Storyteller (7:03)
Every year I plan this family trip. My two brothers and I and my two nephews. We always do something kind of as a family. Last summer, we were going to do some primitive camping, followed by, like, a nice cabin with a game house and stuff like that. I found this place in Kentucky. It's on a privately owned farm. It was great because we like to take our dogs. We like to let them off leash. We like to swim, privacy. We're kind of a big group, and we just kind of want to be able to hang out and enjoy ourselves. You get to the farm, and the campsite is, like, almost a full mile back off of the road. When we got there, you kind of roll up to the lake and there's a dock. No running water, no showers, nothing like that. Our campsite was on the far side of the lake. So we drove all the way back there and set up, and it was nice. Our campsite was actually kind of tucked away under a bunch of trees. It had this really nice canopy, so we were in a lot of shade. And we were right on the lake. The first day we were there, there were still people using the lake. You know, we saw folks at other campsites, and I knew that people would come and get day passes for this place, come hang out, use the lake, and then leave. We're just kind of checking things out. And there were some other campers there. Across the lake, there was a group of teens doing what teens do. They're having a good time. Took it into the late night. The second day, we're kind of at our picnic table in the shade, playing cards. It's pretty quiet at this point, and I hear this buzzing sound. I mean, we're nowhere near a freeway. There's nothing close. I shouldn't hear anything. And I looked up, There was a drone above us. It wasn't moving. We're under this canopy of trees, so there's just this sliver of space for this drone to be looking at us. There's nobody else to watch. It's just watching us. It's hanging out. It's not like it was there for a bit. It checked on us, realized that we're boring and playing cards, and left. It was there for a while. It Was there long enough for me to kind of get annoyed and mad? Who was watching us? We're not exciting. There's nothing to see here. What is this drone doing here? It was eerie seeing it just stay in the same area. It made me question, like, okay, are we doing something wrong? Am I at the wrong campsite? It made me feel uncomfortable. My initial instinct was that it was just the owners checking on their campers. And I went back to playing cards with my family. I can still hear the buzz. And I look up and it's still there. Four hands later, it's still there. So I actually messaged the camp owner about it. Hey, is this you like? I thought maybe she did that to check on campers, see if everything's okay. Cause it's kind of off the road a little bit. Basically her response was that, no, that wasn't us. That was weird. Also made me feel kind of uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, it's, you know, not that big of a deal. I guess it's maybe early afternoon and my 13 year old nephew and I, we decided we were gonna swim. We were swimming and it was great. It was so hot out. Why didn't we do this sooner? My nephew, he really wanted to get one of the paddle boats that was across the lake. He said he was going to swim over there. It's kind of far, so I could sort of see what he was doing. I could tell he had to move some things to get the paddle boat that he wanted. Eventually, he paddled all the way back over. He said, did you see that guy and the dog? I couldn't see anybody with him. He looked completely alone. I didn't see anybody talking to him, nothing. I said, no, yeah, it was some guy with a mastiff. It was a big dog. I thought that was really weird. I just kind of chalked it up to not being able to see that far. The only reason he probably said anything was because it was weird to him. We thought that we were alone at this lake. We didn't see any other cars. There were no other tents. We didn't notice anything until he swam over there and came back and said he saw this guy and his dog. It was getting closer to like dinner time. Now, while we're kind of talking about making dinner, one of my brothers goes down to the bathrooms and he takes his dog with him. He comes back, he saw the guy with the mastiff. This whole time I have not seen this guy or this dog yet. Two people in our group have seen him and have Interacted with him in one way or another. As we started to prep for dinner, kind of out of nowhere, this big storm came through. It was a lot of wind. It was a lot of rain. After the storm, everything was just soaked. Everything was wet and muddy, and it was so hot and humid that nothing was ever going to dry. So we had sort of just like, accepted that this is going to be miserable. Let's just get through this night, and then tomorrow we have showers and air conditioning. We all went to bed in our muddy campsite. In the middle of the night. I had to get up and use the bathroom outside in the middle of the night by myself. I just did not feel alone. I felt so uncomfortable. I hustled back to my tent, and I don't normally do that, so I hustled back to my tent, climbed in with the dogs. I really didn't sleep the rest of the night. It might have been a paranoia that I was being watched. I definitely did not feel alone. The next morning, getting ready to head out. We're gonna pack our stuff up, and we're gonna go take showers and get some ac. It's going to be great. We thought we would kind of enjoy just, like, one last morning on the lake. So beautiful early in the morning, you know, the sun's just kind of glistening off of it. It's so quiet. We're just enjoying our coffee. Hanging out across the lake, we see two large black trucks roll up. A bunch of guys get out, and it looks like they're doing, like, tactical maneuvers, running around the trees. They ran off into, like, this wooded section. I kind of thought that it was just a bunch of guys, like, going to play paintball or something. Then we don't see anything. There's no movement out of a loudspeaker on the trucks. The Ride of the Valkyries. And that makes us perk up because we are in the middle of nowhere on a campsite. These two black trucks roll up, and they're blasting Ride of the Valkyries. They maybe play, like, 30 seconds of it, and then it shuts off. And then again, on the loudspeaker comes a voice that says, drop the bag and get on the ground. What is happening? Trying to figure out what's going on, but we still can't really, like, see that far. After we hear this. Drop the bag and get on the ground. There's some action. And then some guys get in the trucks, and the trucks leave. As we're kind of talking about packing up and heading out early, a helicopter comes in And a helicopter starts circling the lake. We're far enough from civilization, highways. This is not the traffic guy for the morning commute. And then a second helicopter shows up and it's circling. It's about this time. We're gonna get out of here right now. Pack your shit. We're going now. Things clearly went sideways somewhere. We want to leave as soon as possible. Everything was wet, balled up, thrown in the back of the trucks. We were out of there. I knew that the helicopters and the drone could see us. Everybody knew what we were doing. We're in all three vehicles. We're starting to kind of leave and pull away from the lake. And you have to go up this hill towards the top of the hill. As I'm leading this caravan, six heavily armed men, full combat gear, come over the hill with firearms pointed straight at me. I throw it in park, and I throw my hands out the window. They don't immediately approach. They get within shouting distance. And the first guy shouts to me, ma', am, are you being held hostage? I shout back, no. Then immediately, I was worried because I had two dogs in the back, but the windows were tinted. Maybe they see movement in the back of my truck. I shouted at him, I said, I have two large dogs in the back. He was like, we see them. They flanked all three of our vehicles and searched us. They kind of check in the cabs of the trucks. The beds are covered. We opened the tailgates of the trucks. I don't know what they thought was going to be in there. They were fully prepared to defend themselves. They all had conversations with each one of us in our vehicles. They eventually cleared us, still had no information about what was going on. We started to pull away, and then kind of out of nowhere, an unmarked vehicle came up right next to me and said he was going to escort me out again. This campsite is way back there, so it's like a mile off of the road. And we get all the way out, and we're coming over that last hill. It's just filled with agency vehicles. There's sheriff, there's staties, marshals. There were SWAT vehicles, ambulance. The level of attention put towards whatever was going on at that campsite was astounding and surprising. We got up to where all of the vehicles were, and they checked our vehicles again. They had to clear us one more time. I still didn't ask a lot of questions. I think I was just shocked and intimidated by everything that was going on. When we got to leave, my brothers and I checked in and were like, let's just go up to this place and we'll sit down and grab something to eat and just kind of compare notes. We get up to this restaurant up the road and we're all out on the patio with the dogs. One brother is kind of googling things in the county, like trying to figure out if the local authorities put out a notice or something like that. As we're comparing stories, that's when my older brother, he says one of the officers came up. They showed him three pictures. The first picture was a picture of a woman. Have you seen this woman? No, we haven't seen this woman. Second picture was a picture of a man. No, we haven't seen this man. The third picture was a picture of the mastiff. And of course, everybody has seen that mastiff. Everybody except me saw that mastiff the day before. I guess one of the officers told my brother that when we heard the drop the bag and get on the ground. In that bag they found guns and pipe bombs. While we were comparing notes, my younger brother was trying to figure out what actually went on there. He found, through one of the local posts, the wanted poster for the man in question. It was his picture, it was his charges. This was a manhunt. We're in Kentucky. He was wanted in North Carolina for some really horrific stuff. He was hiding out states away in a lonely campsite in the middle of nowhere. And he had this woman and dog with him. They ultimately found him in that campsite, but it was another three days. When the sheriff or the local authorities posted that wanted poster of him. They of course, had the notice to the public there. It basically said that we encourage citizens to lock their homes and vehicles and stay inside. When I read that, that made me think back to that moment in the middle of the night when I was outside my tent all by myself, absolutely vulnerable. We thought we were the only people there for a full day. You kind of run through the worst case scenarios in your head. Yeah, I'm really thankful that we're all fine and got away from that unscathed. But it's kind of terrifying to think about what could have happened for people that were in a desperate situation.
