October 14, 2025 • 21 mins
In edition of Two for Tuesday, we’ll hear terrifying true stories that will make you think twice about what’s lurking just out of sight. A chilling encounter with something evil that waits in the darkness of a basement — and refuses to stay hidden plus strangeness in seemingly peaceful forests. Real people. Real stories. Real scary.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, campfire crew, let's get it on. Whatever it is, man,
whatever it is. At this point, we're obvious. Okay, get
the hell out. The one you don't shoot by hectic,
(00:27):
he tricked. If you've spent any time hunting up in
northern Michigan, and you've probably heard about it. Everybody's got
a name for it, the Watcher, the tall one. My granddad, though,
he always called it the one you don't shoot. He
told me about the first time he ran into it,
(00:48):
sometime back in the seventies near Torch Lake. He said
it was one of those mornings where the air was
so still it felt like the woods was holding its breath,
perfect for hunting. He was tucked into his blind before
first light, waiting when this buck stepped out of the
tree line. He swore was the biggest he'd ever seen
(01:09):
in his life. Rack wide and heavy, antlers looked like
something carved out of bone for a king. He raised
his rifle, finger curling on the trigger, and that's when
he caught its eyes. He said. They weren't dear eyes,
not at all. They looked aware, like there was some
(01:30):
one else looking out through them, someone older, someone who
knew him better than he knew himself, and before he
could squeeze the trigger, he heard it, not out loud,
not a sound in the air, but in his head,
as clear as his own thoughts, not me. He froze,
(01:50):
hands locked and hard, pounding, and the buck just stared
back at him, and then it walked off, calm as
anything like it knew there wasn't a man alive who
dared follow him. My granddad swore that he sat there
for ten whole minutes before he trusted his legs enough
to climb down. When he got back to his truck,
that's when he saw the dirt all around it, torn
(02:13):
up with fresh tracks and hoofprints, circling over and over again,
like something had been waiting for him to return. Now
you'll hear a lot of hunters up that way tell
similar stories if you know how to ask. Some say
it's a spirit, some say it's just an old tale.
But the warnings are always the same. Don't shoot it,
(02:36):
don't even raise your rifle. Some claim if you take
the shot, you'll never make it out of the woods.
You'll get turned around and lost, and they'll find your
body weeks later, if at all. Others say you'll make
it home, but it won't stay in the trees. It'll
follow you back, and you'll hear it at night, hooves
(02:57):
pacing outside your house, or worse, under your window. I
laughed at those stories most of my life and thought
they were just campfire yarns meant to spook kids. Until
last season. I was out near Robinson Road, same stretcher
was my granddad used to hunt. That morning. The frost
(03:19):
was thick and the woods were still, and then, just
like he'd said, a buck stepped into the clearing and
the Lord it was massive, broadside, perfect shot. I raised
my rifle, lined up the scope, and then it lifted
its head for just a heartbeat, I swear on my life,
(03:40):
I saw its mouth stretch into something that wasn't right,
something like a smile. My stomach turned cold, and I
lowered the rifle. I didn't say a word, and as
I sat there, gripping the stock with shaking hands, I
felt it like a thought that wasn't mine pressed hard
(04:00):
into my skull until I couldn't think of anything else.
Good Basement Evil by Judy B. I wanted to tell
(04:21):
you something very disturbing that happened to me as I
was coming into puberty. I believe I was between the
ages of ten and thirteen, but I'm not exactly sure.
I might have been a little younger. I'm now fifty
nine years of age. We lived in a small white
house with an earthen basement, more like a cellar, though
I suppose no cement flora walls. Our furnace was down there,
(04:46):
as well as my mom's preserves, and we stored our
winter fruit and apples, etc. Down there as well as children,
we would be sent down to bring up something for
our mother all the time. We had a little dog
and a female cat to go down there with us.
The basement always smelled like fresh earth and musty molds,
as are common in such places. However, at times there
(05:09):
used to be a terrible odor, one that used to
upset me and the dog and cat too. Whenever this
smell came around, they wouldn't go downstairs. I mean, the
cat would just disappear, and the dog would stand at
the top of the stairs and growl and bark and
then usually take off. I guess I should mention a
(05:30):
little bit about how we got down to the basement
in the first place. The house was originally just a
small two bedroom place with a veranda on the side.
My brother and I shared a room until he turned
around eight or nine, and then my folks closed in
the veranda and made it into a bedroom for him.
There was a heavy trap door which led into the
(05:51):
basement and it remained the only entrance there as well.
It was really heavy, about two or three inches thick,
and to open it, and we as kids, had to
lift it up and then rest it on her bended
knees and then push it all the way up. My
dad had put a large locking hinge of some sort
to hold it up for us. There was a nasty
(06:12):
presence down there when that smell came around, and it
made itself known. At the time that this happened to me,
I didn't know that my brother was having his problems
with it as well. I only knew that something woke
me up and came into my room by my door
one night, but only came in just a little ways.
Whatever it was, it called to me and wanted me
(06:35):
to come to it, not knowing whether it was real
or not. Like any child, I would just cover my head,
but sometimes it would sound like my mom's voice and
try to get me to come to it man, because
I didn't go to it. I would just lay there
in fear. This light would pulse larger and larger, and
(06:56):
it seemed as this thing would get closer. The light
only happened when it would seem to be angry when
I wouldn't follow it, And at that point I would
scream for my mom and dad. And then the light
would get smaller and go out of my room and
down a short hall like if you could even call
it a hall, it was only about three feet long.
(07:16):
I would see this thing turn around the corner, go
past our bathroom back into the Nick's room, and then
it would disappear. This happened off and on for about
three years. Now. I should tell you my brother Nick's
story too. He knew that something was down there in
(07:36):
the cellar as it would wake him up. Sometimes he
would actually hear the trap door open and he would
wake up, and what he told me he saw was
two red orbs. It just felt bad, like felt like hate.
He said that as he got more frightened, they would
get larger and the door would open more. He used
(07:58):
to lay empty tin cans at an angle on the
trap door, or angle his chair so that it would
go off balance if this happened when he was asleep,
and he would wake up. Then he told me that
whenever this happened, he started to hate the thing himself,
and the stronger his emotions got, the smaller the red
orbs became. They would retreat and the trap door would close.
(08:22):
One time the thing got past him, because he told
me that on one of those occasions that it came
to him, he followed it and it went to my room,
and that's when I would scream and it would start
coming back towards him, so he would duck into the
bathroom and it would go buy him back into his
room and back down into the basement. He never told
(08:44):
any of us about this until he was an adult,
well into his thirties. He didn't want us to think
that he was losing it, he said, when this thing
would visit me, I would tell my folks, and they
would always tell me that I was dreaming or had
a bad nightmare, and that was that. But I always
knew that it had happened since I spoke to Nick
(09:06):
about it. Now I believe it was real. About fifteen
or sixteen years ago, I was telling my mom's older
sister about things, and I said, you probably will think
I'm going for the loot. He been here, but this
is what happened. And I told her what I just
told you. She in turn related to me something that
(09:27):
my dad had told her. And now when I think
about it, I remember my dad no longer going down
into the basement himself. A little bit about my dad.
He's passed away now. He was a true full blooded Italian,
originally from Italy, and he came to Canada when he
was fourteen years of age. He himself had a number
(09:49):
of unusual events happened to him, seeing and hearing things
at any rate. My aunt told me that on one occasion,
when my mother had left him at home on his
own for a few days to visit her sister in Surrey, BC,
he was downstairs and something not nice chased him around
the basement. She never told me what he saw, only
(10:12):
that he came out to her place after it happened,
completely whitefaced and very upset. After that, he never went
down to the basement alone. That house. It's still standing
and people never seem to stay there too long. I
don't know if they're experiencing anything or not. I just
(10:32):
noticed that it's always either for rent or for sale.
My folks owned it from late nineteen fifty two to
nineteen seventy eight, and it was sold to an elderly
lady who lived there for a year or two and
then sold it. Yeah. Like I said, over the years
it changed hands a number of times, and it's been
rented out a lot. I believe it's for sale again,
(10:55):
and I know that before Christmas of this last year
it was, but I'm not sure if it's still is
or if it has been sold. It upsets me, though,
when I see children living in it, I believe that
they are the most vulnerable. I can't say if there
were any other further occurrences after we left. I just
know what happened to us. Anybody hearing this probably thinks
(11:19):
I'm nuttier than the fruitcake, and I've been looked at
weirdly by a few folks who I've told this to,
But I talk about it anyway. People don't know what
is out there that they can't see. I realize that
not all entities are evil or danger to anyone physically
or mentally, but they are there, nonetheless good and bad.
(11:41):
Be they spirits who are tied here for some reason
or another, or maybe something else entirely the Watcher of
the Forest by far Box and the Flowers. Before I begin,
(12:05):
it's important to acknowledge that my encounter takes place in
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, home to and land of the
Ojibwe of Fort William First Nation. I have a good
friend who I will refer to as Annie. At the
time of our encounter, Annie and I had been very
close friends for approximately four years and had a lot
(12:26):
of wacky adventures. She was not above toting us around
on her parents van as we blasted meat loaf and
obnoxiously high volumes with the windows down, cruising the streets
of our city. We met and became friends in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
If you know anything about Canada and its horrifying history
(12:46):
of European colonization, you will know that the First Nations
peoples are victims of mass genocide. I refuse to use
the phrase attempted genocide because the continued erasure of this
culture's rich history is an ongoing homa side against these people,
their stories, and their spiritual practices. My story begins in
(13:07):
September of twenty eighteen. Annie had just moved to thunder
Bay in the spring of twenty seventeen to live with
her partner, Dan, who was born and raised there. Naturally,
I missed her terribly and was quick to arrange a
visit to more or less just be in her presence.
While I was there, I enjoyed the company of Annie, Dan,
(13:28):
and Annie's tattoo artist's friend Moe. One evening, I got
tattooed by Mo and we smoked some weed, and I
watched Annie and Mo play a video game that I
can't recall the name of it at this time. Another evening,
Annie made candles to give to loved ones as gifts,
and I video called my new partner, who remained in Winnipeg,
all the while breathing in the cool, fragile air and
(13:51):
pacing around under a piercingly illuminated crescent moon. The mood
of the entire trip was relatively light hearted, though at
times admitted to a more melancholy feel. Thunder Bay is
no stranger to gray skies and light fog, as it
is along the northwestern shore of Lake Superior, making this
type of nuanced characteristics seem par for the course. It
(14:15):
was either my second or third day in the city,
and Nanny and Dan and myself decided to take advantage
of the mild weather and spend the day outside exploring
the rivers, springs, and general green space. Needless to say,
these surroundings are very comforting to us all so we
were quite pleased to be climbing over jagged rocks and
plundering down small embankments all afternoon. Ultimately, we agreed that
(14:41):
a walk through the forest would be just what our
souls needed to feel nourished. The wooded area was dense
but had clearings where people could either bike or walk down,
and this particular forest was one that both Annie and
Dan were very familiar with and was often visited by them.
I was in awe of all the day different species
of trees and birds, mushrooms and plants, and was so
(15:04):
captivated by the vibrancy of the foliage that I lost
myself in taking snapshots of every new moss, cloak log
that I could find. The bark of trees probably displayed
brooches of fungi, and the turning leaves shimmered with flecked
kisses from the sun. We were enjoying our trogging around
until the mood suddenly shifted less nuanced melancholy and instead
(15:27):
felt more ominous, dull, seeping. I'll never forget the moment
that Annie and I looked at each other, reading each
other's chilled expressions. We both heard it at the exact
same time. Dan was a little further ahead of us
on the trail, and we called to him, yes year
at it two. The sound was distance and breathy, yet
(15:51):
echoed clearly in the spaces between the trees. The sound
was distinctly that of some type of wind instrument, though
I've never been to discern what kind. I feel the
need to emphasize that there was absolutely no one else
anywhere in our vicinity. Making the sound of this wind
instrument at all audible nearly impossible, especially considering how crisply
(16:14):
we could all hear it as our eyes darted around
the bristled giants with their brooches and sun kiss leaves.
Annie's eyes eventually connected with mine, and she said what
I was thinking, We need to leave now. Though the
feeling gradually overcoming us was not what I would consider sinister,
(16:34):
it was still not a very pleasant feeling. It felt
more like contempt and displeasure that we were there. We
didn't run along the path, but instead hurried our steps,
as if running would send shock waves vibrating through the
whole forest and throw off Earth's balance entirely. As we
picked up the pace, not only could we hear the
(16:55):
instrument in the distance, but we could also feel it.
The music cloaked us in a translucent blanket of darkness
and followed closely behind every step of the way. Annie
and I didn't speak, just plugged along the trail, instinctively,
knowing exactly what each other was experiencing, and I remember
thinking that this thick, sullen darkness was going to catch
(17:18):
up with us and swallow us whole. As this thought manifested,
we saw the mouth of the forest up ahead, ready
to regurgitate us from its gullet, and Dan, like a
bear leading her cubs to safety, timbered lightly towards the
sun last opening. Upon first impact of our feet beating
concrete on the other side, Annie and I stated, at
(17:40):
the exact same time, it's lifted, and it had. The
music stopped instantly upon us exiting the forest, and the
darkness that had stalked us vanished. Annie and I discussed
what we had experienced later that evening, and both of
us felt that we had an immediate feeling of heaviness
and dread that was lifted from us as soon as
(18:02):
we left the forest behind. I'm no stranger to the
spirit realm. It's something that I've always been connected to
my entire life. But this particular experience, however, has always
left me feeling sorrowful for the watcher of that forest.
I wholeheartedly believe that they don't mean any harm, that
they're simply protecting their land, a sovereign for every living
(18:25):
species that thrives in the forest, and a host for
every creature who calls at home. Thank you, Forest for
allowing us to enjoy your beauty, and as for the
watcher of the forest, I'm sorry that we intruded without
being welcome first. I hope Grandfather's Son shines brightly upon
you and Grandmother Moon keeps you well. Hey Yang, thanks
(19:03):
for listening to this episode. If you have a true
scary story of any nature that you'd like me to narrate,
email it too, Uncle Josh True Scary Stories at gmail
dot com. I read them all, and if you have
a true scary story about Halloween, please send that in immediately.
Looking forward to another great Halloween extravaganza this year. Follow
(19:28):
me on social media. Links to that are in the description.
And if you're catching this on YouTube and you'll like
what you heard and saw when I give it a
thumbs up, leave a comment. I'd love to know what
you thought of the stories. And if you're not a subscriber, hey,
become a subscriber today. Maybe even tell a friend about
my channel. I sure would appreciate it. It does help
out with the algorithms. Everyone be excellent to each other
(19:53):
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.
Hey, campfire crew, let's get it on. Whatever it is, man,
whatever it is. At this point, we're obvious. Okay, get
the hell out. The one you don't shoot by hectic,
(00:27):
he tricked. If you've spent any time hunting up in
northern Michigan, and you've probably heard about it. Everybody's got
a name for it, the Watcher, the tall one. My granddad, though,
he always called it the one you don't shoot. He
told me about the first time he ran into it,
(00:48):
sometime back in the seventies near Torch Lake. He said
it was one of those mornings where the air was
so still it felt like the woods was holding its breath,
perfect for hunting. He was tucked into his blind before
first light, waiting when this buck stepped out of the
tree line. He swore was the biggest he'd ever seen
(01:09):
in his life. Rack wide and heavy, antlers looked like
something carved out of bone for a king. He raised
his rifle, finger curling on the trigger, and that's when
he caught its eyes. He said. They weren't dear eyes,
not at all. They looked aware, like there was some
(01:30):
one else looking out through them, someone older, someone who
knew him better than he knew himself, and before he
could squeeze the trigger, he heard it, not out loud,
not a sound in the air, but in his head,
as clear as his own thoughts, not me. He froze,
(01:50):
hands locked and hard, pounding, and the buck just stared
back at him, and then it walked off, calm as
anything like it knew there wasn't a man alive who
dared follow him. My granddad swore that he sat there
for ten whole minutes before he trusted his legs enough
to climb down. When he got back to his truck,
that's when he saw the dirt all around it, torn
(02:13):
up with fresh tracks and hoofprints, circling over and over again,
like something had been waiting for him to return. Now
you'll hear a lot of hunters up that way tell
similar stories if you know how to ask. Some say
it's a spirit, some say it's just an old tale.
But the warnings are always the same. Don't shoot it,
(02:36):
don't even raise your rifle. Some claim if you take
the shot, you'll never make it out of the woods.
You'll get turned around and lost, and they'll find your
body weeks later, if at all. Others say you'll make
it home, but it won't stay in the trees. It'll
follow you back, and you'll hear it at night, hooves
(02:57):
pacing outside your house, or worse, under your window. I
laughed at those stories most of my life and thought
they were just campfire yarns meant to spook kids. Until
last season. I was out near Robinson Road, same stretcher
was my granddad used to hunt. That morning. The frost
(03:19):
was thick and the woods were still, and then, just
like he'd said, a buck stepped into the clearing and
the Lord it was massive, broadside, perfect shot. I raised
my rifle, lined up the scope, and then it lifted
its head for just a heartbeat, I swear on my life,
(03:40):
I saw its mouth stretch into something that wasn't right,
something like a smile. My stomach turned cold, and I
lowered the rifle. I didn't say a word, and as
I sat there, gripping the stock with shaking hands, I
felt it like a thought that wasn't mine pressed hard
(04:00):
into my skull until I couldn't think of anything else.
Good Basement Evil by Judy B. I wanted to tell
(04:21):
you something very disturbing that happened to me as I
was coming into puberty. I believe I was between the
ages of ten and thirteen, but I'm not exactly sure.
I might have been a little younger. I'm now fifty
nine years of age. We lived in a small white
house with an earthen basement, more like a cellar, though
I suppose no cement flora walls. Our furnace was down there,
(04:46):
as well as my mom's preserves, and we stored our
winter fruit and apples, etc. Down there as well as children,
we would be sent down to bring up something for
our mother all the time. We had a little dog
and a female cat to go down there with us.
The basement always smelled like fresh earth and musty molds,
as are common in such places. However, at times there
(05:09):
used to be a terrible odor, one that used to
upset me and the dog and cat too. Whenever this
smell came around, they wouldn't go downstairs. I mean, the
cat would just disappear, and the dog would stand at
the top of the stairs and growl and bark and
then usually take off. I guess I should mention a
(05:30):
little bit about how we got down to the basement
in the first place. The house was originally just a
small two bedroom place with a veranda on the side.
My brother and I shared a room until he turned
around eight or nine, and then my folks closed in
the veranda and made it into a bedroom for him.
There was a heavy trap door which led into the
(05:51):
basement and it remained the only entrance there as well.
It was really heavy, about two or three inches thick,
and to open it, and we as kids, had to
lift it up and then rest it on her bended
knees and then push it all the way up. My
dad had put a large locking hinge of some sort
to hold it up for us. There was a nasty
(06:12):
presence down there when that smell came around, and it
made itself known. At the time that this happened to me,
I didn't know that my brother was having his problems
with it as well. I only knew that something woke
me up and came into my room by my door
one night, but only came in just a little ways.
Whatever it was, it called to me and wanted me
(06:35):
to come to it, not knowing whether it was real
or not. Like any child, I would just cover my head,
but sometimes it would sound like my mom's voice and
try to get me to come to it man, because
I didn't go to it. I would just lay there
in fear. This light would pulse larger and larger, and
(06:56):
it seemed as this thing would get closer. The light
only happened when it would seem to be angry when
I wouldn't follow it, And at that point I would
scream for my mom and dad. And then the light
would get smaller and go out of my room and
down a short hall like if you could even call
it a hall, it was only about three feet long.
(07:16):
I would see this thing turn around the corner, go
past our bathroom back into the Nick's room, and then
it would disappear. This happened off and on for about
three years. Now. I should tell you my brother Nick's
story too. He knew that something was down there in
(07:36):
the cellar as it would wake him up. Sometimes he
would actually hear the trap door open and he would
wake up, and what he told me he saw was
two red orbs. It just felt bad, like felt like hate.
He said that as he got more frightened, they would
get larger and the door would open more. He used
(07:58):
to lay empty tin cans at an angle on the
trap door, or angle his chair so that it would
go off balance if this happened when he was asleep,
and he would wake up. Then he told me that
whenever this happened, he started to hate the thing himself,
and the stronger his emotions got, the smaller the red
orbs became. They would retreat and the trap door would close.
(08:22):
One time the thing got past him, because he told
me that on one of those occasions that it came
to him, he followed it and it went to my room,
and that's when I would scream and it would start
coming back towards him, so he would duck into the
bathroom and it would go buy him back into his
room and back down into the basement. He never told
(08:44):
any of us about this until he was an adult,
well into his thirties. He didn't want us to think
that he was losing it, he said, when this thing
would visit me, I would tell my folks, and they
would always tell me that I was dreaming or had
a bad nightmare, and that was that. But I always
knew that it had happened since I spoke to Nick
(09:06):
about it. Now I believe it was real. About fifteen
or sixteen years ago, I was telling my mom's older
sister about things, and I said, you probably will think
I'm going for the loot. He been here, but this
is what happened. And I told her what I just
told you. She in turn related to me something that
(09:27):
my dad had told her. And now when I think
about it, I remember my dad no longer going down
into the basement himself. A little bit about my dad.
He's passed away now. He was a true full blooded Italian,
originally from Italy, and he came to Canada when he
was fourteen years of age. He himself had a number
(09:49):
of unusual events happened to him, seeing and hearing things
at any rate. My aunt told me that on one occasion,
when my mother had left him at home on his
own for a few days to visit her sister in Surrey, BC,
he was downstairs and something not nice chased him around
the basement. She never told me what he saw, only
(10:12):
that he came out to her place after it happened,
completely whitefaced and very upset. After that, he never went
down to the basement alone. That house. It's still standing
and people never seem to stay there too long. I
don't know if they're experiencing anything or not. I just
(10:32):
noticed that it's always either for rent or for sale.
My folks owned it from late nineteen fifty two to
nineteen seventy eight, and it was sold to an elderly
lady who lived there for a year or two and
then sold it. Yeah. Like I said, over the years
it changed hands a number of times, and it's been
rented out a lot. I believe it's for sale again,
(10:55):
and I know that before Christmas of this last year
it was, but I'm not sure if it's still is
or if it has been sold. It upsets me, though,
when I see children living in it, I believe that
they are the most vulnerable. I can't say if there
were any other further occurrences after we left. I just
know what happened to us. Anybody hearing this probably thinks
(11:19):
I'm nuttier than the fruitcake, and I've been looked at
weirdly by a few folks who I've told this to,
But I talk about it anyway. People don't know what
is out there that they can't see. I realize that
not all entities are evil or danger to anyone physically
or mentally, but they are there, nonetheless good and bad.
(11:41):
Be they spirits who are tied here for some reason
or another, or maybe something else entirely the Watcher of
the Forest by far Box and the Flowers. Before I begin,
(12:05):
it's important to acknowledge that my encounter takes place in
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, home to and land of the
Ojibwe of Fort William First Nation. I have a good
friend who I will refer to as Annie. At the
time of our encounter, Annie and I had been very
close friends for approximately four years and had a lot
(12:26):
of wacky adventures. She was not above toting us around
on her parents van as we blasted meat loaf and
obnoxiously high volumes with the windows down, cruising the streets
of our city. We met and became friends in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
If you know anything about Canada and its horrifying history
(12:46):
of European colonization, you will know that the First Nations
peoples are victims of mass genocide. I refuse to use
the phrase attempted genocide because the continued erasure of this
culture's rich history is an ongoing homa side against these people,
their stories, and their spiritual practices. My story begins in
(13:07):
September of twenty eighteen. Annie had just moved to thunder
Bay in the spring of twenty seventeen to live with
her partner, Dan, who was born and raised there. Naturally,
I missed her terribly and was quick to arrange a
visit to more or less just be in her presence.
While I was there, I enjoyed the company of Annie, Dan,
(13:28):
and Annie's tattoo artist's friend Moe. One evening, I got
tattooed by Mo and we smoked some weed, and I
watched Annie and Mo play a video game that I
can't recall the name of it at this time. Another evening,
Annie made candles to give to loved ones as gifts,
and I video called my new partner, who remained in Winnipeg,
all the while breathing in the cool, fragile air and
(13:51):
pacing around under a piercingly illuminated crescent moon. The mood
of the entire trip was relatively light hearted, though at
times admitted to a more melancholy feel. Thunder Bay is
no stranger to gray skies and light fog, as it
is along the northwestern shore of Lake Superior, making this
type of nuanced characteristics seem par for the course. It
(14:15):
was either my second or third day in the city,
and Nanny and Dan and myself decided to take advantage
of the mild weather and spend the day outside exploring
the rivers, springs, and general green space. Needless to say,
these surroundings are very comforting to us all so we
were quite pleased to be climbing over jagged rocks and
plundering down small embankments all afternoon. Ultimately, we agreed that
(14:41):
a walk through the forest would be just what our
souls needed to feel nourished. The wooded area was dense
but had clearings where people could either bike or walk down,
and this particular forest was one that both Annie and
Dan were very familiar with and was often visited by them.
I was in awe of all the day different species
of trees and birds, mushrooms and plants, and was so
(15:04):
captivated by the vibrancy of the foliage that I lost
myself in taking snapshots of every new moss, cloak log
that I could find. The bark of trees probably displayed
brooches of fungi, and the turning leaves shimmered with flecked
kisses from the sun. We were enjoying our trogging around
until the mood suddenly shifted less nuanced melancholy and instead
(15:27):
felt more ominous, dull, seeping. I'll never forget the moment
that Annie and I looked at each other, reading each
other's chilled expressions. We both heard it at the exact
same time. Dan was a little further ahead of us
on the trail, and we called to him, yes year
at it two. The sound was distance and breathy, yet
(15:51):
echoed clearly in the spaces between the trees. The sound
was distinctly that of some type of wind instrument, though
I've never been to discern what kind. I feel the
need to emphasize that there was absolutely no one else
anywhere in our vicinity. Making the sound of this wind
instrument at all audible nearly impossible, especially considering how crisply
(16:14):
we could all hear it as our eyes darted around
the bristled giants with their brooches and sun kiss leaves.
Annie's eyes eventually connected with mine, and she said what
I was thinking, We need to leave now. Though the
feeling gradually overcoming us was not what I would consider sinister,
(16:34):
it was still not a very pleasant feeling. It felt
more like contempt and displeasure that we were there. We
didn't run along the path, but instead hurried our steps,
as if running would send shock waves vibrating through the
whole forest and throw off Earth's balance entirely. As we
picked up the pace, not only could we hear the
(16:55):
instrument in the distance, but we could also feel it.
The music cloaked us in a translucent blanket of darkness
and followed closely behind every step of the way. Annie
and I didn't speak, just plugged along the trail, instinctively,
knowing exactly what each other was experiencing, and I remember
thinking that this thick, sullen darkness was going to catch
(17:18):
up with us and swallow us whole. As this thought manifested,
we saw the mouth of the forest up ahead, ready
to regurgitate us from its gullet, and Dan, like a
bear leading her cubs to safety, timbered lightly towards the
sun last opening. Upon first impact of our feet beating
concrete on the other side, Annie and I stated, at
(17:40):
the exact same time, it's lifted, and it had. The
music stopped instantly upon us exiting the forest, and the
darkness that had stalked us vanished. Annie and I discussed
what we had experienced later that evening, and both of
us felt that we had an immediate feeling of heaviness
and dread that was lifted from us as soon as
(18:02):
we left the forest behind. I'm no stranger to the
spirit realm. It's something that I've always been connected to
my entire life. But this particular experience, however, has always
left me feeling sorrowful for the watcher of that forest.
I wholeheartedly believe that they don't mean any harm, that
they're simply protecting their land, a sovereign for every living
(18:25):
species that thrives in the forest, and a host for
every creature who calls at home. Thank you, Forest for
allowing us to enjoy your beauty, and as for the
watcher of the forest, I'm sorry that we intruded without
being welcome first. I hope Grandfather's Son shines brightly upon
you and Grandmother Moon keeps you well. Hey Yang, thanks
(19:03):
for listening to this episode. If you have a true
scary story of any nature that you'd like me to narrate,
email it too, Uncle Josh True Scary Stories at gmail
dot com. I read them all, and if you have
a true scary story about Halloween, please send that in immediately.
Looking forward to another great Halloween extravaganza this year. Follow
(19:28):
me on social media. Links to that are in the description.
And if you're catching this on YouTube and you'll like
what you heard and saw when I give it a
thumbs up, leave a comment. I'd love to know what
you thought of the stories. And if you're not a subscriber, hey,
become a subscriber today. Maybe even tell a friend about
my channel. I sure would appreciate it. It does help
out with the algorithms. Everyone be excellent to each other
(19:53):
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.
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