September 26, 2025 • 74 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain.
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(00:22):
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Subscribers also get access to the Ultimate episodes.
These are extra long. I'm talking 6-8 to 12 hours
uninterrupted stories with relaxing rainfall designed for
falling asleep, staying asleep all night long relaxing, or just
(00:46):
enjoying hours of long form entertainment.
And last thing before we begin, I just want to say thank you so
much for being here and I reallyhope you enjoy this episode.
I've worked for the United States Forest Service here in
Texas for just shy of 10 years now.
(01:08):
I love my job, and it's rare foranything particularly creepy or
scary to occur. But having worked this job for
so long, I have my fair share ofstories I can share that might
just make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.
For example, we sometimes get Jaguars hunting in the forests
here, a particularly scary big cat, and that's because of what
(01:32):
they do with their prey once they're caught and subdued.
So just picture the scene. You're walking through the trees
on some bright sunny day when all of a sudden you start to
smell something rotten. You look around, but there's
nothing to be seen, just the picturesque view of the Pines
and the sound of birds song floating through the green.
(01:55):
Then something hits the top of your head, something wet.
You place your hand on the top of your head, feeling something
cold and slimy dribbling throughyour hair.
You bring your hand down to see what it is, hoping that it's not
bird crap, only it's something way worse.
It's blood. You look up and hanging up in a
(02:17):
tree just feet above your head is the mutilated, half eaten
corpse of an animal. Guts torn out, skin shredded,
face half eaten with hooves or paws missing, with broken pieces
of bone protruding from cracked limbs.
It seems an utterly bizarre thing to do, but the Jaguar has
(02:37):
a good reason for doing all thisheavy lifting.
If a Jaguar doesn't bother to hoist its kill into the tree, it
risks losing its meal to other, more ground based predators or
scavengers. Creepy.
Yeah, but that kind of natural world stuff is nothing compared
to some of the other stuff I've encountered during my time in
(02:58):
the Forest Service. So this other time I am on a
routine walk through some of thetrails to make sure all the
directional signs and information markers for tourists
are all in order. There's a large rock protrusion
about 100 meters off of this trail, like this big sandstone
boulder that juts out of the earth that has kind of a shallow
(03:20):
cave carved on one side that hasbeen worn away from thousands of
years of wind erosion. As I get close, I see a guy in
what I first thought was camouflage hunting gear hanging
around the entrance. I call out to him, just some
friendly greeting, nothing threatening, and he turns to
look at me. Only he doesn't say a word, he
(03:42):
just runs off through the trees.I start getting worried about
what he was doing in The Cave, terrified he has left a body or
something there, and honestly I was so thankful that he hadn't.
But it seems like he did leave something behind.
I mean, I'm not even 100% sure it was him that did this, and
I've often considered the possibility that it was him that
(04:05):
happened to cross this little find 1st.
And seeing me, he got the idea in his head that it was me that
left this there. He got the idea into his head,
saw me, and just freaked. But when I walked into that
little cave and shined my flashlight around, I saw
something that would completely explain why he was so quick to
(04:26):
run away, whatever his motivations for doing so were.
There was a little circular patch of dirt, one that looked
like it had been raked over to clear some space, and in the
middle of it all were a bunch ofhuman teeth.
I don't know why they were there, I don't know who left
them or why, but I did what I could.
(04:49):
I gathered them up into a littleplastic bag I had on me that had
previously contained my lunch and took them down to the
nearest police station, giving alittle description of the guy
that I've seen run away from TheCave.
I have the usual wild animal encounters, weird noises during
the night, but I have never forgotten those teeth.
(05:09):
I have no explanation to offer up at all, but it certainly does
make for a good little scary story.
Montana has to be one of the most beautiful places in the
world and it's one of the last beautiful places in the United
(05:30):
States that still feels truly wild.
Unlike my native California we're almost every area of
natural beauty is plastered withman made trails, Ranger
stations, and tourist traps. But I don't mean to offend
anyone. I'm sure your favorite hiking
spots in Wisconsin or Washingtonor wherever are amazing.
(05:51):
And maybe it is just a little internal bias talking, having
watched too many old cowboy movies with my dad, but to me,
Montana truly feels like one of the last untouched wilderness
areas in North America. A buddy of mine feels exactly
the same way about it. So every year around September
he and I would take a trip up toBozeman to spend some time away
(06:14):
from big city life out here in Frisco.
We have been friends forever andpretty much spent all of our
high school and college days together.
But since we have slammed into our 30s and did all the boring
grown up stuff like get married,have kids, focus on careers, we
don't have nearly enough time tospend together.
So I honestly relish our year trips out to Montana together
(06:37):
where we can catch up on stuff, get some serious drinking in,
but most importantly indulge in a mutual hobby of ours that's
verged on an obsession. Ever since we were teenagers
hunting, our stomping ground of choice has always been Glacier
National Park, right up on the Canadian border.
(06:57):
It's about a 5 hour drive from Bozeman itself, but we make a
point of driving out for a few days, one to get settled into a
campsite, another few to actually hunt, all before a few
days of drinking back in Bozemanto celebrate our successes or
commiserate our failures. So last year we repeated the
same old ritual, driving out to the National Park with our
(07:19):
hunting gear and tow. We found a good place to park
the truck, hiked a few hours outinto the wilderness, and found a
decent little spot to set up camp.
Every year we seem to be a little more exhausted when the
day ends. Call it just side effects of
getting older I guess. So last year in particular, we
passed out pretty early in our one man tense with the intention
(07:41):
of rising at dawn to begin our day's hunt. 6:00 AM the next
morning, the little alarm on my wristwatch starts beeping.
It's the closest thing we have to that feeling of Christmas
morning. When you're a kid, it's just
pure excitement, jumping out of bed to see what hunting Santa
has left among the trees for us that day.
(08:02):
We have a little breakfast, drink a little coffee, then pack
up and head out. For those of you that are
unfamiliar with hunting or nature in general, there are two
times in a day when birds sing the loudest.
Dawn and dusk. It sounds all pretty to us
humans, like this wonderful lyrical bird song, but it's
(08:22):
actually just pure war cries. What sounds sweet and cute to us
is actually them. Like I'm here and if you come up
in my tree I'm going to mess youup.
So back off other birds for real.
And it's something that soundtracks every morning.
Hunt every single time we have visited Glacier.
(08:43):
But that morning it was almost silent.
We could hear the odd squawk in the distance, but our immediate
vicinity was as silent as the grave.
And that only means one thing, that a large predator is in the
area. Something that's on the hunt.
I remember the look on my buddy's face when he turned to
me and stated that exact thing. How I double checked that I had
(09:06):
my can of bear Mace on me just in case anything happened.
But that area of Montana, right near the Canadian border is
known to have wolf packs roamingaround, and I shuddered at the
thought of what would happen if we were cornered by 1-2.
Aging city boys would be run down in an instant.
We wouldn't stand a chance. We would be torn apart and eaten
(09:29):
alive right there on the forest floor, probably before we could
even get a shot off. Trigger discipline is probably
the most important aspect of weapon safety, but I struggled
to keep my finger off the trigger of my Remington.
Once I had racked around into the chamber, the fear was
palpable. It felt like something was
close, real close, and in woods as dense as the ones we were in,
(09:54):
something could be on top of us in just seconds.
Then, after another mile or so of walking through the near
silent forest, we saw it in the distance.
A grizzly, and it was huge. I've never seen one in the flesh
before that day, and I was completely overwhelmed by the
size of that thing. I mean, they are monsters in the
(10:17):
very sense of the word. Just a flesh tank, a ball of
muscle and sinew perfectly designed to chase down, kill and
shred whatever they take a liking to.
We watched it staring back at uslike this dull expression on its
face, before it sniffed the air a little, catching our scent.
(10:39):
We must have looked like frightened little boys, but to
the grizzly, we were nothing. This was just another day, and
we were just another meal, another kill business as usual.
We just slowly walked on, keeping our eyes on that murder
machine the whole time until it was eventually out of sight.
(11:00):
We're not dumb. We knew we couldn't just hang
around and carry on our hunt with that thing in the area,
especially not since it had our scent.
So slowly but surely, we made our way back to camp with the
intention of packing up and moving to a safer area.
But God laughs at well laid plans.
And about halfway back, as we'rekeeping our heads on a swivel,
(11:22):
trying to keep an eye out for that thing stalking us through
the trees, I heard something heavy bounding towards us.
I couldn't see it right away, and frankly, the idea that
something so huge could just creep up on us like that is
something that is just pure nightmare fuel to me.
But stalk us it did, and in a moment, a pure stomach churning
(11:44):
horror, it knocked my buddy to the ground as easy as a grown
man might knock over a child. I mean, it just sent him
crashing into the dirt and it was on him in seconds.
How I managed to miss that thingwith my first shot is something
I'll never really understand. I am an experienced hunter and I
am a pretty good marksman. But pure panic took over.
(12:08):
Crippling fear just had me turning to Jelly.
The feeling of expecting to see my best friend in the world torn
apart before me is something I'mnever, ever going to forget.
I am not military, I have never had any official training,
nothing like that. So I didn't even think to work
the bolt action and chamber another round.
(12:29):
I just went for the bear Mace, spraying it right in that
thing's eyes as it slashed its claws across my buddy's chest
and face, tearing up clothing and flesh like with deep gouging
strikes. His screams though, that's what
I kept hearing in the quieter moments during the months
following that trip. These blood curdling screams as
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he thought he was going to die. And not just die, be eaten
alive, watch his own guts being torn from his body and chewed up
right there in front of him. But it worked somehow.
The bear Mace just worked. It immediately stopped clawing
at my buddy, started like wrinkling its nose and doing
(13:10):
these weird like sneezes or coughs.
I can't really think of any other way to describe it, but
what was obvious is that it was in considerable discomfort as
the ingredients in the Mace wentto work on its nose and eyes.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it took off again,
crashing through the trees, smacking into the one odd or two
(13:32):
as it obviously struggled to seewhere it was going.
Then it was just a case of checking on my buddy, but Oh my
gosh, he was an absolute mess. The bear's claws had torn off
chunks of flesh from his face, shoulders and chest, and blood
was everywhere. I mean everywhere.
(13:52):
I was frantic too. I kept alternating between
trying to tend to his wounds andlooking around to make sure the
bear wasn't charging us again. Like when I think back to it, I
can only see certain frames. It's not like a movie in my
head, it's like still pictures. Side effect of the adrenaline I
guess. The blood is leaking off my body
(14:14):
as I help him to his feet. He was capable of running but
the attack had stunned him and he shook violently as I pulled
him up and started dragging him back in the direction of our
campsite. I knew the bear Mace or bear
spray or whatever you want to call it had worked, but for how
long I had no idea. And so we ran as fast as our
(14:35):
legs could carry us through trees and over hillocks until we
saw the bright orange fabric of our one man tents.
Another weird memory I have is of my buddy applying his own
gauze bandages. Like you think the guy would be
in major pain at that point, buthe was just running on pure
adrenaline. That bear had torn him up real
bad, but he couldn't feel a thing.
(14:59):
It was just pure survival instinct kicking in.
He was a survivor and he wasn't about to go down easy.
And in a twisted kind of way, I was really proud of him by that
point. My one major concern was that
he'd lose too much blood on the way back to our truck.
I mean, he had already left a blood trail from the scene of
(15:19):
the attack, so the bear would beable to trace our path really,
really easily. So I was stuck in a horrendous
catch 22 situation. Leave him with his rifle and
risk getting attacked again, or have him come with me to get
help and risk bleeding to death or leading the bear onto our
trail. But a primal, angry roar that
echoed through the trees kind ofmade that decision for us.
(15:43):
The bear was still in the area. Not even that it was close and
it was angry. I wrapped like half my buddy's
head in gauze, taped a bunch of it to his chest, and we got
running again. Almost every step we took I
expected that bear to just appear again.
Only this time if it attacked me, my buddy wouldn't have a
(16:04):
rifle to be able to take the thing out.
Although that fact that the bearmaze had worked was actually a
huge comfort, so there was no doubt that it would work a
second time. But we got lucky for a second
time that day. First time when the injuries to
my buddy weren't as bad as they could have been, and the second
when that bear didn't rally for a second attack.
(16:26):
We made it out of the park and down to a place called Ennis
pretty quickly. Visited a medical clinic, got my
buddy all stitched and patched up, then actually headed to a
bar to just decompress and unwind from the nightmare we had
just lived through. Needless to say, my buddy didn't
have to buy a single beer that night.
(16:46):
Not as he told the story of getting full on attacked by a
fully grown grizzly. We're not sure if we're going on
our year trip this September. All this virus stuff aside, I'm
not sure either of us is quite ready to get back on that horse,
but I look forward to the day when we are.
I'm not going to let a horrific encounter like that ruin the one
(17:07):
thing that's kept us close for so many years.
This is something that happens constantly to me and I'm
actually at work typing this outbecause it just happened again.
Three months ago I started working at a packing warehouse.
(17:31):
I'm the youngest one here, beingonly 19, and there's barely any
other females here. The women's bathroom literally
has only one stall and since thevirus it is supposed to be one
person in the bathroom at a time.
This wasn't a problem for a while until one of my Co
workers, we'll call her Jane, started following me into the
(17:52):
bathroom. At first I didn't care as
sometimes she would come in while I was in there and I would
see her feet by the door. I just assumed she was waiting
to go. Then I started to notice she
would only go as soon as I went in.
I gave her the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks up until
recently when I would see her standing right in front of the
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stall while I was in there. I could see her through the
cracks and she would just stand there still with a blank
expression. I thought she was just a creep.
Other people started to notice when she would literally just
leave the bathroom and I would go in after her and she would
just go right back in. She only did this with me and
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when I left she would leave without using the bathroom.
All around the factory I see herstaring at me.
This weirds me out so much but she hasn't really done anything
else. I mean we have never even spoke
to each other until about 5 minutes ago.
She came in again while I was inthe stall.
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She walked closer to the stall door and started to tap it.
She kept whispering I want to come in with you.
I'm freaked out. So I yelled at her no she
started to raise her voice stillsaying she wanted to come in.
I screamed at her to leave. I was just scared for my life
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thinking that she would just slide under the bottom.
She just laughed and said she'llsee me tonight.
I'm getting off super late tonight and I live alone.
I don't know what to do. This happened a few years ago in
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my hometown. I am not going to say where to
protect the privacy of my best friend, but everyone should be
on the lookout for these types of situations as they are
growing increasingly more common.
My best friend and undergrad, we'll call her Maria, and I,
were extremely close. We worked together, had the same
degree, had the same hobbies, most of the same classes, the
(20:08):
same friend group. And lived very near to each
other. As a result, we were with each
other very often, so very rarelyalone.
Keep this in mind as the story goes on.
Maria was picking up her cats from a friend's house and parked
her car on the street outside. She put the cats in the car, ran
(20:28):
to lock the front door, and cameback.
It took maybe 10 seconds to lockit and run back, but she didn't
lock her car. About halfway to her house, she
realized that her purse containing makeup, hundreds of
dollars, checks from work, her passport, all of her IDs and
cards and bills for her apartment with her address on
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them was missing from the passenger seat.
She had been running errands to prepare for a trip to her
hometown, which is why she had all of these things with her.
Pulling over, she looked at her bank account online to see
someone had already tried to usethe card at a gas station 5
minutes away, so she cancelled her card and drove home.
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When telling me the story, I pointed out that whoever took
her purse was so fast that they had to have been watching her
and she agreed. She reported it all to the
police but wasn't expecting anything to come from it as we
lived in an area notorious for theft at the time.
A month or so later, she received a phone call from a
(21:33):
detective saying that they had found all her items except the
cash. Maria told the detective it was
fine as she already had new ones.
The detective paused for a moment and then told Maria that
they would not be returning her items at all since they were now
evidence in an investigation. When Maria asked what she meant,
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the detective told her they found all her items with a woman
who was known to be involved in drugs and human trafficking.
The area where the woman was arrested is also a human route
human traffickers take, and our state is one of the hot spots
for human trafficking in the US.Along with the stolen items,
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there were pictures of Maria from several months prior
walking around our college campus and our work and hanging
out with friends on her birthday.
There were also photos of her friends and other girls that we
didn't know. These people had her hometown
address, her address in the state where we lived, where we
worked, the places we ate and hung out at, her university ID
(22:38):
card, knew that she had animals and where she walked them, where
she did her banking, what kind of car she drove, and who her
friends were. Naturally, her boyfriend, who is
in the military, lost it and hadhis friend sit outside the house
when he wasn't home and escort her to and from work at night.
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For the next few months, it didn't seem like I was a target,
but I still had my boyfriend usemy car to drive me to and from
work for a while, and I bought pepper spray for my key chain.
In the aftermath of finding thisout, we realized a few things.
Despite being followed at fairlyclose range, somehow neither of
(23:19):
us ever noticed somebody following us, Probably because
the person was a woman. Most of the opportunities for
someone to take her, such as walking to her car or house at
night, were probably missed because either her boyfriend or
I were with her. They must have been learning the
schedules of everyone around her, as well as to see when
(23:40):
there were times she was truly alone.
Since they already knew so much about her before stealing all of
her information, there must be abig boss somewhere who has at
least some information about her, including what she looks
like. The one thing they didn't seem
to have photos of was her hikingwith her dogs.
Either they didn't know she hiked often alone, or they were
(24:03):
worried it would be too obvious if someone were to follow her,
thus tipping her off. And perhaps the most terrifying
if they decided after all this time to make a move and steal
her things. They must have been planning to
do something big fairly soon. It's likely they took her IDs in
order to make fake ones to get her out of the country
undetected. Unfortunately I can't give an
(24:26):
update as nothing ever happened after the arrest and every time
she asks about the case, the detective says it's an active
investigation and they cannot disclose any information.
We have never actually seen the photos either.
All of the explanation was done over the phone.
It's been three years since all this happened and even though we
(24:47):
have moved past it, it still terrifies me to think about what
would have happened if they hadn't found that woman.
I urge everyone to be aware of their surroundings.
Be wary of anyone following you,not just men.
Stay with your friends, check inon them to see if they made it
home safe, and always, always lock your doors.
(25:18):
The following story occurred in 2008 during summertime.
A month had passed since school ended and I was excited to be
home. I have a huge family.
At this particular time, there were about nine people in the
household, my mother and father,my four sisters and two brothers
and myself. I am the youngest.
(25:40):
The night was beginning to approach and my mother decided
to put on the movie screen for all of us to watch.
Unfortunately, my father had to work.
Normally we watch our films in the living room area, but
instead, my mother decided to watch the movie in her room.
She had a huge bed to accommodate us all.
Anyway, after getting food and snacks, we turn off the lights
(26:04):
and begin watching the film. About 20 minutes later, I spot
my mother whispering something into my oldest sister's ear.
It was dark in the room and I couldn't quite hear the
conversation. I figured she was telling her to
grab something from the kitchen because my sister rolled her
eyes and proceeded to go downstairs.
I placed my attention back onto the movie.
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Keep in mind that my oldest sister was 20 at the time.
Moments later, I begin to hear an unfamiliar voice come from
below the room. Everyone in the room was fixated
on the film, but even through the volume of the tvi could hear
something. If you walk right through my
mother's bedroom door, straight ahead is the staircase.
(26:45):
On the left. I could see a glimmer of light
shining on the banister that leads downstairs.
It went away quickly as I heard the front door close.
No one seemed to notice. Shortly after, my sister returns
back upstairs with some sort of bag in her hand.
She kept it tucked behind her back and handed it to my mother
(27:07):
and sat down on the bed. At that point I was confused,
but I pretended that I did not see what occurred.
After the movie ended, my motherannounces that it's bedtime.
My siblings and I grunt and groan in irritation and proceed
to go to our rooms. Before I leave, my mother asks
me to throw away all of the empty bags of popcorn.
(27:29):
Now, I did not mind doing this, but I had a fear of going
downstairs by myself, especiallyat night.
Despite my hesitation, I collectthe trash and begin making my
way to the kitchen. The only source of light we
leave on downstairs is the cook top light in the kitchen above
the stove. As I exit the living room and
enter the dining room, I pause and discover something in the
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kitchen. I saw a shadow reflecting onto
the fridge. It appeared to be a man with a
slightly pointy nose and a wide brim hat.
He resembled the monster from Jeepers Creepers a little bit.
The shadow stood there silently as I watched in awe.
I was shocked. I could not tell if it was an
(28:14):
appliance or a kitchen item, butdeep down inside I felt as
though that was not the case. My entire body was paralyzed in
fear. Suddenly the shadow disappears
and I hear footsteps run out of the back door through the
pantry. I scream until everyone comes
downstairs. My mother consoles me and asks
(28:36):
me what happened. I explained to her the
situation, and at that moment I believe she realized what
occurred. Earlier that night, my mother
gave my oldest sister money to give to a drug dealer in
exchange for weed. When I described what I thought
the man looked like, she confirmed that it was him.
My mother has known the dealer for many years, so she was
(28:58):
surprised to discover that he snuck back into the house to
steal from us. Shelves and drawers were open
and some items were on the ground, and apparently the front
door was unlocked. My mother asked us to promise
her to never tell our father about what happened that night.
I have kept that promise to thisday.
(29:27):
I lived in the same house from when I was born until I was 10
years old. It was a pretty typical suburban
home. It was not particularly old and
was finished with all of the cheap outfitting that are
typically used to cut down on costs in mass produced homes.
It was unremarkable. It was a little box made of
ticky tacky in an area full of little boxes that all look the
(29:50):
same, so to speak. It had a finished basement that
was filled with toys. It was what should be a child's
paradise. There were two rooms there.
One was what we considered the main room, which was the room
that you first walked into when coming down the stairs and had
ATV computer and a pull out couch that was great for
(30:10):
sleepovers. The other was what we considered
the backroom. It was smaller, with many toy
filled bins. It was essentially a play room
for me and my siblings. It had a white board on the only
wall that wasn't nearly entirelytaken up by sliding doors to
small storage and utility rooms.I would spend hours down there,
(30:31):
often alone, while my mom went about her business upstairs.
I spent a lot of time, particularly in the backroom,
playing with dolls or whatever little girls do until an uneasy
feeling wood forest me back upstairs to the safety of my
mother's side. This would happen just about
every time I played down there. I would play until I got too
(30:52):
scared and then I would flee upstairs.
I didn't put much thought into my uneasy feeling because it had
happened in that room my entire life and four year olds tend to
not think too much about those things.
Looking back at it, I understandthe fear and uneasiness I felt
in that room. I felt like I was being watched.
(31:15):
The feeling was strongest when Iwas alone in that backroom, but
I would still feel it when I wasin the main room or with people.
A prime example of this is the sleepovers I would have when I
was a bit older, about 7 years old.
I always had sleepovers in the main room because it had the
pull out couch and ATV. The pull out couch was situated
(31:35):
as far away from the doorway to the backroom as possible, but
still had a clear line of sight to it.
I would always take the spot furthest away from the
backroom's doorway in an attemptto get away from the uneasiness
that room caused, especially at night.
I felt like I was being watched on those late nights and I would
look up to the doorway and expect to see a woman standing
(31:57):
there, even though I never actually saw her with my eyes.
It was like I saw her with my mind because even now I have a
distinct mental image of her. She was tall, frail, and gaunt.
She was an older woman, probablyabout 60 or 70, with a messy
frizz of Gray hair that went down to her shoulders.
(32:20):
Her cheekbones were very pronounced, like she had not
eaten in months or like her flesh was starting to decay off
her bones. The thing that stood out to me
the most was her eyes. They were dark and sunken,
vacant with 1000 yard stare. I did not know it at the time,
but after working at an assistedliving facility and seeing dying
(32:41):
people, I realized that she looked like she was dying, or
perhaps already dead. She frightened me, but not as
much as the other presence. The thought of the other
presence still sends ice cold terror through my veins nearly
ten years later. I never saw him, not even
(33:02):
mentally, but I felt the darkness he emitted.
I think I could never picture what he looked like because he
did not look like anything, likehe was inhuman and could shift
into any form he pleased. He felt dark and powerful, like
pure evil. I felt his presence strongest in
the backroom, especially when I felt like I was being watched.
(33:24):
The dark, malicious energy was suffocating there.
I took special care to not look too closely at the slots of the
doors that led to the storage rooms because I was afraid I
would see his dark faceless eyesstaring back at me.
I learned to not look too closely at the darkness.
There were times when I avoided that room entirely, like late at
(33:47):
night when everything felt amplified.
There were also month long periods where I could not go
into that room alone. I don't exactly know why there
were periods when I felt like I could and couldn't be there.
Maybe I had exhausted my courageand needed time to build it back
up again. Maybe there were certain periods
where the presences were just stronger.
(34:09):
These periods would frustrate myparents to no end because they
dismissed my fears as childish nonsense.
They had never spent a night in that basement the way I had with
my sleepovers. They have never felt the gaunt
woman's eyes on them as they slept.
They had never felt the dark, malevolent energy that radiated
from the back of the room in themiddle of the night.
(34:32):
Eventually, after moving out of that house, I began to think it
was just childish nonsense too. I never actually saw anything
unusual, so it was probably justmy overactive childhood
imagination, right? Well, that was what I thought
until I brought it up to my sister years after moving out of
there. My sister is 6 years older than
(34:54):
me, so she was 16 when we moved out of that house.
She was old enough to be over that sort of childishness.
I had mentioned it to her to joke about how dumb I was as a
kid and how my imagination must have gone into OverDrive.
I stopped in my tracks when she told me deadly serious.
No, that house was haunted. It wasn't just you.
(35:19):
She and my brother, who was 14 when we moved, we're fully
convinced the place was haunted without me saying anything about
the basement. She said that her and my brother
thought the basement in particular was haunted.
I took things a little more seriously after that
conversation, but I wasn't entirely convinced.
(35:40):
We were siblings after all, and I talked to each other about the
uneasiness in the basement when we lived there.
We likely colored each other's perceptions and freaked each
other out. At least that's what I thought
until I brought this up to a childhood friend.
This friend and I were pretty close in elementary school but
fell out of touch in middle and high school.
(36:00):
We now go to the same college and have gotten more in touch
because of it. One day when I was with her, I
realized that she had been in the basement countless times
while we played and had sleepovers.
She should also be relatively unbiased because I never told
her about the haunting at the time because I didn't want to
scare my friends off. I mentioned my conversation with
(36:23):
my sister to her and she was unsurprised.
She told me that she had thoughtthe house, and the basement in
particular, was haunted. She hadn't told me at the time
because she didn't want to freakme out.
She went on to say that the backroom was where it was the
worst. I did not tell her that my
siblings and I thought that the basement was the most haunted
(36:44):
part of the house, much less anything about the backroom.
Needless to say, I took things more seriously after that.
What really freaks me out is my nightmares.
To this day, whenever I have paranormal nightmares, it is
always in that basement or the hallway leading up to the
basement door. I have had dreams where I went
(37:07):
down the stairs at my current house only for it to shift to
the bottom of the stairs at my old house.
When I walked down the hallway by the stairs and past the
basement door, there was the woman floating ominously in
another nightmare that I had. I turned into a grotesque and
mangled monster, and I was inexplicably drawn down that
(37:27):
hallway towards the basement. It was like I knew that was
where monsters belonged. These nightmares freak me out
because dreams are often used byyour brain to sort through
information and trauma. When I had these dreams, I had
just about forgotten about that basement, and I've only recently
pieced all of this together. It is entirely possible that I
(37:51):
had an experience that scared meto the point of trauma in that
basement, but I can't remember it because it is blocked from my
memory. In that case, my brain may still
be trying to work through it through my dreams.
If that is true, I hope that memory never comes to the
surface because some things are best left unknown.
(38:12):
I never want to experience anything similar to that
basement ever again, because sometimes childhood fears are
more than just childish nonsense.
I had never ever babysat for anyone before, so admittedly I
(38:37):
was pretty nervous, but if I hadknown what kind of night I had
in store for me, I would have turned the job down in a second.
It was made all the worse by thefact that my parents pretty much
assured me that it would be an easy 50 bucks and that the night
would be over before I knew it. I had a bad feeling about the
whole thing from the start, but my dad actually managed to talk
(39:01):
me out of that headspace. Now I wish I had just trusted my
gut and stayed well away. So I wander over to the house
around 7:00 in the evening, introducing myself to the
parents and the kid before they go over a few ground rules.
At first it seemed like my dad was right, that I was just being
silly, and that if I played my cards right I could turn this
(39:24):
into a regular earner to fund myweekend shopping habits.
The parents were lovely and so was the kid, so I got pretty
chill pretty quickly and ended up sort of enjoying myself
entertaining the kid after they left with the help of Disney
Plus, which I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a huge fan of.
Anyway, everything is going welluntil it comes time to put the
(39:46):
kid to bed. Then things started getting a
little awkward. The kid straight up refuses and
our new happy little friendship starts to quickly deteriorate.
I felt super mean having to lay down the law with the kid, and
he went from crying and wailing to shouting and screaming at me
that like I wasn't his mom, he hated me and I didn't belong
(40:10):
there, Stuff like that. It actually kind of hurt, and I
started to realize that maybe I wasn't ready for that kind of
responsibility yet, to be a parent or a guardian.
You need to be tough enough to be able to kind of like be the
bad guy, if that makes any sense.
And if there are any of you out there that are looking to get
into babysitting thinking it'll be an easy few bucks, please
(40:33):
reconsider. I have done way way easier
things for money before and since.
Things that don't make you feel crappy for having to shout at a
kid. But after a while the whole
temper tantrum seems to have tired the kid out, and even
though he still seems upset withme, he went up to his room, got
into his pyjamas and climbed into bed to go to sleep.
(40:57):
He asked me to read him a story,and since he had actually done
as he was told, I obliged. And when his eyes finally closed
and his breathing slowed, I snuck out of the room and
downstairs to leave him to get some rest.
So about an hour or so later, I was sitting on the couch texting
a friend of mine telling them how babysitting was way harder
(41:20):
than I thought it was going to be.
I am working through the leftover chicken pot pie that my
mom had given me to take over there, catching up on some
episodes of The Mandalorian whenthe family house phone starts to
ring. Thinking it was the parents
looking to check up on me, I pick up, greeting the caller in
the cheeriest voice I could manage, only no one on the other
(41:43):
end responds. I say hello a few more times,
assume it's a butt dial or a badline, and hang up, heading back
to finish off my pie. No sooner that I sat down again,
the phone rings again. I was kind of expecting it, I
suppose. Maybe the parents had gone
through a tunnel or something, Idon't know, but either way I get
(42:07):
up again, head over to the phoneand pick up.
Only this time when I do, I can hear breathing on the other end
of the phone. I give another cheery hello, but
there's just the same breathing coming from the other end.
When the person finally speaks, it's this super deep voice,
(42:28):
obviously a guy, telling me to check on the sleeping kid.
I thought it might have been thekids dad, but there was also
something really weird and distorted about the voice too.
I respond like OK, I'll go check, and the line goes dead
immediately. The kid is fine, sleeping like a
(42:49):
rock. So as much as I'm kind of
creeped out by the weird voice, I figure it must have been the
dad. Maybe the parents had argued, I
don't know. I tried not to think so much
about it, but then pretty much as soon as I'm back downstairs,
the phone rings again. No caller ID, no nothing.
(43:11):
So I answer, unable to prevent this fear from entering my
voice. Big mistake.
Whoever is calling senses this and starts to like, giggle down
the phone line in that same weirdly distorted voice.
What they said next made my blood turn to ice.
(43:32):
Going to snatch him up? Going to snatch up the Kitty
when you're not looking. Going to get him.
I went silent, just totally silent out of fear.
And that's when I heard a Creek in the floorboards above me.
Someone was moving around in therooms upstairs.
I pretty much dropped the phone and bolt upstairs into the kids
(43:55):
room to find that he's still asleep.
Or rather, that he very much appears to be asleep, but that
same deep, slow breathing isn't there.
The more I look, the more like he seems like he's almost hiding
his breath or something. Not only that, but his arm is at
(44:16):
this weird angle that makes it look like he's holding on to
something under his pillow, something he's trying to hide.
In a fury, I pull the pillow up slightly and then realize what's
been happening. Whoever thought it was a good
idea to buy an 8 year old kid a phone is straight up crazy.
(44:36):
But under that pillow wasn't just a phone, there was a voice
disorder under there too. I grabbed both and run out of
the room. Back downstairs where the kid
starts throwing another temper tantrum.
I felt so dumb, completely played by the kid, made to feel
terrified and vulnerable. How could someone be so young
(44:59):
yet so malicious and mean spirited?
The parents arrived home shortlyafterward and I didn't mention a
word of what happened until theyhad paid me in full.
Then I read them the riot act. I was never going to babysit for
them again and they were completely irresponsible letting
their kid have things like a phone, let alone an actual voice
(45:22):
disorder. Turns out the creepy little
gadget with their older college aged kids and the little guy was
fascinated with it and wouldn't give it back.
But I didn't care. I wasn't about to put myself out
there like that ever again. Yeah.
(59:29):
Yeah. Yeah.
(01:12:34):
Yeah.
Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain.
Before we begin, I just want to remind you to follow this
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it'll ensure that you never missan episode.
And if you would like to take things a step further, you can
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Plus, you'll automatically be entered to win every giveaway
(00:22):
that I do each month. Right now there's a PlayStation
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Subscribers also get access to the Ultimate episodes.
These are extra long. I'm talking 6-8 to 12 hours
uninterrupted stories with relaxing rainfall designed for
falling asleep, staying asleep all night long relaxing, or just
(00:46):
enjoying hours of long form entertainment.
And last thing before we begin, I just want to say thank you so
much for being here and I reallyhope you enjoy this episode.
I've worked for the United States Forest Service here in
Texas for just shy of 10 years now.
(01:08):
I love my job, and it's rare foranything particularly creepy or
scary to occur. But having worked this job for
so long, I have my fair share ofstories I can share that might
just make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.
For example, we sometimes get Jaguars hunting in the forests
here, a particularly scary big cat, and that's because of what
(01:32):
they do with their prey once they're caught and subdued.
So just picture the scene. You're walking through the trees
on some bright sunny day when all of a sudden you start to
smell something rotten. You look around, but there's
nothing to be seen, just the picturesque view of the Pines
and the sound of birds song floating through the green.
(01:55):
Then something hits the top of your head, something wet.
You place your hand on the top of your head, feeling something
cold and slimy dribbling throughyour hair.
You bring your hand down to see what it is, hoping that it's not
bird crap, only it's something way worse.
It's blood. You look up and hanging up in a
(02:17):
tree just feet above your head is the mutilated, half eaten
corpse of an animal. Guts torn out, skin shredded,
face half eaten with hooves or paws missing, with broken pieces
of bone protruding from cracked limbs.
It seems an utterly bizarre thing to do, but the Jaguar has
(02:37):
a good reason for doing all thisheavy lifting.
If a Jaguar doesn't bother to hoist its kill into the tree, it
risks losing its meal to other, more ground based predators or
scavengers. Creepy.
Yeah, but that kind of natural world stuff is nothing compared
to some of the other stuff I've encountered during my time in
(02:58):
the Forest Service. So this other time I am on a
routine walk through some of thetrails to make sure all the
directional signs and information markers for tourists
are all in order. There's a large rock protrusion
about 100 meters off of this trail, like this big sandstone
boulder that juts out of the earth that has kind of a shallow
(03:20):
cave carved on one side that hasbeen worn away from thousands of
years of wind erosion. As I get close, I see a guy in
what I first thought was camouflage hunting gear hanging
around the entrance. I call out to him, just some
friendly greeting, nothing threatening, and he turns to
look at me. Only he doesn't say a word, he
(03:42):
just runs off through the trees.I start getting worried about
what he was doing in The Cave, terrified he has left a body or
something there, and honestly I was so thankful that he hadn't.
But it seems like he did leave something behind.
I mean, I'm not even 100% sure it was him that did this, and
I've often considered the possibility that it was him that
(04:05):
happened to cross this little find 1st.
And seeing me, he got the idea in his head that it was me that
left this there. He got the idea into his head,
saw me, and just freaked. But when I walked into that
little cave and shined my flashlight around, I saw
something that would completely explain why he was so quick to
(04:26):
run away, whatever his motivations for doing so were.
There was a little circular patch of dirt, one that looked
like it had been raked over to clear some space, and in the
middle of it all were a bunch ofhuman teeth.
I don't know why they were there, I don't know who left
them or why, but I did what I could.
(04:49):
I gathered them up into a littleplastic bag I had on me that had
previously contained my lunch and took them down to the
nearest police station, giving alittle description of the guy
that I've seen run away from TheCave.
I have the usual wild animal encounters, weird noises during
the night, but I have never forgotten those teeth.
(05:09):
I have no explanation to offer up at all, but it certainly does
make for a good little scary story.
Montana has to be one of the most beautiful places in the
world and it's one of the last beautiful places in the United
(05:30):
States that still feels truly wild.
Unlike my native California we're almost every area of
natural beauty is plastered withman made trails, Ranger
stations, and tourist traps. But I don't mean to offend
anyone. I'm sure your favorite hiking
spots in Wisconsin or Washingtonor wherever are amazing.
(05:51):
And maybe it is just a little internal bias talking, having
watched too many old cowboy movies with my dad, but to me,
Montana truly feels like one of the last untouched wilderness
areas in North America. A buddy of mine feels exactly
the same way about it. So every year around September
he and I would take a trip up toBozeman to spend some time away
(06:14):
from big city life out here in Frisco.
We have been friends forever andpretty much spent all of our
high school and college days together.
But since we have slammed into our 30s and did all the boring
grown up stuff like get married,have kids, focus on careers, we
don't have nearly enough time tospend together.
So I honestly relish our year trips out to Montana together
(06:37):
where we can catch up on stuff, get some serious drinking in,
but most importantly indulge in a mutual hobby of ours that's
verged on an obsession. Ever since we were teenagers
hunting, our stomping ground of choice has always been Glacier
National Park, right up on the Canadian border.
(06:57):
It's about a 5 hour drive from Bozeman itself, but we make a
point of driving out for a few days, one to get settled into a
campsite, another few to actually hunt, all before a few
days of drinking back in Bozemanto celebrate our successes or
commiserate our failures. So last year we repeated the
same old ritual, driving out to the National Park with our
(07:19):
hunting gear and tow. We found a good place to park
the truck, hiked a few hours outinto the wilderness, and found a
decent little spot to set up camp.
Every year we seem to be a little more exhausted when the
day ends. Call it just side effects of
getting older I guess. So last year in particular, we
passed out pretty early in our one man tense with the intention
(07:41):
of rising at dawn to begin our day's hunt. 6:00 AM the next
morning, the little alarm on my wristwatch starts beeping.
It's the closest thing we have to that feeling of Christmas
morning. When you're a kid, it's just
pure excitement, jumping out of bed to see what hunting Santa
has left among the trees for us that day.
(08:02):
We have a little breakfast, drink a little coffee, then pack
up and head out. For those of you that are
unfamiliar with hunting or nature in general, there are two
times in a day when birds sing the loudest.
Dawn and dusk. It sounds all pretty to us
humans, like this wonderful lyrical bird song, but it's
(08:22):
actually just pure war cries. What sounds sweet and cute to us
is actually them. Like I'm here and if you come up
in my tree I'm going to mess youup.
So back off other birds for real.
And it's something that soundtracks every morning.
Hunt every single time we have visited Glacier.
(08:43):
But that morning it was almost silent.
We could hear the odd squawk in the distance, but our immediate
vicinity was as silent as the grave.
And that only means one thing, that a large predator is in the
area. Something that's on the hunt.
I remember the look on my buddy's face when he turned to
me and stated that exact thing. How I double checked that I had
(09:06):
my can of bear Mace on me just in case anything happened.
But that area of Montana, right near the Canadian border is
known to have wolf packs roamingaround, and I shuddered at the
thought of what would happen if we were cornered by 1-2.
Aging city boys would be run down in an instant.
We wouldn't stand a chance. We would be torn apart and eaten
(09:29):
alive right there on the forest floor, probably before we could
even get a shot off. Trigger discipline is probably
the most important aspect of weapon safety, but I struggled
to keep my finger off the trigger of my Remington.
Once I had racked around into the chamber, the fear was
palpable. It felt like something was
close, real close, and in woods as dense as the ones we were in,
(09:54):
something could be on top of us in just seconds.
Then, after another mile or so of walking through the near
silent forest, we saw it in the distance.
A grizzly, and it was huge. I've never seen one in the flesh
before that day, and I was completely overwhelmed by the
size of that thing. I mean, they are monsters in the
(10:17):
very sense of the word. Just a flesh tank, a ball of
muscle and sinew perfectly designed to chase down, kill and
shred whatever they take a liking to.
We watched it staring back at uslike this dull expression on its
face, before it sniffed the air a little, catching our scent.
(10:39):
We must have looked like frightened little boys, but to
the grizzly, we were nothing. This was just another day, and
we were just another meal, another kill business as usual.
We just slowly walked on, keeping our eyes on that murder
machine the whole time until it was eventually out of sight.
(11:00):
We're not dumb. We knew we couldn't just hang
around and carry on our hunt with that thing in the area,
especially not since it had our scent.
So slowly but surely, we made our way back to camp with the
intention of packing up and moving to a safer area.
But God laughs at well laid plans.
And about halfway back, as we'rekeeping our heads on a swivel,
(11:22):
trying to keep an eye out for that thing stalking us through
the trees, I heard something heavy bounding towards us.
I couldn't see it right away, and frankly, the idea that
something so huge could just creep up on us like that is
something that is just pure nightmare fuel to me.
But stalk us it did, and in a moment, a pure stomach churning
(11:44):
horror, it knocked my buddy to the ground as easy as a grown
man might knock over a child. I mean, it just sent him
crashing into the dirt and it was on him in seconds.
How I managed to miss that thingwith my first shot is something
I'll never really understand. I am an experienced hunter and I
am a pretty good marksman. But pure panic took over.
(12:08):
Crippling fear just had me turning to Jelly.
The feeling of expecting to see my best friend in the world torn
apart before me is something I'mnever, ever going to forget.
I am not military, I have never had any official training,
nothing like that. So I didn't even think to work
the bolt action and chamber another round.
(12:29):
I just went for the bear Mace, spraying it right in that
thing's eyes as it slashed its claws across my buddy's chest
and face, tearing up clothing and flesh like with deep gouging
strikes. His screams though, that's what
I kept hearing in the quieter moments during the months
following that trip. These blood curdling screams as
(12:50):
he thought he was going to die. And not just die, be eaten
alive, watch his own guts being torn from his body and chewed up
right there in front of him. But it worked somehow.
The bear Mace just worked. It immediately stopped clawing
at my buddy, started like wrinkling its nose and doing
(13:10):
these weird like sneezes or coughs.
I can't really think of any other way to describe it, but
what was obvious is that it was in considerable discomfort as
the ingredients in the Mace wentto work on its nose and eyes.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it took off again,
crashing through the trees, smacking into the one odd or two
(13:32):
as it obviously struggled to seewhere it was going.
Then it was just a case of checking on my buddy, but Oh my
gosh, he was an absolute mess. The bear's claws had torn off
chunks of flesh from his face, shoulders and chest, and blood
was everywhere. I mean everywhere.
(13:52):
I was frantic too. I kept alternating between
trying to tend to his wounds andlooking around to make sure the
bear wasn't charging us again. Like when I think back to it, I
can only see certain frames. It's not like a movie in my
head, it's like still pictures. Side effect of the adrenaline I
guess. The blood is leaking off my body
(14:14):
as I help him to his feet. He was capable of running but
the attack had stunned him and he shook violently as I pulled
him up and started dragging him back in the direction of our
campsite. I knew the bear Mace or bear
spray or whatever you want to call it had worked, but for how
long I had no idea. And so we ran as fast as our
(14:35):
legs could carry us through trees and over hillocks until we
saw the bright orange fabric of our one man tents.
Another weird memory I have is of my buddy applying his own
gauze bandages. Like you think the guy would be
in major pain at that point, buthe was just running on pure
adrenaline. That bear had torn him up real
bad, but he couldn't feel a thing.
(14:59):
It was just pure survival instinct kicking in.
He was a survivor and he wasn't about to go down easy.
And in a twisted kind of way, I was really proud of him by that
point. My one major concern was that
he'd lose too much blood on the way back to our truck.
I mean, he had already left a blood trail from the scene of
(15:19):
the attack, so the bear would beable to trace our path really,
really easily. So I was stuck in a horrendous
catch 22 situation. Leave him with his rifle and
risk getting attacked again, or have him come with me to get
help and risk bleeding to death or leading the bear onto our
trail. But a primal, angry roar that
echoed through the trees kind ofmade that decision for us.
(15:43):
The bear was still in the area. Not even that it was close and
it was angry. I wrapped like half my buddy's
head in gauze, taped a bunch of it to his chest, and we got
running again. Almost every step we took I
expected that bear to just appear again.
Only this time if it attacked me, my buddy wouldn't have a
(16:04):
rifle to be able to take the thing out.
Although that fact that the bearmaze had worked was actually a
huge comfort, so there was no doubt that it would work a
second time. But we got lucky for a second
time that day. First time when the injuries to
my buddy weren't as bad as they could have been, and the second
when that bear didn't rally for a second attack.
(16:26):
We made it out of the park and down to a place called Ennis
pretty quickly. Visited a medical clinic, got my
buddy all stitched and patched up, then actually headed to a
bar to just decompress and unwind from the nightmare we had
just lived through. Needless to say, my buddy didn't
have to buy a single beer that night.
(16:46):
Not as he told the story of getting full on attacked by a
fully grown grizzly. We're not sure if we're going on
our year trip this September. All this virus stuff aside, I'm
not sure either of us is quite ready to get back on that horse,
but I look forward to the day when we are.
I'm not going to let a horrific encounter like that ruin the one
(17:07):
thing that's kept us close for so many years.
This is something that happens constantly to me and I'm
actually at work typing this outbecause it just happened again.
Three months ago I started working at a packing warehouse.
(17:31):
I'm the youngest one here, beingonly 19, and there's barely any
other females here. The women's bathroom literally
has only one stall and since thevirus it is supposed to be one
person in the bathroom at a time.
This wasn't a problem for a while until one of my Co
workers, we'll call her Jane, started following me into the
(17:52):
bathroom. At first I didn't care as
sometimes she would come in while I was in there and I would
see her feet by the door. I just assumed she was waiting
to go. Then I started to notice she
would only go as soon as I went in.
I gave her the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks up until
recently when I would see her standing right in front of the
(18:14):
stall while I was in there. I could see her through the
cracks and she would just stand there still with a blank
expression. I thought she was just a creep.
Other people started to notice when she would literally just
leave the bathroom and I would go in after her and she would
just go right back in. She only did this with me and
(18:36):
when I left she would leave without using the bathroom.
All around the factory I see herstaring at me.
This weirds me out so much but she hasn't really done anything
else. I mean we have never even spoke
to each other until about 5 minutes ago.
She came in again while I was inthe stall.
(18:57):
She walked closer to the stall door and started to tap it.
She kept whispering I want to come in with you.
I'm freaked out. So I yelled at her no she
started to raise her voice stillsaying she wanted to come in.
I screamed at her to leave. I was just scared for my life
(19:20):
thinking that she would just slide under the bottom.
She just laughed and said she'llsee me tonight.
I'm getting off super late tonight and I live alone.
I don't know what to do. This happened a few years ago in
(19:44):
my hometown. I am not going to say where to
protect the privacy of my best friend, but everyone should be
on the lookout for these types of situations as they are
growing increasingly more common.
My best friend and undergrad, we'll call her Maria, and I,
were extremely close. We worked together, had the same
degree, had the same hobbies, most of the same classes, the
(20:08):
same friend group. And lived very near to each
other. As a result, we were with each
other very often, so very rarelyalone.
Keep this in mind as the story goes on.
Maria was picking up her cats from a friend's house and parked
her car on the street outside. She put the cats in the car, ran
(20:28):
to lock the front door, and cameback.
It took maybe 10 seconds to lockit and run back, but she didn't
lock her car. About halfway to her house, she
realized that her purse containing makeup, hundreds of
dollars, checks from work, her passport, all of her IDs and
cards and bills for her apartment with her address on
(20:50):
them was missing from the passenger seat.
She had been running errands to prepare for a trip to her
hometown, which is why she had all of these things with her.
Pulling over, she looked at her bank account online to see
someone had already tried to usethe card at a gas station 5
minutes away, so she cancelled her card and drove home.
(21:12):
When telling me the story, I pointed out that whoever took
her purse was so fast that they had to have been watching her
and she agreed. She reported it all to the
police but wasn't expecting anything to come from it as we
lived in an area notorious for theft at the time.
A month or so later, she received a phone call from a
(21:33):
detective saying that they had found all her items except the
cash. Maria told the detective it was
fine as she already had new ones.
The detective paused for a moment and then told Maria that
they would not be returning her items at all since they were now
evidence in an investigation. When Maria asked what she meant,
(21:54):
the detective told her they found all her items with a woman
who was known to be involved in drugs and human trafficking.
The area where the woman was arrested is also a human route
human traffickers take, and our state is one of the hot spots
for human trafficking in the US.Along with the stolen items,
(22:14):
there were pictures of Maria from several months prior
walking around our college campus and our work and hanging
out with friends on her birthday.
There were also photos of her friends and other girls that we
didn't know. These people had her hometown
address, her address in the state where we lived, where we
worked, the places we ate and hung out at, her university ID
(22:38):
card, knew that she had animals and where she walked them, where
she did her banking, what kind of car she drove, and who her
friends were. Naturally, her boyfriend, who is
in the military, lost it and hadhis friend sit outside the house
when he wasn't home and escort her to and from work at night.
(22:59):
For the next few months, it didn't seem like I was a target,
but I still had my boyfriend usemy car to drive me to and from
work for a while, and I bought pepper spray for my key chain.
In the aftermath of finding thisout, we realized a few things.
Despite being followed at fairlyclose range, somehow neither of
(23:19):
us ever noticed somebody following us, Probably because
the person was a woman. Most of the opportunities for
someone to take her, such as walking to her car or house at
night, were probably missed because either her boyfriend or
I were with her. They must have been learning the
schedules of everyone around her, as well as to see when
(23:40):
there were times she was truly alone.
Since they already knew so much about her before stealing all of
her information, there must be abig boss somewhere who has at
least some information about her, including what she looks
like. The one thing they didn't seem
to have photos of was her hikingwith her dogs.
Either they didn't know she hiked often alone, or they were
(24:03):
worried it would be too obvious if someone were to follow her,
thus tipping her off. And perhaps the most terrifying
if they decided after all this time to make a move and steal
her things. They must have been planning to
do something big fairly soon. It's likely they took her IDs in
order to make fake ones to get her out of the country
undetected. Unfortunately I can't give an
(24:26):
update as nothing ever happened after the arrest and every time
she asks about the case, the detective says it's an active
investigation and they cannot disclose any information.
We have never actually seen the photos either.
All of the explanation was done over the phone.
It's been three years since all this happened and even though we
(24:47):
have moved past it, it still terrifies me to think about what
would have happened if they hadn't found that woman.
I urge everyone to be aware of their surroundings.
Be wary of anyone following you,not just men.
Stay with your friends, check inon them to see if they made it
home safe, and always, always lock your doors.
(25:18):
The following story occurred in 2008 during summertime.
A month had passed since school ended and I was excited to be
home. I have a huge family.
At this particular time, there were about nine people in the
household, my mother and father,my four sisters and two brothers
and myself. I am the youngest.
(25:40):
The night was beginning to approach and my mother decided
to put on the movie screen for all of us to watch.
Unfortunately, my father had to work.
Normally we watch our films in the living room area, but
instead, my mother decided to watch the movie in her room.
She had a huge bed to accommodate us all.
Anyway, after getting food and snacks, we turn off the lights
(26:04):
and begin watching the film. About 20 minutes later, I spot
my mother whispering something into my oldest sister's ear.
It was dark in the room and I couldn't quite hear the
conversation. I figured she was telling her to
grab something from the kitchen because my sister rolled her
eyes and proceeded to go downstairs.
I placed my attention back onto the movie.
(26:25):
Keep in mind that my oldest sister was 20 at the time.
Moments later, I begin to hear an unfamiliar voice come from
below the room. Everyone in the room was fixated
on the film, but even through the volume of the tvi could hear
something. If you walk right through my
mother's bedroom door, straight ahead is the staircase.
(26:45):
On the left. I could see a glimmer of light
shining on the banister that leads downstairs.
It went away quickly as I heard the front door close.
No one seemed to notice. Shortly after, my sister returns
back upstairs with some sort of bag in her hand.
She kept it tucked behind her back and handed it to my mother
(27:07):
and sat down on the bed. At that point I was confused,
but I pretended that I did not see what occurred.
After the movie ended, my motherannounces that it's bedtime.
My siblings and I grunt and groan in irritation and proceed
to go to our rooms. Before I leave, my mother asks
me to throw away all of the empty bags of popcorn.
(27:29):
Now, I did not mind doing this, but I had a fear of going
downstairs by myself, especiallyat night.
Despite my hesitation, I collectthe trash and begin making my
way to the kitchen. The only source of light we
leave on downstairs is the cook top light in the kitchen above
the stove. As I exit the living room and
enter the dining room, I pause and discover something in the
(27:53):
kitchen. I saw a shadow reflecting onto
the fridge. It appeared to be a man with a
slightly pointy nose and a wide brim hat.
He resembled the monster from Jeepers Creepers a little bit.
The shadow stood there silently as I watched in awe.
I was shocked. I could not tell if it was an
(28:14):
appliance or a kitchen item, butdeep down inside I felt as
though that was not the case. My entire body was paralyzed in
fear. Suddenly the shadow disappears
and I hear footsteps run out of the back door through the
pantry. I scream until everyone comes
downstairs. My mother consoles me and asks
(28:36):
me what happened. I explained to her the
situation, and at that moment I believe she realized what
occurred. Earlier that night, my mother
gave my oldest sister money to give to a drug dealer in
exchange for weed. When I described what I thought
the man looked like, she confirmed that it was him.
My mother has known the dealer for many years, so she was
(28:58):
surprised to discover that he snuck back into the house to
steal from us. Shelves and drawers were open
and some items were on the ground, and apparently the front
door was unlocked. My mother asked us to promise
her to never tell our father about what happened that night.
I have kept that promise to thisday.
(29:27):
I lived in the same house from when I was born until I was 10
years old. It was a pretty typical suburban
home. It was not particularly old and
was finished with all of the cheap outfitting that are
typically used to cut down on costs in mass produced homes.
It was unremarkable. It was a little box made of
ticky tacky in an area full of little boxes that all look the
(29:50):
same, so to speak. It had a finished basement that
was filled with toys. It was what should be a child's
paradise. There were two rooms there.
One was what we considered the main room, which was the room
that you first walked into when coming down the stairs and had
ATV computer and a pull out couch that was great for
(30:10):
sleepovers. The other was what we considered
the backroom. It was smaller, with many toy
filled bins. It was essentially a play room
for me and my siblings. It had a white board on the only
wall that wasn't nearly entirelytaken up by sliding doors to
small storage and utility rooms.I would spend hours down there,
(30:31):
often alone, while my mom went about her business upstairs.
I spent a lot of time, particularly in the backroom,
playing with dolls or whatever little girls do until an uneasy
feeling wood forest me back upstairs to the safety of my
mother's side. This would happen just about
every time I played down there. I would play until I got too
(30:52):
scared and then I would flee upstairs.
I didn't put much thought into my uneasy feeling because it had
happened in that room my entire life and four year olds tend to
not think too much about those things.
Looking back at it, I understandthe fear and uneasiness I felt
in that room. I felt like I was being watched.
(31:15):
The feeling was strongest when Iwas alone in that backroom, but
I would still feel it when I wasin the main room or with people.
A prime example of this is the sleepovers I would have when I
was a bit older, about 7 years old.
I always had sleepovers in the main room because it had the
pull out couch and ATV. The pull out couch was situated
(31:35):
as far away from the doorway to the backroom as possible, but
still had a clear line of sight to it.
I would always take the spot furthest away from the
backroom's doorway in an attemptto get away from the uneasiness
that room caused, especially at night.
I felt like I was being watched on those late nights and I would
look up to the doorway and expect to see a woman standing
(31:57):
there, even though I never actually saw her with my eyes.
It was like I saw her with my mind because even now I have a
distinct mental image of her. She was tall, frail, and gaunt.
She was an older woman, probablyabout 60 or 70, with a messy
frizz of Gray hair that went down to her shoulders.
(32:20):
Her cheekbones were very pronounced, like she had not
eaten in months or like her flesh was starting to decay off
her bones. The thing that stood out to me
the most was her eyes. They were dark and sunken,
vacant with 1000 yard stare. I did not know it at the time,
but after working at an assistedliving facility and seeing dying
(32:41):
people, I realized that she looked like she was dying, or
perhaps already dead. She frightened me, but not as
much as the other presence. The thought of the other
presence still sends ice cold terror through my veins nearly
ten years later. I never saw him, not even
(33:02):
mentally, but I felt the darkness he emitted.
I think I could never picture what he looked like because he
did not look like anything, likehe was inhuman and could shift
into any form he pleased. He felt dark and powerful, like
pure evil. I felt his presence strongest in
the backroom, especially when I felt like I was being watched.
(33:24):
The dark, malicious energy was suffocating there.
I took special care to not look too closely at the slots of the
doors that led to the storage rooms because I was afraid I
would see his dark faceless eyesstaring back at me.
I learned to not look too closely at the darkness.
There were times when I avoided that room entirely, like late at
(33:47):
night when everything felt amplified.
There were also month long periods where I could not go
into that room alone. I don't exactly know why there
were periods when I felt like I could and couldn't be there.
Maybe I had exhausted my courageand needed time to build it back
up again. Maybe there were certain periods
where the presences were just stronger.
(34:09):
These periods would frustrate myparents to no end because they
dismissed my fears as childish nonsense.
They had never spent a night in that basement the way I had with
my sleepovers. They have never felt the gaunt
woman's eyes on them as they slept.
They had never felt the dark, malevolent energy that radiated
from the back of the room in themiddle of the night.
(34:32):
Eventually, after moving out of that house, I began to think it
was just childish nonsense too. I never actually saw anything
unusual, so it was probably justmy overactive childhood
imagination, right? Well, that was what I thought
until I brought it up to my sister years after moving out of
there. My sister is 6 years older than
(34:54):
me, so she was 16 when we moved out of that house.
She was old enough to be over that sort of childishness.
I had mentioned it to her to joke about how dumb I was as a
kid and how my imagination must have gone into OverDrive.
I stopped in my tracks when she told me deadly serious.
No, that house was haunted. It wasn't just you.
(35:19):
She and my brother, who was 14 when we moved, we're fully
convinced the place was haunted without me saying anything about
the basement. She said that her and my brother
thought the basement in particular was haunted.
I took things a little more seriously after that
conversation, but I wasn't entirely convinced.
(35:40):
We were siblings after all, and I talked to each other about the
uneasiness in the basement when we lived there.
We likely colored each other's perceptions and freaked each
other out. At least that's what I thought
until I brought this up to a childhood friend.
This friend and I were pretty close in elementary school but
fell out of touch in middle and high school.
(36:00):
We now go to the same college and have gotten more in touch
because of it. One day when I was with her, I
realized that she had been in the basement countless times
while we played and had sleepovers.
She should also be relatively unbiased because I never told
her about the haunting at the time because I didn't want to
scare my friends off. I mentioned my conversation with
(36:23):
my sister to her and she was unsurprised.
She told me that she had thoughtthe house, and the basement in
particular, was haunted. She hadn't told me at the time
because she didn't want to freakme out.
She went on to say that the backroom was where it was the
worst. I did not tell her that my
siblings and I thought that the basement was the most haunted
(36:44):
part of the house, much less anything about the backroom.
Needless to say, I took things more seriously after that.
What really freaks me out is my nightmares.
To this day, whenever I have paranormal nightmares, it is
always in that basement or the hallway leading up to the
basement door. I have had dreams where I went
(37:07):
down the stairs at my current house only for it to shift to
the bottom of the stairs at my old house.
When I walked down the hallway by the stairs and past the
basement door, there was the woman floating ominously in
another nightmare that I had. I turned into a grotesque and
mangled monster, and I was inexplicably drawn down that
(37:27):
hallway towards the basement. It was like I knew that was
where monsters belonged. These nightmares freak me out
because dreams are often used byyour brain to sort through
information and trauma. When I had these dreams, I had
just about forgotten about that basement, and I've only recently
pieced all of this together. It is entirely possible that I
(37:51):
had an experience that scared meto the point of trauma in that
basement, but I can't remember it because it is blocked from my
memory. In that case, my brain may still
be trying to work through it through my dreams.
If that is true, I hope that memory never comes to the
surface because some things are best left unknown.
(38:12):
I never want to experience anything similar to that
basement ever again, because sometimes childhood fears are
more than just childish nonsense.
I had never ever babysat for anyone before, so admittedly I
(38:37):
was pretty nervous, but if I hadknown what kind of night I had
in store for me, I would have turned the job down in a second.
It was made all the worse by thefact that my parents pretty much
assured me that it would be an easy 50 bucks and that the night
would be over before I knew it. I had a bad feeling about the
whole thing from the start, but my dad actually managed to talk
(39:01):
me out of that headspace. Now I wish I had just trusted my
gut and stayed well away. So I wander over to the house
around 7:00 in the evening, introducing myself to the
parents and the kid before they go over a few ground rules.
At first it seemed like my dad was right, that I was just being
silly, and that if I played my cards right I could turn this
(39:24):
into a regular earner to fund myweekend shopping habits.
The parents were lovely and so was the kid, so I got pretty
chill pretty quickly and ended up sort of enjoying myself
entertaining the kid after they left with the help of Disney
Plus, which I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a huge fan of.
Anyway, everything is going welluntil it comes time to put the
(39:46):
kid to bed. Then things started getting a
little awkward. The kid straight up refuses and
our new happy little friendship starts to quickly deteriorate.
I felt super mean having to lay down the law with the kid, and
he went from crying and wailing to shouting and screaming at me
that like I wasn't his mom, he hated me and I didn't belong
(40:10):
there, Stuff like that. It actually kind of hurt, and I
started to realize that maybe I wasn't ready for that kind of
responsibility yet, to be a parent or a guardian.
You need to be tough enough to be able to kind of like be the
bad guy, if that makes any sense.
And if there are any of you out there that are looking to get
into babysitting thinking it'll be an easy few bucks, please
(40:33):
reconsider. I have done way way easier
things for money before and since.
Things that don't make you feel crappy for having to shout at a
kid. But after a while the whole
temper tantrum seems to have tired the kid out, and even
though he still seems upset withme, he went up to his room, got
into his pyjamas and climbed into bed to go to sleep.
(40:57):
He asked me to read him a story,and since he had actually done
as he was told, I obliged. And when his eyes finally closed
and his breathing slowed, I snuck out of the room and
downstairs to leave him to get some rest.
So about an hour or so later, I was sitting on the couch texting
a friend of mine telling them how babysitting was way harder
(41:20):
than I thought it was going to be.
I am working through the leftover chicken pot pie that my
mom had given me to take over there, catching up on some
episodes of The Mandalorian whenthe family house phone starts to
ring. Thinking it was the parents
looking to check up on me, I pick up, greeting the caller in
the cheeriest voice I could manage, only no one on the other
(41:43):
end responds. I say hello a few more times,
assume it's a butt dial or a badline, and hang up, heading back
to finish off my pie. No sooner that I sat down again,
the phone rings again. I was kind of expecting it, I
suppose. Maybe the parents had gone
through a tunnel or something, Idon't know, but either way I get
(42:07):
up again, head over to the phoneand pick up.
Only this time when I do, I can hear breathing on the other end
of the phone. I give another cheery hello, but
there's just the same breathing coming from the other end.
When the person finally speaks, it's this super deep voice,
(42:28):
obviously a guy, telling me to check on the sleeping kid.
I thought it might have been thekids dad, but there was also
something really weird and distorted about the voice too.
I respond like OK, I'll go check, and the line goes dead
immediately. The kid is fine, sleeping like a
(42:49):
rock. So as much as I'm kind of
creeped out by the weird voice, I figure it must have been the
dad. Maybe the parents had argued, I
don't know. I tried not to think so much
about it, but then pretty much as soon as I'm back downstairs,
the phone rings again. No caller ID, no nothing.
(43:11):
So I answer, unable to prevent this fear from entering my
voice. Big mistake.
Whoever is calling senses this and starts to like, giggle down
the phone line in that same weirdly distorted voice.
What they said next made my blood turn to ice.
(43:32):
Going to snatch him up? Going to snatch up the Kitty
when you're not looking. Going to get him.
I went silent, just totally silent out of fear.
And that's when I heard a Creek in the floorboards above me.
Someone was moving around in therooms upstairs.
I pretty much dropped the phone and bolt upstairs into the kids
(43:55):
room to find that he's still asleep.
Or rather, that he very much appears to be asleep, but that
same deep, slow breathing isn't there.
The more I look, the more like he seems like he's almost hiding
his breath or something. Not only that, but his arm is at
(44:16):
this weird angle that makes it look like he's holding on to
something under his pillow, something he's trying to hide.
In a fury, I pull the pillow up slightly and then realize what's
been happening. Whoever thought it was a good
idea to buy an 8 year old kid a phone is straight up crazy.
(44:36):
But under that pillow wasn't just a phone, there was a voice
disorder under there too. I grabbed both and run out of
the room. Back downstairs where the kid
starts throwing another temper tantrum.
I felt so dumb, completely played by the kid, made to feel
terrified and vulnerable. How could someone be so young
(44:59):
yet so malicious and mean spirited?
The parents arrived home shortlyafterward and I didn't mention a
word of what happened until theyhad paid me in full.
Then I read them the riot act. I was never going to babysit for
them again and they were completely irresponsible letting
their kid have things like a phone, let alone an actual voice
(45:22):
disorder. Turns out the creepy little
gadget with their older college aged kids and the little guy was
fascinated with it and wouldn't give it back.
But I didn't care. I wasn't about to put myself out
there like that ever again. Yeah.
(59:29):
Yeah. Yeah.
(01:12:34):
Yeah.
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