Jen (29:28)
Hi, my name is Jen. I was calling in because my husband Justin and I, we were traveling towards Idaho to go to Silverwood. Other than small gatherings in Coeur d' Alene when I was a small child, I'd never been to Idaho or done anything in that area. Was very unfamiliar with the area. It was extraordinarily hot, Fourth of July weekend. Had our three children with us. And we're traveling to try to find a place to stay. We wanted to find free camping. And I don't know exactly how it felt like we got so lost off the trail, Came through these long paths and stuff and roads and came to this lodge. And the lodge was just weird. I can't even explain to you. Like, it looked like some cute little country place, just kind of like an old Western kind of situation just in the middle of the woods. And you walk into it, and it felt like some weird Stephen King movie where all the people I'm, you know, entering into this building into, like, they all. Like I've known them from somewhere or there's some type of significance to them. But there's this one man that is across the counter and the bar that when you walk in. I went in to get our daughter milk because it was so hot. The milk that we had for her in the car, it was not safe to give. So go in there to ask if we can get milk for her sippy cup. And I just noticed this one guy just keeps looking at me and staring at me. And I see the Seattle Mariner's umbrella in the corner by a newspaper. And I don't know why, but I keep looking at it here throughout the entire time that I'm waiting for this milk. We were from the Seattle area at that time. We had driven out from Maui Terrace in Washington State. And it was just weird, the people. Everything took so long. And I couldn't figure out for the life of me what the significance of these people that just were just staring at me. And as we came into the lodge, there was lots of people outside, like in a picnic area. And they were all just kind of having a picnic or a party or something. It wasn't huge, but there was a good amount of people, at least 20, 30 people out there. I didn't really take much notice to the fact that I guess when I came out, I noticed that they all had guns holstered on the side and whatnot. But being in the lodge, it seemed to just take for absolute. Ever paid $4 for the sippy cup of milk, Talked to a gentleman. It felt like he asked me my. Or knew my whole life story. That's how long I was there. And by the time I came out, the kids and my husband were tired and in the sun. A lot of people, all those people that had come from the picnic area, they had come up towards the lodge to the entrance where I was. So I went from being nobody there to coming out to all these people with guns and saying hey. And just acting strange, like no one wanted to talk. It was like all body language, and everybody was kind of like approaching slowly like some weird zombie movie. They just weren't zombies. And I was very happy to get back in the truck. And as soon as I did, my husband Justin, pointed out, did you notice how many of them were all carrying guns? And I guess they find out later, I guess a gun law had been passed in their state or whatever. So they were pretty happy to have open gun law or whatever. So I. But it was just so weird. And then we're like, okay, we just. We got to figure out our camping spot. We got to find a store so we don't have to pay, you know, a Lodge $4 for milk, because our daughter's gonna need it again soon. It was so hot, the kids were complaining. I don't really know how much further we traveled. It felt like forever, I would say miles and miles and miles, and the roads became thinner, and there was some really great places that him and I both wished that we would have taken pictures of. I mean, the road just seemed so thin, and on one side, huge dips and trees and everything, and it was just really neat. But as we went further and further down the road, he says, oh, there's like a little lake we can go down to. And we went down a road that was. I mean, it got less exciting, less maintained, let's put it that way, and thinner. And then you find that there's mobiles and trailers and small houses, and it leads you down to the lake. But the people along the way. Here we are. It's like the hills have eyes kind of crap. Things were just weird. The people that we encountered were definitely unique and different. And I don't know how to describe it. There was just this overwhelming feeling of like, we definitely cannot stay here. Just trying to find a place to turn around was tough enough. But I can remember him And I feeling very urgent, like, we just need to get out of here. Felt like wrong turn kind of situation. Just get out. And then as we're leaving out of there, we are back on the road. But we realized that we didn't get to go back the way that we came in. So there was only, like, one option. So how did that happen? And it felt like we were traveling forever to try to find this free camp spot. And then we hit a rest area off the side of the road. And finally I tell my husband. I was like, finally, something seems, like, familiar, you know, like, this actually seems like a rest stop. It's not some weird place. There's not a bunch of people. It's not populated with interesting things or weird signs or, you know, warning signs. Someone will shoot you. No trespassing. We finally get to an actual, like, what seems like a great rest stop. Beautiful view, or so I thought. So we get out of the car and my daughter. I have three daughters. My oldest, she travels into the bathroom, which I can say was like the shape of a hexagon or an octagon. It was like a yurt or something, only a toilet, and it wasn't one you could flush. There was no sink. There was no windows. It was very. It was okay for the maintenance, I suppose. It's kind of icky. Anyway, she goes in there to go to the bathroom. There's this large rock wall that extends out. And I'm just kind of peering out, looking at all the beautiful forest and everything. It's almost like a Bob Ross painting, in a way. My husband, he has to also go to the bathroom. So he goes and travels down further on a path, figures, let the girls use the restroom, and him and our dog go down for him to find out kind of more about the area and to relieve himself. So as he's down there, he's experiencing what he thinks is just him and the dog down there. And he finished going to the bathroom, and he's looking at kind of a post of things explaining what's going on in the area. And then he feels this presence behind him. And he goes to turn and say he's sorry and realizes that this person's, like, translucent and doesn't really look like a person. Like wearing, like, a clear suit is what he explained to me. This is my husband, Justin. He called in a couple months ago to explain his side of the story. Anyway, I'm still up at the rock, not realizing that Justin's experiencing this. And I'm realizing that everything that I'm looking for. It looks like a green screen. I felt like if I could have just had, like, a slingshot, I could have taken, like, Bart Simpson style and totally, you know, flung something out there and hit what's supposed to look like. It's so far away. It looked like huge. Just screens up in front of me, at least three of them. And one was. I mean, you really had to look to find the seam. And I was trying to show my husband, Justin, when he came back up the path, but he looked like he'd seen a ghost. He was just absolutely just like, sweating and looked scared and looked like a kid see ghost. And me, I'm sitting here just, like, wanting to tell him, like, oh, my God, look out here. It's not even real. Like, all this that I thought looked so wonderful. And he's not really paying attention to me because he'd already gone through his own thing. And as he's trying to explain to me that he's scared, we need to leave. He's trying to tell me what he saw. The dog had already ran off way ahead of him. I mean, he's like, I saw someone that wasn't even there, and he was just freaking out. And then as he's trying to convey this to me and be like, where's our oldest daughter Ashley? Where's she at? You know? And I'm like, she's in the bathroom. And if I'm saying that to him, she'd already been in it. I mean, we really weren't there that long, four or five minutes. And then she starts screaming. She says she saw somebody in the bathroom. There's no windows. I've been standing at one of the side where there's the entrance to this bathroom. I mean, I'm not leaving my kids up there. My other two are asleep in the car. It's very hot, and she's just screaming, mom, there's someone that was in here. I don't know where they went and. But the door was shut. I was there the whole time. There's no windows. This thing is like. It's a bathroom. It's just a toilet. It's like a dug hole. They have to have come. People have to come and maintain it. There's no. There's not even a sink inside. I don't know how she saw someone, but she made it sound like after we'd all kind of talked later on, you know, kind of like what Justin said, somebody just kind of appeared and then kind of disappeared. And I just. I didn't see anyone but when I went into the bathroom, and it's huge and echoey, I went in there to check on her in the situation that was going on, and I felt like there was someone there. That's when it felt all Harry Potter and, you know, just like someone's there breathing. You can hear them, but you cannot see them. And how do I tell my child who that, you know, everything's fine, honey. There's nobody in here but you and I. Because I felt that would have been a complete lie. And then Justin was screaming, let's go, let's go. He wanted out of there. The car was already started. He got the dog. We barely jumped in and shut the door. I mean, I didn't even have a chance to get my safety belt on. And I'm yelling at of, what is the freaking hole? Like, hurry. I mean, he hadn't fully explained to me everything down there and what I had heard. I didn't feel, you know, was like, alarming yet. But, I mean, we got all in that car and started sharing what we were experiencing. And the moment he said that about the guy in the suit, I just said, yeah, like. But I said, it gets so, like, they are really invisible. I mean, you can't see anything. But I was like, I could feel somebody else's presence. I could hear someone else breathing. And like I said, we had to leave. So much I to this day, wish I that we had gone back. I so desperately want to go back and have answers. Just the green screen thing alone. I mean, the scenes. I could see the scenes. I was trying to point it out to him, but he didn't really want to look because he was worried about what he had just experienced. And then my daughter experiencing something else. I mean, there were people there that you couldn't see. That's just. You can't. There's people there. There's a presence. I mean, we couldn't ignore it. I mean, and it just. I felt like I was in this trance. I was so wanting to, like, figure out more about this place. Like, I was ready to explore more. My daughter and my husband were like, no freaking way. And like I said, we were gone. We had such a weird experience at trying to find anything for camping. It's like the Fourth of July weekend. And we extended our stay because the girls were on summer break. And we were just excited to. Maybe they'd never been to Idaho and thought, this is going to be awesome. But we ended up being so freaked out of Idaho that we literally drove out of Idaho into Montana. Which I had never been before just to sleep at a rest stop because we were so scared and didn't want to stay anywhere in Idaho and have never returned since. It was just crazy. I don't know how to explain it any better than I felt like maybe we went to like some type of weird government place or something that we weren't supposed to the whole way home. This is hours and hours and hours. I mean we hit eastern Washington and I still Spokane area and I still didn't feel fully safe again. I felt like we learned too much. We'd stumbled upon too something that we shouldn't have. It was just everything was out of weird movies. I can name five or six movies and it feels like if you put them all together, like that's what we were living. And I still, you know, I still think about the faces that were in that lodge on the people that were just staring at me like I was. I stuck out like a sore thumb. I mean even the bartender who was. He seemed very young. I wondered if he was even old enough to serve alcohol. He had had a young. And like I said, I was sitting there so long and kept asking me so many personal questions and I told my husband, I said I felt so stupid that I shared so much with him because you know, it felt like it was all a part of the same kind of thing. Like something we weren't supposed to do. And the fact that we were scared to go back that way and never encountered going back that way. How. How did we go one way in and there being only one way out and coming out something completely different. It just. It felt very Twilight Zone. I don't know. There's so much more. I just. It sounds crazy but I mean, I guess most people that call in probably feel like people see them that way. But really enjoy your guys show. We love it and thank you so much for all your great stories that you guys do. Thanks for listening to ours. All right, have a good day.