Wilderness Frights: Tales of Survival and Unseen Dangers

Can't sleep? Welcome back to another bone-chilling episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast. This is where your deepest nightmares come to life. 

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Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'm part of a volunteer search and rescue organization, and
every year our group takes part in a late summer
retreat full of team building and bonding exercises. One of
these exercises involves night training, which, as you can probably imagine,
involves practicing our search and rescue skills after dark. My
specific job title is s n r K nine Handler,

(00:35):
which sort of encompasses why I joined in the first place.
I always wanted to work with animals. I just never
had the grades to study to be a vet, and
so joining as a dog handler meant the best of
both worlds. I could do something constructive and contributive with
my spare time, all the while playing with dogs. I
use the word play very loosely there, but you get

(00:56):
the idea. Anyway, we were out night exercises when my dog,
who is trained to find human remains, started to alert
us to ascent. I was partnered with a more senior
member of the team at the time, but when I
looked at them for some guidance, she basically said, let's
just go with it. Now. I'm sure a lot of

(01:17):
you are thinking your dog picked up the scent of
human remains. Why weren't you freaking out? Well, the answer
to that is simple. Even the most highly trained cadaver
dog gets things wrong sometimes, and in a place like Washington,
where we get California's annual rainfall on a Tuesday, damp
scents can often confuse HRD or human remain detection dogs.

(01:42):
So when my dog started to alert, our policy was
basically just let him do his thing, because best case
scenario is a false positive, and the very worst case
scenario we find some previously unearthed human remains, which, as
horrifying as that it be, was obviously a major part
of our drop. So the senior team member and I

(02:03):
agreed to part weighs temporarily. She'd wait on the trail
while my dog and I went off to follow the
scent that he'd picked up. Since we both figured it
was just a false positive, it would only be a
matter of minutes before my dog lost the scent, and
then we'd be back on the trail and on our
planned route before we knew it. But then a few
minutes turned into like ten minutes of walking through the

(02:25):
dark woods, and then after my dog started to lead
me down a fairly steep slope, I lost my footing
and took a really nasty fall. The next thing I know,
my chest is on fire, probably from the two broken
ribs that I just sustained, and I could feel blood
oozing from where I'd bashed my head on a rock
on the way down. The first thing I did was

(02:48):
press the emergency alert on my GPS, which signals base
camp that one of the team needs assistance. The second
thing I did was start calling out for my dog
because I'd lost control of his leash during the fall,
which I think scared him so bad that he ran
off or something that or he just mindlessly followed the
scent trail thinking that I was still following close behind.

(03:09):
As you can probably figure, I was not feeling like
my best self. I was in agony. I was confused,
and having dropped my flashlight as well as the leash
during the fall down the slope, I couldn't see very
well either. I just lay there, calling out for Brodie,
hoping that base camp had someone closing in on my
positions so I could get to the damned hospital already.

(03:32):
I don't know exactly how long I was lying there
before someone showed up, but when I heard footsteps getting
closer and closer. I felt this wave of relief washing
over me. I started to call out something like I'm here.
I think I broke something, assuming it was a fellow
S and R volunteer, But the second I heard their voice,

(03:52):
I knew that they weren't with our group. Like I said,
we did all kinds of ice breakers and bonding exercise
as every year there tends to be a couple of
new volunteers. But the voice I heard that night didn't
belong to a long term team member, and it didn't
belong to the new girl or new guy either, as
we only had two new faces on the team that year.

(04:16):
It was a man's voice, and when they started talking
instead of directly helping me, I swear it sent this
chill of fright running right through me. The voice most
definitely belonged to a man, and they started talking about
how I was in a dry creek bed, one that
dozens of people fall into every year. He went on

(04:36):
to say that at least one person dies there every
year thanks to the flash floods the place sees during
the rainy season. Someone falls, they get stuck, and then
they drowned. I went from asking for help to literally
begging for it, but the guy just completely ignored my
requests and carried on giving his little speech about how
often folks go missing or lose their lives out in

(04:58):
that area of the woods. I remember losing my temper
and asking what the hell was wrong with him, and
when he replied with something like, you're not in a
position to talk to me like that, I started to scream,
not wild screams of fright, but help somebody, help, over

(05:18):
and over while I tried and failed to reach for
my flashlight. I also cannot overstate how god damn painful
that was. Having to scream when doing so made the
burning pain in my chest feel so much worse. And
around about that time, I started to hear my dog, Brodie,
calling out for me. He's part Australian Shepherd and he's

(05:41):
a very vocal dog, so I started to hear a
series of a woos and trills and rolled barks, all
of which tended to mean hurry, you're butt up human.
As soon as Brodie started making those noises, the shadowy
figure stopped talking. And then as we both started to
hear the sound of Brodie getting closer and closer, I
heard that guy's footsteps as he made a hasty retreat.

(06:05):
I think maybe a minute or two later, I start
hearing more footsteps, only they're from multiple people that time,
and they came with flashlights. I call out for help
one more time, and the next thing I know, two
of my fellow volunteers are walking up the creek bed
and one shines their flashlight right on me. My first
thought was to tell them about the guy that had

(06:26):
just been talking to me, the one that had talked
about the accidental deaths in the way that made me
think that they weren't so accidental. I know that might
sound kind of crazy, but the way he talked about them,
like those deaths made him happy. It was one of
the creepiest encounters of my entire life. So yeah. I
told my two rescuers about the stranger, and one of

(06:48):
the first things they did before administering first aid was
to make sure that he was actually gone. One guy
shown his flashlight all around while the other started asking me,
will you push and both later said that they were
scared that that creepy guy had been the cause of
my injuries. Hence, one asked if I was pushed or not,
and then asked if I was sure about that when

(07:10):
I said no. Then. Don't get me wrong, I was
terrified that he was about to do something, especially since
I was basically incapable of getting away from him. But
he didn't cause me to slip. He was just there
to see it or maybe hear it. But that obviously
raises the question of what the hell was he doing
out there in the first place. My two teammates then

(07:32):
kept me company until the medics showed up with an
ATV and a backboard that they could attach a stretcher two.
I was then slowly driven back to base camp, given
a quick look over, and then we headed over to
a very rural medical clinic once we figured out my
ribs were broken. Once I've been given some pain medication
and the doctors told my team leaders I was stable,

(07:53):
everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and a bunch of
my fellow volunteers came to visit me in the morning
to see how I was doing. And that's when I
finally got a chance to tell every one about the
guide that had showed up in the minutes after my
fall and how his warning sounded an awful lot like
thinly veiled threats About a week later, after I had

(08:14):
been discharged from the hospital and I was safely back
at home, I got a call from that same senior
team member that I'd been with before my fall. She
asked how I was doing, how my recovery was progressing,
and stuff like that, and she then told me that
the team leaders were discussing a change of locations for
the following year's retreat. A couple of other team members

(08:35):
had reported some one walking around in the dark, someone
who definitely wasn't a volunteer, and that after talking it over,
they decided that safety was paramount and that they'd be
looking at alternative locations. In the words of one team leader,
a second run in with that creepy, shadowy stranger was
not something they were willing to risk. My name's Chris.

(09:08):
I'm a longtime fan from Melbourne, Australia, and the story
I've got for you actually involves you and your YouTube
channel in a sort of roundabout way. I met my
girlfriend in May of twenty nineteen and it was her
that introduced me to your videos. I'm not gonna lie.
At first, I did think it was a bit weird
that scary stories seemed to help her fall asleep, But

(09:30):
after a while I started to see the appeal, and
we'd often put on a video while doing the dishes
after dinner. This became something of a long time ritual
for us. Than sometime in late February the following year,
we were listening to some camping stories of yours when
my girlfriend suggested that we pay a visit to the
one in Gadda Valley. One in Gada Valley is about

(09:51):
a four hour drive out of Melbourne and it's a
fairly popular destination for hikers and campers. I know it
probably makes us sound a bit mental to listen to
a load of scary camping stories and then be like,
well that sounds like a good time, sign me up.
But we're actually aware of how rare any kind of
rural crime is. We didn't feel like we would be

(10:12):
in any danger, and we weren't, in all fairness. But
then at the same time, that makes what I'm about
to tell you pretty bloody ironic. So we drive out
to one and Gata and remember the exact date being
the twenty first of March twenty twenty. We bought a
load of camping gear online and we were looking for

(10:34):
a good spot to pitch our tents. When we came
across a couple of other campers. They were standing just
off the trail, and about ten to fifteen meters away
was a burned out utility vehicle and would look like
charred remains of a tent. There was a man and
a woman there, fairly young looking, and the man was
pacing back and forth with his phone to his ear,

(10:55):
looking majorly concerned. My first thought was that these guys
had accidentally set their tent or ute on fire, which
had then caused the other to catch fire. God knows
how they might have managed that, but figuring out exactly
what had happened wasn't the first thing on our minds.
We just wanted to make sure that the couple was
all right. As we're walking up the trail, the guy

(11:17):
thanked whoever he was talking to on his phone and
then just hung up just in time to greet us
as we got closer. It turns out it wasn't their campsite.
They just had come across to it at the same
time as we did and figured they'd reported Since it
was obviously fresh. We could smell that charred, kind of
burned smell from all the way over on the trail,
so he was right when he said that it must

(11:39):
have been fresh. But the guy said that there was
some untouched food lying around too recently purchased stuff, which
made him think that it wasn't just some dick head
teenagers looking to destroy the evidence of their last night's
joy ride. The bloke had actually been on the phone
to the coppers right as we turned up, which was
obviously the right thing to do since someone was already

(12:01):
dealing with it. Me and my girl just kept on
walking after wishing the other couple good luck. It sounds
crazy looking back on it, but at the same time
we didn't think there was anything sinister going on. What
it looked like was that there had been some kind
of horrible accident and someone was potentially hurt. There were
no signs of a struggle, no blood or any other

(12:23):
sort of human remains. It didn't look like what it was.
Not long after we got back, my girlfriend sent me
a link on Facebook to a local news story. The
burned out ute intent that we'd come across belonged to
an elderly couple who had been out camping just like
we had, but instead of getting the help that they needed.
They hadn't shown up anywhere at all, and they were

(12:45):
still considered missing people. There was a big appeal for information,
so obviously me and the missus got in touch to
offer our services, But to be honest, I'm not sure
that we were of much help at all. We'd been
in the valley for two knights, but aside from the
run in with the couple and the burned tents, we
hadn't heard or seen anything even remotely suspicious, and for

(13:08):
a while we started to worry that the couple that
we'd seen might have been in on it in some way.
I mean, we just rocked up and asked if they
needed any help, and then walked off. After a quick
chit chat, the bloke told me that he'd been on
the phone with the emergency services, but I had no
way of knowing that for certain. We'd mentioned them to
the police when we called them, and they told us

(13:29):
that they'd already talked extensively to the person who made
the call, but they didn't tell us exactly when the
call was made, and neither did they give us any
details in the person that had made it. Spoilers, but
we really were just being a bit overly paranoid because
the couple we bumped into had nothing to do with
the missing people, and we found that out for certain

(13:49):
about eighteen months later, when the bodies of the missing
couple finally showed up. It was sad, and I hate
to sound harsh, heer or whatever, but it wasn't really
a surprise to me or my girl. This poor old
couple had gone missing after some kind of accidental fire
had inflicted god knows what kind of injuries to them.
It seemed like they'd gotten lost, gotten hurt, or even

(14:11):
worse than sadly, they'd succumbed to the elements and passed away.
I remember my girlfriends saying that, like, say, they'd been
in the tent whilst it was on fire, they could
have inhaled all kinds of nasty smoke on the way out,
not to mention getting burned and then those burns getting
infected or something. It was just an all round horrible

(14:32):
tragic way to go out, and he really felt for
the couple. But then the news broke that it hadn't
been any kind of accident at all. The elderly couple
had been murdered and their ute intent had been burned
to get rid of any physical evidence their killer might
have left behind. Knowing we'd come across the scene of
a murder like that, and in complete ignorance too, it

(14:55):
was chilling. According to things we read online, the murder
had taken place not even to twenty four hours before
we arrived. If we'd left the day before, we might
have even seen them hanging around their little camp site.
We might have even swapped a good day or two
going past, or at the very best, maybe the trail
being a bit busier, might have saved their lives. Who

(15:17):
felt terrible for their families, for their friends. But at
the same time, we couldn't help but wonder about the
gorrier details. Call it more but curiosity, but my girl
and I were pretty desperate to know what had happened
to that poor old couple. I mean, we spent two
nights in the valley after they were killed, so were
we in any danger at all? Was some one just

(15:39):
hunting people at random? Or had it been some kind
of personal thing. As it turns out, it was neither
of those things. It wasn't some psychoserial killer stalking the
valley for victims, nor had the killer and his victims
ever laid eyes on each other before the murders happened
because of an argument that started over a bloody drone.

(16:00):
The whole thing is going through the courts now, or
at least it was when I had the idea to
write this all up and send it over to you.
I tell you to look it up for yourself. But
it's as confusing as it is depressing. The killer's defense
lawyers are saying that his victim pointed a gun at him,
and that he somehow managed to rush the guy, grabbed

(16:20):
the gun, and then killed the elderly couple, both man
and wife, before he burned all the evidence. He even
burned their bodies too, and there's court testimony of him
saying how he felt terrible for doing it, how he
vomited from the smell. All this stuff trying to make
him seem like a victim of the whole thing too.
It's just gross, man. But anyways, all the best with

(16:43):
your channel and all that, and best of luck in
the future. I dun'no when this bloke's going to be
sentenced or whatever, but I hope it's for a bloody
long time. Fancy killing someone over a drone. It hardly
bears to think about, but Tapsco State Park used to

(17:08):
be one of my favorite places in the entire world.
I grew up just outside of Baltimore in a place
called Woodlawn. Some of you might recognize that name, but
probably not for the best of reasons. I went to
Woodlawn High School, same one that Adnan Sayed and Himan
Lee went to, and the same one made infamous in
the podcast Cereal. For those of you not in the know,

(17:30):
Cyril was probably the first big true crime podcast, and
I told the story of how Adnon supposedly murdered Himan,
who was his girlfriend at the time she was killed.
It cast a long shadow over Woodlawn and Baltimore's reputation
had been in the toilet ever since the wire came
out during my final year of middle school. I used
to love both places, and I spent what's probably an

(17:52):
embarrassing amount of time defending both in various online game lobbies.
But then came the day when I was no longer
able to defend Baltimore or the wider county, and that
just so happened to be the day that I decided
never to visit Patapsco State Park. Ever again. My girl
and I decided to visit during the summer of twenty fourteen,

(18:14):
as Patapsco has a ton of different places to camp
that came with their own table and firing. I had
spent almost my entire life hiking and camping around that park,
hence why it was one of my favorite places, and
that also meant that I knew the place like the
back of my hand. Like how I knew one of
the most secluded and picturesque places to hike was between

(18:35):
the river and the train tracks. He had this stretch
of barely trodden trail right there next to the river
and provided a trained and roll past every so often.
You might think it was a scene from a faery
story or something, which is obviously why I was so
excited on showing my girlfriend at the time, because I
figured if I thought it was pretty, she would go

(18:56):
absolutely nuts over it, you know. Anyway, we drive out
to Patapsco, found ourselves a free camp site, then once
we were all set up, we crossed the train tracks
and started heading for the river. We're about ten to
fifteen minutes into the hike. My girlfriend is absolutely loving
the river and was taking all kinds of pictures on
her phone when suddenly we heard voices from somewhere on

(19:20):
the other side of the water. The river isn't all
that wide, but since it was summer and all the
trees and bushes were in bloom, we couldn't see who
it was until some one suddenly burst up from the
bushes and ran into the river. They looked scared, and
as they were running, their foot must have caught on
a rock or something, because they suddenly just splashed down

(19:41):
into the water and what looked like a pretty nasty fall.
I was about ready to jog up the bank a
little to see if the guy was okay and if
he wanted any help, but then read as I was
about to take off, he stands up, turns around and
yells out no, please, no, And the next thing we

(20:01):
hear is bang, bang bang. Three gun shots. Then the
guy fell backwards into the river again. It was all
over in a matter of seconds. We heard the voices,
saw the guy fall, then he stood up and he
was dead. But I swear I don't think his back

(20:22):
had even touched the water before my girlfriend and I
took off running the split second we heard those shots.
It was just a complete one eighty not in terms
of the direction we ran either. Everything was turned on
its head. One minute that was the happiest I'd been
for many many months, and the next we were quite
literally running for our lives. I mean, I know it

(20:45):
wasn't us getting shot at, but I figured if someone
was willing to do that, they probably didn't want any
witnesses to it either. I think the thing that really
sticks with me was how I didn't run as fast
as I could have. The whole time my girlfriend and
I were running, I was trying to keep my body
between her and the shooter, thinking something like, if anyone

(21:05):
was going to get hit, I wanted it to be
me and not her. I'm not saying that to sound heroic.
It was purely out of instinct. I just remember the
skin crawling sensation that came with it, though, slowing myself
down when I wanted to sprint off through the trees,
all while hoping but I didn't get shot, and then
hoping that if I did get shot, the bullet wouldn't

(21:27):
go through me and hit my girlfriend too. She was
amazing by the way she ran like the wind and
stayed as quiet as possible, and she didn't even start
to slow down until we were safely back across the
tracks without a shadow of a doubt. Those were the
most terrifying few minutes of my entire life. If it
was just me on my own, or maybe me with

(21:49):
like a guy friend, it would have been scary all
the same, but with it being my girlfriend with me,
for some reason, that made it all the more terrifying.
I guess there was just that natural instinct to protect her,
But at the same time I knew that if push
came to shove, I wouldn't be able to protect her
from a guy with a gun, especially if that person

(22:09):
wanted to do us harm. The best I could do
was try to shield her, and I'm proud of myself
for doing that, but it's still made for a terrifying
few minutes. We ended up getting out of there safely,
and we called the cops as soon as we were able,
But I don't know anything about the person who got shot,
and as far as I know, their killer has never

(22:29):
been caught. Back in like twenty eleven, I tried to
organize a camping trip for myself and a few friends.
They had been talking all spring about how awesome it'd
be if we all went camping together, just a bunch

(22:51):
of dudes, no phones, just living in the moment, all
that kind of stuff. But then as it came closer
and closer to the date, each of the four dudes
dropped out one by one, citing various reasons as to
why they couldn't attend. And obviously it sucked. I was
super stoked for some kind of crazy adventure, and I'd
also invested what at the time was a ton of

(23:15):
money and all the clothing and gear I thought I needed.
I was kind of heart broken that the trip was
basically set to be canceled, but then it occurred to me,
why not just go on my own. We planned the
trip for mid July, which is easily the best time
to camp in the far Northeast, meaning it was very
much a case of stick to the date or possibly

(23:37):
wait a whole year for the opportunity to resurface. So
I packed my stuff and on the day that we
were due to depart off, I went on my lonesome
for a few days, camping in Acadia National Park for
the three days that I was there. At the time
of my life, I actually figured that I might regret
going so low that i'd be bored out of my

(23:58):
skull for the duration. But I couldn't have been more wrong.
First off, I barely had a moment to myself between
making camp, collecting enough firewood, setting up the bare alarms,
and then getting the fire going. I literally did not
have a spare moment until sundown. Then when it did
finally go down, I was in no mood to relax.

(24:20):
Nighttime in the woods is freaking scary, dude, And since
I was my first night in the woods in probably
ten years and I was on my own, it was
just a lot to get used to in a very
short space of time, at least if I wanted any sleep. Anyway,
I got used to the night sounds in the end,
and there's only so many times that you can play
that scene from the Blair Witch Project in your head

(24:42):
before just it gets kind of old, you know. And
so after that, the second and third night were way easier,
and I managed to actually get some decent bouts of sleep.
Then on the third and final night of my trip,
I woke up in the middle of the night in
some serious discomfort. Also, no delicate way to put this,
so I'll just be real blunt about it. I didn't

(25:04):
poop for three whole days while I was out there.
Every time I even thought about it, i'd picture as
snake slithering up me, having to aboat, and either getting
poop all over me or getting my butt bitten by
a gardener steak or something. There aren't any venomous steaks
up here in Maine, but they'll still bite you if
the mood takes them. So the idea of dropping trowel

(25:26):
and squatting someplace wasn't in the least bit appealing to me,
but I could only put it off for so long.
I was almost constantly busy or on the move, at
least during daylight hours anyway, and that meant that I
needed to eat a lot. But then the more I ate,
the more I needed to take a dump. Until I
finally reached the point where I couldn't hold it in

(25:47):
any more. I got up, put my head lamp on
the tactical settings so that it admitted it just a
little blue light it's harder to spot, and then walked
off into the woods with my wet wipes. I didn't
walk far, but I didn't exactly want a poop right
next to where I was planning on eating breakfast the
next morning either, so I must have walked for at
least a minute or two trying to find the perfect

(26:08):
spot before finally leaning up against a tree and dropping
my pants. I promise that is enough poop talk for
the remainder of the story. Just know that everything went smoothly,
maybe not the best choice of words, and I managed
to wipe and pull my pants up before starting on
the walk back to my camp. But literally, just as

(26:28):
I'm about i dunno eighty to ninety feet away, I
see another person's flashlight shining up near my camp. The
sudden appearance of this other person in the middle of
the goddamn night obviously sent major alarm bells ringing in
my head. And obviously there were a handful of innocent explanations,

(26:50):
but there were way more not so innocent ones too.
So instead of just walking back up to my camp
to see what this mysterious stranger wanted, I switched off
my headlamp real quick and then crept over to a
tree trunk in the darkness and watch from behind it.
Some of you might be thinking, why the dim blue light, Well,

(27:11):
if you've given yourself night blindness by using a big
bright flashlight like my visitor was. It's almost impossible to
detect that real dim shade of blue, and that's why
I was able to turn my head light lamp off
real quick without being seen anyway. So I duck behind
a tree, watching as this guy's flashlight beam is just
sort of moving around my camp. I can't see the

(27:34):
guy holding it, not in any sort of great detail anyway,
but I could see that he was shining his flashlight
on different stuff, like he was inspecting my camp or
looking for something. Seconds later, I see a second flashlight appear,
meaning two people were now walking around my camp site.
The second flashlight seemed to follow the same pattern as

(27:55):
the first for a minute before the two strangers stopped
inspecting my camp and start talking to each other. Now
I couldn't hear every word, but I heard enough to
know that they were looking for me specifically. One guy
asked the other a question. In his reply was just
a little louder when he said he was just here now.

(28:16):
Hearing those words made for one of the creepiest moments
of my entire life. I get that two guys might
just randomly stumble across the camp site after dark. That's
not entirely out of the question, but then to know
that at least one of them had been watching me somehow,
that made me feel sick to my stomach. I felt

(28:37):
perfectly capable of defending myself, but only against things I
could see and things that didn't creep up on me
in the middle of the night when I should have
been sleeping. You also got to remember that I put
down a bunch of little bare alarms, which are basically
trip wires with a noise maker on the end, and
those guys made it up to my camp without triggering

(28:57):
a single one. Sure they had flashlights, but those things
aren't easy to see if you don't know they're there,
even in broad daylight. I watched the two flashlights for
a few minutes longer, trying to figure out what the
two men were saying. I could barely make out a word,
but then I heard one of them say something like
we'll just come back tomorrow. A few more words were exchanged,

(29:20):
and then the two guys turned and walked away from
my camp site. I stayed put from maybe ten to
fifteen minutes, internally debating on what I should do. In
my head, I was almost certain that the two guys,
or at least one of them, would go back to
wherever they were watching me from and then return the
second I showed up at my camp again. I wanted
nothing more than to just run back to camp, pack

(29:42):
my stuff away, and then get the hell out of
there before dawn. But that first thought stopped me. Packing
up camp would make way more noise than I was
comfortable making, and there was also no way that I'd
be able to do that without cranking my head lamp up,
which in turn would make it much easier to see me.
And this was also assuming that the two strangers didn't

(30:04):
have some kind of night vision capability. Now, I know
that sounds like I was overthinking the whole thing, but
I literally had nothing else to do. I was just
stuck there in the darkness, barely breathing, not moving. All
I had were my thoughts and my fears, nothing else.
I stayed exactly where I was for what seemed like forever,

(30:25):
and then I finally started to see dawn approaching and
I felt safe enough to creep back up to my
camp and started to dismantle it. I did it as
quickly and quietly as possible. Then, instead of having some
breakfast like I planned to before departure, I walked all
the way back to where I had left my car.

(30:46):
This took me way longer than it would have done
under any other circumstances, too, because I made a huge
effort not to stick to any regular trails. I also
made a point of stopping at the information center on
the way off the island, where I asked if any
of the rangers had come across a campground in the
middle of the night. They didn't have a clue what
I was talking about. No rangers had been patrolling the

(31:08):
park after dark, and if they had been, there's no
way they'd have just walked up on some sleeping campers
like that. Since the rangers also handle law enforcement in
the parks, I was invited to file a report and
give as much detail as possible if folks were creeping
up on campers in the middle of the night. The
rangers damn sure wanted to know about it. But as

(31:29):
much as I appreciated their concern, I wasn't exactly filled
with the kind of confidence that made me want to
revisit Acadia anytime soon. I'd say the most life threatening

(31:49):
thing I'd ever faced was during a solo camping trip
back in late June twenty twelve. For those of you
that either don't remember Warrens in West Virginia at the
time or otherwise never heard of them, the region gets
these crazy summer storms every couple of years that folks
call de rachos. I'm terrible explaining these types of things,

(32:10):
so here's just the definition from weather dot Gov. De
rachel is a widespread, long lived windstorm that's associated with
a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms. Although de
racho can produce destruction similar to the strength of tornadoes,
the damage typically is directed in one direction along a
relatively straight swath. By definition, if the wind includes gusts

(32:33):
of at least fifty eight miles per hour or greater
along most of its length, then the event may be
classified as a de racho. If you consider that the
mildest form hurricane has wind speeds of like seventy plus
miles per hour, you start to understand that the racho
is basically like a baby hurricane. They can be dangerous,

(32:54):
but to most people they are little more than an annoyance.
But then imagine solo camping in the middle of West Virginia,
seeing the skies darken and realizing the wind is strong
enough to uproot dead or dying trees, and you start
to understand why I got so scared being there. Luckily,
as I was searching for a safe place to camp

(33:15):
that night, I came across a kind of man made shelter.
It was really little more than a single walled concrete pavilion,
which didn't do much to keep the wind and rain
off of me. But in the event of a falling
tree close by, I knew that it might just be
the difference between losing my life or not. But then, apparently,

(33:35):
and very unfortunately for me, I wasn't the only thing
in the forest to have that same idea. About an
hour before sundown, with the wind still howling in the trees,
I heard that sort of thumpity thump of something heavy
running towards the shelter. I couldn't see what it was
at first, nor did I hear the thing until the
last second, because of the wind and how the shelter

(33:57):
was positioned. A second later, I was barely on my
feet when it came hurtling around the corner of the shelter.
It was a black bear, the storm had scared it
out of its wits, which was very bad news for me.
My first reaction was obviously to roar and waved my

(34:18):
arms round like a crazy person, trying to be even
scarier than the storm. But as you can probably guess,
that was much easier said than done. The bear saw
me and jump back in fright and then appeared to
keep on running in the direction was going. But then
all it did was loop around the blind side of
the shelter, then come tearing back around the same side.

(34:39):
I first saw it basically in a rough circle. I
did the same thing I did the first time, jumping
up and down and screaming like a madman until it
ran off again. But then for a second time, all
it did was loop back around. It obviously wanted the shelter.
It was just weighing up whether I was worth fighting
or not. And the scary thing was that every time

(35:02):
it looped back around and got closer and closer. After
a few more loops, I heard its claws clacking on
the concrete just a few feet in front of me,
like it was that close, and the huffs and puffs
of anger and confusion it was making were equally terrifying.
It was getting closer with each loop, until in the

(35:23):
end I had to back off to keep from coming
within clawing distance. Then the more I backed off, the
more ground I gave it, until suddenly it darted into
the shelter and took a swipe at me before backing
off for another loop. At that point, I grabbed my
backpack to use as a kind of improvised shield for

(35:44):
the next time it came in for an attack, and
I had it by the straps and it still had
most of my gear in it, so it was still
pretty heavy, and was planning on using it like a
battering ram too. If the bear rushed me again, I'd
thrust my pack toward towards it too, hopefully giving it
enough of a scare to deterret from any further assaults.

(36:06):
My heart was in my mouth as it came around
for that next pass, and when it did, it once
again looked like it was about to dash into the
shelter a little to try and take a swipe at me.
But then I guess the sight of me holding my
pack like that, though I had changed my size and
shape and appearance, that gave the bear enough of a
scare to back off altogether. It didn't even head in

(36:29):
for a second attack. It just sort of roared a little,
did a kind of three sixty, as it must have
been thinking what the hell, and then it ran off
in the direction it first came. The thing to do
after that would have been to get the hell away
from the shelter, because the bear was most probably going
to come back, right But then where the hell was

(36:50):
I supposed to go? Pretty Much every second I was
out in those woods with no sort of shelter, I
was at a solid risk of being squished by some
falling tree. But every minute I continued to stay in
the shelter was one that I was at risk of
a bear attack. If something happened to me in the woods,
something which meant that I couldn't walk or even run,

(37:11):
then the bear might just catch up with me and
inflict some serious, real damage. But if I stayed in
the shelter and use that same tactic of using my
backpack as a shield, then I might just withstand another
bear attack. I guess that might seem crazy to some people,
but I was actually fairly confident that it wouldn't come back.

(37:32):
But I was absolutely certain that at least a handful
of trees would be uprooted by the wind and come
crashing down on the forest floor, and there was no
scaring one of those off by waving my pack around.
And that's why I opted to stay in that shelter,
even though it meant a sleepless and thoroughly terrifying night
in the storm. A few years back, my boyfriend and

(38:04):
I were on a camping trip last summer in Arkansas.
The first few days were real nice, and then late
one afternoon, we were casually grilling some dinner when we
heard some one loudly yelling for help. It sounded like
it was coming from a few camp sites over and
just out of sight but close enough to hear, so
me and my boyfriend looked it over to the source
of the yelling, and then her face was something that

(38:27):
looked straight out of a horror movie. Some guys leaning
against a camp table with a huge gash across the stomach.
Apparently he had been walking along knife in hand, and
then he tripped and stabbed himself so deep that he
was gushing blood. We laid him down, my boyfriend tried
to put pressure on the wound. Then I pulled out

(38:48):
my cell phone, only to find that I didn't have service.
The only hospital was maybe twenty miles away, so even
if I did have bars, it was going to be
a while before anyone reached us. And that's when my
boyfriend had the idea to ask the guy where the
keys to his truck were. He tells us where and
I went to grab them. Than the next minute, we're

(39:08):
hauling this guy on to the back of his truck,
then driving off in the direction of the nearest hospital.
The whole situation was made infinitely more terrifying for me
personally because at that point we had quite a bit
of blood on us, and blood has always made me
extremely squeamish. I've gotten a bad cut on my hand
before now, ran it under a faucet in the kitchen,

(39:30):
and then woke up on the floor. Moments later, I
see blood, I pass out, so I had no other
option but to drive so that my boyfriend could continue
keeping pressure on the guy's wound. If I'd have stayed
back in the truck bed with him, I'd have passed
out and be fallen out of the truck bed. And
if our guy bled to death in the back, there

(39:52):
there'd be two funerals. But then if I passed out
at the steering wheel, we'd all be dead or severely
injured at the very least. I tried to raised that
point with my boyfriend, but I guess it was him
being protective that had him imploring me to drive and
keep my eyes on the road and not on the
guy's blood. He told me to pull over if I
felt woozy or anything, but I think the pure adrenaline

(40:14):
saw me through, and we made it to the hospital
in exactly twelve minutes. My boyfriend later said that we
arrived just as the guy was beginning to slur his
words and what not, which was obviously a very bad sign.
Any longer in the back of that truck, and he
might not have been conscious when we arrived, which, as
anyone with any medical background will tell you, is a

(40:36):
place you don't want to be. I remember when the
hospital staff opened up the back of the guy's truck
to pull him out, and there was this huge pull
of blood underneath him and my boyfriend and my boyfriend's
pants were completely soaked with it. Once the injured man
was safely handed over, we drove his truck back to
our campsite. And ended up having to watch his dog

(40:57):
as we tried our best to have something that resembled
any normal evening again, which was obviously impossible. The next morning,
the guy's brother showed up to collect his things and
thankfully told us that he'd survived his ordeal and was
going to be okay. It was deeply emotional. If you've
ever had someone thank you for saving the life of
a loved one, you'll know just how intense and humbling

(41:20):
an experience it is. The guy had a huge lump
in his throat, as did we, and we wished him
all the best after helping him pack away his brother's gear.
All in all, it was a horrifying situation, but we
saved a man's life, so not only did we have
a happy ending, but it's something that brought me and
my now husband much closer together and became a memory

(41:43):
we'll never forget. A few years back, I decided to
go camping with about ten other friends at Snively Hot
Springs in eastern Oregon on Friday the thirteenth, which also
just so happened to be a full moon. The drive

(42:06):
out there took a little over an hour, and since
I had work the next day, I decided I wasn't
going to drink much so I wouldn't be hung over
in the morning, and so we arrived set up camp
in a nice spot away from the majority of other campers,
and then we started cracking open the beers. After that,
we took a dip in the nearby springs, and then

(42:26):
after sundown we went on a night walk to enjoy
the mountains illuminated by the full moon and the stars.
It was really dark at this point and people dipped out,
so only a few of us ended up actually going
on this night walk. A side note, the three of
us that went had all been microdosing mushrooms pretty much
the majority of the night. Things were slightly trippy, but

(42:49):
I don't like to get super glonky and or unaware
of my surroundings. So it's the four of us, myself,
two friends, and one of my friend's dogs. We're walking
up hill for about ten minutes, flashlights lighting the way
before us, when we suddenly take a right onto a trail.
We didn't even make it three minutes without hearing some

(43:10):
very loud and very close rustling in front of us.
We stop on our tracks and my friend in the
front of the line starts scanning the area with his flashlight.
Have you ever seen a big cat's eyes in the dark?
The way they glow is chilling, especially when the cat
is bigger than you. So when I tell you I
have never been so scared in my life, I mean

(43:32):
it with all my heart and soul. And so we're
face to face with a big old mountain line. It's
not more than a few yards in front of us.
An instinct kicks in for all of us and we
just back away slowly. My friend's dog, on the other hand,
had an instinct of its own and ran off to
the right of us into the woods, but the mountain

(43:52):
lion didn't cash in on her. It kept those glowing
eyes glued directly on us. We continued to back away
in till we can't back away any more, and sure
enough we see the dogs right next to us, in
which case, what had we heard running up behind us?
We shine the flashlight and holy crap, another frickin' mountain line,

(44:15):
only this one we figured was her baby. On the
other side of the fence was some one else's campsite,
and we had no choice but to turn around and
jump it. We got the dog over first and then
jumped it and ripped all of our clothing in the process,
with my friend cutting his leg pretty bad. And so
we're in some one else's campsite on Friday the thirteenth,

(44:36):
under a full moon in the mountains, tripping on some shrooms,
completely lost. We don't know where the people are, but
we don't care. We got into their unlocked car and
honked the horn for about a minute to scare off
the cougars. We made sure that clearly young let any
and everybody around us know that we weren't robbers and

(44:56):
that there were cougars close by. We got out after
a couple of minutes and were pretty weird, a doubt
that nobody came out to check on their campsite. My
friend swore that she could hear someone screaming or trying
to scream, but her boyfriend insisted that we needed to
leave the camp site. Part of me believed her, though
I didn't hear any noises, but I was also ready

(45:19):
to just gt fell away from that area. We found
the exit of their camp site, and on the way
back to ours, I said my final prayers and I'm
not even religious. We got back to camp and every
rustling noise around me had me convinced that we were
being stalked by these cougars. I had a full fledged
panic attack in the car for about an hour and

(45:39):
was absolutely covered in gnats because of the sun roof
being cracked. Everyone else was having fun around the camp fire,
even the other two who had just gone through the
same experience I had. I was hung over as all
hell the next morning. No showed my job and got
fired when I got back into town, actually, which sucked,
but I didn't give a single f I was just

(46:02):
happy to be alive. Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Click
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(46:25):
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(46:46):
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Thanks so much, friends, and remember Tiny Hammer do beheading windshields.