made him afraid to make too much noise. 26:51 He began to feel like he was being watched. He saw silhouettes moving among the trees. 26:57 By then he had already turned in the direction of town. He felt that if he stayed out there much longer, he would be putting himself in danger. 27:06 It was not long before he began to see eyes, yellow eyes reflecting the light around them. 27:11 Worst of all was that apparently those eyes were at the same height as his own. 27:16 They were tall animals, whatever they were. 27:19 He felt he had no choice but to run. He could hear footsteps all around him, moving through the forest, but he ran faster than he had ever run before. 27:28 He ran until he was out of breath in the middle of the road. Since then, he has not gone that deep into the woods again. He still camps, yes, but he no longer goes without the gun he bought after that experience. 27:41 I know Joaquin, and I have never seen him as scared as when he tells this story. 27:51 Story 5. 27:53 I worked for the National Park Service in a state I would rather not give details about. I know that when park rangers share stories like this with too many people, they end up attracting the wrong kind of attention. 28:05 If there is anything I want to accomplish with this brief story, it is for it to serve as a warning. The woods are dangerous. I simply do not want this to become an invitation for thrill seekers. 28:17 I have been working for the National Park Service for around five years. In general terms that is not too long, but it has been enough time to witness quite a few strange things. 28:27 I have participated in many search and rescue missions, and I am glad to say that most of them ended well. 28:34 People get lost in these woods, yes, but usually they do not tend to wander too far. 28:39 However, every once in a while there are those people who do not stay still. 28:43 It may be because they are young and reckless. or because they believe they know exactly what they are doing when they try to save themselves after getting lost. 28:52 On one occasion, a middle-aged man got lost while hiking along some of the deeper trails. We had already been looking for him for three or four hours. 29:01 Helicopters had flown over the area several times without getting any results. 29:05 A partner and I decided to head into a denser part of the forest, descending toward a small creek. 29:11 We thought maybe the man had gone down there looking for water, and in doing so, had ended up getting even more lost. The deeper we went into that place, the more it began to feel as if we were entering another world. 29:23 It did not take long for us to hear what sounded like a dozen different groups of footsteps moving around us. 29:29 In that region, we did not have many real wolf sightings, and when someone said they had seen one, it usually ended up being a coyote or a wild dog mistaken for a wolf. 29:40 Generally all we had around there were mountain animals and once in a while a bear, but this was none of those things. 29:47 At that moment even I came to assume that maybe a pack of coyotes or perhaps wolves was stalking us. 29:53 Then everything got worse. 29:55 Suddenly we heard terrifying screams as if someone were being torn apart. 30:00 They echoed through the entire forest and bounced between the mountains. 30:04 I cannot emphasize enough how loud those screams were. I was sure we had found the missing man. 30:10 I was convinced that by the time we reached him, he would already be dead. 30:15 We ran toward the noise at full speed, completely ignoring the footsteps that kept moving around us. 30:21 Running like that so suddenly would surely trigger the predatory instinct of any animal that was stalking us, but we could not stop. 30:28 We had to find that man. 30:30 And if necessary, my partner had a pistol on his hip. After running about 75 yards toward the sound, the scream still did not stop. Then we stumbled into a clearing and saw a figure crouched beside the creek. The figure turned toward us when it heard our obvious arrival. 30:47 It was a middle-aged man drinking water from the creek. He stood up and walked toward us, repeating over and over, Thank God. Thank God. 30:56 I thought I was going to be lost here forever. 30:59 We asked him if he was hurt, checking him for injuries. But to our surprise, he was completely fine. 31:06 He had no visible wounds. He was not injured in the slightest. He was only thirsty and hungry. 31:13 Then I asked him, why were you screaming like that? 31:17 The man looked at me confused. 31:20 Screaming. I stopped yelling hours ago. My voice was already starting to give out. 31:26 For a moment I did not know what to say. 31:29 My partner stepped in. 31:31 Well, didn't you hear those screams? 31:34 What do you mean? I didn't hear anything. It was quiet here. 31:38 Well, until I heard footsteps running through the woods and then you two showed up, the man said. 31:44 I felt my heart stop. How could anyone in that entire valley not have heard those screams? 31:50 They sounded as if someone was dying. There were sobs inside those screams. 31:55 I could almost feel the pain, the crying, and the suffering in them. 31:59 How was it possible that someone had not heard them? 32:03 We gave the man clean water and then contacted the rest of the team so they could come to our location. From that moment on, everything proceeded normally. To this day, I do not know what that scream was. 32:14 I have heard all kinds of sounds in nature. I have heard many cougars and panthers throughout my life, but nothing comes even remotely close to what I heard that day. 32:24 Even if someone thinks I am wrong, that scream lasted several full minutes, echoing everywhere, without pauses and without seeming to need to take a breath. 32:34 If it had been a cougar, how did that man not hear it? Better yet, what was really out there? 32:46 Story 6. 32:48 It all happened in a little-known national forest near my home. 32:52 That day I had my seven-year-old Labrador retriever with me while I was hiking during an afternoon in late August. 32:58 At that time I was going through a difficult period and I used to go hiking a lot to clear my mind. 33:04 I had been walking for about four hours without seeing anything except a few squirrels and a black bear. 33:10 My Labrador trotted happily beside me, excited simply to be outside. We decided to stop near the edge of the canyon to drink some water and eat the dinner I had packed for both of us. 33:21 His was a can of dog food, but I had prepared something fairly decent for myself. Cheese, crackers, a turkey sandwich, and some apple juice. 33:30 When we finished eating, I began telling him my thoughts, like my problems with friends because I had been going through complicated times in high school. 33:38 My Labrador was my closest friend. 33:41 Come on, Fido, I told him. Let's go back to the car. 33:45 He jumped happily and began trotting beside me. We had not gone even a mile when a strange feeling came over me. I felt as though someone was watching me, even though I knew there should not have been anyone for miles around. 33:59 I tried to remind myself of that just as my Labrador's ears went stiff. 34:03 He began to growl quietly. 34:06 What is it, Fido? I asked him. 34:08 Suddenly all the hair along his back stood up, the way it did when he was angry or scared, and he took off running. 34:15 I followed him, calling his name over and over. 34:18 He never disobeyed a call like that, so it worried me a lot. 34:22 Then I began hearing heavy footsteps running from the direction where he was barking. 34:27 He was chasing something. 34:30 Fido, get back here, I shouted. 34:33 When I finally caught up to him, the dog had all his fur raised, his teeth exposed, and he was growling ferociously. 34:40 Fido was a big dog. Of course, he chased creatures all the time, but I had never seen him that aggressive. 34:46 After putting his leash back on, I looked toward the animal in front of me. 34:50 It was not a normal dog. It was enormous, with dark fur and a single silver patch over one eye. 34:57 I immediately thought of a wolf. Its legs were muscular, its snout was covered in dried red, and while it stood on all fours, its head reached my chin. 35:07 Its eyes were a piercing red. 35:09 I began backing away slowly, moving away from the wall, while saying, It's okay. I'm not here to hurt you. We're leaving. 35:19 The animal took a step toward us, and my eyes widened. Fido growled and pulled on the leash, catching me off guard. 35:26 Then the thing that disturbed me most happened. Startled, that wolf-like animal rose up onto its hind legs. The muscles, which I could now see more clearly, tightened and flexed. 35:37 Its legs looked almost human, and its chest was covered in hair like that of a grown man. 35:43 The animal showed its teeth and looked directly at me. 35:47 Fido, come here, I said. 35:49 My dog curled up behind me, whimpering and whining. We were both terrified. 35:55 The creature towered over us. It growled, showing its teeth, and began sniffing me and Fido while slowly circling around us. 36:03 I could not move at all, not even when the creature touched my back with its snout to smell me. 36:09 Then it began to growl again, lifting its head backward. 36:13 I remember thinking, these are my final moments. Maybe it is calling others to come help it devour me. 36:20 I looked down at my terrified dog. 36:23 At that instant, we made some kind of silent decision. I shoved the creature with all my strength, making it fall. 36:30 Something like that is easier with creatures standing on two legs. 36:34 And we ran. 36:35 I ran as if I was not going to see the next day, and Fido kept pace with me. 36:41 Come on, buddy, I said while I felt the heavy footsteps of that animal behind me. 36:46 I forced myself to keep going. 36:48 I ran faster, faster and faster. 36:52 I reached the road and looked back. That was a huge mistake. 36:56 The creature was no more than ten feet from us, running at full speed. 37:01 Then I heard something. 37:03 A truck. 37:04 A large truck approaching on the road. 37:07 I kept running until I saw it. 37:09 Then I turned back again, and the creature was gone. 37:13 It had probably been frightened by the sound of the heavy machinery. 37:16 I ran until we reached the car. I threw the backpack inside, Fido jumped in, and we took off down the road at about 45 miles per hour. If I had gone any faster, we surely would have crashed. 37:30 A horrible howl began to echo from the forest. The creature appeared again in the rearview mirror, chasing us once more. I could not go any faster. 37:39 The curves and bumps prevented me from doing so. 37:43 I thanked God my car sat high off the ground. At one point, the creature was barely ten feet behind us. I could hear its hissing even over the engine. 37:52 Then we reached pavement instead of dirt. I accelerated to 45 miles per hour and we finally managed to leave the creature behind. 38:01 I kept driving down the road until I got home. When we went inside my parents asked what had happened. I told them a bear had chased us. 38:10 It was not entirely a lie because we had seen a black bear and something had in fact chased us. 38:16 Fido and I finally managed to calm down enough to sleep. I woke up at 2 in the morning because I needed to go to the bathroom. I started getting out of bed when I heard a familiar growl outside my window. 38:28 Oh god, I thought. 38:30 I heard footsteps and then a ripping sound, as if claws were sliding along the siding of the house. 38:36 I was terrified. 38:38 Fido remained silent, trembling just as he had before. 38:42 I kept one eye on the window the entire time. The floor shook. Finally, the creature roared and struck the wall three times. 38:50 I screamed and ran to the living room waking my family. 38:53 My dad grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and ran outside, but the creature was already gone. 38:59 Only signs that it had been there remained. The sighting on the side of the house had deep marks, about six feet to the right of my bedroom window. 39:07 Since then, I moved out of my parents' house. Fido and I no longer go hiking in the forest, and I have never seen the creature again. 39:15 Part of me would like to go back and try to see it again, but I know it is best to avoid those woods. 39:22 If you are ever in John Cap Gray, stay away from the Spring Creek trails. 39:31 story seven i worked at a bar and grill that belongs to my family located in a small town our town has prospered thanks to a beautiful state park that attracts a lot of tourism it was the middle of summer and the bar was nearly full of tourists in their 20s men and women looking for something to do late at night after the park rangers removed everyone from the park who was not staying there until morning All those guys wanted to tell the pretty brunette behind the bar something that, according to them, was impressive. 40:03 Unfortunately, I was that girl behind the bar, forced to act as if they were the first ones to tell me they had climbed to the top of some place, or caught a huge fish in the lake. 40:13 When closing time came, Juan, the bar's security guard, helped me get everyone out, except for two drunk men who were waiting for their driver, who was in the bathroom. 40:23 Juan is an enormous man, built like a lineman, so I felt safe enough to send the other employees home while I finished cleaning the bar. 40:30 The two drunks seemed fairly normal at that moment. For the most part they talked to each other, laughed or chatted with Juan about the last game they had watched on television. 40:40 The point is that they did not seem that drunk, at least not enough to be dangerous or insist on driving themselves. 40:47 The only strange thing was that they seemed too responsible to have gone out drinking until 2.30 in the morning. 40:54 Finally, the driver came out of the bathroom and approached me to ask whether his friends owed anything on their tabs. They did not owe anything. 41:02 Either way, I wanted to finish quickly and go home, so I closed everything, wished them a good night, and started walking the gentleman toward the door. 41:11 After they went outside, Juan shook his head jokingly and smiled. 41:15 Ready to leave, miss? He asked, calling me miss because he knew it annoyed me. 41:20 Not yet. I need to take the money out of the register, and then we'll be done, I answered while opening the drawer. 41:27 But then the two drunks burst back in, pushing themselves against the door while something struck it from outside. 41:34 I looked at Juan. 41:35 He looked at me, too. 41:37 Guys, it's time to leave, Juan said, starting to walk toward them. 41:42 Call 911, one of them shouted, still leaning against the door. The other ran to a window and began looking outside frantically. 41:50 What happened? Where is your driver? I asked. 41:54 Someone attacked him, shouted the man by the door. 41:57 I was trying to understand what they were talking about when I noticed that the man looking out the window had red stains on his shirt. They had not been there before. 42:06 I ran across the bar to where the phone was and dialed 911. The operator greeted me in a fairly cheerful tone. 42:14 It was the first time I had ever called the police for something like that. 42:18 Normally, if there were problems, they involved drunks or some small fight in the bar. 42:23 I struggled to find the words. 42:25 Hi, this is Andrea from the bar. There are some guys here who say their friend was attacked. They insist that whoever attacked them is still outside, I said with a trembling voice, trying to stay calm. 42:37 The operator tried to calm me down and said the police and an ambulance were already on the way. 42:42 After hanging up, I looked at Juan, not really knowing what to do. 42:46 We have three minutes, I told them. My father made all his employees, especially his daughters, memorize how long emergency responses usually took. 42:56 Since you hung up, the first second has already passed, Juan said, and went to try to calm everyone down. 43:02 Then he heard something strange outside, right beside the door. 43:06 From the way it sounded, he thought it could be a bear or a large dog. 43:10 What the hell is that? Juan asked. We all looked toward the door. 43:15 A few seconds later, sirens were heard. The police were knocking on the door, but the man leaning against it did not move. 43:23 Juan approached to move him aside and let the officers in, but the guy shoved him. 43:28 That was quite an achievement considering Juan's strength. 43:31 Juan shoved him back and managed to move him away from the door. The police rushed in to assess the situation, seeing Juan practically fighting to control the frantic man. 43:42 The officers restrained him, and then the sheriff entered. The sheriff was a close family friend, so I felt very relieved to see him. He asked me what exactly was going on, and I told him everything I knew, which was not much. 43:56 He said they had found the third man outside. He was alive, but he had a large cut. 44:01 He pointed to his young deputy and asked me to show him the security cameras to see what they had captured. 44:07 I knew the deputy was young, barely a year older than me. 44:10 He was new to the area and still fairly inexperienced. 44:14 We went to the back office and I pulled up the exterior footage. The cameras covered the parking lot, but there was a blind spot if someone was right against the building. 44:23 We saw the men walk out toward their car. One of them pointed toward the corner of the building, directly below one of the cameras, out of view. 44:31 Then something fast ran toward them. It looked like a tall thin man running on all fours. 44:37 It leaped onto the driver, and the other two men ran back toward the bar. 44:42 The creature turned to look at them, so we were able to see its face. 44:46 It looked like a man wearing a mask, but there was not much else that could be made out. 44:51 Then it ran toward them, and that was what hit our door. 44:55 This is what happened, I said, stunned, while trying to process what we had just seen on the cameras. 45:01 What the hell is that? Juan asked. We all looked at the door cautiously. The recording left us frozen. The creature attacked the driver of the car as if it were not fully human. 45:13 It was a tall, thin figure, moving on all fours, with some kind of terrifying mask on its face. 45:19 It chased the men to the bar and struck the door with a force that did not seem normal. 45:24 The sheriff frowned as he watched the monitor. 45:27 What the hell is that? he murmured. 45:30 Meanwhile, the man who had been attacked was treated outside. He was wounded but alive. The ambulance arrived and they took him to the hospital. 45:39 After the police took statements and reviewed the evidence, they told us that the creature remained a mystery. 45:45 No one had ever seen anything like it before, and there was no clear explanation for what appeared on the security cameras. 45:52 When all the chaos ended, they finally allowed us to go home. 45:55 My sister insisted on taking me herself, along with my friend Marcos, who had also arrived at the bar after receiving my call for help. 46:04 On the way home, the car was silent until Marcos finally spoke. 46:09 Did you see that, Andrea? Did you see the creature on the cameras? He asked with a worried expression. 46:15 Yes, I saw it, I answered, still trembling from the experience. 46:20 This makes no sense. I have never heard of anything like that near the state park, Laura murmured from the driver's seat. 46:27 None of us could explain what we had witnessed that night. The creature recorded by the cameras remained an enigma, and the feeling of unease did not leave us. 46:37 Since that night I have never felt completely safe near the state park again. 46:41 There was always the impression that something was lurking in the shadows, something that could not be easily explained. 46:49 And so the mystery of that faceless and unexplained creature continued to haunt me. The strangeness simply never seemed to stop. 47:02 Story 8 I grew up in a small rural town in Georgia. There were two schools there, one private and one public. 47:10 I attended the private school until high school, and then I switched to the public school in the hope of being recruited by a college to play football after graduating. 47:19 Football did not work out. I went to college, but I had to return home after my first year for the usual reasons. Parties, lack of attention in class, and bad decisions. 47:30 When I came back home in 2012, I moved into a remodeled trailer located on family land. 47:36 I got a job and enrolled in a community college in the nearest big city, about 30 minutes from my town. 47:42 Since coming back, I had had some legal trouble, so I decided to stop drinking and smoking. 47:48 One night or rather early in the morning after my friends left and I felt restless because I was not drinking or smoking, I decided to drive to the gas station. It was about 10 minutes from my house and it was around 12 or 1 in the morning. 48:01 While taking a curve I saw flames on the side of the road. It was a huge fire. The flames surrounded what seemed to be an overturned car. 48:10 I slowed down from 55 or 60 to about 10 in 2 seconds and stopped beside the wreckage. Then I noticed something else. There was a man. 48:20 I stared in disbelief at the burned corpse of a man outside the car, closer to the road. 48:25 He had been burned into a black, crispy mass. 48:28 He was lying on his back with one leg cut off from the knee down. 48:33 The other leg still had flesh, but it was so burned that it barely mattered. 48:37 His arms were so burned that it looked like he was missing fingers, and his hands had been reduced to smaller, deformed versions of themselves. 48:45 His left arm was extended into the air, as if he were asking for help or something else. 48:51 I suppose the fire burned him into that position, and that was how he stayed. 48:56 I was in shock. 48:58 How was it possible that no one had heard or seen this? There were houses in the nearby neighborhood. I wondered if I was the first person to find that accident. 49:07 I got out of my car and called the police. 49:10 After hanging up, I walked around the scattered wreckage. I actually found his identification. 49:16 I knew the guy. He was seven years older than me and had attended the same private school where I studied until high school. 49:23 It was a long night, to put it one way. 49:26 I stayed there about three more hours talking to the police. Eventually I got my pack of cigarettes and went back home. In 2015 I was in Nantahala National Forest with my friends. 49:37 We had gone camping getting ready for our usual summer fun, kayaking on the Chattuga River. 49:44 It was the last night and I was smoking my last cigarette before going to bed. 49:48 Almost three years had passed since that incident, but soon that would be the only thing I could think about. 49:54 Suddenly, I heard something in the woods to my right. When I looked up, I felt something very strange. 50:00 I am not one of those people who ignore those feelings, so instead of dismissing it, I pointed my flashlight toward the noise. 50:08 What I saw left me petrified. 50:10 It was him. 50:12 I think it was the man I had found beside the road, burned after that disaster. 50:17 he was standing there staring straight at me without eyes he was exactly as i had found him that night with one and a half legs deformed fingers and ruined hands i was so shocked that i froze slowly he lifted his burned arm and pointed at me finally i managed to break out of that paralysis I stood up, grabbed my knife, and in a low voice, asked him by name what he wanted from me. 50:42 I did not expect him to answer, but he did. 50:46 Look behind you. 50:48 I turned around. When I did, I saw a bobcat about 5 or 10 feet from me, right beside my tent. 50:55 I grabbed the knife and called my friends with all my strength, preparing myself in case the bobcat jumped on me. 51:01 Frightened, the animal moved away. 51:04 When I turned back around, the man had disappeared. 51:07 My friends came out, saw the bobcat, and we all left there quickly. 51:11 They asked me how close it had been, and I told them it had been practically on top of them. 51:17 I really do not know why that happened. 51:20 I am not sure whether that man truly left this earth. 51:23 But today, almost on the sixth anniversary of his death, I can only thank him for possibly saving my life that day. 51:37 Last year, during the final days of summer vacation, I was in a national park in Scotland known as Loch Lomond. 51:44 I had been staying with my cousin for a week before having to go back to school. 51:49 In general, we spent those days fairly calmly. We stayed up late watching horror movies, went out with my cousin's friends, and in simple terms, tried to have as much fun as possible. 52:00 However, during that week, there was one experience that stands out above everything else. It was something simply unsettling. 52:08 Not unsettling in a sinister or evil way, but in a way I truly do not know how to explain. 52:14 Still, I will do my best. 52:16 As I was saying, I was staying with my cousins. who lived with my aunt and uncle on the outskirts of Glasgow. They did not have many opportunities to see nature or truly wild areas, so we all decided to go walking in Loch Lomond National Park, which is about 25 miles north of Glasgow. 52:34 It was a perfect day to do it. 52:36 The temperature was around 68 degrees Fahrenheit, there was a warm breeze in the air, and the lake was completely calm. 52:44 After a while, my cousin Dan got tired of wandering through the forest we were in and asked if we could go explore on our own. 52:51 I was 17 years old and Dan was 15. They told us we could do it as long as we did not go too far. 52:58 But as bored teenagers usually do, we completely ignored that advice and ran deep into the forest. 53:05 It was fairly dark in there because the leaves of the trees were so dense that they barely allowed sunlight to pass through the canopy. 53:12 We saw some deer running among the trees in the distance, and at one point Dan Swarty had seen a wildcat climbing a tree. 53:19 That seemed possible to me. However, it turned out there were much stranger things to see in that forest than wildcats. 53:27 Eventually we reached a clearing and Dan stopped just before entering. 53:31 I kept moving forward crossing the tree line into that illuminated clearing. It was a very beautiful place. There were many wild plants like foxgloves and bees buzzing around them. But it was there that everything began to get truly strange. 53:46 As I looked around the clearing, the silhouette of another person caught my attention from the opposite side. 53:52 I narrowed my eyes to make out that dark figure which was standing just beyond the trees, and I immediately noticed that there was something odd about it. 54:00 I took a few steps toward the figure, but it showed no sign of life. 54:04 Then I noticed what it was wearing. 54:07 It seemed to have a metal helmet and armor over torn red underclothes. 54:11 One of its hands rested on something at its belt, something I identified as the hilt of some kind of short sword. 54:18 A damn Roman, I muttered. 54:20 I had studied history in school, of course, and the Roman Empire had been one of the subjects we covered. That definitely looked like Roman armor, and what it carried at its waist looked like a Roman gladius sword. That was the last thing I expected to run into in the middle of the forest. 54:37 What are you looking at? 54:39 Dan's voice behind me pulled me out of my thoughts. 54:42 Dude, there's some weird guy dressed like a Roman. Stay there, I told him. 54:47 I froze when I turned around and pointed to where he was. The guy had disappeared. 54:53 I thought for a moment and then began walking quickly toward the trees where I had seen him, wanting to check if he had hidden from our view, but he had vanished completely. There was not even the slightest trace of him. 55:05 Where's that weird Roman you were going to kill? Dan asked mockingly. 55:10 I answered him with a couple of insults before we continued our adventure. I convinced myself that it was probably some group of people filming a project for college, school, or something similar. 55:22 Maybe they had seen us and wanted to play a joke on us. 55:25 I was starting to push the scene out of my mind. We reached a very dark part of the forest, and Dan and I were chatting about different things when I heard a loud, sharp sound coming from our right side. 55:36 We both froze. 55:37 Dan had heard it too. 55:39 We stopped and listened for a while. It was eerie. All the birds had stopped singing, as if they had reacted to the same sound. The noise was heard again. 55:50 Is what we're hearing metal? Dan asked. 55:52 The sound began to increase both in volume and frequency. Dan was right. It sounded like swords clashing against each other. 56:01 From the way it sounded, it was as if an entire army were fighting a war deep in the forest. 56:06 I started thinking that maybe I had been right about that Roman and that it was all part of some filming group. 56:12 Then suddenly a guttural scream of pain broke the silence among the trees. 56:17 And then everything went quiet. 56:20 What the hell? Dan said. But he was interrupted when a dark figure stepped out from behind a tree, about 65 feet away. 56:28 That figure was also wearing the same Roman armor as the man I had seen before. It was another Roman. Maybe the same one. 56:37 I do not know. The only difference was a huge wound running across the center of his body. 56:43 Dan and I were frozen at the site. Before we could move, another figure stepped out from behind a tree behind the first one. 56:50 This one was missing its left arm and was holding a javelin in its right hand. 56:55 Its armor hung carelessly from its body. 56:58 Beyond those two in the distance, we could see more shadowy figures. All of them were horribly wounded. That was when we finally remembered how to move. We both turned around to run. 57:10 As we did, we managed to see one last figure separated from the rest. 57:15 He was wearing a Gallic helmet, the classic Roman helmet with a crest that identified him as a higher ranking officer. A Centurion. 57:23 But he had not escaped injury either. 57:26 He had some kind of axe embedded in his breastplate and was bent over in pain. 57:31 That was enough for Dan and me. We ran back the way we had come as fast as we could. 57:36 Although I cannot be completely sure, I swear I heard the Centurion calling to us. It sounded as if he was telling us to flee. That still makes me shiver to this day. 57:47 When we finally found the way back to the car and returned to my aunt and uncle, they gave us the typical lecture about ignoring instructions, about how we could have gotten lost and all that. But we did not care. 57:59 Instead, we tried to tell them about the Romans. They did not want to hear any of it. They thought we were making everything up. 58:07 After getting home, I decided to research the area around that forest a little. I found information about the 9th Roman Legion, or the Lost Legion, as it came to be known after its entire army of 6,000 men disappeared after being sent north into Scotland to suppress a rebellion by the natives. 58:25 The peoples believed to be responsible for the Romans' disappearance lived near Loch Le Monde, and they probably ambushed the Legion because they knew the land and the forest very well. 58:35 What do you think? 58:37 Was it an elaborate prank meant only for two young people? Or was it something beyond the natural? 58:47 Story 10. 58:49 In 2009, I had a major disagreement with my parents. I was 17 years old at the time and still depended on them quite a bit. 58:57 After that argument, they kicked me out of the house and set me off to figure things out on my own. 59:03 Maybe you are thinking I should have notified the police since I was still a minor, but the last thing I wanted was to drag out that drama any longer than necessary. 59:12 If things were going to be that way, then who cared that they had raised me? 59:17 I deserved to be happy too. 59:19 I took informal and odd jobs, gathering enough money to stay in motels around different parts of the Midwest. 59:26 Over time, I was able to buy an old Ford Focus, and I filled the trunk with hiking and camping gear. I was drawn to state and national parks. I spent my time walking and sometimes even meeting new people on the trails. 59:39 That was my life now. Camping, hiking, driving... and when money started running low, working as an independent mechanic for people who needed it. 59:48 I managed pretty well with older cars before everything became too advanced under the hood. 59:54 In May of the following year, that is, in 2010, I was driving through rural Indiana. 60:00 I had spent the day hiking through some mountains. I was tired and wanted to leave that national park to head to the next one before sleeping. 60:08 Then, without warning, everything became a nightmare. It all started with the stars. There was almost no light pollution there. I remember that before night fully fell, I could see a multitude of stars in the sky. But suddenly, one moment they were there in all their splendor. And the next, when I looked through the windshield, the sky was completely black. 60:30 i mean it was so black that it looked like a gigantic dark continent covering and erasing the sky above me i tried to find the moon to calm myself but it had also disappeared along with the stars even though there had been a fairly visible half moon that night it was not exactly fear that i felt at first but rather a deep sense of confusion it was so dark that i could no longer see anything through the side windows The only light I had came from the headlights and from a flashlight that was on the back seat. 61:00 That was when I saw a familiar green sign on the side of the road. 61:04 I slowed down to get a better look at it. I could not angle the headlights properly to read all the text on the sign, so I had to get out of the car with my flashlight. 61:14 If I was not scared before, I was after reading that strange sign. The plain white letters said, you are now leaving Feltfields National Park. 61:24 Feltfields. 61:26 I had never heard of that park, and I was almost certain there was no park by that name anywhere in the Midwest. Besides, what did that cautionary warning mean? 61:35 Confused and ready to leave, I turned back toward my car, shining the flashlight on the road. For a moment, I could not breathe. My car had disappeared. 61:45 How was that possible? 61:47 The headlights had been on, lighting up part of the sign so I could read it. 61:51 In such absolute darkness I would have noticed if it disappeared. 61:55 I began to panic, moving the flashlight quickly to the left, then to the right, and then back to the left again. 62:02 This could not be happening. 62:05 I kept telling myself it was not real, that it had to be a dream. 62:09 Maybe I had fallen asleep on the road and needed to wake up. 62:13 Unfortunately, I was already awake, awake inside a nightmare. 62:17 I did not know what else to do, so I kept walking in the same direction I had been going before, passing beside the sign on the side of the road. 62:25 I kept one eye on the trees on both sides, shining my light on them from time to time. 62:31 I swear I kept seeing a silhouette standing there. It moved just outside my field of vision every time I aimed the light at it. 62:38 Maybe I was going crazy. 62:40 Maybe not. 62:41 At that point I started running. My heart was beating so hard it felt like it wanted to burst out of my chest while I shone the flashlight along the sides of the road. 62:51 Suddenly I slammed into something hard. The impact knocked the air out of me and left me with a broken knuckle. 62:57 I quickly aimed the flashlight forward, convinced I was going to find a creature or a person ready to end me in that terrible darkness. 63:05 But it was only my car. It was there in front of me, exactly as I had left it. 63:11 I had returned to the sign I had passed half an hour earlier. 63:14 I did not waste a second. 63:17 I got into my Ford Focus, which was still running, and stepped on the gas. 63:21 I drove, and I am not exaggerating when I say this, for about three hours. Only after those three hours did the stars reappear, the moon reveal itself again, and I passed that damn sign one final time. 63:34 Then it was all over. 63:36 It was the most confusing and terrifying event of my life. An experience that made me distrust driving and hiking for a long time. 63:44 Eventually I got a steady job and an apartment in a small town in Minnesota. 63:49 That is my story. I have found no explanation whatsoever. Not on the internet and not in any physical place about felt fields. And I will never forget the fear I felt. 64:05 Story 11. 64:07 I have always kept an open mind about the creatures that might roam our world, partly because I am curious by nature and partly because of my mother. 64:17 She always taught us to pay attention to our surroundings and to respect nature. 64:21 One of the first things she taught me was to listen to animals. They will tell you if there is something out there. 64:28 Years ago, when I was a teenager, we traveled to my dad's hometown in Texas for a family reunion. 64:34 His town was small. You could walk through the central part in less than an hour, and most of the other people lived in houses farther out, usually with at least an acre of land around them. It was nice and quite private. 64:47 In the afternoon we joined my dad's large family at a party near the edge of town. There were people dancing, drinking and having a good time, while my brother, a cousin, her friend and I simply watched the festivities. 65:00 We talked about those typical teenage things, you know, about who we liked or did not like at school, and topics like that. 65:08 At some point we looked toward the edge of the party, where a fence marked the boundary of the place we were in. 65:14 that area separated the yard from the brush that began at the edge of town we could not see very far because night had already fallen and the lights on the fence posts only lit up the fence itself and a little of the nearby brush as i watched i noticed something it was an object half hidden by a small tree but it seemed strange to me because it did not move with the breeze like the rest of the foliage I pointed it out to my brother and my cousin, and they saw it too. 65:42 As we looked at it, some things began to become obvious. It was a creature approximately five feet tall, if I had to guess. It had a tan brown color, similar to a coyote. 65:54 One of us asked if it could be a coyote, but we could definitely tell it was not. 65:58 It was too large. Cautiously, or maybe foolishly, we moved closer to the fence. We were about 65 feet from it. 66:06 The creature was another 30 feet beyond the fence, far enough to remain outside the direct reach of the light. 66:13 We stopped dead when we saw enough to realize that the creature was not anything we had ever seen before in our lives. 66:20 It was a creature covered in hair, hunched over on long legs. 66:24 It had arms like a person's and long, hairy hands ending in sharp claws. 66:29 Its head was half hidden by the tree, but we could see a shape like that of a canine with a long snout and pointed ears, just like a coyote. 66:38 It was looking at us, and we were looking at it. 66:42 We quickly ran back to the party, realizing that we were closer to that thing than to our own families. 66:48 If that werewolf, as I called it, without really knowing what it was at the time, was as fast as the werewolves we had seen in movies, the fence would not have been any obstacle for it if it had wanted to cross. 67:00 We were all shocked and silent. Once we were back at the party, we simply sat there and looked at one another. 67:06 Had we just seen that? Did creatures like that really exist? 67:11 We were stunned by that encounter. We did not even know who might believe us, so we said nothing. 67:17 The next day, my family returned to Oklahoma. My brother and I were secretly relieved considering what we had seen. But my cousin and her friend lived in Texas, in my dad's hometown, which was part of that thing's territory. 67:32 I hope they never had to see it again. 67:34 Over time, I left that night behind, but that encounter always remained in the back of my mind. Later, I learned about creatures that other people claimed to have seen in the woods. 67:44 I heard at least one name for what we had seen, and I hoped I would never encounter anything like it again. 67:50 But as they say, be careful what you wish for. 67:54 In 2019, I was at my boss's farm during a three-day work outing in the summer. 67:59 His farm is a few hours from Oklahoma City and has 80 acres of land, mostly forest, and is fairly isolated. 68:07 His nearest neighbor probably lived more than half a mile away. I had been to that farm many times over the years and knew the woods around the place fairly well. 68:15 There was a trail that left the compound and went into the trees. 68:19 I walked it every morning with his dog whenever I went there for work. I never walked that trail alone, and I never did it without weapons. 68:28 Not because I was worried about running into a werewolf or Bigfoot, but because I knew there were wild hogs in the area, and they did worry me. 68:36 In all the years I had been there, I had never heard stories of Bigfoot or werewolves being seen in that area, but I had heard plenty about wild hogs. 68:45 That particular day I headed to the trail in the late afternoon with Bobby, my boss's dog, right beside me. The trail was not exactly heavily traveled and had more grass than dirt. 68:56 Halfway down the path where the ground was more open, I could already see some deer tracks. raccoon tracks, and even an armadillo mark in the soil. 69:06 While I counted the different tracks, Bobby moved off the trail into the trees, maybe to sniff something that caught his attention or to find a place to pee. 69:15 I called him so he would not go too far, moving toward the edge of the path to do so. 69:21 Then I looked down and saw something that made my heart stop. 69:24 Right at the edge of the trail, where the bare dirt gave way to grass, there was an enormous canine-like track. 69:31 It was larger than any track Bobby could have left. 69:34 Bobby was a 75-pound German Shepherd, and at home I had a 150-pound Great Dane. 69:41 Not even his paws were as large as that mark. 69:44 I placed my size 10.5 boot beside the track, and the mark was more than half the size of my boot. 69:51 It was fairly fresh. 69:53 It could not have been more than 24 hours old. 69:56 I had to make an educated guess. 69:58 I looked back, following the direction from which the track seemed to have come, but I found no more marks. It was as if that thing had jumped across the trail to avoid leaving tracks in the dirt. 70:09 Something had jumped about 16 feet across the path to avoid leaving signs of itself. 70:15 I quickly looked around and decided I did not want to stay there too long in case whatever had left that track was still nearby. 70:22 Farther ahead the trail became more enclosed, surrounded by trees and leaves covered the path. 70:28 Only because I had walked through there so many times did I know how not to get lost as I moved forward. 70:34 As I continued along the trail I noticed a large branch right at the edge of the path. Branches were not unusual there, of course. Besides, with the ice storm that had happened during the winter, many trees had lost quite a few branches. 70:47 But this one in particular was about eleven and a half feet long. 70:51 It was the size of my forearm at its thinnest part and thicker than my thigh at its widest. 70:57 What caught my attention was that it had been flipped over. I could tell by the impression in the ground, the leaves and the dirt around it. 71:05 Although wild hogs can flip logs while looking for food, and they do, they do not do it like that. There were no hog tracks or marks around it. 71:15 Mentally, I traced the trail behind me, remembering where I had seen that track. 71:20 Then I realized the branch was directly in line with the mark. When I understood that, everything went silent. There were no birds. There were no insects. 71:30 I looked around for Bobby, but he was no longer beside me. He had continued down the trail and was about 30 feet ahead of me, looking at me with a nervous posture. 71:40 He seemed to be saying, We have to leave now. 71:44 I looked around briefly, but I did not see anything among the trees. 71:48 Then I remembered an old phrase my mother used to say to me. 71:52 You may not see them, but they can see you. 71:55 I quickened my pace and caught up to Bobby. Then we ran together along the trail back to the barn. 72:01 Once I came out from the edge of the forest, I could not prevent an idea from settling in the back of my mind. 72:07 They are here. They are here in Oklahoma. 72:11 It was absurd to assume they simply would not be there, knowing that at least one had been seen in Texas, and now there was only one track here. 72:20 That same week, my brother had told me that a co-worker of his believed he had recently seen a werewolf at the edge of his property. His co-worker lives in El Reno, Oklahoma, and my boss's farm is only about six miles from there. 72:34 My mind filled with questions and fears as I went back to the barn. 72:38 What were those creatures? 72:40 How is someone supposed to deal with something like that if they cross paths with them? 72:45 They were unsettling thoughts, and I hoped I would never have to face a situation like that again. 72:51 Since then I have been much more cautious when I am in wooded areas, especially if I am alone. 72:57 Before I had never really believed in those stories about strange creatures, until I saw one with my own eyes. 73:04 Now when I hear similar accounts I know there is some truth in them, something that goes beyond what most people believe possible. 73:12 And although I hope I never encounter one of those beings again, I am more mentally prepared if it ever happens. 73:18 Until then, I can only keep an open mind and continue moving carefully through these woods, which now seem much more alive and mysterious than I ever imagined. 73:32 STORY 12 Hello, my name is Ezekiel, and I am going to tell you what happened to us last summer when my wife and I went to Washington State to spend a week camping. 73:42 We took our trailer to a reserve site in Eatonville. 73:46 The weather was pleasant and warm all week. The first two nights were excellent. 73:51 We cooked chicken and beans on our grill. and we also roasted some marshmallows as a late night snack. 73:57 The third night was when we had this incredible experience. 74:01 A loud sound woke me shortly after midnight, and then it woke my wife too. 74:06 Our children and the baby were still deeply asleep. They can sleep through anything. 74:11 Whatever we heard was not too far from our campsite. It was probably about 30 or 50 feet away. 74:18 It made a strange high-pitched sound, and we could also smell it. 74:22 It smelled like a mixture of hot garbage and dead animals. 74:26 It was unbearable. You know how most campers have those dim yellow lights outside. Well, from the inside window we could see the light, and the smell got worse as that thing walked right in front of the trailer's yellow light. 74:39 My first thought was that it could be a bear, but bears do not usually stand on two legs for no reason. 74:45 All the food we had eaten, we had covered and stored. We also picked up all the leftovers because we knew there were grizzly bears nearby. We even cleaned the grill so there would be no food smell left. That creature must have been between 7 and 10 feet tall, and we heard it make a low growl. 75:02 I have been around quite a few bears in my life, and I have never heard them make a sound like that. 75:08 At that point, my wife and I were almost completely sure that it was not a bear. 75:12 We both stayed frozen. I could see tears running down my wife's cheeks. 75:17 I whispered to her as quietly as I could. 75:21 Try not to make noise. 75:23 Out of nowhere, that thing made that loud, high-pitched sound again. This time it did it in groups of two, and it sounded much more intense because it was right in front of our trailer. 75:34 Even the trailer shook a little as it walked around us. 75:37 It finally left about 30 minutes later. And then we were able to try to sleep. 75:43 The next day we woke up around 7 in the morning. We stepped out of the trailer and saw other people gathered outside, looking at absolutely enormous footprints the creature had left behind. 75:54 I asked them, Excuse me, we heard this last night. Did you hear it too? 76:00 Most of them said yes. 76:02 Look what it did right in front of your trailer, one of them said, pointing at the marks. 76:07 I looked at that set of footprints completely surprised while everyone else took photos. 76:12 Everyone packed up and went home, including us. 76:15 They even refunded our money for the site. 76:18 I decided to report it to the Bigfoot Research Organization so they could examine the footprints. 76:24 After investigating them, they got negative results regarding known local wildlife. They said they did not match any animal tracks from the area, so it was probably almost certainly a Bigfoot. 76:36 Personally, we decided never to return to that site again, but the teams from the Bigfoot Research Organization have been doing more investigations in that area, so hopefully someday we will have stronger evidence of these things. 76:53 Story 13 My name is Pablo, and I think I have just had the strangest encounter of my entire life. 77:01 In one of my previous stories, I mentioned that my friend and I used to go to Ocean City, a popular beach in Maryland located about three hours from where I live. 77:10 Well, I decided to go back and spend some time at our condominium simply to relax and rest. 77:16 The summer had been very chaotic because of the pandemic, so I did not plan to spend too much time on the beach. 77:22 I am one of those people who enjoy the beach, but I do not like going down to the sand too much or getting too far into the water. Well, unless it is more empty and there are not so many people taking up the whole place. So I drove there in my Chevy Nova on July 21st, this time alone, although my family planned to join me a few weeks later. 77:42 Either way, I hurried through the entire trip because I wanted to avoid stopping. 77:47 When I arrived, I ran out, locked the Nova's door and went straight to the condominium. 77:52 I unloaded all my bags onto one of those hotel carts they sometimes have near the elevators. 77:58 Our condominium has one for some reason and it turned out to be much more efficient than going up and down the stairs carrying everything. 78:05 Once I had everything in the room I went out onto the balcony. We were on the fifth floor of the complex and the balcony faced the beach. 78:13 I cannot explain how nice it was to wake up every morning to the sound of the waves breaking. 78:19 Anyway, the ocean looked fairly rough, but even so there were a bunch of people on the beach without caring too much about having space. 78:26 I thought that was not going to be for me and went back inside. 78:29 It started raining around 2 in the afternoon and the beach was practically empty. I took the opportunity and ran down to fish from the shore for about an hour and a half, with the rain falling on me the whole time. 78:41 I did not catch anything, but when I fish I feel alive. 78:46 It is one of those things like bow hunting that takes me to my happy place. 78:50 The first night passed. I ordered seafood for dinner and then went back to bed with freshly changed sheets. 78:57 The next day I woke up and made some coffee. I had brought my Nintendo Switch, but I felt something calling me to get up and do something outdoors. That feeling came over me, and I decided there was no better way to spend a good day at the beach than by going to Wonder Island. 79:12 For those who do not know, Ocean City is basically an enormous sandbar, and there are several islands and small stretches of land around it. 79:21 One of those places is Wonder Island. It is a national park, and my next door neighbor, who is studying to become a park ranger, had strongly encouraged me to visit national parks. 79:33 The interesting thing about Wonder Island is that it basically brings several environments together in one place. Let me explain it briefly. The island has protected wetlands, beaches, marshy areas, and it is also fairly large with wooded sections. 79:48 In other words, it is a natural paradise for people who enjoy the outdoors. There are also horses that have lived there for generations in the wild. There is an off-road dune trail for vehicles like jeeps and certain types of trucks. But my Nova is from 1970, and sand is basically the same as rust for a classic car like that. 80:08 So that option was out of the question. 80:11 Even so, I drove there and parked in one of the visitor lots. I got out and decided which path to take first. 80:18 I walked the marsh trails and the mosquitoes destroyed me. 80:22 I cursed my stupid decision not to bring repellent. 80:25 I finished that trail and then took the wetland path, wading through the beautiful waters, watching crabs and small fish pass by my legs. So far, nothing creepy had happened. 80:36 Sorry about that, but it is coming soon. 80:39 I promise. 80:40 Anyway, I found a good stretch of beach to spread out on. Somehow I remembered to bring a towel so I placed it on the sand and lay down, closing my eyes. 80:49 My bag and the Nova's keys were beside me. I was not worried about someone stealing them. 80:55 The park was practically empty, at least the part where I was. Besides, I am about 5 feet 11 inches tall and let my hair grow down to my shoulders. 81:05 When I am not well-groomed, I look like a crazy person, although I would never hurt a fly. 81:10 Anyway, I lost track of time. I probably arrived at the beach and lay down around noon. 81:16 But my stupid self woke up when it was already getting dark. 81:20 I cursed my own clumsiness while trying to sit up. I screamed. I was so sunburned that it felt as if my skin were burning in flames, and tears filled my eyes. 81:31 I had put on sunscreen, but I suppose it had already worn off. 81:35 My body seemed to be bubbling and peeling before my own eyes. 81:39 I was as red as a damn tomato. 81:41 That was where the creepy things began. 81:44 While I was trying to figure out how I was going to limp back to my car, I heard a large splash. 81:50 Normally I would not have thought too much of that. 81:53 There are exceptionally large fish and even sharks off the coast of Ocean City in Wonder Island. 81:59 In fact, I once caught an almost 10-foot tiger shark near Wonder Island two years ago, but that is another story. 82:06 I realized the splash came maybe about six feet from the shore, which was very strange. 82:12 The odds of a large fish being that close to the coast and making that much noise were low, to put it mildly. 82:19 I dropped my bag and my keys while slowly and painfully standing up. It took me maybe five steps to reach the water. Then it made a sound I will never forget. 82:29 Imagine the roars of a mountain lion mixed with the deep calls of an enormous whale. It was terrifying, sad, and fascinating at the same time. 82:38 Extremely difficult to explain honestly. 82:41 My mind immediately went to stories of mermaids and nyods, those beings whose hypnotic singing drew unsuspecting sailors toward their doom. 82:50 I did not really believe they were mermaids. I am not skeptical at all, but mermaids simply seem too unbelievable. 82:58 Even so, we have only explored a small part of our oceans, so honestly, who knows what is out there? 83:04 Those thoughts and many others spun in my head as I backed farther and farther away from the waves. 83:09 The waves were now much smaller, and whatever was making that noise seemed to be getting closer to me. 83:15 I began to hurry back to grab my bag. I got out of there like a bat out of hell, straight toward my car in safety. 83:23 I let out a chain of curses when I realized the Nova's keys were still on the beach. Half limping and half running, I went back to the place I had just left, feeling my skin peel and burn. 83:34 I turned on my phone's flashlight and aimed it at the sand where I had been before. 83:39 There they were, shining like pearls. The Nova's keys. 83:44 I knelt down, grabbed them, and when I stood up, I met its gaze. It was the strangest thing I have ever seen in my life. 83:52 It was pale, almost translucent, like a jellyfish. 83:56 Its skin looked aged, but strong and muscular. 83:59 Its legs were long and strangely tall, like those of a basketball player. 84:04 There was not a single inch of hair that I could see. 84:07 Its hands looked amphibious, and it had something that almost resembled a tail. 84:12 But the truly terrifying thing was its face. 84:16 It looked like the clean, expressionless face of a department store mannequin, the kind they hang clothes on. 84:22 It only had something like a nose and a small slit that I assumed was its mouth. It showed no expression at all. 84:29 I felt my heart in my throat as sweat ran down my face. For some reason I smiled like an idiot. Maybe I thought that creature had some kind of emotion. 84:39 Then it smiled back. But everything was wrong. 84:43 The small slit of its mouth began to expand. 84:46 The face slowly tore open into an abnormally large smile. 84:51 Blood began dripping down its face while it smiled back at me. showing sharp teeth that shone under the light of my phone. 84:58 That image will haunt me until my final day. 85:01 I ran screaming like a little girl. 85:04 I was surprised that no park ranger had heard my scream while I ran back to my car. 85:09 Behind me I heard that thing scream back, almost as if it were mocking me. 85:14 Somehow I managed to reach the car and sped out of there. When I arrived at the condominium I ran up the stairs as fast as I could. 85:22 I locked the door behind me and began breathing erratically. When I finally managed to pull myself together, I sat on the couch and basically passed out. 85:31 The next day I went to the local clinic to have my burns checked. They gave me a prescription lotion to help with the burned skin and I went home immediately. 85:40 I searched everywhere for some explanation of what I saw. 85:44 It could not have been a skinwalker because I am almost certain they do not go into the water or live in swamps. 85:50 Maybe they were aliens. Maybe some other cryptid with the ability to shapeshift. 85:55 I do not know. 86:02 Story 14. 86:04 I am a big fan and have been listening for quite some time. 86:07 Anyway, this is my experience with what I believe was a Bigfoot. 86:11 A little context. I am very fond of outdoor activities. 86:16 I grew up among woods and always knew about Bigfoot, although I never thought I would actually see one. 86:22 To set the scene, this happened around late 2016 or early 2017 near New Year's, which is also my birthday. 86:30 My family decided to take my best friend Lorenzo and me to Alabama from Texas to visit some distant relatives for my birthday. 86:38 We spent some time with the family and eventually snuck away to hang out in the woods, as we always did. 86:44 Lorenzo, my cousin Tyler, and I explored the surroundings. 86:48 During our exploration we found an old abandoned mobile home, so we decided to take a look, as people usually do when they are teenagers. We finished checking the house and entered the master bedroom, where we found an enormous nest made of pine branches. 87:03 We had been inside the mobile home for about 25 or 30 minutes when suddenly we heard a terrible roar right outside. 87:10 Then the house began to sway violently, so much that it seemed like it was going to tip over with us inside. So we crawled out and took off running back to the house. 87:21 As we ran I turned my head and I swear by everything I know to be true that I saw a Bigfoot. 87:26 As I looked at that enormous creature, its gaze met mine. 87:30 Then it began chasing us back toward the house. We even crossed three yards between my cousin's house and the woods. 87:37 The Bigfoot stopped at the edge of the trees and watched us enter the house. 87:41 I wish I could say that was all, but unfortunately it was not. 87:46 In the middle of the night I woke up because my cousin and Lorenzo were telling me to be quiet. that it was right outside the window. So I went to look through the blinds. 87:56 When I separated them, I found myself face to face with that thing. 88:00 And it looked angry, to put it mildly. 88:03 So we grabbed the guns and went outside toward where we had seen it, but there was nothing. 88:09 I took out an alternative cigarette and looked toward the woods. 88:12 We went toward the abandoned mobile home. We had made it about halfway there when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. 88:19 I slowly turned around, and there it was. 88:23 Only a few feet away, that thing again. It looked absolutely furious. 88:28 So, feeling a little brave after my alternative cigarette, I did the only thing I could think of doing. 88:34 Run. 88:35 I bolted all the way back to the house, with my friends screaming and howling the entire time, completely terrified. 88:43 And yes, we were armed to the teeth, but honestly, running was probably the best option. 88:48 Over time, once we all managed to get to the house and calm down, we decided we would never talk about it again. 88:55 We did not want to sound crazy. We did not want people to think we were lunatics. 89:01 But I know what I saw, and I know what we experienced. 89:09 Story 15. 89:11 This happened around February of 2017. 89:15 I was 15 years old at the time, and I remember that year I had a dry throat. 89:20 I wanted to build a shed in the middle of the woods in my backyard and use it simply as a place to hang out, as a fun project for the summer months. So on a cold, dry, windy but sunny day, probably near noon or mid-morning, I started walking alone through the woods behind my house to find the perfect place to put the shed. 89:39 The shape and geography of that wooded part of the property were rather strange. The wooded area extended like the Oklahoma panhandle, and to reach the deeper sections of my property, where I wanted to build the shed, you first had to climb a hill. 89:54 Then that hill eventually leveled out. 89:57 Also, that hill was easily the highest in the entire general area. 90:01 On the day my encounter happened, I could see hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet away, especially because there were no leaves on the trees. 90:10 The walk lasted barely about two minutes, and from there you could see things like rusty barrels and metal fences among the trees. 90:18 mainly because the woods in my backyard had been a popular hunting spot in the past. That was obvious from the rusty metal barrels and beer cans I found, some of which seem to date back to the 1980s. 90:30 I walked through the property until I reached the part where the hill leveled out. You also have to keep in mind that someone's house was probably about 100 feet from where I was. 90:40 I had a fairly good view of the whole property. There was also a barn and a house quite far from us, and from there I could see much farther into the distance. For a few minutes I began looking for a good place to build the shed. 90:53 Eventually I chose one and imagined how I would do it. I wanted to start it from scratch. 90:59 While I was thinking about that, I heard a five-note whistled melody in the distance. I am not a musician, but I will try to describe it. 91:08 It was like two long flat notes with a brief pause between them, then a third wavering and higher pitched note, quickly followed by a wavering medium pitched note. 91:18 After that, it returned to a long flat note, but at a higher pitch than the first two. Whoever was whistling repeated that same sequence, and honestly, they must have had lungs of steel. 91:30 I looked around for quite a while to see if I could find the person who was whistling. It sounded as if it was coming from deeper in the woods, downhill, but I did not see anyone. I also checked toward the house and the barn to see if anyone was in sight, but there was not a soul. 91:46 I did not hear the crunching of leaves either. 91:49 The entire forest was covered with them, and the sound of dry leaves underfoot would have easily given away anyone's location. 91:57 But there was nothing. 91:58 At first I dismissed it, thinking it was probably one of my neighbors or something like that. 92:04 I also want to make it clear that the whistling did not sound like an animal. It was human. 92:09 Birds can whistle, yes, but this had a much more breathy quality, like someone using air from their lungs. 92:16 So I went back to the place I had chosen, convinced that it was a person walking through the woods. That was the most logical explanation. 92:25 But the whistling kept getting closer. It grew louder and louder, always repeating the same five notes. 92:32 And still I did not see any person. I did not hear leaves crunching or any other sound that indicated movement either. 92:39 I stubbornly held onto the idea that it was not something paranormal. It had to be human. 92:45 Even if whatever was whistling was getting closer to me and I still had no idea who or what it was. 92:52 The whistling had been going on for more than a couple of minutes. 92:55 Eventually, it began to feel so close that it seemed like someone was literally right on top of me. It also seemed to be coming from all directions at the same time. 93:05 That was when I started to get scared. I concluded that whatever was whistling had to be a threat, so I began heading back to my house. It was only a two or three minute walk. 93:16 I was not terribly far away, as I already said. 93:20 I did not run or anything like that. 93:22 I walked back home as calmly as possible. 93:25 I was scared but not terrified. I also felt that if I ran, whatever was whistling would come out and chase me. 93:32 So I walked and tried to stay calm, as if that could keep that thing at a distance. 93:37 I definitely felt that whatever was whistling was stalking me and mocking me. 93:41 Now I have to be honest. This next part of my experience felt a lot like a trance. Because of that, I could have hallucinated this part. And maybe even the whistling. 93:52 I have had episodes of sleep paralysis several times in my life. and when i am exhausted i sometimes hallucinate things but at that moment i was not tired i also had not had a hallucination episode in a long time besides all my fatigue hallucinations and sleep paralysis episodes usually last from a fraction of a second to several seconds so if this was a hallucination it would be the strangest longest and most detailed one i have ever had Going back to my story, I was a few minutes away from reaching my backyard, still hearing the whistling, when I decided to look up. 94:29 And there it was. Something gray, blurry and without facial features. 94:34 A humanoid thing was flying above me. It could have been between 5 and 6 feet tall with a wingspan roughly the same. 94:42 It had the silhouette of a person. 94:44 Head, two arms, torso and legs. 94:47 It looked like some kind of figure with a circle at the top acting as a head. 94:52 It was almost like a shapeless mass without clear body definition. 94:56 I trusted my instinct. 94:58 Instead of running, I kept walking. The measures I had taken up to that point had kept me safe, so I thought continuing the same way was the wisest thing. 95:08 Finally, I stepped onto the grass in my backyard, and suddenly everything strange stopped. There was no more whistling. The flying thing had disappeared. That feeling of dread and trance vanished completely. 95:22 I remember smelling roses, as if everything had become peaceful after the experience. 95:27 After that, for years I wanted to build anything except a shed in that forest. 95:32 Even to this day, in a certain way, I hate being near that backyard. 95:37 It took me a long time to tell this story because, honestly, for quite a while I considered it simply some kind of paranormal encounter. 95:44 The idea that it might have been an angel or something similar crossed my mind. 95:49 But after researching something called Cryptid Wiki and reading about the Kinderhook Blob Monster, I noticed several similarities with what I had experienced. 95:58 First, I do not live very far from Kinderhook. I could get there by car in a matter of minutes. 96:04 Second, I saw a blob-like creature, and its description sounds very similar to that monster. 96:10 I am not saying that is exactly what it was. but I have a strong impression that maybe I crossed paths with something related to the blob monster. 96:19 After all, I am not the type who scares easily, but that experience was completely different. 96:25 Although I tried to rationalize it at first, I simply cannot find any logical explanation for what happened that day in the woods behind my backyard. 96:33 Since then I have kept a cautious distance from that place. 96:37 I never heard that mysterious whistling again, or saw that strange flying creature again. 96:43 But the feeling of that day still haunts me, as if I had witnessed something I was never meant to see. 96:53 Story 16 It all began when I was just a small child. I have dealt with ghost-related things for most of my life, but this is without a doubt the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. 97:06 Every night from the time I was about four years old until I was seven, maybe even eight, I suffered from chronic sleep paralysis. 97:14 Anyone who has experienced sleep paralysis knows how terrifying it can be. 97:19 My experiences were a little different. I was tormented by a creature I called the Tickle Monster. 97:25 It always happened the same way. 97:28 The first thing that happened was that a sign would appear in the place where the bed met the wall. 97:33 Usually it was written in blood. 97:35 The sign would say things like, he is coming, he is here, or some similar ominous phrase. 97:42 Then the window or the door would appear open, and then he would arrive. 97:47 I am trying to remember his exact appearance, but I remember that he had long dreadlocks, pale skin, and long bony fingers that looked more like claws than normal hands. 97:58 He would come up to my bed and start tickling me. 98:01 As a child I did not really know how to describe what he was doing, but that was the closest explanation I could give. 98:07 It was not a happy or fun experience. Although I could not move or scream, I felt all of it. Once he finished tickling me, he would simply leave. Then I would fully wake up and call for my father or my mother. 98:20 This happened almost every night. The sequence of events remained almost always the same. 98:26 My mother tried to get me to communicate with the tickle monster as if it were real. That thing had an infernal mouth full of sharp teeth, like those of a shark. 98:36 She never doubted that what I was experiencing was legitimate, but nothing ever came from all of that. 98:42 I do not know if she thought it was something only in my head that would disappear with time, or if she believed it was a real experience. 98:50 One night it simply stopped, and it never happened again. 98:54 Since then I have only had two episodes of sleep paralysis, and neither had anything to do with the tickle monster. 99:01 I have searched online to see if anyone else has had a similar experience, but I have not found anything. 99:07 My mother told me about a voodoo demon that supposedly stole children in the middle of the night or something similar, but I am not sure that fits exactly. 99:16 Part of me thinks the whole thing may have been the product of an overactive imagination, but there is still another part of me that believes maybe it was something more, perhaps some kind of paranormal entity or a creature from another world. 99:35 Story 17. 99:38 This happened in March of 2011 near my house in a small town about an hour north of Indianapolis, Indiana. 99:45 I was in eighth grade at the time. 99:47 During my spring break that year, instead of sunshine and warm weather, there was a snowstorm. 99:53 Probably about eight inches of snow fell more or less. My two friends, my two younger brothers and I decided to make the best of the situation and simply go outside to play in the snow during the day. 100:04 There was a forest near my house. It was not enormous, but it was large enough to walk through for a few hours. 100:10 So we decided to do exactly that. 100:13 About an hour after we started the walk, we stumbled upon what looked like an old well. It was a circle of stone about 13 feet in diameter, and it stuck up approximately one foot from the ground. 100:25 It was partially filled with foul-smelling half-frozen water. 100:29 We threw some stones in and stuck long branches down into it to try to figure out how deep it was. 100:35 We tried with a branch that was at least 20 feet long, but we never managed to touch the bottom. So it had to be fairly deep. The well itself was not exactly terrifying, but how old it looked and the fact that it was simply there, in the middle of the forest, made it unsettling. 100:51 The part that truly terrified us came about 20 minutes after discovering it. We had decided that we were done messing around with the well and continued deeper into the forest. 101:01 Then we all heard something that left us frozen with fear. 101:05 A loud shrill laugh echoed through the forest. It was a high-pitched screeching voice and yet very powerful, although it seemed to come from somewhere far away. 101:15 We stood still for a moment, trying to understand what we had just heard. 101:19 The laughter sounded again. 101:21 This time it was clearly closer, although still not in our immediate proximity. 101:26 At that moment none of us said a single word. We ran in the direction of my house, away from the sound. 101:33 We did not stop running for what felt like hours, until we finally made it back to my house without anything else happening. 101:40 None of us had any idea what we had just heard, and none of us was brave enough to go back there and try to find out. 101:48 I would love to hear any theory about what it could have been, whether it was something paranormal or something completely different. 101:59 Story 18 This happened to me, my brother, and our friends. It is not a story from my sister's uncle's best friend or anything like that. This is personal and to me 100% real. 102:13 So do not make assumptions. These are the facts. You decide what happened. 102:18 I grew up in a small mountain town in Utah, far from civilization, in the upper part of the canyon. If you went out the back door of my house and walked about 200 yards across a field, you reached a river and a small wooded area that we always called the river bottoms, for obvious reasons. 102:36 In the summer of 2004, just before I turned 16, our house was the gathering place where we always went. 102:43 A lot of people came over, and most nights we ended up with a bonfire in the backyard, guitars, and everyone simply relaxing. 102:52 One night we started telling ghost stories. One of my close friends lived about a mile and a quarter away, with his house located some distance from those same river bottoms. 103:02 The conversation shifted from fake ghost stories to seriously talking about strange things that had happened to us. 103:08 My friend quickly took over everyone's attention by telling two stories. 103:13 The first was from when he was younger, maybe around 10 years old. 103:17 He woke up in the middle of the night in the dead of winter and decided to go downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water. 103:24 His sink faced the river bottoms. 103:27 While he was drinking he looked out the window and saw the face of a man watching him from outside. 103:33 He dropped the glass which shattered on the floor and his mother went to see what had happened. 103:38 They turned on the porch light and looked outside. There was fresh snow but there was no man. There were no footprints either. 103:46 We thought it could have been a reflection. 103:48 A few weeks later he was outside playing in the snow just after dark. 103:52 His dog began barking and growling toward the river bottoms. He looked, but he did not see anything. 103:59 Even so, he felt a strange sensation in his stomach and started heading inside. 104:04 He was about to reach the back door when he heard his dog behind him. Then he saw it run toward him again. 104:10 He turned around, but he saw nothing. So he ran inside. 104:15 He ended the story by saying he had always been afraid of the river bottoms and did not like going there. 104:21 Naturally, as a group of young people with something to prove, some of my friends decided they were going to explore. 104:27 It was almost a full moon and a clear night, so visibility was fairly good. 104:32 I think there were five of them on that first trip. 104:34 They were gone for about 15 minutes, not long enough to really reach the bottoms and explore anything. 104:41 Then they came running back to the bonfire. Some said they had seen something out there, which was not that extraordinary. 104:48 The fields between my backyard and the bottoms often had cows, and it was common to see deer, coyotes, and other wildlife in the area. 104:57 We calmed them down and went back to the guitars. One of my brother's older friends was sitting with his back to the bottoms and had been unusually quiet since he came back, turning his head to look behind him. 105:09 He was 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighed more than 240 pounds, so seeing him that way was very strange. 105:16 Eventually another group decided to go out. This time we went into the house and gathered flashlights, hockey sticks, baseball bats, and anything else we could find just in case. 105:27 This time there were about ten of us, including me. 105:31 We made it about halfway there when I began to feel a very dark sensation. 105:35 It was related to fear, but it was much more intense. 105:39 It was as if something was not right. 105:42 The only time I had felt a similar fear was years earlier, when someone pointed a gun at me and I genuinely feared for my life. 105:49 Then we began to hear a faint whistle, like what you would hear from the wind in a wooded area, but we were not among the trees yet. Then we heard it again from a different direction, then directly behind us. 106:02 It was moving much faster than any person could move without being heard or seen. 106:07 We got scared and grouped together. We heard the whistle again, and the two people carrying flashlights aimed them right at the spot to our left. 106:16 What we saw for a fraction of a second was a dark silhouette, maybe three or four feet tall, with eyes that reflected a bright red. 106:24 Then it escaped at incredible speed, and we lost sight of it. 106:28 Knowing that we had all seen that thing, we ran like crazy back to the house. 106:33 When we got back to the bonfire, we decided we did not want to stay there any longer. 106:38 We put the fire out in the typical young guy way. All the guys formed a circle and urinated on it until the embers went out. Then we got into the cars and left. 106:48 About an hour later, my brother and I returned home. When we came up the driveway, we saw that the fire was still burning. Still uneasy, we went to put it out with the hose. All the wood we had stacked a few yards away had been thrown into the pit. Very strange. 107:04 The next day, we were having Sunday dinner with my parents. My dad grew up in the 1950s in a house neighboring the one we currently lived in. They asked us if we had fun the night before, and my brother said, yeah, but I don't know if anyone is going to want to come back. 107:20 Why? Did you see the boogeyman? My dad asked jokingly. 107:24 Yes, my brother answered sarcastically. 107:28 Yes, dad, we saw the boogeyman. 107:30 Then my dad said, actually, I saw the boogeyman once when I was very little. I was probably eight or nine years old. 107:38 I remember I was very sick and had a fever one evening around sunset. 107:42 I looked through the front door and saw a dark shape beside our mailbox. 107:47 Its head was just below the mailbox, and it was looking at me with glowing red eyes. 107:52 That was when my brother and I looked at each other, knowing he was telling the truth. 107:57 A few weeks later, we were having another bonfire at home when we noticed that the river bottoms seemed to be burning some distance away. 108:04 We got into the car and drove almost to my friend's house when we saw that the bottoms were on fire. 108:10 We called 911 to report it, since it was government land. and decided to go see it ourselves while we waited for the fire department to arrive. It was not out of control. 108:21 As we got closer we saw that it was only the grass burning in a small clearing. 108:25 We decided we could probably put it out easily. 108:29 It looked like burned lines within a radius of about 10 feet. 108:33 We got out of the car and one of my friends started walking in circles following the burned ashes. 108:38 He looked toward the center, then began climbing a tree. When he was a few yards up, he said, guys, this is a pentagram. 108:47 The strange thing is that it had been burning for at least half an hour before we arrived, but the grass was still burning in the shape of a perfect pentagram, without spreading or deforming. Very strange. 108:59 A few days later, we heard that years earlier, some people had been arrested for performing satanic worship in the river bottoms. 109:06 They regularly burned pentagrams into the ground and sacrificed animals in the center. 109:12 Over the next year, the story spread through the town and became a kind of legend. 109:16 My brother had a mythology class in the spring, and the final project consisted of creating a myth. 109:23 The teacher, knowing this story, suggested that my brother use it and give it depth by integrating Greek mythology with real life. 109:30 My brother brought the name Nephes Goan, or go for short, to life. 109:35 It was a story about a mortal punished by Zeus for a romance with Hera, condemned to be a river demon for the rest of time. 109:42 But the backstory was not enough. He decided he needed evidence. So we decided to start the night the same way as the first, with a fire, about 15 or 20 people, guitars, ghost stories, and then stories of Go. 109:58 We called this the ritual, and it seemed to invite whatever had been following us. 110:03 After a few hours we decided it was time. 110:06 We headed toward the bottoms with a video camera in night mode, spotlights, flashlights, airsoft guns and everything we had. 110:14 We made it about halfway there and that dark feeling returned. 110:19 I have to stop and emphasize it. That feeling was pure fear, as if you knew something wanted you dead. 110:26 This time we did not hear the whistle, but we did hear fast movement very close by. 110:31 We could not catch it with the lights or the camera, so we decided to keep going. 110:35 We were about 65 feet from the bottoms, and there was a small hill separating the fields from the river. 110:42 The person in front stopped and asked for the spotlight. He aimed it upward at the hill, and beside a tree was the black shape with bright red glowing eyes about four feet tall. 110:52 It looked like a child in a hooded coat, but so black that it seemed to be made of a black hole. It stood there staring at us. 111:00 It seemed to last forever, all of us looking at it, and it looking at us. 111:06 Does everyone see that? The cameraman said. 111:09 Focus on that, someone else said. 111:12 Then the figure slowly took two steps toward the tree and disappeared behind it, without coming out on the other side. 111:19 With the project and everyone else present, panic took over us. Everyone started running toward the house. 111:26 We reached the backyard, where we had to cross a barbed wire fence. 111:30 Our house had many exterior lights, so we thought that once we crossed the fence we would be safe. 111:36 The cameraman was still on the field side, still pointing toward the bottoms. 111:41 When he realized he was the last one on that side of the fence, he panicked and quickly turned to jump over it. 111:47 We all got inside. After trying to calm down, we decided we needed to watch the footage. We watched everything, trying to detect anything strange at first. But when we reached the part with the hill, the camera simply did not want to focus. 112:01 It was extremely blurry. He would lower it and focus on the feet and it would become clear again. But when he aimed it back at the figure it became blurry again. 112:12 You can hear when someone says it is going behind the tree. 112:15 And then all at once the focus becomes clear as day again. 112:19 Obviously we were all very disappointed. Everyone started talking on their own. My brother started the tape from the beginning and sat right under the television. watching it without saying anything. 112:30 He paused and rewound frame by frame during the blurry part, trying to find something, but none of the images seemed useful. 112:39 He reached the part where we were almost back at the house, and my friend, the one from the stories at the beginning, was watching casually. 112:46 Then he said, wait, go back. 112:50 They advanced very slowly, frame by frame. 112:53 When the cameraman jumps the fence, the camera turns slightly toward the yard, to the left. 112:59 There, standing beside a tree less than five feet away, is a small black figure with glowing red eyes. 113:05 It was in the yard, 5 feet from the cameraman, and less than 10 feet from most of us. 113:12 None of us saw it, none of us knew it was there, but we had it on tape. 113:17 In those days we had these things called VHS tapes where we recorded movies. 113:22 My brother and his friend edited the movie and made two copies, one for us and one to give to his teacher as part of the project. 113:30 Both tapes included the footage we recorded that night, as well as most of the story I have told here. 113:36 A few years later, my brother and I decided we wanted to watch it again, but we could not find the tape anywhere. 113:43 We searched the whole house. Nothing. 113:46 We did not want to give up, so my brother called his mythology teacher, who we knew had the other copy, and asked if we could borrow it to copy it. 113:55 Of course, it turned out that he had also lost his copy. 113:58 To this day, I still do not go to the river bottoms. I do not like mentioning this story when people or members of my family ask me to tell it, because I know they will think I am lying or that it was just youthful fear playing with my mind. But I know what I saw. I know what I felt. 114:15 It was real. 114:17 And although I do not know what it was, something decided to come and torment my friends and me during our teenage years. 114:23 I am 100% sure of one thing. It wanted to see us dead. 114:33 story 19. my friend and i were driving one weekend night with some girls we had picked up he was behind the wheel i was in the passenger seat and they were in the back we were extremely bored and suddenly the topic of scary stories came up where we live there is a road hidden deep in the woods that passes near some train tracks it is an extremely dark road and has a reputation because of the number of creepy stories told about it Most are ghost stories, although people also talk about people being raped, beaten and murdered on that same road. 115:06 My friend and I, being the brave men we supposedly were, suggested going there. The girls agreed. We arrived at the beginning of the road and began slowly moving along that dark, miscovered path in the middle of the night. 115:20 We drove for about 15 minutes until we reached the end, where the road connected to a busier road. We were not impressed, so we decided to turn around and do something a little different. 115:31 We took the road again and began driving down the same road once more, but halfway through my friend decided to turn off the car and the lights too. 115:39 We sat in complete silence for about 10 minutes, listening to distant sounds that seemed to come from everywhere. The fog was thick, although we could still make out at least about 15 feet in front of us. 115:52 My friend and I were grinning from ear to ear because the girls were starting to get very nervous and scared. 115:57 until we heard a crash. Immediately all the windows fogged up. We could no longer see anything, as if condensation had covered all the glass at the same time. 116:08 The girl started screaming. My friend and I thought, well it is time to get out of here. 116:14 He started the car and took off, trying to make his way through the fog in the fogged up glass. 116:19 Eventually we reached the end of the road, but this time the exit was blocked by a fallen tree. 116:25 That scared us at the moment, although we tried not to make too much of it. So we turned around and got out of there. 116:32 Five years passed and a co-worker began talking about that road. It turned out that one of his friends, he and their girlfriends, had gone there to ride four-wheelers. 116:41 His friend ended up going off alone into a wooded area, only to return later without his four-wheeler, running for his life and screaming. 116:50 They wasted no time trying to understand what had happened. They left in a hurry only to discover that the exit was blocked by a fallen tree. 116:58 He did a little research and apparently someone had been murdered there after being trapped by trees blocking the road. 117:05 I never took the time to verify what he found. Maybe because I am scared to think about what could have happened if that was true. Or maybe because I do not want to discover that it was all just a trick of my mind. 117:17 Even so, I will never forget my own experiences in that place. The road is especially famous and popular for its ghost stories. 117:25 One of the best known legends speaks of an albino who lives somewhere along the road with glowing eyes. 117:31 All I have heard about him is that he is a cannibal, but friendly. 117:35 Until he invites you to his house to try his homemade moonshine. 117:40 Either way, you probably do not want to discover the truth for yourself. 117:44 After doing a little research, I discovered that it all happened on Constitution Drive in Pennsylvania. 117:50 I saw a video where a woman claims to have captured Constitution's most famous ghost story, the man and his dog. 117:58 According to the legend, that man was walking his dog one day when he was hit by a train. He lost a leg, was mortally wounded, and ended up bleeding to death. 118:08 Some say that man can still be seen walking up and down Constitution with his dogs whose eyes glow red. 118:15 Constitution is a truly strange place to visit at night. There are tons of weird, insane, and terrifying stories that are always told about that road. 118:24 When you go there at night, you can hear strange noises, almost as if someone were whistling a melody at you. 118:35 Story 20. 118:37 I come from a remote island called Rendova, located in the Solomon Islands, although I have since moved abroad. 118:44 Across from the island there is another one called Tetapare. The history of Tetapare is truly interesting because it was completely abandoned by its inhabitants a few centuries ago. 118:54 The villagers fled the island and moved to neighboring islands like mine. 118:59 Today, several centuries later, because of the absence of humans, the island is known for its biodiversity. 119:06 Some researchers arrive from time to time to study the place. If you are looking for remote and interesting places to travel after the pandemic, I highly recommend it. The most interesting part of Tetapare to me was always why everyone simply left. 119:21 If you had lived there in those days, it would have been an excellent place to settle. It had volcanic soil ideal for farming, abundant fresh water, and animals that were easy to hunt. 119:32 The official version that is told is that there was a great disease and that people started dying everywhere, so the villagers fled to get away from the illness. 119:41 However, the island is so large that realistically, if someone wanted to separate from the others, it would not have been that difficult. 119:50 You could be self-sufficient in other parts of the island. 119:54 The story I was told growing up is a little different. In those times our people loved to fight. 119:59 A group from my island, Rendova, came to Tetapare to fight. 120:04 However, when they arrived they found numerous unburied bodies. All the large canoes that belonged to the people of Tetapare were gone. 120:12 Leaving in such a hurry and not even burying their dead was truly strange. 120:16 In those days they thought spirits had done that to those people. 120:20 Even so, the people of Rendova decided to establish villages there against their better judgment. 120:26 Over time, they also fled because the spirits that had supposedly decimated Tetapari's population began attacking the newly founded villages. 120:35 Since then, the island has remained uninhabited, except for some eco-villages that tourists visit from time to time. 120:42 Today we go to Tetapare maybe for a picnic or to hunt. 120:46 However, we are extremely cautious because the island is believed to still be very wild. 120:51 Due to the lack of humans, it is said that spirits roam freely. 120:55 I have some strange stories about going hunting there, and I think it is time to tell some of them. 121:01 The island is said to be wild because no churches have been built on it yet. For that reason, it is said that the spirits remain free. 121:09 Since I was a child, I went hunting on Tetapare. They have a problem with wild boars which destroy their natural habitat, so hunting is encouraged. 121:18 As a result of chasing wild boars across the island, I know quite well where things are. 121:24 A few years ago when I was younger we were hunting and decided to visit our other relatives in the eco-village. 121:30 I recommend it if you want a unique experience. There was a researcher who wanted to take a look at the island's particular flora and fauna. Since I was the only one who spoke English with some fluency, I volunteered to take him. 121:43 We explored the island fairly thoroughly. 121:46 The problem is that we know that when we go hunting, we should not go too deep into the rainforest. We might not get out, simply because of how dense it is, but also because of the stories about other things. 121:59 At that moment I was guiding this researcher and he had a navigation device that he used to orient himself. 122:05 The day was ending and I wanted to return to the village. 122:09 I did not want to camp in the middle of the night without shelter, the way we usually do. 122:13 Our normal way of moving around is to leave the rainforest toward the coast and from there walk wherever we need to go. 122:20 We do not want to get lost among the vegetation. 122:24 I knew where we were and I knew which way led to the coast. So I told the researcher, let's go this way. 122:31 That was when things got strange. His device said the coast was in a completely different direction from the one I knew was correct. 122:39 I had heard stories of people who go hunting, lose their minds, and walk straight into the jungle, never to come out again. 122:47 At that moment I had to question my own brain because what his device said was completely different from what I knew. 122:53 But then I understood that maybe the device was malfunctioning. And I was not willing to risk disappearing into the rainforest by following it. 123:01 I had walked through that jungle thousands of times. I decided to trust my instinct. 123:07 I told the researcher that I thought his device was wrong. He did not like that at all and tried to argue with me, insisting that I was wrong. 123:16 But I knew something was not right. 123:18 I did not want to waste time arguing. 123:21 I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. 123:24 Basically, I told him, I am going the way I know to reach the coast. You can follow your device if you want, but I am not going to follow you because you are wrong. We could die. 123:36 To summarize the story, I followed the direction I knew, and surprise, we reached the coast. 123:42 The thing is that if we had followed his device, we would have ended up in the densest part of the island, where people are known to have disappeared. 123:50 When we returned to the eco-village, he apologized and checked his device to see if it was broken, but surprise again, it was working perfectly. 124:04 Story 21 I worked at a bar that was about two and a half miles away in the neighboring town. I usually finished quite late, around one or two in the morning, and I had to ride my bicycle back home. 124:17 The only possible route was a small road that crossed through some fairly large woods. There was a stretch of about half a mile without any street lights. It was completely dark. 124:28 One night while I was pedaling through the woods I began to hear a loud screeching sound similar to a small animal dying. 124:36 I got very scared so I started pedaling faster. 124:39 I kept hearing it and it seemed to be getting closer to me. 124:43 I used the camera light on my phone to guide myself, although it was not completely impossible to see without it. 124:50 I pointed the phone backward, and I swear I managed to see some humanoid creature running on all fours toward me. 124:57 Call it mind games if you want, but it was very vivid. 125:00 I kept pedaling as fast as I could. 125:03 Since I have practiced long distance cycling since I was young, I like to think I am reasonably fast. 125:09 However, I still kept hearing the screeching and the light tapping of the footsteps of whatever was chasing me. I tried to turn off my phone's light. 125:17 After a few seconds I managed to do it. 125:20 Then the tapping started to become quieter and I heard one final screech from that thing. 125:26 I had never felt so much fear in my life. 125:29 A few days later I was making the same ride back on my bicycle. 125:33 After pedaling for a few minutes, I heard the same scream I had heard the first time. I was terrified. The first time had not been just some stupid coincidence. This time it sounded far away and did not seem directed at me. 125:46 I kept the light off, assuming that whatever made that sound could not see me. But I began pedaling hard toward home. 125:53 This is where everything gets worse. From the entire forest in every direction, I heard what had to be at least ten more screams. 126:01 They all sounded exactly the same, as if they were in harmony. 126:06 I honestly thought it was the end and that I was going to die at any second, but luckily I managed to get home. 126:12 I do not know what that is, but I know I never want to go back there again. 126:17 For context, in our area there are deer and foxes, but there are no cougars or wild boars. 126:23 I know what both sound like since my house is surrounded by a lot of forest, and neither makes a sound like the one I heard. 126:30 I can still hear it echoing in my head. 126:33 I am completely terrified and do not know what to do. 126:41 Story 22 A few years ago I was working with my cousin on a large ranch in Texas owned by a very rich man. We were going to work with two other people, former army sergeants. 126:54 They were tough guys, men who had seen plenty during the war. 126:58 The two soldiers had been on the ranch longer than my cousin and me, so they knew all the details of the place. 127:04 One day I asked one of the sergeants about the woods. I wanted to know if we could go see them or camp there someday. The sergeant said yes, but only during the day. At night we would not stay there. That confused me. How was it possible that those two guys, almost like John Wick, were afraid of the dark? 127:23 The unsettling thing is that the ranch had night vision cameras installed in the woods. 127:28 Those cameras took photographs when they detected movement, normally of deer late at night. 127:34 The soldiers found two photos on one of the cameras. In them two girls appeared alone beside a deer after midnight. 127:42 Since then they did not venture into the woods late at night. They concluded that one of the girls was carrying a knife or something similar. 127:50 All of this happened on a fenced property miles from civilization. 127:55 I have the two photos. I have seen them. 127:59 One shows a girl about four years old, alone in the woods, with deer around her. 128:04 The other shows a slightly older girl, maybe about eight years old, looking at a deer while another deer looks directly at her. They were not far from the animals. 128:14 The girls were practically close enough to pet the deer. 128:22 Story 23 A friend of mine had just bought a camera and liked experimenting with open exposure. 128:29 I am not sure of the exact terminology, but it is a technique that makes light look stretched out. 128:35 There are probably thousands of other possibilities with that effect. 128:39 So we took some colored plastic cups and went to a part of the woods where we knew there was a trail we could walk on. 128:45 It was almost midnight because we wanted it to be dark so we could clearly see the light effect. 128:51 My friend and I held the cups above our heads and used the flashlights on our phones to illuminate the cups. 128:56 I had a phone where I had to start recording in order to use the flashlight, so I did that. 129:02 The plan was to start at the top of a hill and walk downward, toward the camera, to create some kind of chain of light. 129:09 Correct me if I am wrong, those of you who know about cameras. 129:13 As we were walking down the hill, my friend and I started talking. Suddenly I noticed that his eyes were wide open and he was looking at me as if a creature had come out behind me. 129:23 I asked him what was wrong, immediately getting scared too, and I went quiet. 129:29 He said in a high-pitched voice, Don't you hear that? 129:33 Then I heard it, children laughing. We both panicked and started running downhill, reaching our friend with the camera way too fast. He said to us, What the hell are you doing? You have to come down slowly or you're going to ruin the shot. 129:49 We told him we had heard children laughing in the woods. Naturally, he did not believe us. 129:54 Then I remembered that I had the camera recording so maybe it had captured something. 129:59 I played back the video. The microphone had recorded it perfectly. It was two or three children, maybe around six years old, laughing in the middle of the woods, with no houses, no guardians, and no lights in sight. 130:13 Needless to say, we got out of there quickly after that. 130:21 Story 24 When I was in high school, my cousin and I used to frequently drive my parents' golf cart around the neighborhood. We liked taking it toward the back of the development because that area was abandoned and completely taken over by weeds. 130:36 We knew all the abandoned construction trails that crossed through the woods, and we knew where they connected back to the empty streets, those suburban streets where houses had never been built. 130:47 It was the middle of the day, probably around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. 130:52 We had parked the golf cart after coming off the trail onto the concrete streets at the back of the neighborhood. 130:58 The grass in the unused lots was completely overgrown, with weeds that were probably 5 or 6 feet high. 131:04 We took out the pipe and took a few hits. Then I heard my cousin say my name twice, in a very serious tone. 131:12 I panicked for a second, thinking maybe the police had arrived or something like that, and I looked at him. He was staring straight ahead, completely shocked. 131:20 Then he said quietly, What the hell is that? 131:24 I looked up and down the street, and then I saw it. It was a small man peeking out from the weeds on the left side of the street, about 20 feet away. 131:33 It looked like a naked humanoid, completely covered in mud, crouched as low as a person could possibly crouch while still being able to move. 131:41 It was not human but it had a human shape. Both of us were staring at that creature. 131:47 It leaned back slightly and what disturbs me to remember is that it then ran faster than humanly possible across the concrete street and into the weeds on the other side. 131:57 It was like watching a human move with the speed of an insect when it panics. 132:02 Imagine crouching as low as you can without falling over and then trying to run that way. 132:07 That was exactly what that thing seemed to be doing. 132:10 Nothing needed to be said. 132:13 I released the parking brake, we accelerated, and drove to the front of the neighborhood toward the community center area, probably about a mile away. 132:21 We decided the best thing was to go home. There was a lot of frustrated swearing because there was no rational explanation for what we had just seen. 132:30 We still talk about that story all the time. 132:33 The funny thing is that about a year ago, my parents moved into a bigger house, located about 100 feet from the place where all this happened. 132:42 Once the neighborhood started building in that area again. The second story must have happened about six years ago, maybe one or two years after the first. The timeline is somewhat general, but you get the idea. 132:54 I was hanging out with a friend, his girlfriend, and also his weed dealer, a guy I had come to know pretty well by then. 133:01 I had already stopped smoking but they were all good company and we used to have a few beers together. 133:07 After a while it became obvious that we would have to take the dealer back to his house, so we decided to all go together and use my car. 133:15 It was around 9 or 10 at night. The dealer's house was practically in a straight line down the main road, about 15 minutes away. 133:23 We got onto the main road in town, and for a while everything was completely normal. We were almost at the neighborhood when suddenly police lights pulled us over at a well-lit gas station. 133:34 The situation began to unfold right there. 133:37 The officer accused me of cutting someone off while trying to turn right, even though all the traffic lights had been green and we were in the center lane of three lanes. 133:46 His reason for stopping us was so incomprehensible that it barely made sense. 133:51 But then he ended up recognizing the guy in the front seat, the dealer, who fortunately did not have anything on him. 133:58 They made us wait until three more patrol cars arrived, along with drug-sniffing dogs. 134:03 Of course, the dogs found nothing, and yet they put us through the entire process while searching the car. 134:09 This is where things got interesting because they began pulling out a lot of my occult items. 134:14 A dagger, a wooden object covered in sigils, candles, and some other general tools. 134:20 Are you guys some kind of devil worshippers? they asked. 134:24 I rolled my eyes and opened the trunk for them. There was nothing there except a black robe and a Ouija board I had used for years. 134:31 Of course, they pulled both things out and waved them around, mocking us a little more. 134:36 The encounter ended without much drama because, as expected, they found nothing. 134:41 I hated that they touched all my tools, but I am a fairly calm practitioner. 134:47 We took the dealer to his house and then went our separate ways. 134:50 After that, I headed to my friend's house to hang out and drink a few beers. 134:54 I went home around 2 or 3 in the morning and lay down. Let me tell you something. 135:00 I had never had sleep paralysis or apnea. 135:03 I did not usually dream often or especially intensely, and I could not remember a single time in my life when I had experienced a hallucination. 135:11 So when I saw things, I knew there was something more. I did not wake up completely. 135:17 I was still asleep, but it felt as if my spirit was being carried toward the surface from deep water. 135:22 I opened my eyes, although I still could not see clearly. There was a very strange sound, a rhythmic whispering that seemed to be pushing me toward waking. 135:31 My vision began to slowly expand from the center with a very unusual blue tint. 135:37 I immediately realized that I was not alone. 135:40 I looked toward the room which was being revealed from the foot of my bed. 135:44 Everything glowed with a blue tone from the moonlight coming through the windows at the opposite end. 135:50 A few feet from the foot of my bed there was a tall round table with two tall stools on either side. 135:56 I could barely see it because a perfectly silhouetted goat man was sitting on the tall stool closest to me, looking in my direction. 136:04 He had antlers like those of an elk. The source of the whispering sound was his breathing, as if he had just been running very hard. 136:12 I could not see his features, but it was obvious that he was looking directly at me. 136:17 And I was looking at him. 136:19 I blinked. 136:20 I realized I was experiencing sleep paralysis. 136:24 I thought about blinking more and I got very scared because there really was a seven foot tall goat man sitting in my bedroom. 136:31 Since it was not a usual situation I had to face, I probably stared at him for about 10 seconds before feeling some kind of communication. 136:39 Apparently, that being had just come from doing something terrible to some people, or to one person in particular, and then rushed there to alert me about it. 136:48 His breathing slowed down a little after another 10 seconds, and the being moved to get up from the stool. 136:55 The table behind him moved and creaked as he did. 136:58 As soon as he touched the floor, he simply disappeared. 137:01 I was bewildered, frightened, and relieved. 137:04 I got up, turned on the lights, walked through the house, and everything was completely normal. 137:09 I sat down to think about the whole thing, and the police incident did not even connect in my mind for about five or ten minutes. 137:16 I went outside to smoke a cigarette and look at the lake behind the house and the sky, because the moon was bright and beautiful. It might have been a full moon, although I do not remember clearly. 137:27 I calmed down and went back to bed, feeling somewhat relieved by the connection I had made between the events. 137:34 I do not remember what time it was, because I never looked, but it seemed to be the middle of the night. 137:40 I never had that kind of experience again, or saw anything at night again. 137:45 I never saw that being again either. 137:47 The last story happened not long after, probably less than a year later. 137:52 During that entire period, I worked at a movie theater and had started running around 2 or 3 in the morning after work. It was perfectly peaceful and safe. There was never anyone awake or driving around the area near the house. 138:05 The area had a small triangular layout of roads around the lake, with one road that passed through the woods and returned to the main neighborhood. 138:13 I left the garage and started walking along the road. 138:16 Soon I reached the first curve. The orange streetlights kept the streets fairly illuminated, although that same orange color gave them an unsettling feeling. 138:25 When I turned the corner I saw another runner on the sidewalk coming in the opposite direction on the other side of the road. 138:31 I thought about how strange it was to see another person running at that time of night, so I slowed down and stared at him. 138:38 I realized very quickly that it was not another runner, because most runners are not 8 foot tall ghostly shadow beings. 138:46 Because of the confusion I did not even feel anything at first. 138:50 I only saw that tall, thin being made of shadow run across the entire road right in front of me, between two houses and toward the woods. 138:58 It made absolutely no sound as it crossed in front of me through the middle of the street. 139:03 Where its hands and feet should have been there was nothing but a transition into mist. 139:08 After seeing that and taking a moment to process it, I decided that if an interdimensional shadow being was running at full speed away from something, then I should probably do the same. 139:19 So I turned around and got out of there back to my garage, where I sat in a state of existential terror. 139:25 After about 30 minutes I decided I was going to overcome my fear and run around the triangle, as I had originally planned before having a paranormal incident. 139:34 I did it. 139:36 Unfortunately, nothing happened during that attempt. In any case, those are the stories from my parents' neighborhood. I am not sure whether the apparitions have any connection to the woods, but I have a strong hunch that they do somehow. 139:50 I am an occultist, of course, but stories of this nature are not very different, in essence, from seeing inexplicable beings without any provocation. 139:58 Thank you for listening. 140:05 Story 25 About five years ago something strange happened and today I suddenly remembered it. 140:12 I still do not know how to explain it. I worked an evening shift that went from 11 at night until midnight. 140:19 When I got home I found my dog in the backyard. I went in quickly, took off my shoes and got ready to shower after a long day. 140:28 However, my dog began barking frantically. That was fairly common since he was very protective. 140:34 Even so, I always used to check in case there was any problem when he barked. 140:38 I went out onto the backyard balcony, and there he was, barking downward toward the stairs. 140:44 That was quite unusual. 140:46 I started talking to him, and he immediately stopped barking. 140:50 Then I heard very loud, heavy breathing. 140:53 At first I thought it was my dog panting, but it was not coming from him. 140:57 The sound seemed to come from above while my dog was standing below. 141:02 It was as if someone were hyperventilating, trying to breathe as loudly as possible. 141:07 I could not see anything out of the ordinary but my curiosity took over and I decided to investigate. 141:14 I went down the stairs and examined my yard and also the neighbor's yard next door, since we lived in a quiet suburban area. 141:21 When I got closer to the source of the sound, I suddenly heard the same breathing coming from a yard farther away. 141:28 Every time I got closer, the sound seemed to jump to the next house. 141:32 It always sounded the same. The same intensity, the same tone, and always at the same distance. 141:39 I continued down the street until I reached a curve. My feet began to hurt so I stopped for a minute. Then I realized that because of the curve, I could not see the exact place where the sound was coming from, but it seemed to be right at the edges of a wooded area. 141:54 I was seriously considering chasing it when suddenly a feeling of danger came over me. 142:00 I realized how reckless it would be to keep investigating alone, especially without shoes and with my phone dead. 142:07 Suddenly it felt as if I was being hunted by some animal or predator that was trying to lure me farther away. 142:14 Without thinking twice, I turned around and walked back as fast as possible. 142:18 Maybe it was just my anxiety playing tricks on me in the middle of the darkness, but I could not shake the feeling that something terrible would have happened if I had kept going. 142:28 I never heard that sound again or had another strange experience like that. I no longer live in that area. 142:35 The most reasonable mundane explanation I have is that maybe it was some kind of bird. But what unsettles me most is that since then I have read stories of people following a noise and then feeling that something is luring them into the woods. 142:48 I know many of those stories may not be true or may have simple explanations. 142:53 But if anyone has any suggestion about what I heard, I would love to hear it. 142:59 This happened in the Midwestern United States. 143:07 Story 26 This happened several years ago, shortly after I turned 14. 143:13 My father, my uncle, and I went on a night fishing trip. 143:17 My father and uncle invited me as part of my initiation into fishing. 143:21 I always begged them to take me, but until then they said I was too young. They used to go fishing during the night of the full moon each month because, according to them, the full moon attracted bigger fish. 143:33 I do not know how true that is, but that was what they told me. 143:38 After that particular night when we caught absolutely nothing, I became especially skeptical about that claim. 143:45 However, we had an experience that forced us to return to shore as quickly as possible. 143:50 My father and I packed our gear and went to pick up my uncle. We arrived at the dock around 11 at night and began loading everything onto the boat. The fishing boat was small, but the three of us fit comfortably. 144:02 My father and uncle had installed a 200-horsepower motor when they bought it, so it could go fairly fast. 144:08 We left the dock near midnight with the moon directly above us, lighting our way toward the fishing spot. 144:15 They made me swear that I would keep their spots secret, as if I knew how to get there on my own. 144:21 Either way, that made me feel accepted, so I happily agreed. 144:25 We were about two miles away when the boat began to slow down. 144:29 We're here, my dad said. 144:31 I found it impressive that they could return to the same spot without visual references, only with small islands in the distance. 144:39 Only later did I understand that those boats were equipped with computerized coordinates. 144:44 I had never been that far out at sea, with no lights around us. The moon looked fuller than ever, showing details I had never noticed before. It gave us enough light to take out and prepare our rods. 144:56 At that moment everything was calm, there were no other boats nearby. Only the sound of the sea and the wind. 145:03 Obviously, there were no crickets on the water. We were all on one side of the boat. 145:08 My dad and my uncle already had their lines cast while I worked on tying and baiting my hook. 145:14 That was when I heard a splash on the opposite side of the boat. 145:17 I left what I was doing and went to see if it was a dolphin. 145:21 Dolphins were common at that time of year, although they were rarely seen at night. 145:26 I looked into the water, but I did not see any dolphin or fish. However, I did see a reddish glow coming from deep below. 145:34 It is hard to explain, but it shone in a way similar to fire, and it seemed to move downward as it quickly disappeared from sight. 145:42 My father and uncle asked me what it was, but I did not want to explain what I had seen because I thought they would not believe me. So I simply said it was nothing and moved away from the water. 145:53 At that moment something hit the boat hard from underneath. 145:56 It was a loud crash. 145:58 The boat shook as if a cannonball had struck it from below. 146:02 My dad and uncle let out some curses and I fell to the floor in shock. 146:07 We had no idea what could have done that. They said maybe it had been a shark, but I did not believe that. It did not seem possible to me that a shark could hit and rock a boat that way. 146:18 The anxiety and fear were enough for us to decide to go somewhere else. My uncle and my dad began lifting the anchor. As they were pulling it up, I looked at the water again. right where i had seen the red glow it was there again this time i quickly called the other two so they could see it they definitely saw it none of them could figure out what it was it seemed to be getting larger and we realized that whatever it was it was moving quickly upward We knew we had to get out of there. 146:49 The boat sped away, and for a moment it seemed like we were safe. But when I looked back, I could still see it just beneath the surface, among the waves the boat had created. It was there in the water, and it was chasing us. 147:03 I had never been so scared in my life. 147:06 We were in the vast open sea with whatever had hit our boat from below following right behind us. 147:12 My dad reached maximum speed. The boat seemed to crash into every wave head-on, launching into the air and landing violently on the surface of the water. 147:21 We were all holding on to something by then. 147:24 Otherwise, we would have been thrown overboard and would have had to face whatever was coming after us. 147:29 While my dad drove, I stayed as low as possible, clinging to anything I could. 147:35 My uncle shouted at that thing, asking what it wanted as if it had a conscience. 147:40 Looking back now, I am fairly sure that whatever it was, it wanted to hurt us. 147:45 We were about three minutes from the shore when it stopped being behind us. In our fear, we left everything inside the boat and jumped onto the dock as quickly as we could. 147:55 The dock worker asked us what was wrong, but we really did not know what to say. 148:00 We did not tell anyone after that. It was an extremely terrifying and incredibly strange encounter, something people would probably question. 148:09 Now I am in my 20s. I have told this story drunk once or twice, but people usually laugh as if it is just a drunk story. 148:17 That was the last time any of us went out to sea at night, and we never returned to the same place again. We still have those coordinates saved, not to go back, but to avoid them at all costs. 148:34 STORY 27 About four years ago, when I was seventeen, I had a strange experience on my property in Ohio. 148:43 My house is located at the top of a hill, about a ten minute drive from any town or city. The property has ten acres of pure woods that are completely mine. Beyond that, I am not sure who owns it, but everything is covered in forest stretching as far as the eye can see in any direction. 149:00 At that time, I had invited some friends over to fish and hang out. I gathered three or four friends, plus my brother and my cousin. 149:08 We were smoking around a bonfire near the pond, which was about 500 feet from my house. We started fishing and talking about school, girls, and all those typical teenage things. 149:19 While that was happening, two of my friends were inside my house playing with a Ouija board. I did not realize that until I went back inside about two hours later. 149:28 We sat inside to watch something. By that point we had basically been awake all night, and the sun was about to rise. 149:36 It was still not completely light, but there was enough light to walk outside and see without needing a flashlight. 149:43 My friend John decided to go out onto the front porch to get some air and watch the sunrise. The rest of us stayed inside except for two other friends who were with me near the garage, fairly far from the front porch. 149:55 About ten minutes passed when suddenly my best friend John came running back and slammed the door shut behind him. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, repeating something like, What the hell was that? 150:07 Over and over. 150:08 I was the first to ask him what was wrong because John and I had been friends our whole lives and I had never seen him so scared. 150:16 After a few minutes we managed to calm him down enough for him to explain what had happened. 150:21 He said he went outside, grabbed a chair and sat down while checking Facebook. 150:26 Then everything suddenly became silent. 150:29 He tried not to make too much of it but then he suddenly felt a strong instinct that he needed to run. 150:35 As if if he did not he was going to be attacked. 150:38 He looked around and then he saw it. He described a creature between eight and eight and a half feet tall. 150:45 At first I did not know whether to believe him or not. But as I said, I had never seen him so terrified. I believed he had definitely seen something. 150:55 But an eight foot tall goat man with red eyes. 150:58 I did not think that could be real. 151:00 I paused, unsure what to think about my friends' incredible claims. 151:05 Then my cousin and another friend came back from outside and confirmed that they had also seen something, some kind of black fur crossing the yard at an alarming speed. 151:15 I had been with my friends all night, so I knew they had not gone outside and agreed to make it up, because we would have heard them talking. 151:22 We were all sitting in the living room, and anyone walking on the front porch would have made enough noise for us to hear. 151:28 I know what you are thinking. They were smoking and were probably still high, so your friends were seeing or feeling things. 151:36 But by that time, we had not smoked in four hours or more, so I do not think it was that. 151:41 Since that day, every time I go outside, I always have the feeling that I am being watched, especially when I am sitting on the porch. You can choose to believe this story or not, but I swear to God it happened. 151:59 STORY 28 Working on the ocean can be dangerous. 152:03 Between the waves, storms, marine life and other vessels, it is not surprising that some unbelievable stories came out of my years as a long-line fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico between 2013 and 2018. 152:17 Although I have many anecdotes I could tell, there is one in particular that led me to leave that job. 152:23 It all began like any other trip, preparing the gear, filling the boat with food and ice for the long and difficult run in search of a good catch. 152:32 When we finally left, excitement came over me as I saw the stars and felt the fresh ocean air, with the salt brushing my face. 152:40 It took us three days to reach our coordinates and set our first line. Normally we set six or seven lines a day. 152:47 One of the wonders of fishing in the Gulf is the bioluminescence of the planktonic organisms that accumulate on calm nights, glowing against the hull. 152:56 When you lie down, the gentle movement of the water rocks you like a mother rocking her child. 153:03 I always enjoyed that moment. 153:05 The first 12 days passed without any extraordinary incidents. We had good weather, calm seas, and an abundance of groupers to fill the boat. 153:14 But everything changed on day 13. We woke up to a storm warning and had to hurry to retrieve our sea anchor, a type of underwater parachute that allowed us to drift with the currents during a storm. 153:26 During the night, we rode over the waves for two and a half hours before escaping the storm. 153:31 After making sure we were in good condition, we checked our GPS and discovered that we were over an underwater lake whose name I do not remember, but which my captain called the Devil's Eye. 153:43 I asked him why he called it that, and all he answered was that there was something strange in that area. 153:48 It was just before dawn with calm seas when we felt a hit on the bottom of the boat. 153:54 Normally that would not have been a big deal because of the periodic drops in the sea caused by the current, but this was different. 154:01 I looked at my captain expecting to see him shrug but he was pale. 154:05 Another hit happened. 154:07 Everyone except my captain looked over the side to see if we could identify the culprit. However, the darkness hit whatever was causing it. 154:15 As a crew, we decided to pull in the lines a few hours early since we were all awake. 154:20 After much persuasion, my captain reluctantly turned the boat and switched on the navigation lights, including the floodlights we used for night fishing. 154:29 When they turned on, I heard one of our rookie deckhands gasp. When I looked at him, I saw that he was pointing at something. 154:36 I followed his finger and I saw it too. A single eye the size of a large plate, maybe five or six inches wide, the same color as amber. 154:46 It was about five feet below the hull which was about eight feet deep. 154:50 We stood there staring at that enormous eye for about four minutes. Then we felt the boat begin to tremble and rise out of the water. We watched as that thing kept rising. 155:00 Just as it broke the surface, I saw its skin. It was the color of midnight stars, but dull, if that makes any sense. That was when my captain came out of the cabin with a shotgun. He approached us with the look of a man who had done that countless times and aimed the weapon. He told us to hold on. 155:19 Then he shot the creature. 155:21 The sound that came next can only be described this way. 155:24 Imagine a room full of guitars at maximum volume, all with feedback. Yes, it hurt. I felt like my head was going to explode and tears poured from my eyes. 155:35 The creature submerged, dropping us back into the water with a blow so strong that I thought the hull had cracked. 155:41 My captain ran to the cabin and accelerated. We got out of there as fast as we could, looking back for about 30 miles, until he finally asked us if we wanted to continue the trip. 155:53 We all said no. We told him we needed to go home. 155:57 We unloaded the catch, got paid, and personally I never went back. 156:01 I have no idea what that thing was. and I still have trouble going out to sea and not being able to see what is hiding beneath the waves. 156:14 Story 29 This happened last fall on the banks of the Des Plains River in Illinois. 156:20 I am an avid fisherman, and whenever I can, I try to go out fishing. 156:25 That particular day, my friend Nico and I were fishing at dusk, hoping to catch some sauger and northern pike. 156:32 As the afternoon went on, everything began to grow strangely quiet. The birds stopped singing and the crickets stopped chirping. 156:40 It was a silence beyond normal. 156:42 I said to Nico, Hey, did you press the mute button or something? He answered. 156:48 No, but now that you mention it, it is really quiet. 156:51 It stayed that way for about 30 minutes, until we heard what sounded like growls coming from the opposite bank. 156:58 Nico asked me, what the hell is that sound? 157:01 And the only thing I could honestly answer was, I don't know, man. 157:06 Since it was on the other side of the water, we simply shrugged it off and kept fishing. 157:11 About an hour later, just as it was starting to get dark, the growls began again, but much louder, as if they were closer to us. 157:20 I am not going to lie, that definitely got my attention. 157:24 I began trying to see if I could detect any movement in the woods, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary, until a tree on the other side of the water began to shake. 157:33 It was as if someone were slowly shaking it from side to side. 157:37 As a nature lover, I remembered that during a mating season, deer sometimes rub their antlers against trees, which could also explain the growls. 157:47 I looked at Nico and said, Oh, I think I know what it is. Bambi's dad is trying to have his moment. 157:54 Nico laughed and that made us feel a little better. 157:57 But then the growls stopped and were replaced by something I can only describe as a deafening howl, extremely deep and very angry. 158:05 I have heard coyote and wolf howls before, but I do not think even the largest of them could produce that sound. Nico and I looked at each other, both with that what the hell expression on our faces. I am a veteran, so I do not scare easily. But at that point I was genuinely worried. I started wanting to reach for my weapon, although at first I decided not to. 158:28 Two trees on the other side of the water began shaking violently, and another howl echoed. 158:34 I pulled my pistol from the case. Then the thicker tree of the two shook and broke falling into the water. 158:40 More than half of the tree ended up submerged. What was standing where the tree had been chilled me to the bone. 158:47 I had only seen something like that once in Wisconsin 34 years earlier. 158:52 It was dark brown and gray with long pointed ears, a thick mane, and an elongated snout. 158:59 Although it was about 50 yards from us, it was so large that it made me feel small just looking at it. 159:05 I knew immediately what it was. I had heard stories and legends. The Dogmen. 159:11 I am not sure whether it was hungry or whether we were in its territory, but it definitely seemed to have bad intentions. 159:19 I said to Nico, let's gather our things slowly. We don't want to draw attention. 159:25 We were halfway through packing up when the creature started running toward us. It jumped and landed on the exposed tree in the river. as if it were trying to find a way to cross over to our side. 159:36 Nico said something like, "'Screw this man. Let's get out of here fast.' I had paid too much for my gear to let the dogman keep it. He or she would have to kill me for that. 159:48 I raised my pistol and fired three times into the air, trying to scare it. 159:53 To my surprise, it worked. We gathered our things and ran to the car. We got out of there as fast as possible.' Hopefully from now on the rest of my fishing trips will be dogman free.