Shadows on the Farm: Tales of Fear and Family

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Throughout their rich and storied history, the United States's Federal
Bureau of Investigation has examined a multitude of frightening and
unsettling crimes. But in the mid nineteen seventies, the FBI
was tasked with investigating a series of violent instants that
had captured the attention of the American public. It was

(00:20):
a story of alleged brainwashing, militant politics, and innocence lost.
It raised questions that have remained unanswered even all these
years later. This is the story of Patty Hearst. That's
a snippet from the newest episode of my true crime channel,

(00:41):
Saturn Soul. Be sure to go check it out and
subscribe link down below now enjoy the stories. In the

(01:06):
late eighties, I worked on a remote cattle ranch in
a certain US state. As you can imagine, larger cattle
ranches need round the clock security, and back then that's
how I made my living. It wasn't a glamorous job,
and he usually wasn't very exciting, but I enjoyed it.
During this incident, I was working night shifts. Previously, a

(01:28):
worker who stayed in the on site dorms had reported
a trespasser on the grounds, but when security had investigated,
they found no sign of anyone or anything. When I
was doing my rounds that night, though, I was somewhat
on alert because in my experience, when there's smoke, there's fire.
I was patrolling the area near the cattle sheds with

(01:48):
one of the ranch dogs. The cattle sheds at night
could be a pretty eerie place. They weren't noisy, really,
the cattle were mostly bedded down or resting. There was
just a sense of energy in buzz that came from
being in proximity to so many living things, especially at night.
I don't know how to explain it. I'm not a poet.
The area just felt different. When I saw the man,

(02:12):
I almost wasn't surprised. It's like I'd almost been expecting
to see him, And to this day, I'm not sure
what he was up to. When I caught him. He
was just kind of walking aimlessly around the area central
to the cattle sheds. Immediately it was obvious that he
didn't belong though, even from a distance. And how can
I tell? Well, the fellow was wearing some kind of

(02:34):
wolf skin costume. I flicked on my flashlight and called
out him, ready to release the dog if he ran.
The guy just turned to face me. He stared down
my flashlight pointed right at him, didn't even squint. I
came closer, hand resting on my gun holster, and the
fella looked me up and down like he was almost

(02:55):
sizing me up. I didn't like the look of him
one bit. His wolf skin costume was in some kind
of cultural garb, nothing like that. Up close, you could
see it with some kind of wolf rug or skin
that he was wearing. For whatever reason other than that,
he'd looked like a typical regular guy from our state.
Maybe not regular. He was fairly tall, well built, and

(03:18):
the man looked muscular enough to be a challenge. Though
I told the guy to identify himself and to state
his reason for being on private property. He wasn't intimidated
at all, it seemed. He stepped forward, his wolf skin
costume parting just enough to show the wicked looking blade
that hung looped from his belt buckle. Now my dog

(03:40):
began to growl. The guy stepped forward, and I told
him not to move, and then repeated my question. The
man did stop there as I took my hand off
my holster and instead moved to unleash the dog. Wolfman
then threw his head back and led out some actual,
honest to god howl, and this caused the dog to

(04:00):
get spooked, which was not usual for the ranch dogs.
He pulled his leash free from my grip and just
started running off into the night, and in that moment,
I genuinely felt my heart drop. Thanks buddy. Now it's
just me and mister Wolfman. I honestly can't tell if
this was just some sort of strange, elaborate prank, so
I was kind of laughing, but after howling like a

(04:22):
goddamn movie monster, now he's just looking at me with
some type of sneer. Then he starts laughing, and I'm
the dumbest mf or in the world for daring to
ask who he is. It suddenly struck me that this
guy was definitely mentally unwell, and maybe I should radio
for some backup. And obviously it's not a horror movie,

(04:43):
so that's exactly what I did. I spoke into the
radio and told my colleagues to notify the cops and
then get down here. I never took my eyes off
of him either, and he didn't move a step, just
stood there challenging me. It seemed like. Now bear in
mind how extra crazy this hole thing felt because the
guy was wrapped in a wolf skin rug with a

(05:04):
wolf's head, just sort of sitting atop his own I
asked him a third time who he was and what
he was doing on the ranch, and I guess something
about this third prompting triggered him to action, because that's
when he charged me. This guy went from standing there
like a malicious wolf clad clown to barreling straight at

(05:25):
me like a full back. The guy was on me
before I even had time to react and actually draw
my weapon. And I know, I know, you probably think
that I was bad at my job or had slow
reaction times, but you weren't there. It was so sudden
and so surprising. I do replay the incident in my
head sometimes trying to figure out if I could have
reacted differently, but I don't think so. The guy was unpredictable,

(05:50):
this aggressive fella, and people like that just behave exactly
that way. Unpredictably, he knocks me and sends me flying
straight to the ground. Then this wolfman is on top
of me, choking me. Out Of all things, the goddamn
wolf skin head is just staring into my face like
some kind of dumb Halloween costume. I bucked and writhed,

(06:13):
more affronted than anything else, and despite his size, I
managed to throw the guy off of me pretty easily.
I guess our scuffle had woken up some of the
nearby cattle, because now a commotion was starting to come
from the barns. It was the sound of distressed and
bothered cows mooing and stirring with alarm. And I cannot
begin to describe just how strange and unsettling the incident was.

(06:34):
In that moment, there's this guy who's just decided to
invade the ranch, wearing a wolf skin rug, and he's
attacking me sure, and now the cows are all worked
up and they're hollering and hooting. Then the dog. I
guess he got his courage back, because suddenly the dog
comes running back, barking as well, and this caused the
wolfman to back up, momentarily sizing the dog up. I

(06:58):
was scrabbling across the floor at this point, just trying
to get my bearings. The flashlight cast this very eerie
beam on Wolfman, sending his wolf clad silhouette across the
barn wall. The dog was barking at him, and I
kid you not, Wolfman was barking back, just howling and
yapping at that darned dog like they were having some
kind of argument. And the next thing I know, I

(07:20):
hear shouts and running feet. One of my colleagues, his
name is John, had shown up, and of course he's
more prepared than I was, and he's armed with a shotgun.
And you'd think that seeing my shotgun wielding buddy charging in,
Wolfman would have back down. Instead, it seemed like the
commotion and action was only spurring him on, because he

(07:41):
threw his head back and howls again. It was legitimately
a full throated howl, and it still sends chills down
my back just thinking about how insane this guy was.
I scrambled to my feet, ready to engage with this
wolf guy. John wasn't hesitating though. He ran straight in,
cracked Wolfman straight in the head with the butt of

(08:02):
the shotgun, no stumbling, no stuttering, just a perfect action
movie clock right to the sky's head. The sky went
down like a sack of potatoes, crumpled to the floor,
pretty much unconscious, and by the time I reached them,
John was fastening this Wolfman's wrists with a plastic tie
that he had with him, and now, long story short,

(08:24):
the cops got there, and so did the owners and
one of the managers. It turns out Wolfman was the
deadbeat brother of said manager. He'd got into town, got
completely blind drunk, and then decided to pay his brother
a visit. When he sobered up a little, he revealed
it wasn't even intended to be a violent visit. We

(08:45):
were supposed to just accept and understand the fact that
somewhere between making that decision and him arriving, he had
acquired a thirst for violence, a wolf skin rug, and
a huge knife. It was a terrifying incident at the time,
but I didn't mind the payoff and bonus that I
got out of it, and nor did I mind that
manager going out of his way to make sure that

(09:06):
I got the best shifts in that actual pay raise.
But I'll tell you what, though, even with brother Wolfman
crawling back to where he came from from the ranch,
I still got a little unsettled when I was patrolling
that area of the ranch at night, seeing that lunatic
charge me down in his wolf skin rug and hearing
the whales of the cattle is a very sinister piece

(09:26):
of imagery that honestly will stay with me forever. When
I was a teenage boy, I lived with my sister,
parents and grandfather as neighbors to a large farm. My

(09:46):
father was the foreman of the farm, so my family
lived in a property on the grounds. This is a
pretty upsetting story, and sharing it is hard, but I
want people to understand. I'm not sure what I want
them to understand. There's a lot that goes on in
my head around this. There's the way people can change
and it's not their fault, I guess. I also want

(10:06):
people to understand how dangerous farms can be. If you
don't know what a threshing machine is, it's basically a
machine that can sort and clean grain. They come in
varying sizes and they typically involve the grain being tossed
inside a hatch into a set of rollers. These rollers
are usually bladed and separate the grain from the stalk,

(10:27):
be it wheat, corn, rice, et cetera. The farm we
lived on had a number of threshing machines for the grain,
and that's all you really need to know. For backstory.
None of us knew Papa was getting sick, least of
all Papa, and it came without warning. It was the
sickness of the brain, and you don't often get warned
with something like that. Dementia they call it, But it

(10:50):
was like a curse from the devil himself. Honestly, one
day he was fine, and then the next he wasn't
so fine anymore. Papa had been slowing down in his
old age, that much was true, but he still liked
to go and walks around the farm grounds. That day
I was with him. We were just talking casually about
how school was going on and such, and the thresho

(11:12):
machines were whirring nearby, so I don't think Papa could
really hear me. It was just nice to talk to someone.
Then Papa just froze and began pointing at me. He
said something like I was there to kill him. He
said that he wouldn't let himself be taken by me.
I thought he was joking, although it was very out
of character for Papa. He was a very serious, sedated man, though,

(11:37):
And this was a sudden, violent outburst of screaming, and
I barely had time to consider it. Before Papa grabbed
me by the wrist and began dragging me toward the machinery.
He was surprisingly strong for an old man, and I
wasn't weak either, as a teenage guy who lived on
a farm. But I didn't want to hurt Papa by
struggling too much or knocking him back. That's why I

(11:58):
initially underestimated him and was taken aback by his old
man's strength as he yanked me towards the thresher machines.
Of course, it didn't help that he was yelling and
screaming about how I was trying to kill him and
how he would stop me. By the time I realized
Pa had the strength of a man possessed, we were
over by the thresher machines. PA was screaming about how

(12:20):
he wouldn't let me take him, how I was an
agent of destruction. He was yelling all sorts of scary
things that in the moment I just didn't understand. Looking
back later, the event would simply just make me sad
and right then though it was downright terrifying, I tried
to pull away from Paw. It scared me to notice

(12:41):
how close we were to the threshers. Now, one false
move in either Papa or I get a limb caught
or worse. I was conscious of my feet slipping against
the ground as Papa tried to man handle me. All
the while he was screaming. His voice was sounding more
terrified now, like a part of him was aware of
what he was doing and how bad of an idea

(13:02):
it was. We were so close to the threshers that
grain of wheat were pinging against me, and I knew
I needed to get Paul away from those machines. I
also knew that there was a real and genuine danger
to my life if I didn't fight back. I was
so worried about hurting the old man, though I cried out,
hoping some one else might see what was going on

(13:23):
and step in. Why were the machines running without anyone supervising?
In reality, the whole thing had played out in a
matter of seconds. I just couldn't see that people were
coming over to help. All I knew was that in
the immediate moment, I was in severe danger of having
my head forced into that thresher by my grandfather. Now,

(13:43):
Paul continued to scream about how he couldn't let me
hurt him. He had to stop me. I was so
close to the thresher that I could smell the oil.
The din of the machine was filling my head, and
dust and grit were making my eyes water. I could
hardly see I was going to die, Papa was going
to die, maybe both of us. With a herculean effort,

(14:07):
I grabbed Papa around the waist and lifted him up
off the ground. I still have no idea how I
was strong enough. Paul was an old man, but he
wasn't small or frail, not yet at this point anyway,
And I think it was like one of those stories
you hear about with mothers lifting cars off their small children.
Only it was me lifting Paw away from that thresher machine.

(14:29):
And by now I'd become more concerned with the old
man falling into the machine than the idea of him
forcing me in. I just wanted to get my papaut
of safety and we could work out why he was
screaming and trying to kill me later. Pau did not
like being man handled, though, especially in his delusion that
I was an aggressor trying to kill him. He thrashed

(14:49):
in my arms and I toppled backwards. Now Quickly, I
let go of Paw and spun around, grabbing the side
of the thresher machine and halting myself just inches from
the spinning, rotating blades, and Holy f I had no
time to relax, though. Pa grabbed my head from behind.
He was trying to force my face into that thresher.

(15:10):
Pau screamed in my ear. He yelled something about how
I'd regret what I'd done, that I wouldn't take him too.
I could feel the hot air from the machine against
my cheek. The thresher was like some hungry, violent animal
beneath me, and I suddenly remembered that the machine shared
its name with some type of shark. Both of them
were out for blood in that moment, and that's what

(15:31):
crossed my mind, and that's what made me say no.
Screaming it, I kicked back from that thresher, sending Papa flying,
and I no longer had the luxury of worrying about
bruises or scrapes. I needed to get both of us
away from that machine. Thankfully, Pau stumbled backward and I
grabbed him again. I dragged him along the ground, away

(15:53):
from the thresher. I was shouting at him, now shouting
that it was me his grandson, shouting for him to
get a grip on himself. People were finally running over
to my dad, grabbing both of us in an embrace
of generations at that point, and then things were just
sort of this whirling blur of action. My sudden spike

(16:13):
and adrenaline fizzled out then and I just collapsed to
the ground already. I could see Paw had started to wander,
looking confused. The expression on his face in that moment
broke my heart because that's when I knew. I knew
what had gone wrong. I knew what had happened in
his brain, and that everything would change for him from
here on in. He had a number of other lucid

(16:35):
moments after this, but to me, this is one of
the last times I saw Papa. It became something different
after that. It's rare for dementia to suddenly manifest into
violent moments like that, and from what we could gather,
Pa believed that I was an enemy soldier from his
time in the military. It's hard to be sure, though,
because he was never really there. After that, Paw sadly

(16:59):
had to go in to a home because of that
manifested violence, and I found it very hard to visit
him In there. I could remember the man he used
to be, but I could also remember the man he'd
been that day on the farm when my own flesh
and blood was trying to murder me because he saw
me as a stranger. I'm one kid of many from

(17:29):
a former farming family. We sold the business some years
ago because local farming just isn't what it used to be.
Far too hard to maintain. But I'll always have extremely
happy memories of growing up on a farm. We worked hard,
played well, got up at the crack of dawn, went
to bed exhausted, and generally lived a solid, honest existence.

(17:51):
Our family farm was a decently sized grain farm focused
on various crops. At one point, we had lots of
workers and lots of machinery. Also had a number of
silos for storing the grain. Anyone who's visited farming country
has probably seen them, or some variant squat metal cylinders
that stood on stands. Basically, we didn't have those really large,

(18:13):
fancy ones that you see sometimes, but they had presence
enough to be notable and very memorable. Now, I won't
bore all of you by going into details of how
grain silos work. But what you need to know is
that they're essentially huge metal tubes, some tallest skyscrapers, and
after a harvest, they're filled with grain that can be

(18:34):
stored up, packed up, and shipped off to sell. Now,
as kids, my family was strict about farm equipment because
it's farm equipment, you know, they had to be. You
can't just play around with that kind of stuff. One
single era of judgment and you just lost a hand
or a leg, or maybe your scalp, and so here

(18:54):
and there. As little kids would get taken around the farm.
This tour was usually by our mom, and we'd have
to explain to her exactly what a machine was and
why it was dangerous. And this is how she drummed
it into our heads, scaring the Bejesus out of us
by having us talk about limbs being cut off and
all sorts of things like that. But when we'd get

(19:16):
to the grain silos, it was all very vague. Mom
would stop and get very serious for a moment. You
can't teach kids about danger if you make it too
scary and serious. And we'd stand and look up at
that metal silo. We'd say something like these are the
grain silos, and we don't climb up the ladders. Ever,
if you fall in, you don't come out, and then

(19:38):
Mom would hurry us away on to the next part
of our tour, which I think was the thresher machines
and all of the other random stuff, and then Mom
would hurry us away on to the next part of
the tour. Now, I'm not sure that any of me
or my five siblings really thought about what it meant
to fall into a grain silo at the time. To me,
the danger was falling when they were empty, because well,

(20:01):
it'd be a huge fall, way more than enough to
kill you. And as a kid, I had no idea
whether the grain silos were usually empty or full, so
I just figured that was the danger most of the time.
But how wrong I was. You see, falling into a
grain silo when it's empty, Sure, that probably kill you enough,
a quick drop, a sudden death, just like any other

(20:23):
high fall. Getting stuck in a grain silo when it's
full of grain, though, Yeah, that's the actual danger. That's
what had moms so spooked and why we weren't to
go anywhere near those silos. Anyone who grew up on
a farm will know about this. There's all sorts of
data about the ever increasing rain of grain silo deaths,

(20:44):
and around fifteen years ago there was a big to
do about changing the laws so younger farm workers weren't
even allowed to access inside a grain silo, but that
never went through in the end due to farmers protesting,
I guess, And if you don't know, some grain farms
require the work to go inside the silos to walk
down the grain, and it can be very dangerous. There

(21:05):
are all sorts of laws about grain silos and they
differ from commercial farming and independent farming. Lots of differences actually,
And the only law we knew though, was Mom's law.
Us kids did not do any work around the grain silos.
She just wasn't having it. Our dad never seemed too concerned,
but Mom was the real power in our household. It

(21:26):
was her family farm after all, and our grandparents also
agreed with her. The kids don't work in the silos ever,
not while I live in breathe, she said, And I
would later find out that she actually meant that. She
never wanted any of us kids to work in a
grain silo and She knew that it was important work
that had to be done, but something about the silos
spooked her. I guess maybe she had a bit of

(21:48):
a woman's intuition, given what came next. One day, one
of the farm workers, who held a relatively senior role,
simply didn't show up to work. Rick had always been
one of the most reliable men that you would ever know,
hadn't taken a sick day in all of his years
on the farm. He was in his fifties, a beloved
fixture around the farm, a favorite to everyone. Rick was

(22:10):
our uncle, Mom's brother in law through marriage to her
younger sister or aunt, so when he simply didn't show
up one day, it was kind of crazy. Unusual. Work
carried on as normally as it could without him, but
both Mom and Dad were super stressed at Rick's absence.
They were talking about it near by when my younger
sister Alabeth said something like Uncle Rick went into the

(22:33):
grain silo. They questioned her on what she meant, and
Elabeth claimed that she saw Uncle Rick on top of
the grain silo in the night when she was getting
a glass of water. It was true that you could
see the grain silo from that farmhouse kitchen. But why
would Rick be on the farm overnight in the first place. Still,
Dad went over to the silos and he in a

(22:54):
worker checked. I was near by, and I was kind
of nervous about Rick too, and nervous about my dad
going into the silo, so I hung around a watch.
I heard Dad shout out, and I could tell something
was wrong. Immediately. By late afternoon, Rick's body had been
recovered from the silo. I was there when the worker's,

(23:14):
the sheriff, and a couple of his deputies laid Rick
out on the tarp on the ground, and by all
that's holy, I wish I hadn't seen it. You see,
sometimes when you fall in a grain silo, you suffocate.
Being compressed by grain does terrible things to the human
body by itself. And Rick's face looked like it had

(23:35):
taken a beating. But it wasn't the pressure of the
grain that suffocated him. It was the grain itself. He
drowned in it, slowly and painfully, inhaling grains of wheat
after he'd sunk beneath the surface. You could tell by
looking at him too, by the state of the body. Now,
I don't want to be terrible by describing my uncle's body.

(23:57):
Y' all can look up the Wikipedia page for grain
and try if he want the specific details. But even still,
let me tell you it was absolutely and completely horrific
to see. I had nightmares for months after as a kid,
and from what I heard, so did other people too.
I know that members of my family did. Life had
to go on, and since we lived and worked on

(24:19):
a grain farm, that meant the silos had to stay operational.
I think everyone regarded them with a little more fear
and suspicion from that day on. There had only been
one other silo death on the farm many years back
in my grandparents day, and one near mis rescue when
I was younger, but Ric's death hit different for a
number of reasons. The main reason, though, was why Rick died. Remember,

(24:44):
Elabeth said that she had seen Rick climbing the grain
silo at night. That turned out to be correct. Rick
had died deep down in that grain silo within minutes.
He would have sunk deep beneath the grain and then
slowly suffocated over hours. There was no note, so we
don't know for sure, but the way we figure Rick
did this to himself, he drove to the farm late

(25:07):
at night, climbed up into the grain silo, and opted
to step off the ledge and into the grain. Why
who knows people do funny things due to undiagnosed mental
health issues. We suspect it was deliberate, though, because that's
how Dad new to call for help and mount the
recovery mission. When Dad climbed up the ladder and into

(25:28):
the hatch, he'd found Rick's boots, jacket and watch neatly
placed on one side of the ledge, The only indicated
that someone was down there in the dark depths of
the silo. I'm from Sweden and until recently I helped

(25:54):
run a small, remote sheep farm, and without giving too
many details to identify me, the farm I worked on
reared sheep of a certain in demand breed. Their wool
is quite sought after, so even when this story occurred
a few years back, the sheep were particularly valuable. The
farm being quite remote meant we usually weren't bothered by

(26:15):
people and could go about our business without much drama.
What we weren't prepared for was a gang of organized criminals.
They descended on our small family farm one day, looking
to rob us of our livelihood. It's my family's farm
and has been for many many years. These days, I
no longer live or work there, but back then I

(26:35):
had grown up around the farm. I went off to
college in Malma and then came back and worked on
the family farm for another six or so years until
I eventually left. This incident occurred a few years before
I left. The sheep were out grazing and I was
on shepherd duty that day, just me and one of
the farm dogs, Bruno. It was quiet, an overcast afternoon

(26:57):
with a bit of light rain drizzling down. Mostly I
was just kind of killing time, waiting to load the
sheep onto the truck and move them to the other field.
I was scrolling through my phone, checking out whatever I
was into back then, and at one point I heard
the sound of vehicles approaching. This was unusual. Nobody ever
drove on to this part of the land except to

(27:18):
help move the sheep. I was tucked under a tree,
so I peered around and saw a truck pulling up
to the gate. What was this, I thought, nobody should
have been coming on to this land like that. I
crouched down and watched as a man exited the truck
and opened the gate. The truck backed into the field
and another man got out. Immediately. I knew what was

(27:40):
going on. Sheep rustlers. You hear warnings about this sort
of thing, but it always sounds like something out of
a movie. It's never supposed to happen to you. This
is present day Sweden, not wild West, red Dead, Redemption America.
Unfortunately for me, though, it was happening, and quickly I

(28:01):
grabbed Bruno's collar. I didn't want him to run out
at the men and get himself hurt. Luckily, from where
we were under the tree and in the bushes, we
were pretty well hidden. The men hadn't seen us yet.
They didn't appear to be looking around for a shepherd
or anything. Normally, the sheep wouldn't be under constant watch,
but that day I just happened to be preparing to
move them to another field. We only had a round

(28:24):
ten sheep in this herd at the time, but like
I said, they were valuable. Still, I never imagined anyone
would try to steal them, and certainly not like this. Now.
I was pretty far away, but I thought that I
recognized the truck as belonging to a pair of guys
from the near by town cousins or something like that.
They had a reputation for being trouble makers, always up

(28:45):
to one scheme or another, and it seemed like their
latest scheme was simple steal our sheep and then profit.
I guess one thing I was certain of. There was
no way that I was letting these idiots take our livelihood. Honestly,
it was mostly because I was protective of the sheep
and worried the guys would actually hurt them. I figured

(29:05):
I was far enough away to make a phone call
without them hearing me. They'd left the truck engine idling,
which helped mask the sound. I quickly called up the farmhouse,
told my family what was happening, and asked them to
call the police. Then I hung up, not wanting to
risk making more noise. I was already worried about Bruno
deciding to bark at the men, and at that point

(29:27):
they were trying to catch one of the sheep. They
didn't seem to have much of a plan, just chasing
the sheep around trying to grab it. Maybe they only
planned to steal one or two. Someone else might have
just let it go, but not me. I wasn't letting
a single sheep get harmed that day, and I honestly
would fight them to the death if I had to.
The problem was, I'm not some big, tough fighter type.

(29:50):
I'm a fairly skinny guy, and I was pretty sure
that I couldn't take one of them in a fight,
let alone both. My only option was to convince them
that I was more danger than they were. To do that,
I had to stop worrying about Bruno getting hurt. I
tied his lease around a low branch to keep him
safely away from harm's way. I told Bruno to be

(30:11):
a good boy and wait for me. Then I broke
off another branch from the tree and made my move.
I came charging out of the undergrowth, swinging the branch
above my head, yelling every threat that I could think of,
how I was going to eff and kill them, how
they'd wish their mothers never gave birth to them, all
of this sort of crazy nonsense. And these cousins looked

(30:33):
up pretty startled and clearly spooked by my oncoming charge.
And that's when one of them reached into a waistband
of his pants and pulled out a pistol. Of course,
I just froze in absolute terror. I hadn't even considered
the possibility that these idiots might actually have a gun.
I stopped in my tracks a few meters away and

(30:55):
let the branch fall from my hands, and the cousins
sort of just looked at each other. They're almost like,
what the effort you actually doing here? They clearly hadn't
thought their master planned through and definitely weren't expecting me.
Their incompetence didn't matter much though, when they were armed.
They still had a major terrifying upper hand here, and

(31:16):
the one with the gun kept it trained on me
while the other came over and patted me down. Thankfully,
i'd left my phone hidden with Bruno, and I hadn't
thought about it much. I just didn't want it to
get broken, and I was beginning to realize that I
hadn't thought about anything really much at all. I guess
in that sense, me and the cousins weren't that different, really,

(31:37):
and that thought sort of made me laugh in the moment.
The cousin patting me down seem unnerved by this and
sort of stepped away, and we were at something of
a stalemate. The gun wielding cousin took control and roughly
grabbed me, trying to force me to the ground. And
that's when my survival instincts kicked in, or maybe I
lacked survival instincts. Either way, charged the guy pointing the gun,

(32:02):
who was so startled that he didn't react before I
knocked him over, sending that gun bouncing across the ground.
And that's when I realized that it actually felt suspiciously light.
Was this idiot threatening me with some type of baby gun,
some type of toy. And I didn't have much time
to think about it, because then both cousins were on
top of me, kicking, punching, flailing, and they were surprisingly

(32:25):
bad at fighting for two actual criminals. Still, I'm pretty
sure that they would have overpowered me if Bruno hadn't
somehow pulled free and come charging across that field barking
and snarling like some maniac. And that was too much
for them. I guess they abandoned that fight and ran
back to the truck. The engine was still running, so

(32:45):
they just peeled away, thankfully without hitting Bruno or any
of the sheep. Those cousins were apprehended and questioned by
the cops later that day. There were all sorts of
legal complications, and the whole thing was a mess. In
the aftermath, I beat myself up harder than those cousins
ever did. I still suffered nightmares and PTSD for my

(33:07):
decision to just charge them in actually risk getting shot,
even if it was probably just some be be gun.
Facing down that danger, even for just a moment, stayed
with me for years and eventually led me to leaving
the farm for a much calmer and much more chill profession.

(33:36):
This happened some years back. I used to walk my
dog out in the Somerset countryside where there are a
lot of orchards. It's cider country, after all. There was
a large orchard near me where i'd take my Labrador
Retriever as part of one of our regular walks. A
public footpath ran through the orchard, so while it was
privately owned property, like a lot of the Somerset country side,

(33:59):
it was okay to just wander around. This meant it
was usually a pretty populated dog walking spot. I would
often meet other walkers in and around those long, seemingly
never ending avenues of apple trees. Not always, though, sometimes
the orchard would be completely empty, especially on more dreary,
overcast days, and that's what this day was like, classic

(34:22):
British weather, cold and just a bit rainy. Usually on
days like this I wouldn't see many other dog walkers,
and that day was no exception, so it was just
me and Ben, my dog, strolling through the trees. The
air was misted with this sort of rain, and the
atmosphere was really breathtaking, even despite the crappy weather. Ben

(34:43):
was running ahead through the lines of trees and I
saw movement and called out to him, just to keep
him in sight. The movement I had seen wasn't Ben, though.
Ben came trotting up from behind me, emerging from the orchard.
He wagged his tail and I pet him. Move up
ahead amongst the trees I saw was there another dog

(35:03):
walker out? I couldn't explain why, but I was beginning
to feel very unsettled. I never felt unsettled. I walked
Ben almost most dazed and sometimes in the dark. Maybe
it was my own failing, but I never really got
spooked that day, though, something was giving me bad feelings.
Up ahead, along the row of darkening apple trees, a

(35:24):
figure stepped into the gap. He was quite some distance
from me, but I could make out that it seemed
to be a man in a long coat. Something about
him made me feel even more uncomfortable. I couldn't put
my finger on it. As he stepped forward and the
man began walking toward me. There was something about his gait,
something about his posture in the way that he walked,

(35:45):
that felt threatening. I pretended not to see him and
decided to hurry away to the left. I clipped Ben's
leash to his collar in case we needed to run. Now,
glancing over my shoulder, I realized that I'd lost sight
of the guy. Maybe he was just another walk and
I had nothing to worry about. Something told me that
that wasn't the case, though, and I began to hurry
through the trees, Ben at my side. When the guy

(36:09):
stepped out ahead of me, I had to stifle a
very small scream, and I swear to God, it was
like something out of a slasher movie. He just emerged
from between the trees, except now he was much closer
to me, in coming from a different direction. He must
have run through the orchard to get there ahead of me.
I quickly changed direction, hurrying with Bend through the trees.

(36:31):
I could just about see the edge of the orchard
through the misty trunks, and I didn't want to lose
sight of our goal. I also didn't want to get
caught by my would be stalker. So I began to
speed up. So did he behind me, and I could
hear his footsteps now jogging speed, and so I broke
into a run, and so did he. The orchards rose

(36:52):
no longer seemed quite as straight or easy to navigate.
As I ran, I briefly lost sight of the direction
I knew the exit style to be. I didn't want
to stop, and I let the guy potentially catch me,
but I needed my bearings. Whirling around Suddenly, angry, I
turned to face him, but the man was gone, no
sign of him. I tried to peer through the trees,

(37:14):
looking for a shape, a shadow, or anything. I crouched down,
hoping to see past the trunks of the short, squat
apple trees. No sign of the guy. Ben took this
as an opportunity to get excited and start trying to
lick my face, and I had to fight to avoid
getting distracted. I had to take this situation seriously, I felt.

(37:35):
I managed to work out the direction we needed to
head in and started to jog through the trees again.
The fact that I had lost sight of the stalker
wasn't filling me with any confidence. I made it a
few more meters when sure enough, there he was, again,
moving to my right. This time though he caused me
to stop in my tracks. Sometime during his last disappearance,

(37:58):
the Orchard Stalker had his pants and for want of
a better word, he was letting it all hang free,
very gross, and that's when I recognized him. I'd seen
this guy before while walking Ben around this area, and
a few other dog walkers had pointed him out as
acting strangely. There had also been recent talk of a

(38:20):
flasher in the area, but it wasn't until now that
the two things were connected. This guy was the local
flasher great, and now he was following me through the orchard.
Ben began to growl, and I realized that if I
was close enough to the flasher to recognize him, then
he was close enough to catch up with me. He
took a couple of tentative steps towards me, and I

(38:43):
felt a genuine icy terror coursing through my chest. This
is back in the two thousands, too, and we didn't
carry our mobile phones everywhere at all times, so I
had my phone with me, but it was in my car.
Well that's fine, I told myself. I just need to
get back to the car and call the police. The
problem is I needed to make it there before the

(39:04):
flasher got to me. I had no idea what he'd
do if he caught me, and I didn't want to
find out. It was only one thing that I could do. Run,
and so I did. With Ben at my side, I
sprinted through the orchard. Thankfully, it wasn't harvesting time, so
the ground wasn't lousy with fallen apples that could send
me sprawling, and I did have to duck and dodge

(39:26):
the occasional branch, though, especially since I wanted to put
a lot of distance between myself and the flasher. When
I finally reached the edge of the orchard, I had
no idea if he'd been following me. I made for
the stile and quickly climbed over, feeding Ben's leash through
to the other side as he crawled under the planks.
As I was climbing over, I could see that the

(39:48):
flasher was still aways into the orchard. He definitely followed me,
but not too closely, and now he was standing there
pants off, just sort of blankly staring after me, and
from there it was a single open field back to
the car, I got in and immediately called the copse. Unfortunately,
in a small countryside town, they didn't have the resources

(40:10):
to send some one down there right then as an emergency,
and the officer I spoke to and implied that there
had been a number of reports of a flasher too,
and they were looking into it. I guess they did
in fact look into it, as some time later I
was called to identify my flasher and stalk her in
a line up. I drove over to the neighboring town

(40:31):
where the identity parade took place and picked the guy out.
There was no mistaking him, although thankfully he wore pants
that day. Unfortunately, not enough of the other women he'd
also flashed were able to correctly pick him out in
the identity parade, and charges couldn't be pursued at the time.
Kind of a bummer, but what can you do. Thankfully,

(40:51):
it seems like the threat of almost to rest was
enough to stop the guy from going down to the
dog walk and flashing women, at least for a while.
I never saw him down there again, but I did
see him around town on occasion. My son, who was
at the town library one day, also saw him trying
to leave the library suspiciously. He recognized the guy because

(41:12):
I pointed him out to my son previously. The man
was trying to steal books. He exited the library and
the theft alarm went off, and so he reached into
the huge backpack that he always carried, removed a few books,
and then threw them onto the desk, and then just
scurried off. Nobody even tried to challenge him. According to
my son, this was nearly twenty years ago now, so

(41:34):
who knows what this guy's up to or even if
he's still alive. I haven't seen him around town in
a long time, and either way, though, let's hope he
gave up his life of crime or stuck to stealing
library books instead of stalking and flashing women out at
the park. I know you typically share stories about people,

(42:03):
but sometimes God's other creatures can be absolutely terrifying, and
one such story happened to me and my husband when
we were vacationing on a farm a few years back.
The land had a public path that ran through a
number of fields. In past visits, these fields have been
used to graze sheep, and this time though, we were
walking our two dogs along the river when we noticed

(42:25):
that the sheep had been replaced with cows. They were
quite some distance away, on the other side of this
huge feel and we really didn't pay any attention to them,
and they paid no attention to us. We were just
having a nice time. The dogs jumped in the river.
They were fetching sticks and stones and all of that,
and generally playing and having fun. And that's when my
husband told me to look at the cows. They were

(42:47):
all standing on high alert, sort of staring at us
this entire herd. I had no idea what in particular
caught their attention, but something clearly did. Most of them
look kind of younger, these smaller ows, and I watched
them for a moment staring at us, and then when
nothing happened, I went back to playing with the dogs.
It must have been ten or so minutes later when

(43:09):
I glanced back at the cows and saw that they
were now staring at us. Something about us had caused
them to fixate. My husband suggested that we actually leave,
and I decided he was probably right. We were about
half way down the field at this point, with a
river on one side. The gate leading into the next
field was about an eighth of a mile away. As

(43:30):
we made the leave, the cows started to charge, all
of them all at once. The entire herd thundered across
the field. We were still some distance away from them,
so we had time to react, but my god, I
had no idea that a herd of cows could be
that fast. I guess I paused for a moment, because
that's when I realized that some of the cows were young,

(43:52):
these male cows that haven't grown into full blown bowl
status yet, so they don't really need separating now. These
young bulls were clearly the ones spurring the rest of
the cows on because they led the charge. And basically myself,
my husband, and our two dogs were being charged down
by a herd, or rather stampede of the young bulls,

(44:15):
and that's when my husband told me to run. I
pushed the dogs forward and we bolted. My goal was
to get the youngest dog to safety, so I scooped
her up in my arms. She was still a puppy
and couldn't really run that fast, and then me and
the two dogs ran for the gate. Meanwhile, my husband
decided the best course of action was to try and
bait the young bulls into following him, and so that's

(44:38):
what he did, almost like some prize winning matador. He
waved his arms, jumped up and down, and yelled at
the cows to come get me. They started running toward him,
which is when he realized the problem withdrawing the attention
of an entire herd of stampeding cattle. He was now
being charged by those exact stampeding cattle. These cows then

(45:00):
thundered across the field and it was like that scene
from The Lion King if you remember that, except without
the dramatic music or the lion, just a horde of stampeding, snorting,
angry cattle. And looking back, I can see the funny side,
But at the time I was just running, screaming, calling
for help. I tripped and almost fell, making sure that

(45:21):
I kept hold of the youngest dog as I stumbled.
My husband wasn't as fast as I was, and he
was hanging back a bit. I yelled at him to
come on and hurry up. Now by now I'd reached
the gates in safety. My older dog was looking between
me and my husband, probably thinking should we go back
and save him. At the same time, my husband was
keeping the attention of these stampeding young bulls by backing

(45:43):
away toward the river, and he eventually had to wade in,
and it wasn't until he was about waste deep in
the water that he managed to halt the cattle's advance.
When they reached the river bank, the cows sort of
just changed their minds and began aimlessly ambling around. This
allowed my husband to trek along the river bank and
out through the gate, joining us in safety. Now this

(46:05):
story might not be up there with stalkers or serial
killers and all that kind of stuff that you usually get,
but my god, let me tell you, in the moment,
being charged down by an entire herd of stampeding cattle
was one of the most terrifying moments of my entire life.
It's easy to underestimate just how fast they are, and
they were easily thirty or more cows and total in

(46:26):
that hurt they could have trampled us to death with ease.
And it's very easy to underestimate animals, especially if you
live in the countryside and deal with farm animals regularly.
Normally they'll leave you alone, and a herd of standard
cows likely would have. But those young bulls present in
the field meant that they were angrier, more riled up,
and more prone to being startled. And needless to say,

(46:50):
we did not go walking in that field again while
the cows were grazing any more. Hey, friends, thanks for listening.
Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations.
I release new videos every Monday and Thursday at nine
pm Eastern Time, and there are super fun live streams

(47:11):
every Sunday and Wednesday nights. If you've got a story,
be sure to submit them over at my email Let's
read submissions at gmail dot com and you might even
hear your story featured on the next video. And if
you want to support me even more, grab early access
to all future narrations and bonus content either over on
Patreon or click that big join button here on YouTube

(47:32):
to hear about the extra perks for members of the channel,
and check out the Letter podcast, or you can hear
all of these stories and big compilations located anywhere you
listen to podcasts. All links in the description below. Thanks
so much friends, and I'll see you again soon.