← Scary Stories and Rain
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Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. Before we begin, be sure to check out my brand new podcast, Scary Stories and Fire. If you would prefer the same great stories but with a super relaxing campfire background, the link is in the description. Also, if you haven't yet, I highly recommend you subscribe to this podcast. If you enjoy listening to Relax or Fall Asleep hundreds of hours of stories and rain for $2.99 a month that will get you access to all episodes with zero ads. Consider subscribing and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fix the problem. So why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed's sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast. And even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Wow, this house is cute. 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See full terms@mintmobile.com my mom's dog Punky was a very sweet, loving dog. She was an ESA dog but trained to be a service dog for PTSD before she lost her leg. I had never seen her get aggressive with anyone in the entire 12 years she lived. She never growled or nipped anyone and she had no sense of smell so she loved all animals and people. A real gentle giant among our little terriers at £60. What I'm getting at here was that her barking at something and being aggressive was so wildly Uncharacteristic that I only saw it once. I, 11 at the time, was at home with my siblings, my then stepdad is at work and my mom ran up to the gas station to grab a pack of cigarettes. It was only about a mile or two away from us for reference. We lived in a two bedroom trailer in the middle of the woods on a dead end road at the time. And you had to really make an effort to get down our road, find our house, navigate down our rickety driveway and find the door. I'm sitting at the computer having a grand time watching YouTube videos, when all of a sudden all of our dogs, two Boston Terriers and one Chihuahua, perk up, bark a few times and start investigating down the hall. My siblings were napping in the bedroom at the end of the hall at the time, so. So I figure they just stirred and scared the dogs. But then Punky sits up suddenly, stands up on the couch and puffs her chest out. Her ears are perked up, her fur standing on end. And then she barks loudly. I mean the bark booms through the living room and echoes around and all of a sudden she lunges off the couch and goes tearing down the hallway. I'm already on edge because I don't think I've ever heard her bark, ever. She's a basenji mix, so her bark is more of a bang sound, but this was a big loud alert bark. I stand up and go to look down the hallway, ready to fight off what I'm assuming is a shadow monster based on how the dogs are acting. But then I hear it. Knock knock knock knock knock. We didn't get visitors because of how weird our house was location wise. So my 11 year old mind had no clue what to do here. The only people who showed up were family and they didn't knock. So I slowly walked towards the door. The knock drew the attention of the dogs and they came running back down the hallway. All except for Punky. And I felt better with our three yappy dogs in the room with me. Even if they were all the size of New York City sewer rats. I open the door just a bit and standing on our porch is the sketchiest man I think I've ever seen. I can still picture him perfectly. He was really thin, taller man with dark hair and a sunken face, bags under his eyes and this half managed hair, sort of like he just gave it a quick brush and then figured it was good enough. Everything about him seemed just a little too thin, a little too shallow and his clothes were all off too. They were nice, but fake nice, you know, like a clean, newer looking T shirt and new jeans. But he had what looked like a suit jacket on. All his clothes were dark too, despite the fact that it was summer in Texas and the weather was definitely into the 1/ hundreds that day. He also had this plain, unlabeled bottle in his hand. It looked like the label had been covered up and taped over. I stare up at him in confusion because I definitely don't know this man. And I ask what he wants. He smiles at me in this way that's way too fake, like this exaggerated and forced grin. And he spoke in the same voice retail workers do. Hey there kiddo, I'm trying to sell this here carpet cleaner. And he shakes the bottle at me. Mind if I come in to show you how good it works? Alarms are going off in my head because he just seemed so off looking back with an adult perspective. The fact that he didn't ask if my parents were home is unnerving because he probably knew they weren't and that's why he was here in the first place. I should have told him to get off our property, that I'd have to go get my mom something. Except what I did say, but I didn't. Instead I just shook my head and said, no, we don't have carpet. Well, it works on other things. He took a big step towards the door and shook the bottle at me. I start to freak out and think to close the door, but the thing is, our front door didn't even lock. It was a small town, hard to access the home. We never needed a lock, so that's basically useless. I'm sure there's something very wrong about to happen and I'm terrified as I think about what to do in the few seconds I think I have before it does happen, when all of a sudden I hear it. Hunky had crept up from the hallway, lowered towards the ground with her teeth bared and snarling like she was feraled. She had slobber just dripping from her mouth, her ears were down and she was ready to pounce. The guy hears it too, and as I look towards Punky, she tries to lunge past me and I just barely catch her with my leg as she tries her hardest to duck past me and attack this guy, he freaks out and runs off the porch without another word, booking it down the driveway. As I let Punky out along with the rest of our dogs and they start chasing him, our small dogs chase him down the driveway and stop about halfway barking and jumping about. But Punky stops just on the porch and watches him with her ears perked, just staring in the distance until he disappears. I swear I saw someone join up with him running when he got onto the road. The second he disappeared, Punky's entire body language changed and she went back to being the sweet dog I knew. No barking or growling, just laying around, mouth and throat covered in slobber. Still, I realized my siblings are still down the hall and run to check on them. And when I get to the bedroom, my siblings were still sleeping soundly. But the bedroom window was wide open, the curtains pushed all to one side and the items on the dresser in front of the window all shoved around. Someone had tried to climb through the window. No doubt in my mind about it. From what I can gather, the bedroom window was visible from the couch. Punky was sleeping, so I think someone was trying to climb through the window before Punky went after them and scared them off. And the man at the door was meant to distract me. They definitely didn't expect Punky a bigger dog because most of the time she was with my mom inside. While our small dogs were the ones that saw public eye more often. I don't know what they intended to do, but after my mom got home she took all of us to my aunt's house and on our way there we saw the men walking up someone else's driveway. Men plural, because we watched a second one split off to wait by the road. This happened several years ago. I was home alone one evening when I heard a knock at the back door. This confused me as no one ever used that door. My husband and I lived in a fourplex at the time and all of the units had a back door at the top of a narrow staircase. These doors were a little inconvenient to access as you would have to go around the building and up the narrow stairs as opposed to the wider main entrance at the front. It didn't make sense to use the back entrance and I couldn't think of anyone who would go to that door to visit. As I approached the back door, I saw two tall men in the window standing at the door. A chill went down my spine. I did not feel safe opening the door, so I called out hello. One of the men tapped on the window. Yes, hello. May we come in? We are with Bresnan. At the time. My husband and I had Bresnan for cable but did not have any issues with it. I replied, we're not having any issues with Bresnan. Is there a Problem, ma'am, the man said. Can we come in? We're servicing the area and it's important we look at your cable. I shook my head. We're not having any issues, I repeated. So there's no need to stop by. Ma'am, we are visiting every resident. Let us in so we can do our job. I noticed the man grabbed the doorknob and tried to open the locked door. I slowly grabbed a knife from our knife block and held it at my chest. We're not having any issues, I repeated, trying not to convey shakiness of my voice. So you don't need to be here. The two figures appeared to shuffle and then straighten. Ma'am, let us in. We're on a deadline and need to do our job. I glanced at the clock, gauging when my husband would arrive home from work. I gripped the knife tighter. Ma'am, Ma'am. I saw him try the doorknob again. I closed my eyes and felt overwhelming gratitude of always locking my doors. Just then, a thought came to the forefront of my mind. I'm sorry, I can't help you. Can I please get your names and badge numbers? I can give your supervisor a call to let them know our cable is fine. I heard another shuffle and one of the men replied. Replied, no need to, ma'am. We're sorry we wasted your time. With that, both of the men exited the staircase and disappeared into the night. Shaken up, I held the knife tight and tried to get my bearings. I remember making a mental note to call the cable company or the police, but my hands were shaking so badly I couldn't hold my phone. With the knife still grasped to my chest and the phone falling out of my other hand, I sank to the floor and cried. When my husband returned home, I told him what had happened. I was still very shaken up and had started crying again. After he came home, he immediately called the Bresnan Cable Company and spoke to a representative who informed us that no one from their company was out on assignment in our area. The next day, we asked our neighbors if they had a visit from the company. No one had this episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season, and we're all a bit tired of numbers. But here's one you need to hear. $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now here's a good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com podcast terms apply. Um, I think I just won my taxes. Yeah, I just switched to H and R block in about one minute. All I had to do was drag and drop last year's return into H and R Block and bam. My information is automatically there so I don't have have to go digging around for all my old papers to switch. Nope. Sounds like we just leveled up our tax game. Switching to H and R block is easy. Just drag and drop your last return. It's better with block. Hi, this is Debbie, your blinds.com design consultant. Oh wow, a real person. Yep. I am here to help you with everything from selecting the perfect window treatments to. Well, I've got a complicated project. Oh, not a problem. I can even schedule a professional measure and install. We can also send you samples fast and free. H I just might have to do more. Oh, okay. So the first room we're looking at is for guest shop blinds.com now and save up to 40% sitewide blinds.com rules and restrictions may apply. This happened to me and my friend Anna when we were just kids. Around 10 or 11 years old. I used to live in a very quiet small town in a house right in the middle of a purely residential neighborhood. A lot of kids from my school used to live near me as well when I was young. I was a pretty well behaved kid. Some of my friends though were mischievous. Anna herself was a little punky. She liked to explore everywhere and would often go against what our parents told us. This one afternoon, Anna came to my house after school to play. Since my neighborhood was surrounded by beautiful trees and the day was warm, we set out to walk and play. It was a little bit before sundown, so maybe 5pm when we spotted a cottage. We got to it and played around it for a while until Anna spotted something right beside us. A huge spotty Dalmatian. The dog was in inside a metal fenced backyard belonging to the house right next to this cottage. We marveled at the dog's gracefulness and came close to it heading it through the fence. It was friendly enough and let us play with it for a while. Suddenly, another dog came along, this time an equally large German shepherd. This one though, didn't seem as as friendly and kept its guard up but still let us pet it. We giggled and had fun with the dogs for a while. Nobody came out from the house their owners lived in, which was seemingly empty. From our perspective, it looked like no one was home since the windows were shut this house had a large yard with some toys and a playground indicating a family with kids. Kids lived there. I generally had a pretty good idea of who my neighbors were, but I did not know the residents of this specific house. Everything was fine until Anna had the brilliantly stupid idea of jumping the fence in order to properly play with the dogs, literally trespassing. I immediately protested this idea with all the reasoning of a non confrontational child. I argued that we could get caught, go to jail, get hurt, etc. Anna, though, wasn't having any of it and made up her mind to hop the fence. I said I would help but would not join her and would wait for her outside where I was. Anna was a tiny, skinny kitty kid and on this day she was wearing sneakers and jeans. So against my will I helped her up. She put her foot in a kind of step in the middle of the fence and got to the top. This fence was pointy, so Anna had to hover above the spikes in order to not hurt herself. As soon as she got steady, the worst possible thing happened. The German shepherd started bulging, barking viciously, and bit her right foot, the one that was inside the fence. Anna started screaming in pain. It took a beat to understand what was happening because we didn't anticipate that this could even happen. I remember vividly feeling horrified, not only because of the sudden loud barking, but because of the blood pouring down my friend's leg right in front of me. It took me only a couple of seconds to realize all of this, but then I immediately sprang into action trying to pull Anna back from the top of the fence. She was crying and screaming like never before. The sounds were bone chilling and filled with pure panic. She kept howling and saying she couldn't move and would be stuck there forever. I was terrified myself, but I knew something even worse could happen if she stayed up there for a minute longer. I couldn't get too close to the fence because now both of the dogs turned feral as they would. Both were clearly security dogs, but we obviously did not realize it at the time. I was in so much panic that I started crying really hard while thinking of what I could possibly do to help. I got a little bit to Anna's side and tried to pull her back. That was when she bumped into the spike and ripped the inside of her jeans by her upper thigh. Anna cried even louder. After minutes of me trying to pull her and the dogs trying to attack, she managed to throw herself onto the sidewalk safely. We hugged each other, crying and trembling. That was when I realized her Shoe had fallen inside the fence right where the dogs were still barking and stamping on, still really shaken up. We looked around to see if there was anyone that could help us, but we were completely alone. I'll never forget that dreadful lonely feeling. Anna's foot was bleeding quite a lot and she kept saying how much it hurt. I asked her if she was okay with me going back to the house to call my mom, but she didn't want to be alone nor to tell any adults what happened in fear of a scolding. I was really frustrated and scared, but still tried to keep calm and resolve the situation in my child mind. We couldn't leave her shoe behind since it could be found and maybe traced back to us somehow, as if this was some kind of CSI situation. I then tried to get the shoe, but the dogs were still perceiving us as threats even after getting off their fence. I tried throwing rocks at the back of the yard to attract their attention and make them retreat from the front gate. At first this did nothing, but eventually they backed off. I grabbed a twig and fished out her bloody shoe from inside the gate. Hurt, crying and shaking, we came back to my house. Luckily for Anna, my bedroom was on the ground floor and had a big window I used to climb through. Instead of using the back door, I smuggled her through the window and did my best to clean up the injury in secret. I don't recall exactly how bad it was, but I think the sudden anger of the attack and the sight of the blood scared us more than anything. I still made her promise she would tell her parents and take a rabies shot since it was something I had already gone through a few years before and knew to be important. After she left, I felt so bad that I had to tell my mom. She was really worried and upset, revealing that what we did put our lives in danger and that the house actually belonged to another kid that went to my school. That made me feel even worse. What if the kid somehow found out and told everyone? It didn't make sense of course, but I was very shaken up. Thankfully, I was physically unharmed and Anna recovered just fine. Nowadays, I know that what we did was pretty stupid, but back then it didn't seem like it would be such a scare or even dangerous. All we wanted to do was play with the dogs. We did learn our lesson though, and never hopped any fences or pet unknown animals ever again. The following events took place in June 2022. My passion is in wild F foods. I'm no stranger to working out in the bush for a living. Prior to this I was building mountain bike trails for my friend's company. He owned and was a tree planter. I realized mountain biking, while fun, is not something I can use to get ahead in the world. Tree planting, while lucrative, is probably the most miserable I have ever been in the workforce. Good parties though. It's basically sacrificing all comfort and volunteering yourself for hardship and misery so you can earn a bunch of money quickly and have a rave in the woods every three days. I always picked mushrooms and foraged for fun, but once I found out I could monetize my passion, that it's in fact a pretty big industry and can be just as lucrative, if not more so than planting, I was head over heels. Granted, you need to know what you are doing and what to look for and where, but you can make a killing if you do. Morels are a very lucrative and sought after wild mushroom that rely almost entirely on wildfires to produce fruiting bodies. The carbon from a wildfire spikes the PH of the soil in such a way that it is the ample substrate to produce and the connection between the mycelium and the relationship with the tree roots they depend on becomes disrupted. So they desperately flourish, producing as many morel mushrooms as possible to spread as many spores as possible to re establish these connections. In turn, they also cleanse the soil and allow the forest to regenerate. Sometimes I find a patch so juicy my jaw just drops and I cannot even believe what I have stumbled across. That being said, it's a dangerous industry. Every picker I have met has some sort of harrowing tale of survival. Each year pickers go missing, either to be found as a corpse or never seen again. Being that far out in the wilderness, this is inherently dangerous. One time I slipped and almost impaled my chest on my knife. I'd have been so screwed. Even just rolling an ankle that far from a road or a hospital carries its own risks. I have almost died alone in the woods more times than I'd like to admit and this tale is just one of those times. It was a beautiful bluebird day to be out picking. I was deep in the woods off a logging road inside the Okanagan Indian band. I must have hiked close to 2km up the mountain, across a cut block and far into the woods. I kept finding clusters, nothing too special. I had come across one hillside that was very steep but was loaded with some big honkers. The top of the ridgeline had various clusters all over it. I had about 25 pounds stuffed into buckets, which I had propped up next to a decaying log so they wouldn't tip over. I was taking a break while also scouting the area to see if any more were around. I had pretty much depleted the area on top of the ridgeline and beyond that was too dry for anything to grow. I was scanning around, hoping I could find one more cluster. Cluster? Generally, mushrooms will cluster near a patch. I knew it was around in the general vicinity. My eyes turned back to the direction I came from. There was a really steep hill that plateaued out onto another ridgeline. But just below this hill, the ground was littered with burnt pinecones. Then it dawned on me. Pineapple picking in cedar and birch. There are no pine cones to be had up in here. Holy crap. Those aren't pinecones. I exclaimed to myself in astonishing wonder. I panicked with excitement. Normally, I'd have dropped a waypoint to my buckets on my gps, but if my eyes didn't deceive me, I somehow walked right past the biggest patch of morels I had ever seen in my life. I scrambled down that steep hill as fast as I could, and sure enough, blending into the black soil and singed cedar leaves was an overwhelming surplus of morels. Most of these were young baby mushrooms. If I had my wits about me, I would have marked this entire area on my GPS also, as that patch would be producing for the next two to three weeks. Instead, I hungrily and greedily scrambled across the forest floor on my hands and knees, filling my planting bags, my T shirt baskets, and everything I could use to store them. There were so many. I was financially struggling and looking so hard that I was ready to cry at the bottom. Blessing nature had bestowed upon me. I stood up for a second, drenched in sweat. I caught a bad whiff of something in the air. Disgusting, I thought to myself. As soon as I get to camp and cash out, I'm heading to town and washing these nasty nose piercings. Gonna get some real food and a nice clean shower, I thought to myself. I was driven. Shortly after, I thought I heard sticks snapping. I froze, called out to the wind, scanning my surroundings. A woodpecker near me started pecking a tree. Dang bird. I said to myself as I resumed working. Little did I know I was being watched. This entire time, I had pretty much filled everything. I could carry mushrooms in up to the brim and couldn't pick any more. I resolved to mark this on my gps, cash out at the nearest buyer station and head back up and pick until dusk. Suddenly, without warning, I heard a very loud and hollow thud, followed by another and another. I looked back to the source and it was my mushroom bucket tumbling all the way down the hill, spewing mushrooms in every direction, like Sonic the Hedgehog when he loses his rings. A very strong gust of wind came and simultaneously, my other bucket followed suit. This was infuriating. I threw a hissy fit and started screaming at my buckets as loud as I could as they tumbled, screaming expletives, slurs and curse words at the winds, assuming it was a breeze that knocked them over. When I got my composure back, I heard a very loud snap and a loud huff. Right at the top of the ridgeline was a black bear staring me down. I have encountered many a bear with only a few close encounters. The moment I saw this bear, I knew something was off. It was a juvenile, big yet scrawny. It was bobbing its head up and down and huffing. Its fur was standing on end and it was staring right at me. It looked agitated. It took a few steps towards me and I froze. I knew I had to stay calm. No point in running from a bear. Side note, as I was leaving my car that morning and looking for my bear spray, it was nowhere to be found. I could see it clearly in my mind's eye, right next to my bed in my tent. Screw it, it's not like I'm gonna need it, I said to myself. I also had an exacto knife and a buck knife, both of which were black colored and got lost as soon as I set them down in the woods. They blended in seamlessly into the black ground. I was vulnerable. Sitting duck with only my limbs to defend myself wrapped was the only thing that went through my mind at first. It started slowly coming towards me. Our eyes were locked together. I started to realize the severity of the situation. I reached for my spray and it wasn't there. I remembered that if a black bear attacks you, you must fight back. Unlike grizzlies, black bears will eat you alive if they attack you. Bears do not kill their prey, they just eat it. Grizzlies will attack if they see you as a threat, and playing dead does in fact work for them. Not black bears. Though rare, black bear attacks on average are more fatal than grizzly attacks. Fun fact. All of these thoughts came rushing through my head so fast I could barely process them. I was still frozen as this bear slowly crept down the long hill toward me, grumbling and growling. To say I felt vulnerable and helpless is an understatement. I realized I was Looking this bear directly in the eyes. And even though it was far away, it is not something you should ever do. I remember my crew boss in tree planting describing black bears as big raccoons that are easily startled to make lots of noise, get big and try to scare it off. I unclipped the planting bags I was using to store mushrooms on my hips, lifted them over my head to augment my size and gave a long shout as loud as I could. The bear froze and growled, completely unfazed by this, I stomped the ground and gave a couple of short shouts like a dog would bark. Hey. Hey. As soon as I screamed this at the top of my lungs, it erupted into full blown charge straight at me. Supposedly the top speed of a bear is 50 to 60 kilometers per hour. It's astounding how explosively fast they reach that top speed. I didn't even have time to flinch before it had cleared all that ground and was upon me. I kept my size augmented with my planting bags and was screaming bloody murder, Literally screaming so loud I tasted blood. Standing my ground, just full blown panic screaming. This bear was stopped 10ft away from me, snarling, drooling, snapping its jaws and swiping at me. The bear stopped and I backed up maybe six feet before it lunged at me again. I stayed put, screaming at it. The bear got up on its hind legs staring down at me and let off a roar. As it came back down on its fours, it snapped its teeth with once more and took a swipe at me with its claws. It looked like it was going to pounce and eat me. The next move it made. Without even thinking of it, I took a gamble. I leered at it, screaming and kicked a pile of dirt and ash directly into its face and open mouth. This, in hindsight was very foolish. 9 out of 10 times it would have just pissed it off. But it worked. The bear coughed and huffed looking at me and growled before running back up to the ridgeline. It spun around and looked like it was gonna charge again, but I raised my bags higher above my head and let out the most desperate cries imaginable. Screaming beyond bloody murder. The bear finally got on top of the ridgeline and I started backing out away from it in the direction I came from. Initially, it was now following me with eyes on me, the only thing separating us being the long steep hill between ridgelines that was getting longer the further I went. This bear was stalking me as I literally sidestepped in a crab walk, screaming as loud as I could at it, screaming every curse word word in the book until my throat was completely raw. I realized I was still locked in direct eye contact with it and instantly felt like an idiot. I jumped up and down, screaming as loud as I could. It huffed and went out of sight. As this bear disappeared behind the ridgeline, I noticed I didn't even have time to realize how scared I actually was. Was. I felt dizzy, my heart was beating out of its chest and sweat was literally pouring off my body. Is it gone? I thought to myself. No, it wasn't. It disappeared out of sight and got behind me in the direction I was moving in. I heard brush snapping as it reappeared, appeared on top of the ridgeline further down, waiting for me to get closer. Piss off. I shouted, augmenting my size again, making all the ruckus I could. It charged again down the hill at me. Good thing I went to the bathroom in the woods before this happened, otherwise I would have filled my trousers and seasoned myself. This time it charged slightly off to the side of me and blew right past me down the hill and out of sight again. I took this opportunity to run in the direction I came from. This was stupid. The sound of my fleeing must have brought it back because the next thing you know I was staring down at it from the ridgeline I was at. Again. I augmented my size and slowly started backing away. This thing ran up onto the ridgeline I was at, paused, then scrambled back up the hill and resumed stalking me from on top of the upper ridgeline. Again it ran farther down and waited. I was certain I was gonna die that day. I knew for a fact that I was being hunted. This bear was stalking me and closing a circle around me so it could pounce when it knew I wasn't looking at it. I'm not a religious man, but found myself begging to God to save me and begging for forgiveness. It all felt hopeless and in vain. I proceeded along with my exit strategy as this thing went out of sight again. Cautiously, I started walking faster until I came around the bend and this bear was right in my path, staring me down and slowly approaching me, snarling and huffing. I knew I was helpless and so did this bear. I screamed at it, cursing, and started walking carefully up the hill. It descended down on me from Prior. It approached me again and I kicked more dirt at it from a distance that would never reach it. This bear was hesitant. I don't think it really knew what to do as it probably never encountered a human and I was tall with the upper ground. Now. I slipped, walking backward up this steep hill and Its interest definitely piqued. Again, the bear resumed its approach. I had like 25 to 30 pounds of mushrooms in these planting bags I had over my head, and I could barely hold my arms up anymore, so I chucked them down the hill at this thing. The bear scrambled towards this scattered mess of mushrooms, sniffed them, bit one, spat it out, and looked at me again. I continued with my exit strategy as it scrambled up the hill so it was level with me. It let out a strange noise as I was shouting with once again for it to screw off. It continued approaching. I stopped. Then the bear stopped. This happened frequently and each time the bear stopped, I would resume, and shortly after it would continue stalking me. It appeared to lose interest in me and again ran out of sight. I stood there petrified for a bit until it seemed like it had finally left me alone. At this point, I started hiking with haste in the direction I was retreating in, frequently stopping to listen and check my surroundings. Just before I broke out of the woods into the cut block, I caught another nasty whiff of something. I knew the bear was around. I could smell it. These creatures roll in carcasses, feces and muck. Most times you can smell a bear before you see it. I couldn't see anything, that is, until I noticed it goalposted between two trees right next to me. Still checking me out. I started screaming every expletive in the book until it felt like my voice was breaking. At this point, I had fallen, finally made it to the cut block I hiked in from. I continued backing away. The bear continued approaching. It stopped. However, it was just checking me out from the tree line now and not approaching any further. I was now in a wide open, exposed spot where I could see my surroundings without any obstructions. The direction I was floating, fleeing, revealed the faint neon colors of the tents back at Jane's camp. Meanwhile, back at Jane's camp, an old man named Chuck, bless his soul, was eating a can of beans and smoking a joint and heard me screaming for a while. He reluctantly decided someone had injured themselves in the bush and went to go investigate. I reached the opposite end of the cut block and the bear looked like it was just a distant furball. Now, as I was getting closer to the camp, I saw Chuck walking up the hill, joint in hand, asking me if everything was alright. I was so rattled that I frantically explained everything I just went through while hyperventilating and broke down crying in front of this man. Calmly, he extended his joint to me. Here, man, take some. You really need it right now. A Wave of calm washed over me. He offered me water. We walked down the hill to a spring coming out of the mountain and I splashed water on my face. I felt safe. I felt like the situation was over. I got my bearings again and started breaking down. That I worked almost nine hours and lost all of my mushrooms. Bless this man as his response was oh buddy, you lost all of it. Come on, let's go get him. After a lot of back and forth, he convinced me of things I should have done avoid that situation altogether and convinced me of strength and numbers. I explained I had no waypoint on my GPS and that it would be a mission. He asked if I could trace my steps and find the area again. Yeah, I think so, I replied. Let's go then. Come on before it gets dark. What about the bear? What bear? I looked back and the bear was gone. He had bear spray too. So we started booting back up the mountain. It was a wild goose chase. But two and a half hours of hiking later, as we were giving up and the sun was setting, I found them. We hastily packed these mushrooms out of the woods and got back to camp where I cashed out. I thanked Chuck profusely. What a guy. He didn't even ask for a cut for helping me. Now I was debating even including this information, but I feel it's somehow important. That year I was in a deep depression where I was strongly considering ending it all. This experience was a spiritual one and the spiritual revelation that came from all of this was I am going to freaking Denny's. I almost died a slow, painful, agonizing death in the woods by myself and my last meal would have been Vector cereal with no milk. I bought three steaks and four appetizers. I realized if I ever leave this world, I am not leaving willingly. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? On the 24th of November 1960 1971, the day before Thanksgiving, a gentleman in his mid-40s walked up to the Northwest Orient Airlines counter at Portland International Airport in Oregon. He was a quiet, unassuming man in dark sunglasses, carrying a black briefcase and wearing a black business suit with a white shirt as he used cash to purchase a one way ticket to nearby Seattle. He told the clerk behind the counter that his name was Dan Cooper. Shortly after, Cooper boarded the waiting Boeing 727 and took a seat in the rear of the passenger cabin before ordering a bourbon and soda. The sparsely occupied aircraft took off on schedule at 2:50pm that afternoon for the short 30 minute flight into Washington. Once the flight had reached altitude, flight attendant Florence Schaffner began to walk up and down the aisle, taking drink orders from the passengers. When she reached the row where Dan Cooper was sat and asked him for his order, he simply handed her a note. Ms. Schaeffner opened it up and gasped when she saw what was written. Written with a felt tip pen in neat printed capital letters were just four I have a bomb. Cooper then invited Florence Schaffner to take a seat next to him. Only it wasn't so much an invitation as an order. According to later statements, Cooper then showed the terrified flight attendant exactly what was in his briefcase. She saw eight large cylinders linked to a small circular battery unit with red insulation wire. Schaeffner had never seen an explosive device before, but the one she saw that afternoon was very, very convincing. Cooper then leaned into her ear before whispering his demands. $200,000 in negotiable American currency, four parachutes and a fuel truck standing by in Seattle, one that was ready to refuel the aircraft once it had landed. Schaffner promptly walked down the aircraft's aisle to the cockpit, relayed Cooper's demands to the pilot, and assuring him that she had seen the explosive device, that he was threatening them with Captain William Scott, the aircraft's pilot quickly contacted Seattle airport informing them of the grave situation on board. Not wishing to cause a panic, the pilot passed a message over the intercom to the passengers on board telling them that their arrival at the Seattle airport would be slightly delayed due to minor technical difficulties. On its arrival in Seattle airspace, the aircraft entered a holding pattern, circling the area to ensure that local authorities had time to fully assemble the money and parachutes that Cooper had demanded. Meanwhile, the president of the airline in question actually relented to Cooper's demands, personally authorizing the withdrawal of the full $200,000 from company accounts and passing along instructions that all company employees were to fully comply with the hijacker to preserve human life. A remarkable aspect of the hijacking was Cooper's behavior during the ordeal. Many aircraft hijacking during that period were hallmarked by the cruelty and political extremism of the perpetrators, such as the German communist Red army faction. But flight attendant Florence Schaffner later described Cooper as being well spoken, calm and polite, going so far as paying for his drinks and offering to provide food for the flight attendants when the plane landed in Seattle. At no point did Cooper relate any kind of political motive for the hijacking and in fact, did not communicate any motive for his actions whatsoever. We can only assume that Cooper was a criminal who merely sought personal gain, but one that showed an unusual amount of compassion and empathy for those involved in the hijacking. At 5:24pm, FBI agents on the ground at Seattle airport who had gathered Cooper's money from a few different local banks, relayed a message to the pilot that the aircraft was cleared to land once it had landed. Cooper instructed the pilot to taxi the plane to a well lit area off the Runway before telling the flight attendants to shut off all the window shades on board to ensure that FBI snipers would be unable to get a clear shot on him. This is one of the first clues we get to just how much thought and planning Cooper had put into the whole operation. Shortly afterward, Northwest Orient Airlines ops manager approached the aircraft in civilian clothing, delivering a set of backpacks that were stuffed with cash to one of the flight attendants via the plane's rear staircase. Once Cooper was happy that the delivery was sufficient, he told all passengers and a handful of the flight crew to disembark, leaving only skeleton crew to fly him out of there. It was during the refueling of the aircraft that Cooper informed them of their new course. They would be flying southeast towards Mexico City. But Cooper didn't only give them a new direction. He seemed to have an intimate knowledge of the aircraft's functionality, instructing them exactly how he wished the pilot to fly the plane, such as the speed and altitude he wanted them to fly at, even down to the angle at which he wanted the wing flaps to be deployed. He also instructed the pilot to ensure that the cabin remain unpressurized, telling him to leave the rear doors of the aircraft open when the plane took off again. An official from the Federal Aviation Administration requested a face to face meeting with Cooper, informing him that takeoff would be extreme extremely unsafe given some of the conditions he had requested. It was a bluff. He was counting on Cooper knowing next to nothing about aviation. But Cooper knew far more than anyone had predicted and argued in return that he would only lower the stairs once the plane was in the air. As previously mentioned, it seems Cooper had planned and researched the operation in extreme fright forensic detail in the months or possibly years leading up to the incident and came armed with a frightening amount of knowledge surrounding civilian aviation. There was, however, one thing that Cooper apparently did not have knowledge of. He seemed to have expected the aircraft to be able to make one solid flight down to Mexico City, when in fact it only had a maximum range of about 11000 miles. The CO pilot informed Cooper that they would have to make a refueling stop at Reno Airport down in Nevada. Cooper agreed, but seemed bizarrely unconcerned by such a detail. About two hours after they had originally landed, the hijacked aircraft prepared to take off again with just five people on board, four crew members, and the hijacker himself itself. However, at this stage, the plane was being tailed by two F106 fighter aircrafts that had scrambled from the nearby McChord Air Force Base, one above and one below the hijacked plane so that Cooper would be unable to see them. After the plane took off, Cooper ordered the entire flight crew into the cockpit, leaving him alone in the cabin. One was later noted to have said that they had seen Cooper tying something around his waist before he began to lower to the rear staircase. At approximately 10:15pm the aircraft's rear staircase was still lowered. When the pilots landed the plane at Reno Airport, a large number of waiting FBI agents, sheriff's deputies, state troopers, and local Reno PD began to surround the jet and quickly boarded to take Cooper into custody before he had a chance to get airborne again and escaped to Mexico. But as they completed a thorough search of the aircraft, they discovered that Cooper was nowhere to be found. All that remained of the man was his black clip on tie, his tie clip, and two of the four parachutes he had requested as part of his demands. The only possible conclusion to be drawn was that somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Cooper had jumped out of the plane. What followed was arguably the most extensive and intensive search and recovery operation in U.S. history. A series of composite sketches was developed with local police and FBI agents immediately seeking to question around 800 possible possible suspects. All but 20 or so of these were quickly eliminated from the investigation. One of these suspects was an Oregon man by the name of D.B. cooper, who had a relatively small criminal history. He, too was ruled out of the investigation as just one of the theories was that it was highly unlikely that the hijacker would have used his actual birth name to pull off such a deep, daring heist. But thanks to the details of his questioning being released by reporters, the name DB Cooper stuck in the public's consciousness. Given that Cooper was thought to have jumped out of the aircraft just 20 minutes or so after takeoff, police centered their search on a certain area of Washington, specifically the land around the Lewis river in the southwest of the state. FBI agents and sheriff's deputies from nearby counties searched large areas of the mountainous wilderness surrounding the Lewis river on foot and by helicopter. Door to door searches of local farmhouses were also carried out while search parties ran patrol boats along the river and in surrounding lakes. But no trace of Cooper nor any of the equipment he was thought to have jumped out of the aircraft with was ever located. The FBI then attempted to locate a trace of Cooper by releasing a list of serial numbers that were printed on the money they had given him. But this did little more than confuse the situation. In 1972, two men used counterfeit $20 bills printed with Cooper serial numbers to con $30,000 from a Newsweek reporter in exchange for an incident interview with a man they falsely claimed was the hijacker. For all intents and purposes, the man who called himself Dan Cooper had successfully completed his criminal operation before he disappeared into thin air. No evidence of Cooper was discovered until February of 1980, when a family vacationing on the Columbia river made a miraculous discovery. As they raked over a sandy riverbank to build a campfire, they uncovered three packets worth of the ransom cash that was delivered to Cooper on the tarmac of Seattle Airport. The bills had suffered serious water damage over the years and were heavily deteriorated, but were soon identified as the genuine article by FBI agents. However, none of the other bills have ever, ever turned up anywhere in the world, despite their serial numbers still being available online for public inspection. But who exactly was Dan Cooper? It might seem obvious, but his financial situation was most likely extremely desperate. Why would a man take such an enormous risk otherwise? But whether or not this was to pay medical bills, debts, or for something more material can only be speculated on. One of the flight attendants told FBI interviewers that Cooper had been able to recognize the city of Tacoma from the air, and also noted that McChord Air Force Base was less than a half hour's drive from Seattle Airport, something that few civilians would have been aware of at the time. This has given rise to the idea that Cooper. Cooper was an Air Force veteran, or at least had a background in aviation, a theory supported by Cooper's apparently expert knowledge of the nature of aircraft. He was aware of flying techniques, engine placement, aircraft specifications, as well as local terrain. He may have also specifically selected the 727 model of aircraft, thanks to a recent innovation that allowed all three fuel tanks to be refilled at once. Cooper also knew that the rear staircase could be lowered during flight, a fact that was never disclosed to civilian flight crews, since there was no situation on a passenger flight that would make it necessary. He also seemed aware that its operation by a single switch in the rear of the cabin could not be overridden from the cockpit. Some of this knowledge was only known by CIA paramilitary units. So could Cooper have been former CIA or perhaps a rogue agent. One particularly interesting point is that Dan Cooper is a name shared by a popular Belgian comic book hero who was enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Dan Cooper took part in numerous heroic adventures, including parachuting. Yet the Dan Cooper comics were never translated into English, nor were they imported over to the United States, so there has been much speculation that the hijacker may have encountered them during a tour of duty in Europe during World War II. The comics were not sold in the US but since some copies were translated into French, they were sold in Canada. Cooper could have well been a Canadian citizen, given that he jumped out of a plane in Washington. His escape plan could have been over the border to his native country, with the whole Mexico reference being a diversionary tactic. In line with this theory, much has been made of his specific demand for negotiable American currency, a phrase which some was determined as unlikely to be used by a US citizen in despite the fact that no dead body has ever been found, the FBI has long speculated that Cooper did not survive his jump parachuting into the stormy Washington wilderness. Without the right equipment in such terrible conditions, it's unlikely he even got his chute to open. And even if Cooper was lucky enough to land safely, survival in the mountainous terrain and the onset of winter would have been all but impossible without an accomplice waiting at an agreed upon drop zone. This would have required a perfectly timed jump which would have required cooperation from the flight crew, and there is no evidence that Cooper requested or received any such help from the crew, or that he had any clear idea where he was when he jumped out of the plane. It was also revealed that one of the parachutes they had provided to Cooper has been a dummy, an unusable unit with an inoperative ripcord intended solely as a teaching aid, although it had clear markings identifying it to any experienced skydiver as non functional. However, the FBI stressed that inclusion of the dummy reserve parachute, one of the four obtained in haste from a Seattle skydiving school, was accidental and not a deliberate attempt to kill Cooper. The search for DB Cooper officially ended on 8th July 2016. It was on this day that the FBI announced that it was ending all active investigations, telling the public that they needed to focus its investigative resources and manpower elsewhere. Local FBI field offices have stated that that they will continue to accept any legitimate physical evidence related specifically to the parachutes or the ransom money that may emerge in the future. The 60 volume case file compiled over the 45 year course of the investigation will be preserved for historical purposes at FBI headquarters in Washington D.C. on the FBI website there is currently a 28 part packet full of evidence gathered over the years and all the evidence is open to the public to read. So keep your eyes and ears open for a man with a little too much in the way of aircraft knowledge who has a little too much money for a retiree. There's every chance that D.B. cooper might still be out there, and it might be a listener of this very channel that finally solves the mystery of the greatest airline heist of all time. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Evglis. 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