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- [00:00]
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Hey, this is Dane and this is Scary Stories in Rain. Please join my family and follow this.
- [00:06]
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Podcast on Spotify or Apple.
- [00:08]
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And if you want the ultimate experience, you can get rid of all of the ads and be entered to win all of my giveaways every month by subscribing for just 299amonth. All of the ads gone, every single giveaway automatically entered. And starting now today, every Sunday, I'm going to release the ultimate episode. 6 to 12 hours long ultimate Scary.
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Stories for a Rainy Night.
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Subscriber Exclusive and as a reminder, we are now four months away from my first movie release in theaters.
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Gale Yellow Brick Road A dark and.
- [00:42]
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Terrifying reimagining of the wizard of Oz. If you want to check out the first trailer, click the link in the description to this episode and if you're not following my other two podcasts, please go check them out. Scary Stories and Fire and Scary Stories After Dark. The links are in the description. Thank you so much for being here and I really hope you enjoy this episode.
- [01:06]
D
At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your way@newbalance.com Running.
- [01:41]
C
As a young child I had a very active imagination. As an adult I am very skeptical about ghosts and the paranormal, but as a 7 year old child in the early 90s, I remember seeing and witnessing stuff which a rational mind would conclude to be impossible. Regardless, I remember such events. In some instances I was with other individuals who too shared my experiences of these paranormal sightings, who also have profound memories of them to this day. In the 90s, my family owned a small village pub called the Crown Inn. The establishment is situated in the English countryside. Like many public houses in England, the Crown Inn was very old and at the center of many tragic stories, including murder. I would spend many hours exploring the Victorian building whilst my brother played with his friends in the village. And when my parents worked, I would often spend a lot of time by myself in the upstairs flat and during these times I recall witnessing objects flying.
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Across the room, furniture hovering, feet off.
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The ground, and other such occurrences. I would convince myself that these were just simply hallucinations or my excitable imagination. However, the family dog would also react these unexplained events. On one occasion, Jake, my black Labrador, bolted out of the bedroom with his tail between his legs when a table lifted off the ground. He ran to the bottom of the stairs and urinated all over the carpet. During this time, I was sure that we were not alone in the pub. I will detail one particular night that sits vividly in my mind, which I catch myself pondering about to this day. It was late at night, the pub was closed down and everybody in the.
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Building was in bed asleep.
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At this time I shared a bedroom with my brother and also shared a double bed. I remember waking up in the dark and silent room. Only a slight bit of light spilled through the window from the street, very faintly illuminating items around me. I first focused on my brother, who was sound asleep just a few feet to my left, still laying on my back. I turned my head the other way and as I was about to close my eyes, something caught my attention. On the wall to my right hand side, adjacent to the bed and slightly raised towards the ceiling, was something I couldn't at all comprehend. There were no pictures, paintings, or any items hanging from this particular wall. And apart from the window, the wall was completely bare. Except of course, this strange thing. Being intrigued of this item fully aroused my attention and I must have gazed at this object for what felt to be a few minutes. The item was almost egg shaped, no larger than an American football. Then I felt my heart starting to beat faster and a cold sensation ran down the length of my spine. As I started to slowly understand what I was looking at. The light reflected off the object to make out what appeared to be a cheekbone.
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As soon as I recognized this, I.
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Could make out a masculine jawline, an ear, a nose and a mouth. I was completely frozen. When it was evident I was staring at somebody's face. No other part of the body was visible apart from the facial features. Peering what seemed to be through the wall, the face was slightly turned away from me as if its attention was drawn to something at the foot of the bed. Through my fear, I did my best to remain completely motionless, still staring at this face, studying this insane image in front of me.
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I recall its eyes were casually looking.
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Away from me as if in deep thought, almost sorrowful. The bed made a slight noise as I unintentionally shifted my weight on the mattress. Instantly, the face, in a jolting reflex motion, turned straight towards me as if it had been rudely disturbed, its wide open eyes staring directly into mine. In every sense of the word, I was utterly petrified.
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It sounds peculiar to describe, but the.
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Face was contorted with such an intense expression, a concoction of extreme delight and anger. At the same time, it was Horrifying to behold, to say the least.
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I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move, I.
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Couldn'T scream as this horrifying thing gazed deep into my eyes, no more than a couple feet away from me.
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Desperately wishing for this crazy event to.
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Stop, we both faced each other in the dark for a few moments. It then did something which makes the hair stick up on the back of my neck. Even to this day. The face almost composed itself for a second until slowly revealing a psychopathic grin, a horrible distorted smile, before slowly descending down the wall. I helplessly watched as the face moved down towards the ground, never breaking eye contact until it was completely out of my sight. I thought my heart was going to explode inside my chest as I laid there witnessing the face disappear.
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It's under the bed.
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It's under the bed. The thought screaming in my mind. I tried to move my arms and legs, but I couldn't. Almost as if I was paralyzed, I tried and tried again, desperately trying to.
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Get myself out of the room.
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In one last final attempt, my arms broke free, followed by my legs. I stood up in the bed and darted across the mattress, over my brother and out of the room, never once looking behind me. I ran directly into my parents room, screaming all the way there, waking up the whole pub, including Jake, the family dog. My mom consoled me for a while and for the rest of the night I stayed in my parents bed. It took a few nights before I built up the courage to go back into that room again. With an adult's mind, it would be a fair conclusion that I likely suffered from sleep paralysis, which is something I do suffer with time to time as an adult. With those who are unfamiliar with this condition, it is where you become temporarily paralyzed just before falling asleep or waking up. On rare occasions, individuals also claim to have hallucinations during these episodes, expressing seeing ghosts or demons. I'm slightly skeptical of this because I hadn't knowingly suffered from sleep paralysis until I was in my teens, and although it's happened to me a handful of times, I have never hallucinated episodes in bed like this never happened to me again. And with everything else that I experienced in that building for the 10 years we lived there, I simply can't rule out that something else was awake with me in the room that night. The other day I remember this one little story that happened to one of my friend's old neighbors. His old neighbor lived in a really small RV park. Anyway, he liked to go back there to visit her a lot since they were pretty close. I was his ride at the time, so I would usually end up hanging out there with them. The small RV park was located right off a main road and a highway that led directly into one of our small historic townships. The park was shaded by mostly tall oak trees, so it was often nice and breezy in the hot summers. Since it was such a small neighborhood, in the RV park, everyone had no choice but to know everyone. While we were hanging out there one.
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Day, my friend's former neighbor and her.
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Other neighbor started commenting on the fact that there were tons of ants. That was unusual to them since they lived there for years and never had that problem before. Eventually, after dealing with the ants being absolutely everywhere for a couple days, my friend's old neighbor decided to go outside and try to track the ant trails to see where they may be coming from. She ended up tracking them to an RV that was one space away from hers. There she found several trails of them both going into and coming from this man's rv. Everyone in the little neighborhood knew that the man who lived in that RV was somewhat of a hoarder and he was not clean at all. So she knocked on his door a few times, but he didn't seem to be there. So she decided to tape a note to his door for when he got home. In the note, she asked that he please have his son maybe pick up some ant traps and also to have him maybe clean up a little. The man who lived there was quite weak and ill with mrsa. I believe MRSA is a disease that can be passed through bodily fluids and such, and I also believe it is eventually fatal. Thankfully, though, he had his son around to do his errands and some other things to help care for him. A couple days after she had left the note on his door, she got a knock on her door and it was the man's son. What he had to say was the grossest and most horrifying thing I have heard. What had happened was that when the man's son came by to take his dad to an appointment, he knocked but didn't get an answer.
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As he was waiting for his dad.
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To answer the door, he realized he hadn't heard from him in almost a week. I guess his dad usually called him at least every other day or so. Since his dad wasn't answering him, his son went to go grab the spare key that his dad had given to him previously. When he let himself into his dad's rv, he made a morbid and terrifying discovery. He found his dad's decomposing body still in his bed, totally covered in ants. He ran out of there and it didn't take long for a neighbor to find him sobbing next to his vehicle. Within minutes, the whole small community had heard the gruesome news. As it just so happened, I had taken my friend over there for us to all hang out again on the day his old neighbor had heard the terrible news. We didn't even get a chance to sit down before she was already telling us about it. As she was telling us about all the ants on his body. I just couldn't help but to think about how ants come into your house, crawl all over your sinks, counters and dishes, and even in your food. So for whatever reason, the ants were truly the most horrific part to me. After all, MRSA can be passed through bodily fluids. We didn't go back there for a while after hearing that. When we did, though, they were still in the process of trying to move the RV out of there. And that was after a man in a full hazmat suit spent days cleaning it out. The whole thing just kind of freaked us all out, though, especially the ants. In 2004, in the sleepy Chicago suburb of Aurora, Illinois, Amy Pitzon would give birth to her firstborn son. After some deliberation, she and her husband, James, would name the boy Timothy.
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The first six years of the boy's.
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Life were happy and uneventful, and we have every reason to believe that he was loved and well looked after by his two young parents. He had an extensive collection of relatives that he visited regularly who cared for the boy just as much as his own parents did. But Timothy and his family were headed towards a tragedy that would confound and puzzle all that became familiar with it, a mystery that would remain unsolved even to this day. On the morning of May 11, 2, 2011, James Pittson woke up, made breakfast for himself and his son, and then drove the boy to his kindergarten class over at Greenman Elementary School on West Galena Boulevard before he headed to work. But for some reason, a short while later, just after 8:00am Amy Pittson arrived at the school, telling a member of.
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The teaching staff that there was a.
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Family emergency and that she needed to take Timothy out of school for the day. Timothy's kindergarten teacher naturally obliged his mother, letting the young boy out of class, to accompany her wherever she was headed, after wishing her the best with whatever emergency she was dealing with. However, instead of dealing with this apparent family emergency, Amy Pitson's whereabouts are Unknown until around 10am that same same morning when she arrived at a Vehicle repair shop in Aurora. A friendly employee of the shop then drove Pittson and her son over to the nearby Brookfield Zoo, where the pair then spent the remainder of the morning and the early afternoon relaxing and exploring the various animal exhibits that were on display there. At around 3pm, Amy and her son arrived back at the vehicle repair shop collecting her car before driving over to the Key Lime Cove Resort in the small town of Gurney over in Lake county, which is known for its large water park as well as being a subsidiary of Six Flags. After taking Timothy around the water park, Amy and her son spent the night at the resort, leaving early the next morning before driving over state lines to Wisconsin. Here they checked into Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin dells at around 10am, both being recorded on CCTV cameras. But since then, neither hide nor hair of Timothy Pittson has been seen anywhere. For all intents and purposes, the young man had vanished into thin air. Around lunchtime the following day on May 13, Amy Pitson made a series of phone calls to some of her relatives, including her brother in law and her mother. She assured them that they were not to worry, how she and Timothy were both safe and well, and that neither of them were in any danger. These relatives would later confirm that Timothy was indeed present with his mother at the time of these calls, since he could be heard in the background complaining that he was hungry. In the investigation that followed, cell phone records showed that the calls were made from an area close to Sterling in Vernon County, Wisconsin, and that the pair were apparently on the move again via Route 40. Yet contrary to what one might expect, Amy Pittson did not contact her husband, the one person you might assume she would call to inform of her and her son's whereabouts. James had been frantic with worry ever since the evening of May 11, when he had returned home to find the house empty and had subsequently heard the news that his wife had taken Timothy out of school. On the evening of May 13, Amy Pittson was recorded on the security cameras of a Winnebago Family Dollar store. She was alone when she purchased a notebook, some stationery and some envelopes. She was still all on her own when she was sighted at a branch of Sullivan's Food, also in Winnebago, Wisconsin, where she apparently visited the pharmacy counter before swiftly leaving. She was not spotted again until just past 11 that night, when she had apparently returned to Illinois, checking into a room at the Rockford Inn in the city of Rockford. The following day, in the early afternoon of May 14, a member of the housekeeping staff at the inn, visited the room that Amy Pittson was staying in with the intention of cleaning the room. There was no do not disturb sign present on the door handle, and when the housekeeper knocked, there was no reply from inside the room. So, against her better judgment, she unlocked the room and walked inside. There, to her absolute horror, she found Amy Pitson lying face up on the sheets that were soaked with blood. Pittson had taken an overdose of powerful antihistamines before slashing her own wrists. She had also apparently left a note on a nearby dresser stating that she was well and truly sorry for the mess she had caused, but that Timothy would never be found. However, the note was quick to reassure those that read it that Timothy was, in fact, safe with people who would.
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Care for him, but that it would.
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Be pointless to look for him, since his new guardians had hidden him away and would never give him up. After being called, police quickly arrived on the scene to shut off the hotel room for forensic examination. They located the knife that Amy Pittson used to. And a close inspection of her car found traces of what appeared to be an alarming amount of her son's blood. Yet upon analysis, only Amy's blood was to be found on the knife at the scene. To the relief of investigators, close relatives of the Pittsons revealed that in the run up to Timothy's disappearance, he had suffered a rather large nosebleed in the car. And this was why so many trace particles could be found inside the vehicle. Amy Pittson's cell phone was nowhere to be found at the scene of her death, but it was later found in a grassy verge on the edge of Route 78, evidently tossed out of the window of her moving vehicle as she returned to Illinois. But analysis of her cell phone records shed no further light on what she had done, nor why she had done it. And there were no clues regarding her son's whereabouts to be be found. Furthermore, the analysis of Amy's vehicle revealed that at some point she had been parked in a grassy area. There were traces of clay embedded in the vehicle's tires, which investigators surmised had come from a place with a stream or a river nearby. Thus, it was highly possible that Amy had driven into a rural area, possibly off the road, in order to hand Timothy over to his new keepers. Pittson has since made it abundantly clear that he believed that his son is still very much alive. And In August of 2018, the since canceled law enforcement TV show Live PD showed their viewers some digitally generated age progression images showing what Timothy might look like at age 13. The guest on that episode of the show was Angeline Hartman of the national center for Missing and Exploited Children, who urged members of the public to come forward with any and all information that might help police locate Timothy. But none of the calls that were made as a result came to anything at all. However, less than a year later, calls were made to police in Northern Kentucky that brought a phenomenal amount of hope to those who wished for Timothy's return, but also revealed an unfathomable mystery and an unimaginable evil. On 3rd April 2019, citizens in the city of Newport called local police to inform them that a teenage boy was wandering in nearby streets, apparently in a daze after having run across a bridge on the Ohio River. Police soon located the young man, who was shaken, distraught and exhausted, and who required a great deal of consoling before he could even bring himself to speak. Police asked the teenager for his name and his reply shook them to their core. Timothy, he stammered. T Timothy Pittson. The boy was rushed to Louisville, Kentucky's largest city, where he was interviewed by detectives regarding his apparent disappearance eight years previously. He said he couldn't remember a thing, that the most he could recall was escaping a house in neighboring Ohio before running across the river bridge. But DNA tests would reveal something that was devastatingly disappointing to James Pittson, who was indescribably overjoyed at the sudden breakthrough in the case. The boy was not Timothy Pitson. The entire story was an intricate lie fabricated by then. 23 year old Brian Michael Rini Reni has been released from Belmont Correctional Institution in Ohio just shy of a month. Prior to his terrible claims, he had served just 14 months on charges of burglary and vandalism resulting from acts committed in Medina County. Sergeant Bill Bill Rowley, spokesman for Aurora police, later released a statement saying, although we are disappointed that this turned out to be a hoax, we remain diligent in our search for Timothy as our missing persons case remains unsolved. One cannot possibly imagine what would have possessed Brian Michael Rini to tell such a heinous and evil lie. It is possible that he had seen seen an episode of Live PD or somehow heard of Timothy's disappearance whilst incarcerated and wished to hit back at a world that he viewed with what must be a remarkable degree of contempt. But either way, Timothy Pittson remains missing to this day and there have been no sightings of the boy since the day he suddenly disappeared at the hands of his mother. However, no bodies have been found, not even a drop of blood that wasn't Easily explainable. So it is entirely possible that he is still out there somewhere in the United States, just waiting to be found.
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When I was a young boy, I always had a lot of trouble falling asleep at night. I would lie awake, my mind racing with anxiety. It would get so bad that I would carry my pillow and blanket around the house and see if I could maybe sleep better in the living room or sometimes even on my parents bedroom floor.
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Looking back, this is pretty embarrassing, but.
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There'S a reason I mention it.
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Every so often I would stay at.
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My Nana's house with my younger brother. It was a three story duplex in one of those gated seniors communities that spring up in residential areas surrounding hospitals. When I was 8, my grandfather passed away from cancer at the hospital right around the corner. Since then, my Nana has always lived alone. Even still, I remember enjoying spending time there. Eating lots of food, playing video games, watching lots of VHS tape, taped shows about alien encounters and ghostly hauntings. That's where I got my thrills. That being said, I have always considered myself skeptical to the paranormal. However, something happened one of those nights at my Nana's house that to this day, over a decade later, I still cannot explain. On this particular night it was only me staying over at Nana's house. The upstairs floor of her three story duplex consisted of two bedrooms, a large master bedroom, and right across the hallway was another smaller bedroom. Most nights when I stayed over with my younger brother, we would both sleep in the smaller bedroom. But there was always something a little creepy about that bedroom. And on the night I decided I won't be sleeping alone in that room. Instead I'll just take a pillow and blanket and sleep on the floor in my Nana's master bedroom. My family was used to my strange sleeping habits so it was no problem. I made my bed on the floor in between the door and the queen sized bed that furnished the master bedroom and swiftly fell asleep. I woke up tossing and turning in the middle of the night. It must have been in the very early a.m. hours.
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The room was very dark.
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To my right is the large bed where my Nana lay sleeping. To my left is the bedroom door, left ajar only slightly. I can hear my Nana sleeping in her bed. The soft inhale and exhale of someone in a deep sleep. And then a troubling realization takes hold of me. I notice that hers isn't the only pattern of breathing that I can hear. To my left in the direction of the hallway and the room directly across the hall, I can hear a completely separate inhale and exhale. It sounded as though someone was standing right outside the bedroom door, breathing loudly. I can remember thinking to myself, am I just imagining this or am I hearing myself? I remember holding my breath and listening and then guaranteed myself that I was hearing two different people breathing.
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It was easy to tell because the.
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Breathing sounds were on opposite sides of me. It continued for at least a full minute, and the more I paid attention to it, the more terrified I became in the moment. I pulled my blanket over my head and convinced myself that maybe for some reason one of my other relatives had shown up and needed to crash in her guest bedroom. Somehow I eventually fell back asleep. The next morning, sitting down at a stack of pancakes, I asked my Nana if anyone had been over last night. She told me no and asked me why. I asked, but I couldn't bring myself to tell her what I had experienced the night before. Being in a gated community, she would.
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Have had to buzz through any visitors that arrived.
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That's the one and only time I've ever experienced something that I just cannot explain. I'm only 23 and I'm a very social person, so I've seen a lot of things and I've encountered many strange people. But this experience may have been one of the most frightening and unsettling encounters of my life. This happened in the late summer dark of 2021. It was mid September, so the school year had just started. I was a senior in college and my group of friends and I decided we wanted to go camping. Not overnight camping. We just wanted to go out in the warm night and sit around a fire in the woods, make s', mores, chill and maybe have some drinks. One of my friends, who was a girl, Landry, had come up with the.
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Idea to do this.
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After classes were over that Friday, Landry brought some of her friends, Gracie and Lily. I asked my two roommates, Wyatt and Marshall, if they wanted to come.
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They both agreed.
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So there were six of us in total. Three girls and three boys. We were all just college friends having a good old time. We had all been out there for maybe 30 minutes when I heard footsteps in the woods. As soon as I heard the footsteps, everyone else must have heard them too. All of the talking around the campfire turned to silence. I think the reason it startled everyone was because of two reasons. One, because the footsteps were heavy and it was unmistakably something much larger than a small game animal like a squirrel.
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Or a rabbit, and two, because it.
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Was clearly not a deer or another four legged animal because of the Frequency of the footsteps. The footsteps were hitting the leaves one at a time.
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If it was a deer, there would.
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Be simultaneous thuds on the ground, indicating a creature with four legs. Given the way the leaves were crunching one step at a time, it couldn't be anything but something large that was traveling on two legs. Suddenly, there was a thud on the ground about 30 yards away from us, as if whatever was moving through the woods had fallen. The footsteps had now stopped. We knew whatever it was had to still be in the woods near us, just stagnant. Needless to say, we all had our guard up now. The strong, unsettling feeling of being watched soon got the best of us, so.
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We all agreed to just take our.
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Things and quickly leave. As soon as we all started to get up, we heard a voice from the woods in that same direction yell in a creepy, friendly tone. It was a man's voice, and he said something along the lines of, hey.
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Where are you guys going?
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The girls immediately started running back to the truck without getting their stuff, which was maybe 100 yards away. I wasn't really scared, but I definitely knew something wasn't right.
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Wyatt was obviously flustered, but he was.
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Trying to hide it. He grabbed his stuff and started to walk back without saying a word. Meanwhile, Marshall called back to whoever was in the woods. He said something along the lines of, what do you mean? Or something stupid like that. We were the only two people still within earshot of the man in the woods now. Marshall was toying with danger, and we both knew it. The man replied with something along the lines of, I'm stuck in the woods and I need help. Marshall was kinda being a jerk and said something like, how could you be stuck in the woods? Did you get caught in a bear trap? After there was no answer, Marshall said that he had got him. Marshall and I grabbed the girl's stuff and started toward the truck. I remember walking back thinking that Marshall is an idiot for doing that. As Marshall and I were approaching the truck, I looked at my phone and had some missed calls. Calls from Landry. I found out why as soon as we got back in the truck. When Wyatt and the girls simultaneously started trying to tell me and Marshall about how they saw multiple tall silhouettes walking near the tree line in the moonlight. They explained how the shadow outlines were walking in the direction of where we had set up camp. We obviously didn't think they were lying. After the exchange Marshall just had with the guy in the woods immediately following, we promptly booked it out of that place. In retrospect, it could have been some guys just playing games out in the woods, but more realistically, it was probably some sort of gang or cult or something like that. I'm just glad we were so lucky to get out of there when we did. Or who knows what could have happened.
- [34:12]
C
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E
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E
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F
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- [35:07]
C
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G
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B
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- [36:39]
B
When I was in college, I worked the night shift one summer vacation. I was 19 years old and an average looking female.
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C
I wasn't enthused about having to work.
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B
A job over the summer, but it was the only way I was going.
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To be able to afford tuition.
- [36:55]
B
Working night shift was probably the weirdest experience of my life. It was at the McDonald's drive thru. I still remember my first night on the job. This lady came in and was talking to someone while she was waiting for.
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Us to take her order.
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B
She sounded extremely upset and she was screaming at the top of her lungs. It sounded like it was directed at someone in the backseat. I immediately assumed that she was abusing her children. I'm a psychology major so I naturally pick up on stuff like that. She ordered three Big Macs and three large Cokes. My intuition has been wrong. When she pulled up to pay for her meal, she was completely alone. I was honestly a little startled.
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C
Why would this lady be here ordering.
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B
This much food and screaming in her car if she was alone? I couldn't wrap my head around the situation. She was otherwise polite. She was nice as she spoke to.
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Me and paid for her food and left.
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She even told me to have a good night. She had been the only customer we had in a probably 45 minute window. And after she left I saw some of my co workers laughing at me. I asked what's so funny?
- [38:15]
C
And he told me that it was.
- [38:16]
B
My first encounter with Schizo Susan. They told me that she regularly did.
- [38:21]
C
Stuff like this and always showed up.
- [38:24]
B
At all hours of the night to order seemingly too much food. She was always yelling at people in her car, but there was never anyone actually in her car. They didn't actually know her name so they just started calling her Schizo Susan. They told me that there were occasional nights when she was the only customer.
- [38:43]
C
To come through the drive thru at all.
- [38:45]
B
I found it extremely unnerving. I immediately started wondering what was wrong with this woman. About a week went by. She came in every night just like they said. And in between speaking to me to order her food and picking up her food, she was always yelling at someone. I couldn't take it anymore. I had to know what was up. So I formulated a plan. I was just going to ask her.
- [39:15]
C
Who she was speaking to.
- [39:17]
B
You know, play it off like I thought she was talking to me. It was the best I could come up with without seeming abrasive. I remember it being a Friday night when I decided I was going to do it. I had chickened out a couple of times, but I Figured that since I don't work the weekends, may as well try something new to end my last.
- [39:36]
C
Shift for the week.
- [39:38]
B
Well, the night that I did it, I listened in to her screaming for a few more seconds than I normally did. You see, I can listen to what people are saying through the McDonald's speaker without them necessarily knowing that I'm listening. If I don't say anything, they would never know. I normally never did this because it's kind of frowned upon. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of rule against it. But I listened for maybe 20 or 30 seconds. I listened for long enough to know that she was yelling at someone named Darien. When she was in the middle of saying something, I interrupted her and said, I'm sorry, ma', am, were you speaking to me? She just replied, no. Crap, I thought to myself. I knew that I had to try something else. I asked her if Darian would be ordering with her. Then she went silent. It wasn't an entire minute, but she didn't say anything. After the second time of asking her.
- [40:44]
C
If she was still there, she let.
- [40:46]
B
Out a banshee scream. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life. It really hurt my ears. The McDonald's microphone system is already pretty loud, but when someone screams into it, trust me when I say that it is the most unbearable thing you have ever experienced. I was also surprised at how long she screamed. She had one deep, loud, guttural scream going for like 30 entire seconds. In the moment, though, I was scared for my life.
- [41:22]
C
I also got really worried that I.
- [41:24]
B
Was gonna lose my job. I felt really guilty for asking, like it was my fault for setting her off. In retrospect, I don't think I really did anything horrible to her. Literally just asked her if the person whose name she was screaming just a minute ago was also going to be ordering food. She didn't actually say anything when she screamed. It was just kind of a violent and guttural screaming. I was really taken aback there for a minute. How the heck do you even respond to that? I asked her if she wanted to continue placing her order, and that's when she just drove away. She really floored it and drove way faster than she should have. And as she drove by, I saw her face looking at me through the window. It must have been only a split second that I could see her, but I got that one really good look at her. She looked extremely distressed. And as if things couldn't get any weirder, the microphone system stopped working correctly. The rest of the night. I think she screamed loud enough to break something in it. That was hands down the weirdest thing to ever happen to me throughout any jobs I've ever worked and this weird lady just disappeared. After that she stopped coming to McDonald's altogether. I asked some of my other co workers how long she had been stopping by for her nightly visits and they.
- [42:53]
C
All said that it was for as.
- [42:55]
B
Long as they can remember, which probably meant at least a year. I felt somewhat guilty for pissing this lady off so bad, but I think it is safe to say she probably needs some serious mental help. I haven't worked at McDonald's in a long time and I don't ever plan on working fast food again. I just hope that wherever that lady ended up, she got the help that she so desperately and obviously needed.
- [43:31]
A
During.
- [43:31]
B
The mid 19th century, the United States saw a sharp rise in the number.
- [43:36]
C
Of people who chose to leave their.
- [43:37]
B
Homes in the east to resettle in the California or the newly acquired Oregon territories. For many, a new life in California meant freedom from financial servitude or freedom to practice their own particular brand of Christianity without judgment from their peers back East. Others were attracted to the West's new and exciting economic opportunities or inspired by the idea of Manifest Destiny. But for one group of migrants, their pursuit of the American Dream would quickly turn into a nightmare, one characterized by isolated mountain passes, freezing cold, and stomach twisting hunger. In the spring of 1842, a wagon train that was almost 500 strong headed out from Independence, Missouri, seeking to follow an established trail that would lead them to the promised land of California. Taking their place at the rear of the wagon train was a group of nine wagons containing 32 members of the Reed and Donner families. The the family patriarch, George Donner, had spent time in a number of eastern states before finally making the decision to move his family west. At first, heavy traffic on the trails leading eastward, as well as the large number of other travelers meant that the journey is relatively easy. Traveling in the summer months could be hot and tiresome, but it paled in comparison with how difficult navigation during the winter would be. It was essential that the wagon train make as much ground as possible while.
- [45:20]
C
It was still possible, for winter was.
- [45:23]
B
Coming and it would not be merciful. By the end of September 1842, an attempt at a shortcut had gone terribly wrong for the Donner Reed families seeking to overtake the Sierra Nevada mountains before the winter arrived, they had successfully traversed the Great Salt Lake Desert, but complications meant that they had in fact slowed Themselves down by about a month, lack of water in the harsh dry desert had driven the party to near madness and caused casualties. Among its essential accompaniment of oxen and other cattle. Tensions among the party members were reaching breaking points. In the following month of October, many of wagons that made up the original party had gone their separate ways, either pushing on towards California or making their way back eastward. In the group that remained, two wagons became entangled and a man by the name of John Snyder attempted to remedy the situation. He lacked patience and soon began mercilessly whipping one of the oxen. Soon James Reed, the oldest and most senior member of the Reed family, attempted to intervene to stop the beating. But Snyder reacted furiously to the intervention and turned the whip in his hand towards Reed. A physical altercation ensued, one that was only ended when James Reed took out a long steel bowie knife and plunged it into Snyder's chest. Despite Reed's explanation of self defense, the party members convened to decide his punishment. United States laws were not applicable west of the Continental Divide in what was then Mexican territory and wagon trains often dispensed their own justice. Some suggested that Reid should hang for his crimes, but it was eventually decided that that he should merely be banished from the wagon train. But on pain of death should he attempt to return. What was once a happy adventure into the west had become a vicious fight for survival. Grass was becoming scarce and the animals were steadily weakening. To relieve the animals load, everyone was expected to walk. The trials that the Donner party had so far endured resulted in splintered groups, each looking out for themselves and distrustful of the others. In one incident of abject cruelty, an elderly man was ejected from the wagon he was reliant on for transport, being told that he had to walk or die. A few days later, the elderly man sat next to a stream, his feet so swollen they had split open. Some members of the party begged the others to wait for him, to show mercy to the party's weakest members. But the others refused, thinking only of themselves. The old man was not seen again in the following weeks. Attacks from the local Paiute Indian tribe were responsible for the party losing almost 40 of their cattle. This is extremely shocking for a number of reasons. Firstly, the Paiute tribe had first appeared friendly to the migrants, sharing supplies with them and even directing them onto trails that would take them westward. But at some point the relationship had soured and the people, known for their respect and reverence of the natural world, appeared to have no problem slaughtering the wagon train's animal accompaniment in an attempt to slow down or even stop the party dead in their tracks. With nearly all the cattle gone, one particular party member stopped to bury his wagon for safekeeping. Two of his number stayed with him to help, but they returned without him, reporting they had been attacked by Paiutes, murdered and scalped. By the end of October, the party was forced to make camp around Truckee Lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. Three widely separated cabins of pine logs served as their homes, with dirt floors and poorly constructed flat roofs that leaked when it rained. Of the 60 at Truckee Lake, 19 were men over 18 years old, 12 were women, and 29 were children, 6 of whom were toddlers or younger. Very little food remained in their supplies, and the oxen began to die. Their carcasses were frozen and stacked. Truckee Lake was not yet iced over, but the pioneers were unfamiliar with catching lake trout. The most experienced hunter among them killed a bear, but had little luck after that. Margaret Reed promised to pay double when they got to California for the use of three oxen from other families. She was charged $25, normally the cost of two healthy oxen for the carcass of a single ox that had starved to death. The mood in the camp was beyond tense. People were only looking out for themselves by this point, but an incoming blizzard would be the straw that broke the mule's back. During the height of the snowstorm, a man named Patrick Dolan began to rant deliriously, stripped off his clothes and ran into the woods. He returned shortly afterwards and died a few hours later.
- [51:07]
C
Not long after, some of the group.
- [51:09]
B
Began to eat flesh from Dolan's body. The next morning, the group stripped the muscle and organs from Dolan's body, then dried them to store for the days ahead, taking care to ensure nobody would have to eat his or her relatives. As the days went by, more and more of the party succumbed to their desperate hunger and made the decision to consume human flesh. Some were determined to continue hunting and fishing, only turning to cannibalism when there was no other option. But it appeared some preferred the taste of human flesh and eschewed the long and tiring hunting trips in favor of consuming those who died of disease and malnutrition. At one point, a scouting party looking for the most efficient way ahead came across two Miwok Indians named Luis and Salvador. They had once been party members but had attempted to move on when the supplies had run low. At the time they were discovered, they had not eaten anything for nine whole days and were dangerously undernourished and weakened. As a result. However, instead of attempting to rescue and save the lives of their Indian friends, one of the scouting party simply shot them there and then before carving off chunks of their flesh with a hunting knife. On January 12, the group stumbled into a Miwok camp, looking so deteriorated that the camp's inhabitants initially fled, fearing them to be the spirits of undead souls who wandered the snow capped mountain range. Once it was clear that they were in fact the survivors of a disastrous expedition, the Miwoks gave them what they had to acorns, grass, and pine nuts, completely unaware that the group had murdered and eaten two starving members of their tribe. They were shaken, starving, and had arguably sold their souls to stay alive. But they were safe now. Relatively safe anyway. Reporting on the event across the US Was heavily influenced by the national enthusiasm for westward migration. In some papers, news of the tragedy was buried in small paragraphs. Despite the contemporary tendency to sensationalize stories, several newspapers, including those in California, wrote about the cannibalism in graphic, exaggerated detail. In some print accounts, the members of the Donner Party were depicted as heroes and California a paradise worthy of significant sacrifices. But it seems that sacrificing one's family and friends, as well as losing one's humanity through consuming human flesh, might not be worth any prize, no matter how great.