Rewind: Episode 02

Summary

Radio Rental: Rewind: Episode 02

Date: July 31, 2026
Podcast: Radio Rental (Tenderfoot TV & Audacy)
Host/Producer: Steven
Theme: Real-life horror stories from the archives; a chilling look at camp nightmares and the sinister edges of outdoor adventure.

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Episode Overview

This episode of Radio Rental Rewind dives deep into two unsettling stories from the archives, each centering on the hidden dangers of summer camps and outdoor camping. Listeners are treated to firsthand accounts from storytellers who encountered real-life malevolence and possible paranormal activity, all set against the atmospheric, retro-fantasy backdrop of the fictional Radio Rental video store. With candid interviews, dark humor, and genuine tension, the stories blur the line between psychological thriller and cautionary tale.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Story 1: "Camp Counselor" (Starts ~00:49)

Setting the Stage

• Speaker: Taylor, the storyteller
• Invited to recount experiences as a 17-year-old camp counselor at a Christian summer camp in the mountains near Fresno, California.
• Camp details: isolated, surrounded by pine trees and creeks, with staff living communally and using code names ("Ted" for bear, "Bob" for bobcat) to avoid panic.

The Arrival of Kyle

• Kyle: A charismatic, manipulative new counselor—physically impressive, with a veneer of friendliness but unsettling, shallow affect.
• "He would give you like the big winning pageant smile, but it was never like a real smile. You know, the crinkles by your eyes. It like never went to his eyes, only the mouth." – Taylor (08:02)

Dark Psychology and Manipulation

• Taylor details how Kyle sows discord: infiltrating friend groups, coaxing vulnerable disclosures, then subtly spreading sensitive information to create division and despair.
• "Everywhere he went, fights started, people hate each other...He would introduce himself to the group...and the next thing you know, this girl knew that, or they would open up to each other. Next thing they know, it's all over the camp." – Taylor (08:55)

Personal Experience and Growing Alarm

• Taylor’s increasing discomfort, especially with Kyle’s insistence on being alone with her, culminates in a tense nighttime walk where he attempts to accompany her despite camp rules.
• "There was nothing I could do. He's to my right. And he kept slowing down...It was just like a very gripping fear in the middle of my stomach. You need to get out of this situation." – Taylor (11:46)

The Escape and a Chilling Discovery

• When Kyle tries to isolate Taylor for a car trip, she firmly refuses, prompting a sudden, menacing shift in his demeanor.
• "He was good looking. He was—until he switched and there I couldn't believe I'd ever found him attractive. He was so pissed. It went from golden boy smile to just gone dead, just malice." – Taylor (13:29)
• Taylor discovers her sign-out entry mysteriously erased, suspecting Kyle intended to erase any trace of her departure, possibly to facilitate violence.

Reflection and Advice

• Taylor reflects on how close she may have come to being killed, urging listeners to trust their instincts and prioritize their own safety.
• "You don't owe them anything. You can say, no, I don't want to go. No, I don't want you to do this. No, I don't want you to go with me....If you have a bad feeling, just do whatever you need to do to get out of that situation." – Taylor (13:58)

Memorable Exchange:

• "Good thing you were mean. Yeah, that's crazy. Well, thank you for sharing that." – Interviewer (14:50)

Follow-Up (15:00):

• Years later, by doing a background check, Taylor learns Kyle no longer works at camps, though his current whereabouts remain unsettlingly vague.

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2. Listener Voicemails & Camp Bloopers (16:23)

• Brief, humorous user-submitted stories and questions, including a playful apology over celery and callouts for more "glitch in the Matrix" stories, adding comic relief to the otherwise tense episode.

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3. Story 2: "Watching Me" (Starts ~18:51)

Setting the Scene

• Speaker: Anonymous male storyteller, "Storyteller from Southwest Washington"
• Recounts a recent camping experience in the remote Oregon woods with his wife, daughter, and two large German shepherds.

Subtle Unease at Camp

• The family finds an isolated campsite. The first night brings unusual, heavy footsteps encircling their tents—too loud for normal wildlife. The storyteller gauges his dogs' reactions for reassurance.

Eerie Discoveries and Mounting Tension

• The next day, while hiking, they find a recently abandoned, trashed campsite with expensive gear left behind. Magazines and clippings have been shredded.
• Concern grows after hearing grunting noises and observing their dog, Guts, react protectively to the family.
• Wife reports the chilling sensation of being watched, which prompts heightened vigilance.

Do-It-Yourself Security and a Sinister Parallel

• Preparing a tripwire alarm of Altoids cans and keys around the camp, the storyteller discovers ancient remnants of a nearly identical perimeter security setup: "There was a brown cable there that had washers on it...at about the same exact height I was about to tie it. Someone had the same exact feeling...that they needed to do this." (28:46)
• The family spends a sleepless night, leaving the site at first light.

Lasting Haunt and Realization

• Later, while watching a missing persons documentary, the storyteller sees the area they camped in marked as a high-concentration zone for disappearances.
• Forced to acknowledge the real danger they might have faced, he connects the eerie events to the very real threats lurking in remote places.

Best Advice:

• "Get yourself a dog, man. Then you can go camping anytime..." – Storyteller from Southwest Washington (33:18)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I think he would have killed me. I never said it out loud before. As far as I think I could have been dead. I think he probably would have killed me."
  Taylor reflecting on the consequences of giving in to social pressure (13:46)

• "Why do you care if someone thought you were kind of a bitch this one time? Throw a fit if you have a bad feeling."
  Taylor on prioritizing safety above likeability (13:59)

• "There was a brown cable there that had washers on it...Someone had the same exact feeling at this exact campsite that I having right now that they needed to do this."
  Southwest Washington Storyteller discovering a previous camper’s alarm system (29:15)

• "All of a sudden it pops up. Oregon, the biggest, highest concentration of missing people is smack dab, 100% right over that area we were camping."
  Southwest Washington Storyteller after seeing the documentary (32:23)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:49 – Camp Counselor story introduction (Taylor)
• 08:02 – Description of Kyle and early warning signs
• 11:46 – Nighttime walk with Kyle; Taylor’s alarm
• 13:29-13:58 – The confrontation; Taylor’s advice for listeners
• 18:51 – Introduction to "Watching Me" camping tale (SW WA storyteller)
• 28:46 – Discovery of an old, similar security perimeter
• 32:23 – Seeing the missing persons map
• 33:18 – Camping advice; story conclusion

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Episode Takeaways

• Trust Your Instincts: Both stories highlight the value of intuition and the importance of assertive boundaries, especially in isolated environments.
• Dangers Hide in the Ordinary: Evil doesn’t always look like a monster; sometimes it’s the “golden boy” at camp or something lingering just out of sight in the woods.
• Power in Saying No: Social pressure can be deadly—assertiveness and even "rudeness" can save lives.
• Bring Protection & Prepare: If you must venture into the wild, dogs, weapons, and self-made alarms are worth having.
• Dark Humor to Break the Tension: The hosts buffer the anxiety with humor, call-in voicemails, and existential musings.

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Tone & Style

The original tone balances genuine fear and unease with moments of dark comedy, practical advice, and meta-reflection about the nature of camp horror stories. Throughout, the hospitality of the hosts softens the grim implications, reminding listeners that vigilance, community, and preparedness can thwart even the darkest possibilities.

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Final Note

These "Radio Rental Rewind" stories serve as both thrilling campfire tales and cautionary life lessons—how easily horror can slip into the mundane, and the quiet strength required to resist being swept into someone else’s nightmare.

Transcript

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[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

Weber Inhibited by law CTS and C's

[Taylor (Camp Counselor Storyteller)]

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[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

Hey, what's up, guys? I'm Steven, producer on Radio Rental and this is Radio Rental Rewind, where we dig into the archives of the scariest, the greatest fan favorites, scariest stories ever. And today we've got some creepy camp stories. We're taking it back to episode nine and checking out a story called Camp Counselor. So let's check it out.

[Interviewer]

Let me know when we're good.

[Mike]

Mike.

[Interviewer]

Let's see. I guess, like, could you just sort of set the stage for me? Like, how old were you? What were you doing in life? Where were you? Just kind of like, overall kind of set the stage for me.

[Commercial Voice]

Okay.

[Taylor (Camp Counselor Storyteller)]

I was 17, fresh out of high school. There was this Christian camp that I'd gone to every year from, like the third grade. You would just go and you'd take some time to get away from work and life. And the whole idea was just to get away from like, your phones and the TV and media and have some time to worship and get closer to God. That was the whole idea of it. They hire seasonal workers every year. So there's like staff housing. All the girls stay together, all the guys stay together. It's way up in the mountains, probably an hour from Fresno. Big, big pine trees. It's like near the redwoods, ponds. There's a creek running through the whole camp. We had a bobcat incident. Actually, you're not supposed to say bobcat. You have to call him Bob. I think Ted was bears. If you had a walkie and you saw a bear because there were other people with walkies, you didn't want to say, hey, I just saw a bear. Because then everybody starts freaking, I just ran into Ted. Then we know we have to get the kids very far away from that spot. We all kind of had time before work actually started to get to know each other and, you know, do the team building exercises and all the hokey stuff. And there was this guy named Kyle who also worked at the camp he was in, adventure wreck. They were the lifeguards. And there was some climbing courses and stuff like that. So they would do archery, belay and all of that kind of stuff. Keeping everybody safe and the fun stuff. Basically. He was tall, like probably six four, really handsome, strong jaw, blue eyes, golden brown, curly hair, all around good looking dude, kind of golden boy. I mean, I was 17. Girls would kind of open up to him in particular. He just kind of had a way. You would do things for him and then realize he never asked you to do that. He just kind of of navigated it, Just kind of pushed it that way. For example, the whole adventure wreck thing. Sometimes they ended up working through lunch. So us in the kitchen would always just save them a plate if they let us know they had to work through lunch. Well, he came through the kitchen one time and he kind of grabbed a rag and like wiped something down where I was cleaning. Oh, now that we're best friends and I help you out all the time, you'll. You'll bring me a meal, right? You'll bring me some food for lunch. That's just how he was. Just certain things didn't feel right. He'd give you like the big winning pageant smile, but it was never like a real smile. You know, the crinkles by your eyes. It like never went to his eyes, only the mouth. He would try and get you alone. The minute someone else volunteered to go with, he would just kind of, oh, okay, well, you guys got it. And he would back out. But he would be really insistent on being alone with people. I sort of wrote him off in terms of the weirdness. It's awkward. I'm awkward too, but I kind of wrote it off. At first. He's just bad vibes. I mean, everywhere he went, fights started, people hate each other. You know, people group up into little friend groups. Everywhere he went, people would open up to him. And the next thing you know, this girl knew that, or they would open up to each other. Next thing they know, it's all over the camp shit that happened in their past or you know, how they grew up. There's a lot of rough childhoods growing up. And he would like infiltrate these groups group by group by group. Every time he was in one, it just completely like decimated friendships. He would introduce himself to the group and they'd be like, oh yeah, Kyle's been hanging out. Or Kyle wants to go with us to do this and Kyle wants to go with us to do that. And I was chatting with A bunch of my girlfriends one time, they're like, yeah, Kyle, he's just so sweet. Like, I told him stuff that I've never told anybody. Like, I don't even know if I could tell you guys. And the next thing you know is all around the camp that she'd been assaulted and all this awful stuff had happened to her. I felt like he definitely got off on hurting people and just kind of watching the mayhem happen. He never asked for anything. He would just kind of twist, twist until it popped. I'm really scared of the dark. I'm terrified. And we had just seen a bobcat. So I had to walk a mile to upper camp in the dark to go back to my housing. It had been seen up and down this trail that I had to walk. It was like a mile. I grew up not far from that camp. So, you know all the things as far as big cats, like bobcats. You want to make yourself look big. You want to make loud, very human noises. You don't hunch over, you know, all this stuff. If I see it, I'm going to grab a stick and I'm going to make myself look huge and scare the thing away. It was night. It was pitch black. If I am walking through someplace dark and I hear any kind of sound, I literally, like, I lose all function. Like, I fall on the ground. And I was freaking out. I did not want to. I was very tired. And I'm walking through the camp and there's Kyle and two friends of his. They're hanging out outside. Those three hung out quite a bit. As we're walking up the hill, Kyle says something. How was work? I said, over. I didn't even stop. He's like, oh, let me walk you up. Oh, you know, it's pitch black. The mountain lion's been around. He wasn't even supposed to be in Upper Camp. You had to be, like, one of a few people to be allowed up there because they were young kids. I was like, no, no, I can do it. No, really, it's okay. Just really trying to get him to stay. I'm like, no, I don't want you to get in trouble. No, you should probably stay down here. No, I don't. I don't want to get in trouble either because our boss is up there and, you know, it's just really not a good idea. Why don't you stay down here? And I couldn't make him not come. I couldn't make him not walk with me. There was nothing I could do. He's to My right. And he kept slowing down. I wasn't walking super fast or like I would be hard to keep up with, but he stayed to my right and a little bit behind, not where I could see him comfortably. And look where I was going. It was just like a very gripping fear in the middle of my stomach. You need to get out of this situation. What do you have in your pockets right now? What can you see on the ground right now? Can you book it? What can you do? So we'd been walking a little bit and then they caught up with us. The other friend of his ended up getting his truck. Thank God. He was a really good guy and I had a suspicion he kind of felt the same way I did about him. It ended up being his two friends taking me up and he was like, I'm gonna stay here. And the minute someone else volunteered to go with us, he was like, oh, well, you guys got it. I kind of felt like he knew he was scaring me and he enjoyed it. By the end of camp, there's one meal you can't eat, and mine was the fajitas. Just looking at it makes you want to gag. We were all sick and tired of camp food. I said, fresno's about an hour away. 45 minutes an hour. That's like the big city. So we were all going to load up in our cars. We had like a half day because the group that was there left early. There wasn't really a set plan other than we're gonna go to this place for dinner after. I think it was around 10, 11 o' clock we were supposed to go. So there is a sign out sheet because a lot of people go hiking in Yosemite or there's people going home if they can for the weekend to go see their family. The sign out sheet was just a stack of papers and a clipboard pencil tied to that ring at the top. You would sign your name, where you're going, what time you'll be back, what time you're leaving. So I put my name down, just said I was going to Fresno with the group and the time I'd be back. The whole idea was just, okay, well, we checked the sign out sheet and it's 11 and they're not back. So that's a problem. We need to start looking at the location they put down, where they'd be. If you go hiking in the woods and you fall and you get hurt and you can't make it back, how would we know? So I was the last one off and I come Down. And everyone's pretty much broken up into their groups. A couple of us didn't have cars, so everybody kind of found somebody to ride with. And I look around and pretty much everybody's full except for Kyle. He's like, no, it's okay, Taylor, I saved you a spot with me. And it was just gonna be me and him and his little pickup. And I was like, no. So I start asking a couple of my other friends like, hey, does anybody have a spot? Like, I'm literally just walking around. He's kind of getting insistent and I'm like, no, actually, I'm just kind of tired. I'm just gonna stay here. I'm not feeling super well. I'm not getting in the car with that guy. I'm not gonna be alone with that guy. I'm not gonna go. I just said, I don't feel very good. I'm kind of tired. I'm just gonna stay here and I'll go back to girl staff housing and I'll just knock out for the night. I'm just, I don't want to go. And I never said I don't want to go with you. I wasn't rude about it. I had never said a crossword to him. And all of a sudden he had like a completely different face. He was good looking. He was until he switched and there I couldn't believe I'd ever found him attractive. He was so pissed. It went from golden boy smile to just gone dead, just malice. And he was saying just about anything and anything I think that he thought would hurt my feelings or make me back down, make me feel bad about refusing to go. I was near tears, honestly. He got me. It worked. I was pretty upset. Eventually some of the guys are coming over like, dude, it's fine, it's fine. She doesn't have to go. Trying to calm him down. And they sort of go around by the pickup and my friend Robin comes over and are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I just not in the mood tonight. I'm just gonna stay here. She says, okay, well we'll see you when we get back. I'll bring you some food or something. And she goes to give me a hug and I'm like, do not fucking get in the car with that guy. Do not. She's like, okay, I won't. I turn around and I go back up to the friendship house, to the sign out sheet to cross my name off because I didn't go and I just wanted to go back to girl staff housing. And just be alone. I had to scratch off and basically say, I didn't go. There's pages and pages and pages, pages. And I think the very top page was from the year before. So they have everybody's, all of them for like a year. So I flipped through the page all the way down to the bottom because mine would have been the last one or the second to last see this friend, this friend, this friend, this friend. And I do it again. I'm like, okay, maybe I put it on a different page by accident. So I flipped through all the pages I could find. What did I do? Like, where did I put my name down? And like the year before somewhere or in a different week. I looked at the next page. It was totally blank because no one used it yet. It's not there. Where I was looking at every single name and making sure that was not me and checking every date and it's not there. He was the last person to be around that sign out sheet until I went back up there after everyone had left. He erased my name and he erased my name before the argument because he didn't go back up after. I don't think I was coming back to that camp. You have like a true crime podcast and my mom watched a lot of 48 hours. I mean, you don't have to get very far off the road before no one can really hear you. I think he would have killed me. I never said it out loud before. As far as I think I could have been dead. I think he probably would have killed me. I think he's a bad person. Every emotion he had was about as shallow as a puddle. There was no depth, there was no gravity. I just think if I had just given in like one more time. Like, how many times have you didn't really want to go out and your friend's like, nah, come on, you gave in. What if that time was your life? I think about that sometimes. You know, it's years later and I've been married for years now and all that life that happened in between might have just not happened. It's just so weird to think about, like, I might have died. Be mean, be mean, be rude. You don't have to be nice to them. You don't owe them anything. You can say, no, I don't want to go. No, I don't want you to do this. No, I don't want you to go with me. You can stomp your feet, you can throw a fit. You can be loud when it comes to your safety. Like, why do you care if someone thought you were kind of a bitch this one time? Throw a fit if you have a bad feeling. Just do whatever you need to do to get out of that situation.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, maybe that was just a moment. Maybe. You know, I feel like a lot of people are probably capable, but don't ever do. Seems like he's definitely the type.

[Taylor (Camp Counselor Storyteller)]

Yeah, you know.

[Interviewer]

Shit. Good thing you were mean. Yeah, that's crazy. Well, thank you for sharing that. That was. Yeah, it's gonna sound really good.

[Taylor (Camp Counselor Storyteller)]

Awesome. Thank you.

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

So we don't know a whole lot about Kyle the counselor. I guess that's what we're calling him. Except for years later our storyteller googled him and he was living in the LA area and no longer works as a camp counselor at that camp or any other camp. Or at least we hope he doesn't because that would just be really weird and really creepy. But I guess that's his kind of thing after all, right? Oh, damn. Yeah, so I never went to camp as a kid and I used to be jealous of all my friends who got to, you know, do the summer camp thing. But now I'm like, dude, I'm glad I didn't go because if this type of stuff happens, I'm. I'm out. But let's take a breath, you know, take a break. But we'll be right back.

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[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

We're back. And this is the second time we're

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

going to do this.

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

We got some weird stuff last time we're going to listen to some voicemails from you guys.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

I mean, let's see if you can out weird yourselves. And that is not a challenge.

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

Last time was weird.

[Interviewer]

Or is it?

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

We got some pretty weird ones.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

I know and like weird that I couldn't have thought up here where I think it was accidentally weird, but there's a pattern of accidental weirdness and odd sounds and breathing and weird human behavior. I don't know. It's like, just weird enough to be annoying.

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

Yeah. And somewhat scary. So let's check them out.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

I'm excited.

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

Yeah, let's.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

Let's see what we got this time.

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

Cool.

[Interviewer for Camping Story]

All right.

[Mike]

I am so sorry. I have not gotten your celery back to you. You gave me fresh celery and said, please only take one, and I ate the whole bag. I'm so sorry. I do have a question for you. Where do you get your fabulous hair products?

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

Were they making that up as they went along? We'll eat a whole bag of celery.

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

A whole bag.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

That's all we got. Yep.

[Taylor (Camp Counselor Storyteller)]

I was just wondering if we would

[Mike]

get any more back root or glitch

[Taylor (Camp Counselor Storyteller)]

in the Matrix stories anytime soon.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

My favorite stories. Glitch in the Matrix, The Doppelganger story.

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

Yep.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

These are some of my favorite. Because there's a moment where you think, am I going crazy?

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

And I mean, that's like the whole radar rental world is a big glitch in the Matrix.

[Mike]

Hello from Chicago.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

I don't. I mean, I've never left a voicemail and going, thank you for calling Chicago.

[Mike]

How are you today? Call me back.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

All right, I'm gonna start doing that Goo Goo Gaga.

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

How are you today?

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

Call me back.

[Mike]

How are you today? Call me back.

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

It's pretty funny.

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

Pain. Appreciate you hanging out with me listening to some creepy, weird voicemails. I know it's your favorite part or becoming your favorite part. So hope you come back. But, yeah, we're going to check out another story on the whole camping theme. Summer camp. This one's from episode 27. It's called watching Me. So let's go.

[Interviewer for Camping Story]

Go ahead and just talk for me.

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

Test 143.

[Interviewer for Camping Story]

Okay, perfect. Yeah, sounds good. So what we like to do is start with kind of you telling us, setting the scene a little bit, you know, whoa, where were you in life? What year it was, where you were living, Stuff like that. Just kind of setting up the background

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

to the whole story. Absolutely.

[Interviewer for Camping Story]

And you're ready to go whenever the

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

year was either 2018, 2019, was living in Southwest Washington, near the Vancouver area. Happily married with a single teenage daughter and two German shepherds and a Bengal. It was during the summer months, early summer, June, July. I want to say we decided we wanted to go camping anytime we go camping because of the dogs, because of how high energy they are. And it can Be intimidating for folks. We usually find remote non local areas off site, off the beaten trail, off forest service roads, primitive sites that we go explore and then we kind of make our home for the weekend. And this one was no different. It was just going to be a weekend trip. Do some four wheeling, do some hiking out in the Mount Jefferson area. I usually do all the work up front. I'm the one that does all the getting all the food and directions prepped. I typically pull out Google Maps and I say, all right, what time of year are we in? It's early summer. Okay. The snowpack should be dialing it back and there's going to be good access to some of the mountain peaks. I like found an area near Mount Jefferson. I said, hey, this looks like it's in the middle of nowhere. Told my wife that, hey, take that Friday off. Sure enough, she did. So we usually leave early in the morning, seven, eight in the morning to beat traffic through things about the Forerunner and the dogs. And we only had two dogs at the time. Once I get there, it's kind of just explore mode. Where's a safe place, where's kind of a nice. We could set up a campsite. It's kind of just feeling it out. I find the most perfect campsite. It's this horseshoe off of this old forest service road. Immediately set up camp. I usually always bring a backup tent. Just for whatever reason if I want to go do something and for whatever reason gives me peace of mind. And that particular trip, my daughter wanted to know if she could spend the night by herself. I said that was no problem. I had the backup tent. We set up the two tents next to each other. And I just said, yeah, if you're going to sleep in the backup tent, you're going to have to have guts. Who was our male German shepherd. It's about a four hour drive by the time you're doing all that exploring and everything. So we were probably set up till around 1 o'.

[TextNow Advertiser]

Clock.

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

It's just getting set up. You know, maybe we played some games, some bocce ball, some catch or something like that. At night, for folks that aren't used to it, it can sound creepy or eerie, but you know, I really enjoy it. You're going to hear an owl, you're going to hear squirrels. But through the grass occasionally you may hear some frogs and some crickets. Deer coming to the campground. You know, many times deer come to the campground and pick up scraps of litter or things that you may have missed that fell off. You'll hear that. I've had elk and deer rub against the tent. That particular first night we were there, I and my wife kept hearing these really heavy footsteps. Both my wife and I were just like, do you hear that? And it felt like it was just encirculating us. My measure of alarm is looking at the dogs. And my dogs peek their heads up every once in a while. And I saw them looking outside the tent, but they didn't bark. And so I said, okay, well whatever is out there I'm gonna attribute to maybe a bigger buck or something. It's just, it didn't sound like what I was used to for hearing deer and, and elk that first night. It was uneasy, which is unusual when we're camping. I usually sleep fine. I sleep like a baby. I just had this feeling like it's just the footsteps don't sound right. Next morning we get up, I look around, nothing's awry, nothing's amiss. So I said, okay, great, let's go on a hike, get our gear together, just, you know, day pack. And I always carry with me when I'm camping out in the woods for a variety of reasons. We start hiking probably about half a mile down the road. All of a sudden my dog guts just takes off. He sprints at something and sprints so quickly, by the time I turn he's already 40ft down this trail. And I see that it's an old gate post, so it used to be a turnoff point, but it had been so covered in foliage you missed it at first. You know, it had just been, been basically non maintained for probably 50, 60 years. So I thought, okay, this probably was an old road that somebody was camping on, which you know, some people live out in the woods, you know, it's just whatever. I start running after him, yelling, him saying, hey, gut stop. And I started apologizing thinking, oh, he's clearly stumbled on a campsite. He's going to scare these poor folks to death, he's going to get himself hurt, whatever. I'm yelling after him. And I had probably around about 100ft in by that time. I was enough around the corner that I could see something didn't look right because I could see this blue object. It was an unnatural blue. So I knew it was something man made. I was like, okay, that's gotta be somebody's gear. But in you looking down this road and it doesn't look like it's been traveled in a while and nobody's saying anything. Another 50, 70ft, I'm around the Bend. And sure enough, it's a whole abandoned campsite. All the hallmarks of a fully prepped campsite. It had a tent, had a cooler, had a propane tank. It had one of those camp burners, stove burners that you hook the propane tank up to. And the thing is that some of this stuff was really nice. And I thought to myself, who would leave all this gear here? Why would someone just throw all this stuff, this expensive camping gear away? It had all been destroyed. It's like, okay, this is so weird to me because where we are, of course, there could be a lot of snow, but there's so much tree density in here. I was looking around, like, could there really that much snowpack come in where we are right here? With this much tree cover to crush this stuff, I couldn't make sense of why everything could be that damaged. We circle around. I think we saw magazines or newspaper clippings too, that were also ripped up, but that was it. Just a fully abandoned campsite. It weirded us out. Nobody was there. We didn't see any cars. We just kind of said, all right, this is very strange. Let's walk back. And sure enough, we walked back to the road and continued on our hike for a little bit. I'm thinking about it. I can't get my head around it, but I don't want to spoil the day, you know, of course, I got Grace and the wife with me. I don't want to be spooking them. We go up to the top of a hill, and I hear another weird noise. This time it sounded like grunting. I don't think there's moose in this area. Highly unlikely, but this is definitely elk, definitely buck and definitely black bear. Where the noise is coming from and where the wind is blowing. Three sweaty humans and two dogs. A lot of scent for an animal to pick up. And that wind is carrying it over to that direction, and it didn't deter it. There's probably some elk or shedding or something like that, you know, didn't think too much of it. Go back to our campsite, have dinner, start playing bocce ball. As I'm playing bocce ball, the dogs are right by my side, as would normally be the case. All of a sudden, I see Jamie walking up guts. Within a few seconds later, gets up and he just sprints. His ears are back, his head is down, his back fur is up. He is dead eyed set, focused in on her. I mean, he is bullseyeing her. I was like, wait, what? What's going on what did I miss? Because his tail wasn't wagging. He wasn't wagging, he wasn't jogging.

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He.

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

He was clearly trying to get to her as fast as he could. That struck me as odd. So I kind of like look around and I see he's. Yep, he's running right at her. So I start running towards her. As I start running towards her, all of a sudden I see Jamie starting to run towards us. My wife is running towards me and Guts. I was like, oh my God. So I immediately, just like at an instinct, I grab my pistol. She runs at me. Guts just keeps going. He's running so fast. I can't. There was no way I'm going to catch him. He continues, I'm like struggling. I'm like, what's going on? What's happening? She's like, I had eyes on me. Someone was watching me. Someone was watching me. I felt eyes on me. Guts continues on. I finally am screaming at him and he finally stops. He's probably 100ft, 150ft ahead of me in the thicket of the woods. Leah and my daughter are behind me by about 30ft. Leah was right next to my daughter, right at her hip. All of her hair was raised. She would not leave her side. And then I was like, okay, clearly she senses something is wrong because she's not thinking this is a game. She's not interested in what guts is interested in. Maybe she's being alert to what me and my wife are responding to. She was behaving very oddly and she was just glued to her. Finally, Guts returned and he came back and we scoured the area. We didn't see anything, you know, and I did a. Would like to think a pretty thorough a job of surveying what possibly could have my wife saw or sensed and what caught Guts eye. We'll tell my daughter everything's gonna be fine. He'll go in, go back to the tent. She's ahead of us walking back and my wife and I are basically whispering. And I'm like, so what happened? And she just keeps repeating the same thing. She's like, I know someone was watching me. I swear I saw someone watching me. I said, okay, well, there's clearly nothing out here. So what do you want to do? At this time, it was dusk. There was some sunlight left. We were so in the boons that by the time we packed up it was gonna be pitch black. And then trying to drive on one of these back road forest service roads that aren't maintained if you don't know what you're doing, you can't see well. You can just as easily catch something, fall into something, and cause a whole nother level of pain. So I said, okay, well, let's just bring my daughter into the tent tonight. So, what, all sleep together? Maybe. What it will do is I'll just set up a little trip wire. I happen to have 100ft of paracord with me. So I took that around, started tying as elementary as I could a perimeter cable around our campsite. And I just hung an Altoids can and the truck keys. And I think I put some change and a lighter and the Altoids can. And so it gave a jingle when the wire was tensioned. As I go to tie the last strand, where I was gonna close off the sort of perimeter tie, that's when all of a sudden, like, my entire heart just fell out of my body. I'm staring at this tree, I'm holding these ropes in my hand, and I'm looking down, and I see that someone had done the same exact thing that I had done. There was a brown cable there that had washers on it. The rope was so old that no one saw it. I mean, it was so dilapidated and decayed and dirty from the dirt. There was no way of seeing it. And it was all fragmented. There was only a few inches hanging off the tree in various places, but the washers were still on there. They had it at about the same exact height I was about to tie it. Someone had the same exact feeling at this exact campsite that I having right now that they needed to do this. This is an unusual and unnerving experience. And my gut was telling me, okay, I gotta stay calm in front of them, but I'm pretty terrified. So what can I do? Probably not the best, but my solution was I'm gonna fire my pistol. And I unloaded a clip into the ground. If somebody is out there, at least they know that we are armed. And now they also know we have dogs. That night, not one else asleep, obviously. 5:00am, 6:00am the second the sun's up, packing up and immediately leaving, I saw some of my co workers, and they're all telling me I gotta call the ranger station and report the campsite and all that. And part of me gets hesitant at first, me admitting to myself that it really was potentially a situation where somebody was at risk previously and then us. Then it made it very real. So it did take me a while to eventually call the ranger station and report that location. For a few months, you know, it was all good I'm watching this documentary. It was about missing people. And it plots the number of missing people basically in a GIS geospatial map. All of a sudden it pops up. Oregon, the biggest, highest concentration of missing people is smack dab, 100% right over that area. We were camping. I yelled and paused the screen and told my wife to come look at the tv. I think I took photos of it and sent it to my dad and my mom. I mean, I was flipping out. I could only have so much cognitive dissonance for so long and tell myself that it was an elk, somebody was being lazy and they left all their crap there. You know, I can only do that so far. And then eventually, no matter what, you have to face the reality like, nope, there was something that had malicious intent. You were there, your family was there, and you are the only people that have been impacted by that.

[Mike]

Cool.

[Interviewer for Camping Story]

That is a crazy story. I don't do a lot of camping. I have done. I did it a lot in the past, but that might make me think twice about going again.

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

Yeah, no worries.

[Interviewer for Camping Story]

But the times I've gone, it's. It's nothing like that. Not even close. But great. Thank you. That's a fantastic story.

[Storyteller from Southwest Washington]

No, thank you, man. Thanks for having me. And yeah, get yourself a dog, man. Then you can go camping anytime. It's fun, you know.

[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

So it sounds like our storyteller could have been a victim of something really sketchy and really dangerous. Glad you and the family are okay. And after everything he said, he still goes camping, so there's no stopping him. Good for you, man. Bring plenty of weapons and dogs. Good luck. Damn, I'm. I'm even more glad I haven't been camping. And that just confirms my decision. So I'm not jealous, but if I ever did, I'd have to bring some weapons or something. I don't know, baseball bat, gun or. I don't know. But let's, let's take a break and we'll be right back.

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[Steven (Radio Rental Producer/Host)]

All right guys, Appreciate you hanging out with me on this one. Episode 2 We plan on doing more of this. It's been fun being creepy, being weird, being scary. Hearing the greatest of the greatest. So it's been a good hang. Join me next time on Radio Rental Rewind later it.

[Podcast Host/Co-host]

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