True Scary Stories Volume 77

In this chilling new volume of True Scary Stories, we dive deep into the shadows where the paranormal lurks, stalkers linger in plain sight, and the wilderness hides terrors far beyond the natural world. Turn down the lights, settle in, and prepare for stories that stay with you long after the final word.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/uncle-joshs-true-scary-stories--1977911/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, campfire crew, let's get it on. The only sound
worse than the non human laughter outside r RV was

(00:25):
the sound of my friend's bullet hitting it by Will's
yap cr. You know, I still replay the events of
this trip in my head, even though it all happened
a few years ago now. It was supposed to be
the ultimate hunting expedition, a classic buddy trip with my
friend Gabe down to the Henry Mountains. I'd hunted all

(00:46):
over Utah, but nothing prepared me for what we experienced
down there. It's hard to even talk about it without
getting that cold, sinking feeling in my gut. What started
as the fulfillment of a long held dream turned into
a week of dread, culminating in an encounter that changed
how I'll look at the wilderness forever. The kind of

(01:08):
anticipation Gabe and I felt that November morning was almost painful.
We'd been planning the trip for over a year, ever
since we successfully snagged the permits to hunt the Henry Mountains.
Anyone who knows anything about big game knows that those mountains,
five hours south of our hometown in Salt Lake City
are legendary. They hold giant mule deer that rival anything

(01:31):
in the Rockies, and a genetically pure herd of bison
you can't find anywhere else. Those permits felt like lottery winnings,
and we were practically buzzing as we packed up the
RV for the long drive down. The air was crisp
and cold, already smelling like winter, even though the official
snow hadn't yet hit. We talked smack the entire drive,

(01:54):
arguing over who would bag the bigger buck, fueled by
stale gas station coffee and the sheer excitement of fine
heading out to the high desert, this wasn't any normal
hunting trip. It was a pilgrimage. We finally found our spot,
pulling the RV up near a dramatic cliff face. The
view alone made the five hour trak worth the time

(02:15):
and expense, and looking east, the expanse of Utah's canyon
lands unfolded into a breathtaking panorama. The light was starting
to turn golden as the sun dipped, painting the rugged
landscape in a hue that honestly stopped us in our tracks.
It was the kind of vista that felt too big
for humanity, instantly making you feel small and insignificant. We

(02:40):
started setting up our basic camp, and right away we
felt a difference in this place. It wasn't just quiet,
it was heavy. We saw the usual signs of wolf
scat and tracks, but then Gabe found a massive pawprint
near the dry creek bed, too large and oddly shaped
to be a standard black bear. It was unsettling, but

(03:04):
we shook it off as a mountain lion, or maybe
just a misidentified bear. Our goal was to get the
camp secured before dark, so we were running lines for
a canopy and hanging up some powerful led lanterns. That's
when I noticed it. Hanging low from a branch of
an ancient juniper tree was a crude and disturbing object.

(03:26):
It was a totem made of old dry sticks, lashed
together with leather strips and covered in faded feathers. It
looked old and intentional. We both stared at it for
a moment. Native folks probably used it for a blessing
or something. Gabe mumbled, already pulling it down. I felt

(03:47):
a weird prickle of discomfort, like we shouldn't have touched it,
but we were focused on utility. We tossed the thing
deep into a thicket of scrub oak, just outside of
our lit perimeter, and got back to work. As soon
as that totem left the tree, the quiet atmosphere turned sharp,
like a drop knife. The trouble started almost immediately after

(04:10):
we discarded the strange marker, but it began subtly with faint,
ambient sounds that we initially dismissed as the wind playing tricks,
But soon it evolved into something more focused, like whispers.
I mean, they weren't loud enough to make out, just
a low, indistinct murmur, like someone speaking a language we'd

(04:30):
never heard, and just beyond the edge of our hearing.
It was constant, a low level static that freighted our nerves.
One night, a few days into the trip, we were
just settling down listening to the crackle of the fire.
The air was dead still. Then from the dense forest
line near the cliff's edge, a sound rose up, a profound,

(04:55):
heartbroken morning and it wasn't an animal cry. It was
distinctly human, full of anguish and sorrow, and a sound
that chilled us to the bone. It didn't last long,
maybe twenty seconds, but the silence that followed felt absolute.
It was crushing. Another evening, while we were around the

(05:16):
campfire enjoying a much deserved dinner of chili and corn bread,
the forest ripped open with a horrible piercing scream. I've
heard injured animals before, and that definitely was not an
injured animal. It was prolonged and guttural, ending in a choke.
We grabbed our rifles, hearts, hammering, and searched with flashlights.

(05:38):
There was nothing, no tracks, no disturbed brush, just the
same oppressive silence that seemed to swallow the sound whole.
There were other nights too, when we wake up to
the rhythmic beat of drums and deep rhythmic chanting, like
some sort of ancient ritual or dance party was happening
just out of sight in the deeper woods, invisible behind
the veil of night. It was because coming clear that

(06:00):
whatever this presence was, it was trying to mess with
our heads and trying to lure us away from the
safety of the RV. The most chilling example of this
was the night I was jolted awake by Gabe violently
shaking my arm, will wake up? Do you hear that?
My ears were ringing in the dark silence, and then
I heard the unmistakable thin cry of a baby that

(06:24):
was coming from the trees. We spent an agonizing hour
trying to find the source, eventually calling Search and Rescue.
Convinced there was a lost infant freezing out there. SAAR
arrived hours later, searched and found absolutely nothing, and they
looked at us like we were crazy. The next afternoon,

(06:46):
the thing tried to trick me directly. I was cleaning
my hunting rifle doing some final checks when I heard
Gabe's voice calling my name excitedly from the edge of
the woods. Will come quick, you gotta see this. I
found on something cool. He was motioning rapidly for me
to hurry. I secured the rifle and took three steps

(07:07):
towards him, when a voice, clear and solid said right
behind me, Hey, well, where are you going. I spun
around so fast my neck cracked, and there, standing just
outside the RV door was the real Gabe, looking bewildered
and wiping grease from his hands. I went my head

(07:27):
back toward the forest where this decoy had been, and
there was nothing, no movement, no sign of anyone or anything.
Gabe must have seen the blood drain from my face
because he dropped his rag and asked what was wrong.
I just shook my head, unable to articulate the sheer
horror of seeing my best friend beckoned me into the

(07:49):
woods and knowing it wasn't him. The night before we
were scheduled to head back to Salt Lake City, we
were completely exhausted from a full day of hunting that
yielded nothing but frustration. We collapsed into our bunks around
ten PM, and I guess we were so tired that
the events of the last week didn't register until two am,

(08:11):
when a sound ripped me out of a deep sleep.
It was laughter, but not human laughter. There was a
high pitched, rasping sound like a bird shriek, mixed with
a human snicker, coming from right outside the RV. It
felt mocking and malicious, and before either of us could

(08:31):
fully sit up, the entire RV started to shake violently.
Not a trummer, but a rapid, rhythmic shaking, like something
massive was grabbing at it and trying to flip it over.
The sound was deafening. When the shaking suddenly stopped, Gabe
was instantly alert, and he grabbed his thirty odd to six,
and believing it was a very large, aggressive bear, flung

(08:54):
the RV door open. He didn't even name it, just
started shooting three rapid round into the absolute darkness, yelling,
damn Bear. All I could hear was the booming of
the rifle and then a sickening sound, an animal's fierce growl,
immediately followed by a faint, wretched human groan. Gabe had

(09:18):
hit something, because the next sound we heard was something
heavy and fast, crashing away through the dense, dry brush,
running deeper into the forest. We spent the rest of
the night wide awake, guns drawn and listening to the
deep silence that followed. We didn't sleep another wink. As
the first light of dawn began to paint the sky

(09:39):
with streaks of brilliant pink, we cautiously stepped out, armed
and terrified. The first thing we saw was the devastation
around the RV, flattened ground, bent saplings, and then unmistakable
evidence of the night's encounter. There was a huge, fresh pauprint,
far too big to belong to any black bear, and

(10:01):
clear drops of blood leading away from the side of
the vehicle. Gabe didn't hesitate. We followed the trail of
blood and the massive prints leading directly toward the secluded
part of the cliff face, the same place the sound
of morning had come from days earlier. The trail ended
at an old, gnarled tree right at the cliff's edge. Gabe,

(10:24):
focused on the prince walked straight under its branches. You
think the bear jumped, he whispered, his voice catching in
his throat. He turned back to look at me, but
I had stopped about twenty feet back, staring up at
the tree, and a wave of cold nausea washed over
me as the horrifying truth dawned on me. Gabe, seeing

(10:47):
my pale, fixed gaze, looked up too. Hanging from the
high branches, wrapped in faded funery cloth and aged offerings,
was a perfectly preserved Native American burial bundle. He was
standing directly on hollowed and sacred ground, and my heart
hammered with the realization that we hadn't been dealing with
a bear or a mountain lion. We had disturbed something

(11:09):
ancient and powerful by removing that totem. We didn't exchange
another word. We raised back to the RV, packed our
gear in a blur of panic, deficiency and drove the
five hours straight back to Salt Lake City, leaving the
Henry Mounts behind us. I am convinced to this day
that we tangled with something darker than any predator, a

(11:32):
skin walker or perhaps a wind ago. Whatever it was,
the whole sequence of events, from the baby crying to
the decoy of game, was nothing more than a carefully
orchestrated attempt to lure us into the woods so it
could finish what we started when we tossed that totem
into the brush. I experienced a swat raided for murder

(12:00):
when I was fifteen by Skyfully, for the privacy of
those who were involved, I'll be changing the names of everyone.
When I was fifteen years old, I met my now
ex boyfriend. He was a year older than me, but
I was best friends with a girl he had known forever.
I'll call him THEO. He and I had been around

(12:25):
each other often because we shared the same friend group.
I knew that he had a rough past and liked
to drink and smoke, which I didn't, but I never
had an issue with it. Because we were all in
high school and in my crowd, I was the odd
one out for not doing so. I also knew his
best friend, Mitch because we went to the same school,
but knew about their own group, who consisted of THEO, Mitch, Tommy,

(12:48):
and Rich, who I wasn't too familiar with. Tommy and
Rich were into heavy drinking, heavier drugs, and also stole
and broke into small local restaurants that had licked licenses.
I wanted nothing to do with those two from the start,
and my ex never pushed it, so it was never
an issue until the night it became a very big issue.

(13:12):
I should mention here that we all lived in a
very safe town. The only big news really was people
getting busted for drugs because it was a port city.
I had grown up states away in a very big
city where we nicknamed the five o'clock news the murder Show.
But here even a non fatal stabbing or unarmed robbery
was pretty much the maximum of violence. So after school

(13:36):
one Friday, THEO, Mitch, and I were hanging out at
a mutual friend's place. I'd noticed THEO being quite tired
at school, saying he had been with his friends drinking
the night before, while Mitch hadn't shown up at school
but came to hang out, which I didn't think about
too much besides the fact that he wasn't wearing the
normal red hoodie he wore every single day. Everyone besides

(13:59):
me had started drinking a bit while we all chatted
and hung out. Maybe twenty minutes into it, THEO got
a frantic phone call from his mom asking why the
police were at their house looking for him and Mitch,
and they both looked at each other with the most
dread I have ever seen, Even still ten years later,

(14:20):
before anyone could respond, we heard his mother start scream
crying over the phone, Oh my god, Rich is dead.
Why is he dead? My stomach instantly dropped. His mom
said she was coming over immediately to get him and Mitch.
The room was deafeningly silent. I remember wanting to ask

(14:42):
so many questions, but at the same time thought it
better to just stay quiet and know nothing. After what
felt like in an eternity, we all decided to go
down to the first floor from the third floor we'd
been on. I was the last one to file down
the stairs to the first floor, but before I could,
the front door burst open, and around twelve cops, all

(15:05):
in full gear guns out, stormed in yelling, for all
of us to put our hands up and slowly lay
down on our stomachs when two officers started cuffing us.
The rest started clearing each room, and I remember feeling
like this all couldn't have been real, not even thinking
about why it was happening, but even still trying to

(15:26):
even comprehend that it was even happening. We were let outside,
and THEO and Mitch were held on the ground, while
a separate officer was allowing my other friend and I
to be seated on a step after searching us. These
are all the parts I vividly remember. I wasn't angry, scared,
or really anything, because it all happened so quickly that

(15:47):
I couldn't even process it. All I knew was that
I had just had a gun pointed at me for
the first time in my life, and that THEO and
Mitch knew a lot more than anyone else. At some point,
all of the cops had left the house, placed THEO
and Mitch into different cop cars, and were uncuffing my
friend and I, who still just sat there in disbelieve.

(16:09):
I didn't know if this had all been ten minutes
or three hours. I mean, I felt nothing, It wasn't
until a few days later that I got the whole story.
The night before all of this, THEO, Mitch, Rich, and
Tommy had been busy. First, they'd gone around looking for
unlocked cars to steal out of, and by the third car,

(16:31):
they discovered and stole a loaded gun. The next stop
was a local restaurant bar, where they proceeded to steal
as much liquor as they possibly could, and the third
stop was back to Tommy's house to drink as much
liquor as humanly possible. At some point late end of
the night, they all went to walk a very intoxicated

(16:52):
THEO home, and Tommy refused to leave his new toy
at home. Once my EXE had gotten home, the rest
made their way back, but Rich and Tommy got into
an argument. Without hesitation, Tommy shot and killed Rich in
the street, who was standing right next to Mitch, who
was instantly covered in blood. They both ran. The street

(17:16):
it happened on was residential, and two different houses got
it all on security cameras. It wasn't until the first neighbor,
who was leaving for work that morning, found Rich's body.
In the end, everyone walked for you, besides Tommy who
only got four years for everything, and I witnessed firsthand
something most people never will at just fifteen years old.

(17:48):
I hate addicts by Anonymous. My wife and I bought
our first house in February of twenty ten. We immediately
fell in love with it as soon as we lay
eyes on it. It had everything we wanted, plus a
few extras. For the first month, everything was great, lots

(18:08):
of painting and decorating and getting it just the way
we wanted. Then weird things started to randomly happen. First
it was small things like things upstairs being moved, I
mean put in completely different rooms than where they belonged.
I chalked it up to my wife just forgetting to
put things back where they belonged. But the house also

(18:31):
started to creak pretty loud. It was a fairly new house,
so I just figured it was probably settling, as most
new houses tend to do. One day, the wife and
I were preparing dinner in the kitchen. Our stairs sit
right next to the kitchen entrance, so any noises upstairs
are clearly audible. In the kitchen, I turned off the

(18:53):
water at the sink, and as soon as I did,
we both heard a cough. We don't have kids, and
no one was visiting. The windows were all shut and
the television was not on. This sent the coldest chill
down my spine, and I could feel the blood running
out of my face. I looked at my wife and

(19:16):
she too had gone pale and had this look of
absolute fear. Someone was in our house and they were upstairs.
I quickly grabbed the sharpest knife I could find, and
my wife called the police. I walked to the bottom
of the steps and stood silently, and then heard a
loud pop and creak, just like the ones I had

(19:38):
always heard the house make. My hands were shaking, and
my wife was whispering to the nine one one operator,
telling them that we thought we might have a robber
in our home. The police arrived in minutes, I mean thankfully.
They'd been patrolling nearby. The officer walked slowly up our
stairs with his gun drawn, and he called out, this

(19:59):
is the police. Is anyone upstairs? There was no response.
I was behind him walking up the stairs. We looked
into the first bedroom in closet. It was empty. There
was no one in the half bath either. The last
room is my office, where I have my PC and
no one was in the room or closet there. I

(20:23):
started to feel the tension ease away and felt like
a complete tool making this officer search the house only
to find nothing. We turned to walk out of the
room and right above us a creek. I just about
shit my pants. In my office closet there is an
attic access. The officer pulled the steps down and again

(20:46):
called out, is anyone up there? This is the police.
There was no response. The officer turned down his flashlight
and peeked his head up. He found a man in
his forties kneeling there in the attic, looking dead at him.
With his gun drawn. He told the man to come

(21:07):
out and put his hands behind his head. Obviously, the
man was arrested. He didn't say a word the whole
time and would not look anyone in the eye. He
was scruffy looking and had dirty clothes on. Me and
my wife were freaking out. I don't think either of
us have ever gotten over it. After questioning the man
in the police station, we found out that he was

(21:29):
a homeless man who found refuge in the house while
it was still on the market. He said the doors
were unlocked, and so we stayed there Apparently a realtor
must have forgotten to lock the door after showing someone
in the house. He said that when people would come
to the house, he would hide in the second floor attic.
After we bought the house, this guy was still living

(21:51):
in it for an entire month without us even knowing,
and really freaks me out just thinking about it. Still
my short time as a pizza delivery guy submitted by
col I. Hope this fits into what you're doing and

(22:14):
you can read this. It's not so much scary as
it was disturbing, that's for sure. My first job when
I turned fifteen was working part time at a pizzeria
in my town. It was a good job, though it
only paid minimum wage, which back then was something like
three to eighty an hour. Yeah, I'm old. I started

(22:35):
off as a sub and wing guy, then started making
pies on those old fashioned ovens, not the conveyor belts
they have today, but those big, old hot as hell.
I forgot to shut the oven door when I got
the last pie out and just turned around and bumped
into it and burned the shit out of my arm ovens.
We had a lot of fun at that place, and
as a fifteen year old working with people much older

(22:56):
than me, I couldn't really complain. They treated me well.
I worked there for two years, and when I turned seventeen,
I got my driver's license and also inherited my great
uncle's Delta eighty eight. It was awesome. That thing felt
like it was forty feet long and weighed about fifteen tons.

(23:16):
Just a little different from the cars today. But any
of you old timers out there who remember that kind
of car, you're probably smiling right now. I probably shouldn't
disclose this, but I used to run over traffic cones
that were on the road at fifty miles an hour
just because it wouldn't even put dents in the bumper.
I mean, that car was a fucking tank anyway, as

(23:37):
you can imagine by the title of the story, I
stopped working in the inside of the shop and became
a delivery guy. Delivery really isn't so bad, even though
people say, oh, you're beating the hell out of your car.
I mean it was true, but sort of. I mean, yeah,
I was driving it a lot, but the car was
in really good condition, and I kept it that way.
Outside of my stupid traffic cone stunts. I enjoyed the

(24:01):
job because I could just get out of the pizzeria
for a while, listen to tunes, have a smoke, and
it was enjoyable. I'm going to tell you about two
incidents that I had, one that actually made me quit.
At first, I didn't have any issues. It was simply
getting the orders and then getting them out to customers
within thirty to forty minutes, getting back loading up again,

(24:23):
and making sure I wasn't carrying a ton of cash
when I went out. That was a rule my owner had.
He'd had enough experience of guys getting into trouble, whether
they were getting jumped for the money or sometimes even
spending it and then coming back and fucking up the till.
So this one time, I got an order for a
kind of shady part of town. It was a Friday

(24:45):
night and was close to closing time for the pizzeria.
If memory serves me correctly, I would say it was
a little before midnight. I got the pie, got it
in my car, and it was the only stop that
I had, so I didn't really have any money on me,
maybe twenty or twenty five bucks. I got to the
house and parked in front of the house next door

(25:05):
and brought the pizza up to the front door, and
a real sketchy looking pothead opened up and mumbled, hey, man,
is eb my pie? I said, sure is, that'll be
nine p fifty. He gave me a ten, told me
to keep the change and close the door, and I thought,
oh boy, big spender, but I didn't say anything. I mean,
it was the end of the night, and yeah, fifty

(25:27):
cents is a pretty shitty tip, but that was a rarity.
I usually got tipped pretty well anyway. The more important
part is that my short walk back to the car,
I had to cut over on a driveway that I
had noticed walking up to the house. I'd noticed it
was super dark between them. I mean, it was midnight,
but I never heard the guys coming from the other

(25:48):
side of the street. As I looked down that dark driveway,
next thing I knew, two guys had jumped me from behind,
and one got me in a headlock, telling me give
me your money, give me your money. I realized that
though I did have that twenty or twenty five bucks
somewhere on me, I couldn't remember which pocket it was in.
So I told him, all I got swit's in my

(26:09):
back pocket. Man, that's all I got. That last guy
didn't tip shit. The dude jammed a hand into my
back pocket and pulled out the two quarters and said,
you've got to be fucking kidding me. Then he threw
me to the ground, kicked me in the stomach really hard,
and both of them took off into the night. I mean,
he didn't really hurt me that bad, but getting kicked

(26:30):
in the stomach sucks and I felt like throwing up.
For a second, I thought I was going to puke,
but I regained my composure, got in my car, and
got the hell out of there. I went back and
told Roco, the owner, what had happened, and he felt
really bad. He told me to keep the money that
I had left the store with and then gave me
the next night off paid, which I thought was pretty cool.

(26:52):
Working for a family owned business sometimes has its perks,
and that guy was a really good guy. Anyway, The
truly scary story that I wanted to share was the
last night I ever delivered pizzas. Still driving my Delta
eighty eight, I had to make a late night run
once again, except this time there were two stops. I
got my orders, got in the car, and went to

(27:14):
the first place, and there was no problems. It was
a bunch of younger guys watching college football who gave
me a really solid tip, which I thought was great.
They also offered me some beer and weed and to
hang out, but I just laughed and said, guys, I'm
only seventeen. They laughed too, and I got back in
my car for the last run of the night. When

(27:34):
I got to the next place, it was in a
four unit apartment building, two up and two down. I
looked at my list and saw what apartment it was,
and it was on the left side upper. So I
went inside, went up the stairs and knocked on the door,
which was already open halfway. I yelled out, Rockos and waited.

(27:54):
No one came to the door. I pounded a little
louder and yelled a little louder, Hey, your food's here.
Still nothing, so I gently pushed the door open a
little wider and looked into the kitchen of the apartment.
At the far end of it was a wall between
the kitchen and the living room, and I saw a
leg lying there on the floor. I yelled out, Hey,

(28:18):
are you okay? It's Rockos, and I have your food
the leg didn't move a muscle. I started to wonder
if the guy was hurt or not. Not knowing really
what to do, but not wanting to leave someone who
might have been unconscious or hurt, I gently stepped into
the kitchen and walked forward until I could see the
entire body of a twenty something guy just lying on

(28:40):
the floor passed out. I glanced around the room and
saw a ton of beer bottles and a fifth of
Jack that was almost empty. I gently nudged the leg
of the guy and said, hey, Rockos, I got your food.
Are you okay? He was breathing and snoring, so I thought, okay,
fuck this and decided to take the food back to

(29:02):
the pizzeria. Obviously, there were no cell phones back then,
so I'd just got in my car and drove back
to the shop. When I got there, it was only
Roco and his son, and I told them what happened,
and I said, here, here's the food, and took the
money out of my pocket to put back in the
till and square up for the night. Roco was kind

(29:22):
of pissed because it was just wasted product, but he
told me to keep the pizza and started to go
back to my car in the parking lot. That's when
this car came screaming into the lot and almost hit
my car before correcting itself, and then almost ran into
the front door of the pizzeria. I jumped back and yelled, yo,
what the fuck. It was loud enough that it caused

(29:43):
Roco and his son to come out. The car sat
there for a second, and then the door opened. It
was the guy who had ordered the food but had
been passed out in his living room just a few
minutes earlier. He was screaming, where the fuck he is
my food? He was slurring his words and obviously was

(30:03):
hammered out of his mind. Roco waved me off as
I walked over towards the guy and told him, hey, man,
I showed up. You were there, but not really there, dude. Sorry,
we didn't charge you for anything. Then Roco busted in
and said, hey, asshole, you're drunk. You're not getting your food,
and I suggest you get the hell out of here

(30:24):
right now before I call the cops for almost hitting
one of my workers. We all just kind of stood
there in silence for a minute, and that's when the
guy reached back into his vehicle. And pulled out what
looked like a thirty eight pistol. He didn't point it
at anybody, he just kind of held it up in
the air with one arm. But I nearly shit my breeches.

(30:46):
I moved around to the other side of my Delta
and Roco's son ran back into the shop. Roco stood
there like the three hundred and fifty pound Italian dude
that he was, and said, are you fucking kidding me?
Get back in your car and get the fuck out
of here. I couldn't believe it as I saw Roco
walking towards the guy. I mean, he was taking it

(31:08):
no shit. The guy obviously was intimidated, because he put
the gun back into his car, jumped in and peeled
out in reverse, almost hitting another car in the street
before taking off down the road. I looked at Roco
and said, holy shit, boss, that was insane. He just said, yeah, sorry,
you had to see that. Not the first time, it
won't be the last. Get on home. I'll see you tomorrow.

(31:31):
That was before he asked if I was okay. I mean,
like I said, Rocco was a great guy, so I thought, wow,
that was a crazy way to end the night, and
I was a little shook up. Before I left, Roco
said he was calling the cops, and I got into
my car and started to make my way home, which
was about fifteen minutes away. Again, being midnight, there weren't

(31:52):
many cars out on the street, and I couldn't help
but notice high beams in my rear view mirror. After
only a couple of minutes of drug I just thought, Okay,
some asshole forgot to turn his brights off, and there
wasn't much I could do. For a second, I thought
about break checking him, but then thought better of it
and just decided to keep driving home. Then the brights

(32:15):
went off, and I thought, okay, great he realized his
brights were on. No big deal. I lived on the
edge of our town, and right before you got to
my street, for maybe about a mile, the one lane
road turned into two lanes going in either direction. When
we got to that point, I stayed to the right,
and this car came screaming up on my left hand side.

(32:37):
It got parallel with me, and I looked over for
a quick second and saw it was the guy who
had ordered the food and had just pulled a gun
on us in the parking lot. Now if I had
a cell phone back then I would have called the
cops immediately, but I didn't. I was just a kid
and I was just trying to get home. So I
thought two things. One, I can try to speed up

(33:00):
up in my old boat and i'd run this guy away.
Or I could slam on the brakes and hopefully he
would just keep going. So I lightly tapped the brakes
and slowed down a bit, but he slowed down too,
staying right alongside me. At this point, he was also
veering over into me, making me edge closer to the
soft shoulder on the side of the road, and I

(33:21):
started to get a little nervous. Then I thought about
maybe even veering over back towards him, like some kind
of hot shot to scare him off, but I thought
better of that as well. I knew I only had
about a block to go before my street and the
four lane road would turn back into two lanes. I
decided to wait it out and play the averages and
make a sharp right onto my street before he'd know

(33:43):
how to react. I don't know if he was reading
my mind, but he slowed down and got behind me again,
and then I thought, shit, Now what I was getting frantic.
I mean, I didn't know what to do. I didn't
want the guy to follow me all the way home.
I knew i'd be there in just a minute, but
I also knew the minute I got out of my
car he wouldn't be much longer getting out of his.

(34:05):
And I knew he had a gun, So I took
my chances. I sped up a little bit, and he
sped up as well. And that's when I made the
turn of my life at thirty five miles an hour,
onto my street. Right at the last second, he followed,
but being hammered, didn't have the kind of reaction that

(34:26):
I had. He ran smack dab into the stop sign
on the corner of the street. He hit it so
hard it went flying into the yard of the house
of my friend who lived on the corner. Obviously, he
jumped the curb with a wicked bang, and then plowed
into my friend's bushes in front of his porch. I
lived three houses down, got all the way back to
my house before running inside and saw my dad still

(34:49):
up watching TV. I blurted out a bunch of nonsense.
I'm sure I wasn't making any sense about what had happened.
My dad got me to calm down and then called
the police. Didn't matter. Three other people on the street
had already done that, and by the time we walked
back out into the front yard there were three or
four cops at the end of the street dealing with

(35:10):
this asshole. We walked down and got the attention of
an officer, and my dad told him everything that had
happened that night, about what had gone on at the pizzeria,
and also how the guy had followed me and then
made this ill fated turn chasing me home. The cops
took all of my information and talked more to my
dad than to me, and I think that was also

(35:31):
my dad taking charge and not wanting me to say
anything stupid. Thanks Dad. At any rate, they knew about
him from Rocos call to the police, and obviously the
guy was hauled out of there and faced a bunch
of charges, least of all his DWY that was impending.
I don't really know all about whatever else happened to

(35:52):
that guy, but I do know that he did get
charged with DWI and was going to jail as it
was his third offense. Made up my mind right then
and there that night, that I was no longer going
to be a pizza delivery guy. I told Rocco all
about it the next day and asked him if I
could just go back in the kitchen, and he said,
no problem, buddy, that's fine. So yeah, too crazy incidents.

(36:17):
I can't believe I didn't quit after the first one
I told you about, but I'm happy to say that
I was safe through both. But never again would I
deliver pizzas frat Hoouse submitted by Matt Kay. First off,

(36:40):
I'll give you a little background information about the house.
I won't mention the name of our fraternity, but the
house is located in Cincinnati around the campus of UFC.
The house was built in the eighteen nineties for a
certain prominent political figure, George Barnsdale Cox. He also led
a gambling and prostitution ring, using the house as a base.

(37:04):
The third floor was used in secrets, so in case
the police came to investigate. It used to be accessible
only through a secret door. There's also a secret passageway
that leads from our President's room out to the front door.
Sometime during the house's brief history of prostitution and gambling,
two prostitutes were murdered and buried in one of the walls.

(37:26):
The bodies have since been removed. But now to the hauntings.
There have been many true stories passed down since the
house was bought by our local chapter in nineteen forty nine.
The first story that I can think of is the
actual police report. One of the neighbors was walking his
dog down the street when apparently he saw a ghostly

(37:48):
figure wearing clothing from the Victorian area, pointing a pistol
out the third story window. Another strange occurrence around the
house is the third floor area. There uring a certain
time in the summer, there's a stench of rotting flesh
throughout the hallway of the third floor. I haven't been
in the hallway during that time, but many people, girls included,

(38:10):
can attest to that phenomena. This is said to have
come from the rotting corpses of the dead prostitutes. A
friend and current roommate of mine had a strange experience
when he was going through Hell week. During that week,
all of the pledges slept on the cold floor in
the basement. One night, my friend had a nightmare that
he was being dragged across the floor by a ghostly

(38:33):
figure in the nightmare, his friend at the time was
trying to hold on to him, and when he woke up,
he was several feet away from the original place he
had fallen asleep, and his friend, who was in the
dream and was there sleeping with the group of pledges
apparently had the same dream. The door into the room
was locked on the outside to prevent any active members

(38:55):
from bothering the pledges. Other creepy things have happened too,
like guys being grabbed in the middle of the night
by a shadowy figure, things mysteriously falling off shelves in
a grandfather clock broken for years, mysteriously turning off and on.
Most everyone who's been in that house has had a
weird experience, and I myself still feel a bit uncomfortable

(39:20):
going over to the house Stalker on university campus by
Lone Job. Back in March of this year, I, a
twenty one year old male, once attended a non academic
event on campus with my friends. Were attendees were mostly

(39:43):
students from the humanities and arts field, which made us
stand out as we were the only ones who were
computer science students. After the event, me and my friends
went to the library, which is a few floors below
the venue, just to do our coding assignments on our laptops.
While doing so, a familiar face was staring at me

(40:04):
from about twenty five feet away where our table was.
I remember seeing the guy from the event, who was
an art student judging by his id lanyard. Lanyards are
designed based on college and I didn't mind it first
until I noticed that his eyes were locked at me
and he only looked away when I tried to look
back at him. This lasted throughout my entire stay in

(40:27):
the library, which was an hour until the next class started.
The second encounter happened when I was in class and
he was peeking through the window door staring at me
as he walked past the classroom where I was. I
didn't care at first until it made me distracted in
class as he consistently walked by the corridor a couple
of times until class ended and he disappeared. What's even

(40:52):
creepier was the fact that art students in my university's
campus mostly have their classes in the Humanities building as
opposed to us computer science students in the Engineering and
Computer Studies building, and made it questionable why he was
there in the first place, I thought that would be
the end of my encounter with him. However, the third

(41:14):
happened after gym class, where I went to the restroom
to change clothes. I noticed that the guy was behind me,
but I completely ignored him as I walked in the
corridor toward the restroom. While changing in a cubicle, I
noticed that my previously worn shirt, which had been drenched
in sweat, disappeared from the cubicle's door where I had

(41:35):
hung it. Turns out this creep had followed me to
the restroom and pulled it, was sniffing on it, and
then dropped it on the floor when he rushed out
of the restroom the moment I tried to confront him,
I finally had enough of the guy, so I decided
it was time to file a complaint against him in
the disciplinary office of my university. So the following week

(41:58):
I visited there to act ask for a complaint for him. However,
to my surprise, he got expelled from campus exactly the
day before I visited. Turns out I wasn't the only victim,
as the staff there said he had gotten expelled for
sexually assaulting another male student from a different college. My

(42:27):
one creepy camping story by my low three to four.
I used to do a lot of camping trips with
a friend of mine post college. Most of our trips
were in Montana, since that's where we both lived at
the time, and that's where the story takes place. My
friend Jude and I used to spontaneously leave on camping

(42:48):
road trips, where we just pick a direction and drive
until we found some cool place to hike in camp.
Sometimes we'd look up trails and add one or two
day backpacking adventures to those trips, but more often than not,
we would end up in an empty campground or some
pull off on a forest service road and set up
our tent right outside the car for the night. Looking back.

(43:11):
It was wildly irresponsible because we never told anyone where
we were going. We almost never had a plan, so
if we had gone missing, there would have been no
clue as to where to start looking, and we almost
never had cell service where we camped. So the creepy
camping story I have happened in twenty twenty, which was

(43:32):
the height of Jude and I's spontaneous camping phase. I
had taken a week off of work and we wanted
to go up to Glacier and hike and camp for
several days, which we did. Since it was COVID, camping
inside the park was not allowed, so we had to
find random spots to camp every night. We stayed at
one campground about one hundred and eighty miles away from

(43:54):
West Glacier on the way up, then found a different
spot each night closer to the park. All of our
campsites near the park were between ten and twenty five
miles away from each other, because it was difficult to
locate spots that were both legal to camp in and
hadn't already been taken up by other park goers. This
meant that we sometimes spent hours driving up random forest

(44:16):
service roads looking for somewhere secluded to sleep, but we
always managed to find something. Here's where it gets creepy.
The first night of our trip, we stayed at a
campground near Drummond, which was about one hundred and eighty
miles from West Glacier. Early in the morning, when it

(44:36):
had just started to get light, I heard something walking
around the tent. This campground was occupied by a few
other campers, so at first I thought that maybe one
of them was looking for the bathroom. The steps were
heavy and deliberate, like whoever it was wasn't trying to
be quiet. It was in the grass, though, so I

(44:58):
couldn't hear individual footfalls. It was more like the sifting
through and crushing of grass and twigs. Whatever it was,
it walked within a few feet of our tent, coming
from the side facing the woods, not the other campsites
or the road. I was only half awake, but I
remember thinking two things. One I was glad I made

(45:21):
sure Jude locked the car, and two I really hoped
it was just a very bold deer and not a human.
I was super tired and didn't want to think it
was anything creepy, so I did my best to fall
back asleep, and eventually the sound stopped, though I don't
remember them ever moving away. They just weren't there anymore.

(45:44):
Jude had prescribed sleeping pills and was a deep sleeper,
so I assumed he'd slept through the whole thing. Well.
We both finally got up for the day. I didn't
think anything of it, and I didn't mention it to him.
The second night, we were up by Westlake after a
day of hiking and found a spot not too far
from the park entrance. It wasn't a designated campground, but

(46:08):
it was within a series of dirt roads in a
wooded area. We'd seen other people pulled off and camping
out of their cars, just like we were. Our tent
was set up right next to our car, since there
wasn't a lot of open space in the pull off
that we'd found. Again, in the early hours of the morning,
just when it was getting light, I woke up and

(46:28):
heard someone walking around our tent. This time, the grass
wasn't as tall, and I distinctly heard the heavy footsteps
of a person walking right next to our tent and
then around the car again. I remembered being glad that
Jude had locked the car the night before. The footsteps

(46:50):
had come from the woods, not the road, and continued
moving around our tent for a while. Then they eventually
stopped without moving away. I again went back to sleep,
then woke up for the day a couple of hours
later with Jude, and again didn't think anything more of it.
I assumed it was someone hiking in the area who

(47:11):
cut through our campsite as a short cut, and again
I didn't mention it to Jude. The third night, it
took us a long time to find a campsite. It
was pouring rain and we were both exhausted from a
thirteen mile hike. It took us three hours to find
a place, and we finally settled on a pull out

(47:31):
of a dirt road above the Hungry Horse dawn. We
were both uneasy about this spot because it wasn't a
forest service road, and we were a little worried we'd
be bothered by traffic on the road or cops telling
us not to camp there. It was remote, but not
remote enough, if you know what I mean. The pull
off was kind of a little road that went to nowhere,

(47:54):
probably used to push snow onto when plowing during the winter.
It went about fifty yards into the woods and then
ended with a dirt mound. There was an old fire
pit and broken glass at the end of it, so
we set up our tent near the entrance. It was
still pouring rain, and Jude walked around in the mud
and his bare feet, while I kept my shoes on
and examined the fire pit and broken bottles. Then we

(48:17):
turned in for the night. I noticed too late that
Jude had not locked the car, but he was asleep
with the keys in his pocket, and I was too
tired to get out and do it manually. Plus it
was still raining and I didn't want to get wet.
In the morning, Just when it was starting to get light,

(48:38):
I woke up and heard something walking around in the
woods above our tent. I thought it was dear at first,
the steps weren't as loud as the ones I'd heard
the previous morning. Then whatever it was came down onto
the pull out where our tent was and began moving
around our car. The tent was set up only about
three feet away from the car, so I could hear

(48:59):
what whatever it was distinctly as it walked. The ground
was muddy, so the footfalls were more muffled, and then
I heard the car door open. I remember I was
only half awake up until that point. I became fully
alert then, but was still a little unsure of what
I'd actually heard, so I didn't immediately get up, but

(49:23):
I kept listening, and whatever it was kept walking around
near the car. There were no sounds of any other
vehicles nearby, so whatever it was had to have walked here.
As I listened, I heard the car door shut. I
sat up fully at that point, waking Jude up and said,
I'm going to go check that out. I honestly can't

(49:46):
believe my nerves at that moment, but being scared, numb
and sleep deprived tends to make me stupidly brave. I
put my shoes on and opened the tent. By that time,
the sounds had stopped completely. Remember the tent was right
next to the car, on the same side as the woods.

(50:06):
I would have heard someone walking away. I got out,
and the first thing I noticed was that nobody was
around or inside the car. It was Jude's car, and
he's a bit of a mess, so no one would
be able to fit in there if they weren't in
the front seat anyway. The second thing I noticed was
that the ground was muddy all around the car and tent,

(50:29):
and the only footprints in the mud were from my
trail runners and Jude's bare feet. I even followed his
barefoot trail around to make sure that every print was his.
There were no footprints coming to or from the woods.
I mean nothing. I inspected the car and didn't find
anything out of place. There were no signs of any disturbance.

(50:52):
I walked over to the fire pit, and again could
only find my own footprints. Then I did this stupid
thing I could have, and went past the fire pit
into the woods. There I found a weird makeshift shelter
made of palette that had some blankets and women's undergarments
in it. It scared the shit out of me initially

(51:15):
because I was pretty spooked by that point and thought
there was a body in it, But upon closer inspection,
the whole thing was rained out and undisturbed. Nobody had
spent the night there in quite a while. Even still,
I didn't touch anything. It only came within a few
feet of the thing before turning around. I went back

(51:36):
to the car and sat inside it while I waited
for Jude to finish waking up. Then we packed up
our tent and didn't mention it to each other at all.
That day. On the fourth night, we found a really
cool spot below a dirt road on the west side
of the park. We were briefly disturbed by a man
walking into our campsite, but he just seemed like he

(51:59):
was scouting out a place to camp with his family
and didn't know we were there. That evening was otherwise
uneventful and we both went to sleep early because Jude
wanted to catch the sunrise. I was afraid to miss
my alarm, so I woke up in the middle of
the night and immediately heard something moving around outside our tent.

(52:21):
This time it was right behind our tent and the
direction of the way we'd come where we'd left the car.
I remember being kind of annoyed that this thing had
started up so late when all I wanted to do
was sleep. Eventually, the sound stopped, and I did fall asleep.
In the early hours of the morning, we got up
and broke camp before it got light. My alarm was

(52:45):
loud and it woke Jude up too, and I forgot
about the sounds i'd heard in the night and just
helped pack up the tent, and I didn't mention it
to him. I was pretty happy when we were finally
inside the locked car and we were headed to our
next destination, though, but I've always been a tad scared
of the dark. We saw a spectacular sunrise that morning,

(53:08):
and afterwards, when we were on our way to get
breakfast and coffee before heading home, Jude looked over at
me and said, have you been hearing something outside our tent?
Every morning, I looked at him in shock and said, yes,
remember I got up to investigate it yesterday, And Jude said, yeah,
that's really weird. Every morning I've been hearing it too.

(53:33):
We both talked about how strange it was that we'd
both heard it, but neither had thought it important to mention. Afterwards,
it was like, even though it was really unsettling, something
subconscious had made us both think that it was nothing
to dwell on. To this day, I get shivers when
I think about hearing whatever that was, and I'm still
astounded by the fact that I actually got up one

(53:54):
of those mornings to investigate. But in those moments, even
though I remember it now ldging that it was creepy,
I don't remember actually feeling very afraid, And clearly I
wasn't too worried because I hadn't once thought to bring
it up to Jude. So anyway, that's my one creepy
camping story. I'd like to add that this was not

(54:16):
the first time nor the last, that I've heard something
moving around my tent during a camping trip. However, that
trip was the first time it was so consistent, and
it was the only time I'd ever gone out to
see what it was. Because of how persistent it was.
I've had nights where black bears, elk, and deer have
come through camp. I've never had the circumstances or the

(54:38):
sudden ceasing of the sounds be so creepy. The fact
that we never camped in the same place twice but
still kept hearing something really weirded me out. To this day.
Jude is super unworried and nonchalant about it, whereas I
almost find it more unnerving each time I retell the story.
What do you think it was just a series of

(54:59):
other settling coincidences or was it something else? Hey, gang,

(55:21):
thanks for listening to this episode. If you have a
true scary story of any nature that you'd like me
to narrate, email it to Uncle Josh True Scary Stories
at gmail dot com and I read them all. If
you like what you've heard and seen and you're catching
this on YouTube, give the video of thumbs up, leave
a comment. I'd like to know what you thought of

(55:42):
the stories. And if you're not a subscriber, hey, why
not subscribe? Tell a friend about the channel? All that
stuff does help out with the algorithms. Follow me on
social media. And if you'd like to take a step
further in supporting what I'm doing, find a link in
the description of my Patreon page and consider getting yourself
some Uncle Josh and Campfire Crew merchandise linked to my

(56:05):
tea public storefront is in the description as well. Everyone
be excellent to each other, and until next time, be
wary of things that go bump in the night. It
could be anything a ghost, a monster, or a guy
next door.